Bishop Joseph E. Strickland: The Shadow of the Manger is a Cross

By Bishop Joseph E. Strickland, Bishop Emeritus, Pillars of Faith, Dec. 27, 2025

We are still in Christmas. The Church insists on that. She stretches the feast across days because the mystery is too large to be taken in all at once. The joy is real. Heaven has opened. God has come among us. The Word has taken flesh, and nothing can undo that triumph. The light shines, and it is not overcome.

But this joy is not fragile, and it is not naïve. It is strong enough to look straight at the truth.

That is why the Church does not ask us to leave Christmas behind when she places these witnesses before us. She asks us to understand Christmas more deeply. The Child in the manger has not come to make the world comfortable. He has come to save it. And salvation is costly.

And the temptation has always been the same. When the cost of discipleship becomes clear, when the Cross comes into view, the instinct is to soften it. To make the message safer. To make the faith easier to carry by reshaping it so it does not press too hard against the world. That temptation is not new – but it is very present.

We see it whenever the Church begins to speak more about comfort than conversion, more about synodality than truth, and more about accompaniment than fidelity. We see it when the sharp edges of the Gospel are sanded down so that no one is disturbed, no one is challenged, no one feels the weight of the Cross. We see it when what was once received with reverence is treated as an obstacle, when what was once handed down is described as rigid, and when the Church begins to borrow the language and priorities of the world rather than offering the world something different.

But Christ did not come to make the world comfortable. And the Church was never meant to mirror the world so closely that the Cross disappears from view. When the manger is separated from the Cross, everything becomes distorted. And joy – real joy – is replaced by reassurance. But reassurance cannot save us. Only Christ can.

Continue reading at Pillars of Faith

Continue reading >>>>>>>>>>>>