For each of the 12 days of Christmas, I’ll review and fill out one of the “12 Ways of Christmas” …

Pope Benedict’s recently described how Christ’s cross is a “stumbling block” to the Jews and “foolishness” to the Greeks. This is appropriate on the feast of St. Stephen, the first martyr, and also for the second day of Christmas: You can replace “cross” with “manger” and get the same result.

It’s from his recent series of weekly audience catechesis talks about St. Paul. The Register happens to produce the earliest, best English translations of the audience available. We pay our own translator to do them, and Father Owen nearly always is able to pore over the translations, improving them even more. We make these available to subscribers only. I’ve made this one available to all.

Here are a few quotes from it:

“For the Jews, the cross was skandalon — that is, a trap or stumbling block. … For the Jews, the cross contradicted the very essence of God, who manifested himself through prodigious signs.”

“For the Greeks, that is, for the pagans, the criterion of judgment for opposing the cross is reason.”

“In fact, for them, the cross was death — foolishness — literally insipidity, that is, food lacking salt. More than an error, therefore, it was an insult to good sense.”

“The idea that God could become man, thus immersing himself within all the limits of space and time, was already unacceptable. Therefore, it was clearly inconceivable to believe that a God could end up on a cross!”

And yet, says Pope Benedict ….

“The cross [editor’s note: like the manger] reveals ‘the power of God’ (see 1 Corinthians 1:24), which is different from human power.”

Thus, the second “way” of Christmas:

“2. God loses battles but wins wars. In his day, Herod was Christmas’s formidable enemy. He lied to the Magi and ordered a massacre of innocents, becoming an angel of death in Bethlehem as he killed all newborn boys to try to eliminate Jesus. In our day Christmas is still under attack, though in America the attacks aren’t violent, thank God. Christmas will win in the end, because God wins even through apparent defeats.”

— Tom Hoopes