Making room at the inn

One of my favorite meditations on the story of the Nativity of Jesus comes from the late Archbishop Fulton Sheen, excerpted here from Through the Year with Fulton Sheen: 

Certainly, thought Joseph, there would be room in the village inn. There was room for the rich; there was room for those who were clothed in soft garments; there was room for everyone with a tip to give to the innkeeper. But when finally the scrolls of history are completed down to the last words of time, the saddest lines of all will be: “There was no room at the inn.”
 
No room at the inn, but there was room in the stable. The inn was the gathering place of public opinion, the focal point of the world’s moods, the rendezvous of the worldly, the rallying place of the popular and the successful. But there’s no room in the place where the world gathers. The stable is a place for outcasts, the ignored and the forgotten. The world might have expected the Son of God to be born in an inn; a stable would certainly be the last place in the world where one would look for Him. … So the Son of God made man is invited to enter into His own world through a back door. 

The traditional image has Joseph and Mary wearily going door to door seeking shelter and getting turned away each time until a kindly innkeeper offers them a remote stable for the night. That story reinforces how the Son of God was born in the humblest of circumstances and serves as a parable about how we must ready the “inn” of our own hearts to receive Him.

But there is another interpretation of the Nativity story with a different perspective. 

“Inn” is said to be a mistranslation of a word that means “guest room.” The “inn” was not a motel, but a private home, and Jews were often hospitable to travelers by taking them in as guests. During the busy census, Joseph and Mary found no guest room available, but one household allowed them to stay in the main part of their house, where the entire family slept together and even their animals were ordinarily brought indoors for warmth and safety. And yes, there would be a feeding trough for the animals — a manger. 

In this version, someone made room for Joseph and Mary — not in the “inn,” but in the very heart of their home.

The Ulma family of Poland (see feature, p. 10) made room in their hearts for their Jewish neighbors during World War II. They paid the ultimate price — and have reaped the ultimate reward.

Not every Christian is called to such martyrdom. Nevertheless, the Nativity story reminds us that we must recognize Christ in the least of our brothers and sisters — the poor, the powerless and the marginalized — and open our hearts to them as we would to Him.