Again and again, we fall down: we are not masters of our own lives we are alienated we are not free.
He invites us to Himself, and in a very deep sense, we are all suffering from "the sickness where one falls down." Again and again, we find ourselves unable interiorly to walk upright and to stand. He is "Immanuel", God as a child, a God to whom we may speak in intimate language. And Jesus is there as a child without weapons, issuing an invitation to us. This tree is now the rediscovered tree of life from paradise as an old German hymn says, "the cherub with his flaming sword no longer blocks the way." And this tree is Mary with the blessed fruit of her womb, Jesus. The story is more than just an interpretation of one of our loveliest Christmas customs: I have come to see it as key to the very heart of the mystery of Christmas itself. He wears a crown, and rays go forth from the figure, giving an assurance of faith and hope to many people. The tree still bears the little waxen Christ child. One might say that it has become a precious husk around the tree, out of which the altar and the tabernacle grow. It was built by the most celebrated Austrian architects of the time, on the model of Santa Maria Rotonda in Rome. The Church authorities in Passau were slow to approve of this popular devotion, but the local people were finally given permission to erect a little church around this tree, and the foundation stone of the Christkindl church was laid in 1708. Gradually, people heard about this, and they began to make pilgrimages to the Christ Child in the tree. He brought this image to the tree and said his prayers before it, sensing that a healing power radiated from the image. Then he heard of an image of the Christ Child that had healed a paralyzed nun, and after some time he succeeded in obtaining an exact copy, a waxen Christ Child holding a cross in one hand and the crown of thorns in the other. He placed a picture of the Holy Family in the hollow of a medium-sized pine, and he found strength and consolation as he said his prayers before his picture. At that time, Steyr had a new sacristan and choirmaster who suffered from epilepsy, or, as the chronicle innocently puts it, "the sickness where one falls down." He came from Melk, where he had become acquainted with the devotion to the Child Jesus. The history of this tree takes us back to the year 1694. Tree in the world, which forms a kind of reredos behind the high altar in the church at Christkindl near Steyr. A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to see the oldest surviving Christmas
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