The dear and charming statues of Him, copied from the miraculous image in the capital of harassed Czechoslovakia, belong now to the whole of Catholicity. Today they can be found almost everywhere.

This fact we celebrate in the majestic and glorious feast of Christ the King.

But Christ is the king not only of power and might. He is the not only king of terrible love, ruling from His cross, the conquering monarch entering into the glory of His heavenly kingdom.

He is also the Infant King, the king of Bethlehem and of the nursery in Nazareth . . . the king too small to defend Himself save by flight into Egypt . . . the king small enough to hid in the Host or in a human breast.

This was the wonder that exalted the early Christians and repelled the pagan monarchs.

Suddenly the best of good news broke over the horizon. The remote God was as near as Bethlehem. The great God had become as small as a baby. The hands that fashioned the universe were infant hands. The all-creative voice that had cried the stupendous ・Fiat lux・ broke into the cries of babyhood.

A king must be powerful, aloof, threatening, crowned with awesome majesty.

He must be reached through messengers and surrounded by the restraining pomp of courts.

So God became a Baby. Christianity was born with the birth of an Infant King. Christ's  birth was like a rebirth for human souls.

A million, million Christians have prayerfully and happily followed the Magi as they traveled from pagandom into the very center of Christianity.

Exultantly Catholics have seen these men, the wisest of their times, pierce the thin veil of babyhood and know that a Child could be a king, and God could in His quest of hearts assume the most heart-warming disguise.

Wise as only the holy are wise, they saw the majesty in humility and the strength in love.

Before the Infant King they placed their royal treasures.

How like they were to those holy souls who in far-off Prague placed about the Infant King the trappings of royalty. The three Wise Men gave Him jewels to stud into a crown, and gold to beat into fine thread for His royal raiment, and the perfumes that were burned only in the braziers that sent clouds of sacrificial incense upward to God.

History repeats itself with happy insistence. The gifts that were laid at the feet of the Infant of Bethlehem, modern faith has duplicated for the Infant of Prague.

Often we see our age for what it is, old and tired and faltering to an atomic grave.

It was the wisest of all teachers, Christ Himself, who reminded us that unless we become as little children we shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Nicodemus was puzzled by the whole idea of rebirth, infancy, childhood. Christ explained to him, on that secret night of his abashed visit, the rebirth through baptism. All His life Christ explained to the tired old world of His age the importance of the virtues that keep the world young.

Sin makes men old. Virtue keeps them immortally young.

Sin speeds us to quick death. Virtue wings us to endless life.

"Suffer the little children to come unto me . . . for of such is the kingdom of God" . . . men and women of childlike faith in their Father in heaven . . . men and women unwearied by the dull pounding of sin . . .

How wise the Church to encourage us, of this weary old generation, to kneel before the holy Infant and learn once more the beauties of childhood and the virtues of a heart that never grows old.

Who among us does not turn back to the happy days of childhood?

Those were days without worry or burden, without the demands of each day pressing hard upon us.

The world was new and beautiful, and God was very near. We walked with our guardian angel. We knew the saints by their favorite names.

Sin had not put its lines on our soul.

We loved purely, and we acted on warm, generous impulses.

Why regret childhood? Saints grow old; but they are the happy children of God's most tender protecting care, whatever their weight of years or mantle of responsibility.

The statue of the Infant of Prague has been a wonder-working statue.

In itself it is, as all statues are, stone or plaster or wood.

In its symbolism it is deep and precious and meaningful.

So it has been that near the feet of the Baby King the sick have found their health, the troubled their peace, the weary their rest, the doubting their faith, the despairing their hope.

Strangely enough it has been toward temporal affairs, the affairs that are constantly bungled and mismanaged by the wise adults of earth, that the miracles have flowed most frequently.

Why not? God has used the wisdom of the simple to confound the wise, as He used the Babe of Bethlehem to upset the wiles of Herod and brought into ancient Egypt the eternal Word of God, His Infant Son.

Miracles there will always be, but only for the trusting hearts.

Almighty, everlasting God, who willed that all things should be made new in Your beloved Son, the universal king, mercifully grant that all kindred of the Gentiles scattered by the ravages of sin may be brought under the sweet yoke of His rule. Who lives and reigns with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, world without end. Amen.

Life was cheap, and the attitude of the pagan world toward new life was contemptuous.

Only those who were strong enough to enforce their demands had any rights.

Then came the Infant Christ, and for the first time childhood became precious.

Every baby born into the world by God's hope and design was His child and heir.

Christianity saw in strong, pure, religious youth the guarantee of strong, pure, religious nations.

Marriage was founded no longer chiefly upon the lust of man and woman but upon the love of man and woman, a love that was to ripen into the living symbol of love - the newborn baby.

The child completed upon earth the trinity of home - itself an incarnate spirit of love -  as the Holy Spirit of love completed the Trinity of heaven.

As we look upon the Infant of Prague, we are glad that God became weak so that we could learn tenderness and mercy to the weak. We are glad that the Infant in the holy house gave marriage its high dignity and the home its beautiful sanctity.

Conscious of the dignity of childhood, we say:
The Prayer of the Infant of Prague, the Payer of Christ the King

Almighty, everlasting God, who willed that all things should be made new in Your beloved Son, the universal king, mercifully grant that all kindred of the Gentiles scattered by the ravages of sin may be brought under the sweet yoke of His rule. Who lives and reigns with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, world without end. Amen.

The decent adult cannot fail to feel a strong impulse toward giving when he sees the smile and the outstretched hands of an infant.

Infancy becomes an excuse for human generosity.

Certainly infancy has the power to waken even in the most selfish breasts the desire to give. Christmas proves this power - Christmas that centers on the child in the manger and the children in our homes.

Those holy souls who bedecked the Infant of Prague manifested beautifully this response of human generosity to childhood.

They clothed the Infant as we love to clothe a child in rich robes.

They placed upon His Infant head a jeweled crown.

Then they did in symbol what God had done in reality: They placed in the tiny hands of the Infant Christ the world, of which He is creator and over which He rules, and the scepter, symbol of His dominion over all mankind. So does God impress on a worldly-wise and selfish world, the need of simple, generous love. And He commands our love in the guise of a baby.

Almighty, everlasting God, who willed that all things should be made new in Your beloved Son, the universal king, mercifully grant that all kindred of the Gentiles scattered by the ravages of sin may be brought under the sweet yoke of His rule. Who lives and reigns with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, world without end. Amen.

Though he was battered and broken, He could stand in the presence of Pilate, representative of Rome's powerful monarch, and accept that governor's wondering question about His royalty.

No other king was ever more truly king in his own right than was Christ. As St. John points out in his glorious opening verses, the world is His, for He made it.

When He established the unending kingdom of His Church, He took over the world, knowing that the Church would see kingdoms and empires, republics and democracies rise and fall while it went its calm way.

But most important He is king because millions of men and women have freely and gladly accepted Him. He is the king of hearts, the monarch of souls, the ruler of men's lives, the master of their destinies. He is the sovereign who never disappoints, the emperor who walks at the side of His humblest subject.

He who said, "I will be with you all days even to the consummation of the world," has chosen to keep His promise to us in our day in the guise of an infant, if only to confound our worldliness.

Almighty, everlasting God, who willed that all things should be made new in Your beloved Son, the universal king, mercifully grant that all kindred of the Gentiles scattered by the ravages of sin may be brought under the sweet yoke of His rule. Who lives and reigns with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, world without end. Amen.