Yes, that's a human baby. I'll explain in a moment why she's there. Lest I be accused of misdirection, let me say something about the election: Trump, the latest incarnation (sorry) of conservative liberalism, won. He's bad, but She- the "Grandma Abortion Witch" (all credit to Zippy Catholic) - was far worse. Better him than her. And that's the end of my analysis. Maybe at a later time.
The baby above was born in mid-October, my elder daughter's firstborn. She was about two weeks old when her mother pressed the camera's shutter button. With Christmas upon us, it's remarkable to ponder that, a mere two weeks earlier, Hillary Clinton would have supported the murder of this child, had its mother felt so inclined, and by means most gruesome, so gruesome it beggars the imagination. We kill babies in a spectacular variety of ways undreamed of by previous societies. We live in advanced times.
When Christmas rolls around, it's an unpleasant but necessary exercise to recall what a friend describes as "the horror of horrors" - that in the land of liberty somewhere north of 3,500 babies are murdered daily in utero and some partially ex. If one should survive the assassination attempt (there are a few) it will likely be left alone, gasping and twitching till it can't no more.
Worldwide, there have been over one and a half billion abortions since 1980.
A little over two thousand years ago, a young woman gave birth to a child who was reputedly a merger of the human and divine, without our taking "merger" too seriously. It easily confuses when there was no confusion, or co-mingling of the two natures in Christ. They remained distinct yet united in the one Person. As the old encyclopedia has it: "We speak here of no moral union, no union in a figurative sense of the word; but a union that is physical, a union of two substances or natures so as to make One Person, a union which means that God is Man and Man is God in the Person of Jesus Christ."
Of course, some people don't buy this story, but if it is true, then God commended Himself to the care of the human race. Lying in Mary's arms, he says (without uttering a word) to her and to all of us, "Take care of me." It's what every baby says by virtue of its mere existence. If you've ever held a newborn and were not at once stricken by a tender obligation to guard and protect this helpless innocent, then something's wrong with you. If this sense of obligation does not extend backward in time to this creature's beginning, and forward to its end, then something is equally wrong with you. With us. A lot of people these days are not much moved by the sight of babies, especially if they encounter more than two in one family. And what is wrong with us probably cannot be fixed without our taking rather seriously the claim made upon us by that baby who was a God-man.
Leaving aside the Incarnation's larger soteriological purpose, this mystery reveals to mankind something new about itself. Tending as I do toward misanthropy, it is sometimes hard even for me to believe, but I do try to put the truth before my own inclinations, most of which are probably due to sinful habit in any case. That new thing told us by the birth of the Bethlehem baby is that mankind is made of such stuff, created in such a way, as to render this inexplicable union called hypostatic metaphysically possible. We were made in His image. The Incarnation proves it.
If it is true. Until a sufficient number of us believe that it is, and behave as though we believe that it is, we'll remain lost, the remnant waiting upon the day of judgement. I note that our local chapter of the 40 Days for Life movement has about 400 likes on Facebook. Kim Kardashian has about 40 million.
To end on an uplifting note, here's a picture of that same baby at two months. Let the love begin:
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