4 Miraculous Apparitions Of The Infant Jesus During The Christmas Season

To see Our Lord and Savior as a baby helps us to remember that not only is He divine, but He is also human.  

These four saints were blessed by miraculous apparitions of the Child Jesus on Christmas Eve. 

St. Therese of the Child Jesus credits an apparition of Jesus on Christmas Eve in 1886 as the moment of her conversion. In her autobiography, Story of A Soul, she writes: "On that blessed night the sweet Infant Jesus, scarcely an hour old, filled the darkness of my soul with floods of light. By becoming weak and little for love of me, He made me strong and brave: He put His own weapons into my hands so that I went on from strength to strength, beginning, if I may say so, to run as a giant." 

In 1902, St. Gemma excitedly wrote to her spiritual director about her experience. “Yesterday evening at midnight Mass [Christmas], when the priest came to the Offertory part of the Mass, I saw Jesus, Who offered me as a victim to the Eternal Father. I was very happy. He pressed me to Himself; then He led me to our Mother and presented me to her, saying: ‘This dear daughter of mine you must regard as a daughter of My Passion.’ Father, my heart still continues its violent palpitations."  

St. Faustina shared her vision from Christmas Eve 1937 in her diary, "When I arrived at Midnight Mass, from the very beginning I steeped myself in deep recollection, during which time I saw the stable of Bethlehem filled with great radiance. The Blessed Virgin, all lost in the deepest of love, was wrapping Jesus in swaddling clothes, but Saint Joseph was still asleep. Only after the Mother of God put Jesus in the manger did the light of God awaken Joseph, who also prayed. But after a while, I was left alone with the Infant Jesus who stretched out His little hands to me, and I understood that I was to take Him in my arms. Jesus pressed His head against my heart and gave me to know, by His profound gaze, how good He found it to be next to my heart." (Diary of St. Faustina, 1442).

St. Bonaventure wrote in his biography of St. Francis that the Infant Jesus appeared to the crowd gathered for the first ever nativity scene. He penned, “The man of God [St. Francis] stood before the manger, full of devotion and piety, bathed in tears and radiant with joy; the Holy Gospel was chanted by Francis, the Levite of Christ. Then he preached to the people around the nativity of the poor King; and being unable to utter His name for the tenderness of His love, He called Him the Babe of Bethlehem. A certain valiant and veracious soldier, Master John of Greccio, who, for the love of Christ, had left the warfare of this world, and become a dear friend of this holy man, affirmed that he beheld an Infant marvelously beautiful, sleeping in the manger, Whom the blessed Father Francis embraced with both his arms, as if he would awake Him from sleep.”

We may be shocked by these incredible apparitions of the Child Jesus, but we too have the opportunity to see the Christ Child at every Mass. In the miracle of the Holy Eucharist, as we take part in the highest form of prayer available to us on this earth, we are able to see the face of Jesus.