Between the donkey and the ox

fr. Luciano Bertazzo

Can there ever be a serious nativity scene where they are not present? Yet St. Anthony, referring to the naturalistic texts, gives them a negative connotation, not very much in harmony with Christmas For the month of December, in our itinerary in the “Anthonian Zoo”, it is necessary to present the donkey and the ox in pairs. Can there ever be a serious nativity scene where they are not present? Even if, wanting to be finicky from a historical point of view, we know that perhaps it wasn't really necessary for them to be there, in fact their almost obligatory insertion recalled the verse of the prophet Isaiah: «An ox knows its owner, and an ass, its master's manger; but Israel does not know, my people has not understood» (1:3) That they were, however, already in the imagination since the fourth century with the first representations, is confirmed by the Saint of Assisi himself, Francis, who at Greccio, first, wanted to relive the experience of Christmas to «glimpse with the eyes of the body the hardships in which Jesus had found himself due to the lack of things necessary for a newborn baby, as he was lying in a manger…