Ox and ass before Him bow

Adoration of the Magi Altarpiece, left hand predella panel depicting the Nativity by Gentile da Fabriano (1423)
Public Domain
Traditionally, the ox is seen as Israel, and the ass is seen as the Gentiles. This comes from a very important distinction about the two animals. The ox is a “clean” animal, and the ass is an “unclean” animal according to dietary proscription in the Old Testament. The Mosaic law also ruled: “Thou shall not plow with an ox and an ass yoked together.”
What is forbidden, the yoking of the clean and unclean, the Jew and the Gentile, can only be accomplished without sin by Christ.
–Adapted from “The Ass and The Ox in The Nativity Icon” by Jonathan Pageau.
O that my heart were so clean
as thy manger was!
But I am all filth, and obscene.
Yet if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.
– Henry Vaughan
May the Bethlehem star lead me
to the sight of him who freed me….
Make me pure, Lord: thou art holy.
Make me meek, Lord: thou wert lowly.
–Gerard Manley Hopkins
Jesus – Lord, for whom no room could be found in an inn,
Never let me close my door against thee
Nor against the least of my brethren in their need.
– Eric Milner-White
Human nature is like a stable inhabited by the ox of passion and the ass of prejudice; animals which take up a lot of room and which I suppose most of us are feeding on the quiet. And it is there between them, pushing them out, that Christ must be born and in their very manger he must be laid – and they will be the first to fall on their knees before him. Sometimes Christians seem far nearer to those animals than to Christ in his simple poverty, self-abandoned to God. TAP
–Evelyn Underhill
Nativity scene on a 4th century sarcophagus from Italy
Public Domain
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