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It can be easy to gloss over the fact that Jesus was born during a "census." Many of us are familiar with such government programs that seek to turn each individual into a "number" on a sheet of paper (or on an Excel sheet).
St. John Paul II believed this little historical fact was not without meaning and that Jesus' birth during a census can help recover our own humanity.
Not just a number
The Polish pontiff reflected on this detail of the Nativity during his Urbi et Orbi address on Christmas Day in 1978:
[Jesus] is one of the millions and millions of people who have been born, are being born and will be born on earth. A human being, one item in the vast range of statistics. It as not without reason that Jesus came into the world when a census 'was being held, when a Roman emperor wanted to know the number of subjects in his territory. A human being is an object to be counted, something considered under the aspect of quantity, one of many millions.
Yet, that is not the end of the story.
St. John Paul II went on to explain how we are not simply a number:
Yet at the same time he is a single being, unique and unrepeatable. If we celebrate with such solemnity the birth of Jesus, it is to bear witness that every human being somebody unique and unrepeatable. If our human statistics, human categories, human political, economic and social systems, and mere human possibilities fail to ensure that man can be born, live and act as one who is unique and unrepeatable, then all this is ensured by God. For God and before God, the human being is always unique and unrepeatable, somebody thought of and chosen from eternity, some called and identified by his own name.
The world may think that we are only a number on a sheet of paper, but God knows our name!
Christmas is not only about the birth of Jesus, but in the dignity of humans, the dignity of each one of us.
God become one of us, so that we might see how loved and cherished we are.
You are not a number. You are a son or daughter of God.
God came into the world so that you (in particular) might have eternal life!
