20 How the Church Has Changed the World his wife has given birth to a boy child in the night; while the true Lamb is born that same night nearby, as the good shepherds will see. Noah’s got his ship all stocked, but he still can’t budge the most reluctant creature to get into it while the rains are coming—Mrs. Noah. Your friends aren’t fooled by any fussy limitations of time or space, so that a boy, cheering the defeat of Pharaoh and his charioteers, gives praise to “the Lord Emmanuel,” as is right and just. Many of these plays, from here, there, and everywhere, still survive, and we can see, behind the plain language and the popular stage action, a way of thinking about the world that informs the greatest Christian artists. We don’t see time as a line from one point to another. All of salvation is reflected in each moment; the shadow of the cross falls upon the stable at Bethlehem; in the very curse upon Eve is the blessing that she will be the Mother of One who will crush the serpent’s head. Saint Thomas must have seen them when he was little, and his Grand Theater was the vault of the summer sky. But the greater drama to which he gave his heart, and for which he composed his own beautiful hymns, was the drama that the holiday commemorated. That drama was held every day, before every tabernacle in the world. We know its climax: for this is my Body.
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