"…[T]he Mass is very much like the events of the Gospel itself. That is, in those events we saw ternal mysteries veiled under the inauspicious terms, not only of our world, but of the most unlikely crannies of our world. Nazareth: the ultimate small town. A stable: dung and straw for the child born to the purple. Crucifixion: the worst that our malice could arrange. And yet in all of these the eye of faith sees glory. It finds at these points what T.S. Elliot called ‘the point of intersection of the timeless with time’."

"Likewise with the Mass. To all intents and purposes, it is 8:00 A.M/ on Tuesday, June 13, A.D. 304, or A.D. 1995, in Lyons or Peoria. But we have stepped, the way the shepherds did, into the precincts of the eternal. No straw, no dung, no braying ass, that does not belong here. Belong here? Surely the mystery is to be perceived in spite of all that noisome stuff?"

"No. Belongs here. This is where, and how, the Most High prepared and set the scene for his advent. Let the straw stay; let the straw be acclaimed even, since in it all straw is touched with the dignity of proffering something to the Most High. If the asses are what they truly are, made by this Most High, then their very dung testifies to the odd and cyclic harmony that characterizes his creation. The Incarnate One will not draw fastitious skirts away from this that marks his beloved asses. No: he will be found, quite helpless, right here"

– Thomas Howard, On Being Catholic, pp. 83-84