Adoration of the Shepherds, School of Raphael
When this heavenly child was born, another prince of peace sat on the banks of the Tiber, and there, with solemn ceremonies, dedicated an Ara Pacis Augustae; its marvelous but broken remains, buried for centuries under the ruins of Rome, have lifted their heads in our days. On that altar Augustus sacrificed in honor of gods who do not save. It is lawful, however, to think that the true God and eternal Prince of Peace who appeared among men a few years later, heard the yearning for peace and the peace of Augustus was a sort of figure of the supernatural peace that only He can give, and in which all earthly peace must be understood: the peace conquered not with iron, but with the wood of the cradle of this infant Lord of Peace, and with the wood of his future cross....
Let us therefore go to Bethlehem, to the grotto of the newborn King of peace, serenaded in his cradle by the choirs of angels. Kneeling before Him, in the name of this restless and shaken humanity; in the name of the innumerable men without distinction of people or nation who bleed and die, or have fallen into want and misery, or who have lost their country. Let us direct our prayer for peace and concord, for help and salvation, with words which the Church places on the lips of her children in these days: "Emmanuel, Rex et legifer noster, exspectatio Gentium et salvator earum, veni al salvandum nos, Domine, Deus noster (Brev. Romanum)."
~Pius XII, Christmas Eve address to the bishops & priests of Rome, 1939 (my translation)
