Fourth Day of Christmas: The Significance of Four Calling Birds

Fourth Day of Christmas — Four Calling Birds

Long dismissed as a nursery rhyme, The Twelve Days of Christmas belongs to the English recusant world: a culture of memory, symbol, and whispered catechesis formed under persecution. Read catechetically, the carol unfolds as a compressed rule of faith—Christological, Trinitarian, moral, and ecclesial—fully consonant with the Catechism of the Council of Trent, the Baltimore Catechism, Sacred Scripture, patristic consensus, and the Church’s liturgical year.

The Four Evangelists: Voices That Cannot Be Silenced

If the third day shapes the interior life, the fourth day turns outward again. The “four calling birds” are not decorative songsters; they are heralds. They signify the four Evangelists—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—whose voices carry the Gospel of Christ to the ends of the earth.

The Church has always insisted upon the fourfold Gospel with remarkable firmness. From the second century onward, she rejected both reduction and multiplication. There are not many gospels expressing many “Christianities,” nor is there one flattened narrative stripped of depth. There are four witnesses, each inspired by the same Holy Ghost, each proclaiming the same Christ, each illuminating the mystery from a distinct vantage.

St Irenaeus gives the classic articulation: just as there are four corners of the earth and four winds, so the Church is upheld by four Gospel pillars. This is not numerology, but theology. The Gospel is meant for the whole world, and its proclamation is stable, ordered, and sufficient.

Christmas is narrated by all four Evangelists, though not all in the same way. Matthew situates the Nativity within the history of Israel and the kingship of David. Luke draws us into the humility of the event—shepherds, poverty, obedience. Mark, though silent on the infancy, proclaims the same Christ whose coming he announces. John lifts the veil entirely: In the beginning was the Word. Together, they prevent distortion. No single temperament is allowed to dominate the mystery.

Liturgically, the Church underscores this on Christmas Day by placing the Prologue of St John at the heart of the feast. The Child is not merely born; the Word becomes flesh. For recusants, this mattered deeply. Protestantism often reduced Christianity to private reading and personal interpretation. The carol counters this quietly: the Gospel is proclaimed, not invented; received, not revised. It is called out by authoritative witnesses whose voices harmonise, not compete.

The fourth day therefore teaches attentiveness. God has spoken. He has preserved His Word through inspired witnesses. To be Catholic is not to choose which Gospel suits one’s disposition, but to listen to all four—and to allow oneself to be summoned by their call.

St Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book III, chapter 11.
John 1:1–14; Roman Missal, Mass of Christmas Day.

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