CHRIST IS BORN! GLORIFY HIM!

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us…”

- John 1:1,12-14

“Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth… When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”

– Job 38:4-7

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Going to confession this week in preparation for the Christmas Feast, the priest encouraged me (and everyone else I learned afterwards) to simply contemplate the wonder of Christmas, of God being born as a human infant, of Mary giving birth to the infinite God, and of the world being remade from this perspective. I am always grateful for the joyously merciful mood of the festal seasons, summarized perfectly in the Paschal Homily of St. John Chrysostom, in which guilt for and rebuke of sin are completely dissolved in the sea of forgiveness, and more than that, the vision of God in all things. Like the declaration given to each individual after partaking of the Eucharist, “behold, this hath touched thy lips, and taketh away thine iniquities, and purgeth away thy sins,” the festal seasons reveal to us what we really are. They are a memory not just of historical moments or steps in sanctification, they are a memory of the end in which all are sons of God, and that this end is our beginning.

Remembering-the-future is and is becoming an increasingly important perspective for understanding Orthodox theology. In short, apokatastasis, the end of every thing in God, is not merely a goal we are “supposed” to strive for but can ultimately fail to reach, rather it is the true reality of who and what everything is, it is God as our end which is our beginning, and so our history is the process of building and being built up into the fullness of who we will be and always really are. Jesus Christ, as the uniquely Christian locus of this perspective on the God-world relation, did not arbitrarily and in a passive reaction to time decide to become incarnate and then watch history meander to an unknown conclusion, instead the Incarnation is the revelatory axis in the center of history manifesting the eternal reality of God-manhood, the truth that Eden and New Jerusalem are that eternally true nature of things as principle and end.

A Christological reading of Scripture allows us to see this mystery evident throughout the Bible, for example in the above passages heading this article. Christ gives the power to become sons of God to those who were not borne of blood and flesh (Bios, psyche, corruptible existence) but were borne out of God (Zoe, pneuma, incorruptible life)! Commonly this would be interpreted as referring to our baptisms and this is not wrong, but it is only true because, as St. Maximus teaches, our baptisms in time are the manifestation of our eternal synergistic “yes” to our bringing into being, our birth, from God as gods and sons of God. Baptism as resurrection and birth into God, Eucharist as eschatological banquet and assimilation to divine identity, are in time proleptic manifestations, as are all those acts by which we move from passivity to actuality, of our divine eternity in and as Christ the I AM. Thus, when God asks us in the person of righteous Job, “where were you when I laid the foundations,” that is, the paradigms, the tapestry of the logoi and Sophianic Kingdom established within the Trinity’s council, we can answer through Job that we were there as the morning stars, as the realization of these paradigms, as the sons of God shouting for joy, leading the Magi and rejoicing above the manger.

With this perspective our understanding and appreciation of the mystery of Christmas can and must grow infinitely wide. The meaning of Christmas cannot be limited to a historically exceptional birth among other births in time. Rather, this image is itself iconic of the reality that the whole of creation must and will give birth to Christ in its own transformation into Christ, “[for] in His compassion [He] desires to be born in spirit in those who desire Him… [And] He becomes an infant and moulds Himself in them through the virtues,”[1] and this transformation into Christ is precisely transformation of humanity into the bride of God which gives birth to Christ. Thus, on Dec 15^th we celebrated the Forefathers of Christ, the Righteous of the Old Testament as ancestors by blood and virtue of the Theotokos, as the moving image of eternity. On Christmas we move beyond time to eternity as the ever-moving-repose of God-World communion, in which the marital play of Yahweh and Lady Wisdom (Pr 8:22-31) is the principle and end of divine procession and return, the content of the Logos’ play as our ten-thousand faces in emergence from non-being.

Reflecting on the mystery in this way confronts us with the wonderous reality that every human being is to be regarded as the God-man born in the manger. Just as divine fullness overflows into infinite creativity, our mystical contemplation must become practical love for all creation, not just as a totality but as love for each individual as if they were “the all” because, in divine truth, they are. This Christmas give yourself over to the infinite, profligate love of the Christmas Spirit, and glorify Christ in your loved ones, in your enemies, in the poor and downtrodden, in every facet of God’s creation, and as far as you are able keep this Spirit with you all year round. Because…

In all the places you find love, it feels like Christmas

It is the season of the heart

A special time of caring

The ways of love made clear

And it is the season of the spirit

The message if we hear it

Is make it last all year[2]

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[1] Maximus the Confessor “First Century-7-9” in The Philokalia: The Complete Text, vol. 2 (Faber & Faber, London & Boston: 1979), 165-166.

[2] “It Feels like Christmas” from The Muppets Christmas Carol