In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
We greet you with the continuing days of celebrating the Nativity of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ.
The Evangelist John, recounting Christ’s final conversation with His disciples, brings us the words of the Divine Teacher: A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world (John 16:21).
Likewise, every Christian endures sorrows and undergoes the labor of spiritual birth—the birth of a new man from the old, fallen nature. Yet, this labor, this suffering of birth, also becomes a cause of spiritual joy, which our Lord and Savior bestows on each of us during these holy days following His own Nativity.
Among these festive days, the Orthodox Church particularly honors the first Sunday after the Nativity, when Orthodox Christians gather in fullness for prayer in the church to gratefully commemorate the holy ancestors of Christ the Savior: King David, the elderly Joseph, who was betrothed to the Most Holy Virgin Mary, and Joseph’s son, the Lord’s stepbrother and Apostle of the Church, James.
The life of each individual and of an entire nation can be likened to a book, where every day, every year, and every generation is a separate page.
The life of all humanity is figuratively depicted in the book of Holy Scripture.
We have all heard of the Book of Psalms, part of the Old Testament, called the Psalter, most of which was composed by the Prophet David. This sacred text spans several dozen pages. The holy prophet is often mentioned in the Books of Kings and in the New Testament. A few pages of Holy Scripture contain the Epistle of James, addressed to all Christians. And only a few mentions are made of Joseph, the guardian of the virginity of the Most Pure Theotokos, who shared the burdens of Christ the Savior’s earthly life from its very beginning and served as His protector. It was to Joseph that the Angel of the Lord commanded the flight into Egypt, as we heard today in the Gospel.
Although the extent of the commemoration of these saints varies, all are recorded in the collective Book of Life, and each served the newborn Christ. Each responded to the call to serve the Lord.
Their commemoration on the same day and their spiritual kinship are founded on their labor of hope, their resistance to temptation, and their steadfast faithfulness. Each of them through his life prepared for the coming of the Savior into the world.
The earthly existence of each of us begins with our parents, who, in turn, received the sacred gift of life through their fathers and mothers—those we remember as our departed relatives. These are the ones who, in their time, grew like new branches and leaves from the common trunk of the human race. We know our close relatives and remember their names, but the farther we go back into the past, the thicker the fog of oblivion becomes, obscuring their personal names and lives. These lives, once completed, fell like leaves to the roots of the great tree of human life, nourishing its roots with worldly knowledge and spiritual experience.
Having received the sacred gift of life from the Lord through our parents as an inheritance, we must gratefully remember them in our prayers and actions and be ready, in due time, to yield our place in life to our future descendants.
In our lineage there have been both pious and impious, both sinful and righteous, just as in Christ the Savior’s earthly lineage—enumerated by the holy Apostles—there were both faithful and unfaithful ancestors of God. Yet the Savior did not disdain or feel ashamed of this imperfect lineage. Through the will of His Divine humility, He united Himself with the entire human race. This kinship brings joy to our hearts during this festive time because a man is born into the world [for all of us].
But into what kind of world was Christ born? A world of chaos, turmoil, and evil.
He entered a world in which peace itself was absent. Just as a newborn child cries out at the moment of birth, expressing sorrow at the suffering inherently tied to earthly existence, so did Christ enter into our world.
Christ did not come for a celebration but to transform our very lives into a celebration. Yet a celebration is not mere revelry. He was born to share with us, His mortal children, the difficult burden of earthly existence and to give us His Divine Cross, the bearing of which is the purpose of life and the means of salvation for our souls.
The Lord entered this world as a helpless Child to show us that He is with us throughout all the days of our lives—from the cradle to the grave.
He did not disdain to be born at night in the filth of a cave—a symbol of the dark, cold, and merciless world devoid of compassion.
He did not scorn being born among speechless animals, which symbolize our spiritual ignorance and stubbornness.
He did not fear entrusting His life—but to whom?—to His Most Pure Mother, who was herself a helpless young maiden, and to the frail elder Joseph, burdened by years, responsibilities for his children, the demands of the census journey, the weariness of the night, and the discomfort of earthly hardships. He also entrusted Himself to His supposed brother James, who at that time could not yet understand the fullness of life.
And there was real danger—grave danger.
As we heard in the Gospel earlier this week: Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men (Matthew 2:16).
This injustice of life frightens and outrages us. Our minds struggle to reconcile the joyous event of the Nativity with the subsequent slaughter of innocent souls.
Why? Because we draw near to God with words of praise, but our hearts remain far from Him.
We see only half of the world—the material world—and consider it to be the entirety of God’s creation.
We perceive earthly life as everything, forgetting that we are destined not to depart to a world of shadows but to our Savior. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it (Ecclesiastes 12:7).
We approach the threshold of the spiritual world, beyond which awaits our Lord—the Creator and Sustainer of all. Yet we, being “earthly,” are so attached to the earth and all things earthly that we cannot lift our eyes upward to behold the life of the age to come, into which all shall pass—they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation (John 5:29).
Let us turn our hearts toward Christ and pray for humility and repentance, trusting in the words of the Lord, whose Nativity we celebrate: Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen (Matthew 28:20).
