Nativity Afterfeast and the Week (and Year) Ahead

Dear Parish Faithful,

Afterfeast of the Nativity - This is a somewhat complicated period in terms of how it is approached liturgically.

On the one hand, we have the longest fast-free period in the entire liturgical year, from December 25 - January 4 inclusive. This fast-free period is reflective of the joy that surrounds the Nativity of Christ. That means that the entire week ahead of us is fast-free up to and including Friday.

However, January 5 is "strict fast day" in preparation for Theophany on January 6 (a Sunday this year). So, we have the "twelve days of Christmas" from December 25 - January 5, though the last of these days is a fast day because of the subsequent Theophany.

However, because January 1 is eight days after Nativity, we celebrate the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ on that day. Jesus submits Himself to the Law and is circumcised in the flesh as a male child of Israel; as well as being given his divinely-directed Name of Jesus on the eighth day. Yet, since this feast takes us to the "next step" in the developing life of Christ, we no longer sing the festal Nativity hymns past December 31.

Therefore, though the Christmas season extends up to Theophany, it is no longer the focus of the Church's liturgy/hymnography once we come to the Circumcision. Hence, today is the last day that we sing the Troparion, "Thy Nativity of Christ ..." As I said, a bit complicated...

Here is a link to a good, short summary of the meaning of the Feast of the Circumcision...

On January 1, we also commemorate St. Basil the Great, truly one of the "greatest" of the Church Fathers. Here is a link to a rather lengthy summary of his extraordinary life - all packed into forty-nine years!

How will we, as a parish, celebrate these two feasts on January 1 (together with the civil New Year)? According to the following schedule:

This evening - Great Vespers at 6:00 p.m.
Tuesday - Divine Liturgy of St. Basil the Great at 9:30 a.m.

I hope to see many of you at one or both of these services. If the civil New Year is a big celebration for you, then begin with God!

Christmas and Martyrdom

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

CHRIST IS BORN!
GLORIFY HIM!

The Gospel reading for the Great Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord is Matthew 2:1-12.  This passage proclaims the Good News that the Savior was born in Bethlehem according to the biblical prophecies.

The star guides the Magi and they, in turn, bring their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the newborn Child in acknowledgment that He is unique and a true King, testified to by cosmic signs that even the Gentile Magi can properly interpret.  Joyous as this is, there is already a hint of the ultimate destiny of Christ in that myrrh is used in the burial customs of the Jews.

On the Second Day of the Nativity, we complete the reading of the second chapter of Saint Matthew’s Gospel—2:13-23, which immediately introduces us to the tragic reality of the massacre of the innocent boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or younger.  The previous joy of the Savior’s Nativity is replaced by the wailing and lamentation of the mothers of these innocent children, in fulfillment of the prophecy of Jeremiah:

“A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more” [Jeremiah 2:18].

The shadow of the Cross lay across the infancy narratives in this Gospel, for in the immediate post-Nativity period, these male children become the first of many martyrs who must die because Christ has entered the world, as many of the powerful of this world—following the dark example of King Herod—will not receive Him; they will actually despise Him and turn against His followers.  Thus, the suffering of innocent children is somehow taken up by God as an offering in a sinful world that fluctuates between light and darkness.  

And we must acknowledge that the suffering of innocent children continues to the present time - a suffering directly caused by human wickedness. We now understand that the cave of the Nativity anticipated the tomb of Christ’s burial, and that the swaddling clothes anticipated the grave clothes with which Christ would eventually be bound following His death on the Cross.

On the Third Day of the Nativity - and on the Sunday After Nativity - we commemorate the Protomartyr Stephen, the first to die for his faith in Christ in the post-Resurrection community of the newborn Church.  St. Stephen's lengthy speech to his fellow Jews, in which he upbraided them for their lack of faith; and in which he proclaimed Jesus as the Risen and Ascended Christ is recorded in ACTS 7.  His brutal martyrdom by stoning followed as his testimony resulted in a furious and deadly rejection of his convicting words. In fact, "they gnashed their teeth against him" (ACTS 7:54).

Martyrdom has always been a distinct and powerful witness to Christ.  Actually, “from the beginning” the Incarnation and Martyrdom are inextricably joined together in a world torn by the tension between darkness and light.  To our great joy, we know "that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it" (JN. 1:5).  

The kontakion for the Feast of Saint Stephen captures the movement between the joy of Christ’s birth and the sobering reality of what Christ’s coming meant for some:

Yesterday the Master assumed our flesh and became our guest; Today His servant is stoned to death and departs in the flesh: The glorious first martyr Stephen!

There is no greater witness to Christ than that of the martyrs—flesh and blood men, women and children who gave their lives for the Lord in the sure hope and assurance that eternal life awaited them in the Kingdom of God. 

If we exchange a “Merry Christmas” with others, we always need to be mindful of the commitment we are making to the newborn Christ.  As we temporarily indulge in the days of the Feast, we realize that the Christian life is ultimately a commitment to discipline and restraint, even the “crucifixion” of the flesh with all of its desires, in order to “witness” to Christ as disciples who believe that His advent in the flesh, culminating in His death and resurrection, has prepared a place for us in His eternal Kingdom where there is “life everlasting.”

Inexhaustible Spiritual Riches from the Nativity of Christ

Dear Parish Faithful,

Today is Christmas Eve and we are in our final preparation for the Feast of the Lord's Nativity. There are a multitude of themes that come readily to mind during this feast of inexhaustible spiritual riches - for the Incarnation opens up our minds and hearts to the inexhaustible mercy and love of God - "Since for our sake the eternal God was born a little child!"

So, I have a few somewhat random passages, each of which touches on a particular theme; and each of which contributes something meaningful to our own understanding and experience of the birth of Christ.

St. Ephraim the Syrian

To begin, here is a portion of St. Ephraim's Hymn I On the Nativity. St. Ephraim was the precursor of St. Romanos the Melode from the Syrian tradition, who wrote a type of poetic theology in a series of beautiful hymns based on his knowledge of the Scriptures. These hymns were usually sung in church but today we at least have the texts which have come down to us. Toward the end of this hymn, St. Ephraim draws out the moral and ethical imperatives that flow from the doctrine of the Incarnation:

Serene is the night in which shines forth the Serene One Who
came to give us serenity.
Do not allow anything that might disturb it to enter upon our
watch.
Let the path of the ear be cleared; let the sight of the eye be
chastened;
let the contemplation of the heart be sanctified; let the speech of the
mouth be purified.

This is the night of reconciliation; let us be neither wrathful nor
gloomy on it.
On this all-peaceful night let us be neither menacing nor boisterous.
This is the night of the Sweet One; let us be on it neither bitter nor
harsh.
On this night of the Humble One, let us be neither proud nor
haughty.
On this day of forgiveness let us not avenge offenses.
On this day of rejoicings let us not share sorrows.
On this sweet day let us not be vehement.
On this calm day let us not be quick-tempered
On this day on which God came into the presence of sinners,
let not the just man exalt himself in his mind over the sinner.
On this day when the Rich One was made poor for our sake,
let the rich man also make the poor man a sharer at his table.
On this day a gift came out to us without our asking for it;
let us then give alms to those who cry out and beg from us.

This Lord of natures today was transformed contrary to His
nature;
it is not too difficult for us also to overthrow our evil will.
Bound is the body by its nature for it cannot grow larger or smaller;
but powerful is the will for it may grow to all sizes.
Today the Deity imprinted itself on humanity,
so that humanity might also be cut into the seal of Deity.

Ephraim the Syrian Hymns, p. 73-74.

St. John Chrysostom

St. John Chrysostom implores us not to "pry" into the mystery of the virginal conception of the Son of God in the womb of the Virgin Mary. To do so is to try and analyze or rationalize a mystery both unanalyzable and trans-rational:

Do not speculate beyond the text. Do not require of it something more than which it simply says. Do not ask, "But precisely how was it that the Spirit accomplished this in a virgin?" For even when nature is at work, it is impossible fully to explain the manner of the formation of the person. How then, when the Spirit is accomplishing miracles, shall we be able to express their causes? ...

Shame on those who attempt to pry into the miracle of generation from on high! For this birth can by no means be explained, yet it has witnesses beyond number and has been proclaimed from ancient times as a real birth handled by human hands. ... For neither Gabriel not Matthew was able to say anything more, but only that the generation was from the Spirit But how from the Spirit? In what manner? Neither Gabriel nor Matthew has explained, nor is it possible.

... So how could the infinite One reside in a womb? How could he that contains all be carried as yet unborn by a woman? How could the Virgin bear and continue to be a Virgin? Explain to me how the Spirit designed the temple of his body.

The Gospel of Matthew, Homily 4.3.

Archbishop Kallistos Ware

When Jesus Christ was born, a new person did not come into existence. But a divine Person was born in the flesh. Archbishop Kallistos Ware explains this great mystery with theological clarity:

When a child is born from two human parents in the usual fashion, a new person begins to exist. But the person of the incarnate Christ is none other than the second person of the Holy Trinity. At Christ's birth, therefore, no new person came into existence, but the pre-existent person of the Son of God now began to live according to a human as well as a divine mode of being. So the Virgin Birth reflects Christ's eternal pre-existence.

Because the person of the incarnate Christ is the same as the person of the Logos, the Virgin Mary may rightly be given the title Theotokos, "God-bearer." She is mother, not of a human son joined to the divine Son, but of a human son who is the only-begotten Son of God. The son of Mary is the same person as the divine Son of God; and so, by virtue of the Incarnation, Mary is in truth "Mother of God".

The Orthodox Way, p. 76-77.

Brendan Byrne

And, to close, I would like to turn to a very insightful passage from a contemporary biblical scholar, Brendan Byrne, who reflects deeply on the implications of the genealogy of Christ that introduces the Gospel According to St. Matthew, and which we heard yesterday on the Sunday Before the Nativity. 

That genealogy is decidedly not a list of saintly figures from the Old Testament, but at times something of a "motley crew" of some real great sinners, mixed in with some righteous figures. The point that Brendan Byrne makes is that this mixture of the "good" and the "bad" may also describe our own personal genealogy! But that does not mean that God can not providentially work us through this on a personal level:

The One believers own as Son of God and Savior did not just drop out of the sky, so to speak, without a mixed history - good and bad - that lies behind every human life. There are skeletons in his family closet just as there are in ours. Nor was this line "pure" in an ethnic sense or exempt from sexual scandal and exploitation. But it is through just such a human history that the thread of salvation runs. The invitation is there to trace in our own "ancestry," whether it be our family story or our individual life story, a similar working of grace and redemption, all to be woven into the wider pattern of salvation brought by Jesus.

Lifting the Burden, p. 22.

Closing Thoughts

Just a "taste" of the profound mystery surrounding the Nativity of Christ. In addition to reading this series of wonderful passages, it still remains that the actual worship of Christ through our liturgical tradition offers us the very experience of being united to Christ.

We will celebrate the great Feast of the Nativity in the following manner:

Festal Matins this evening at 7:00 p.m.
Divine Liturgy Tuesday morning at 9:30 a.m.

In our hyper-hectic world, I hope that everyone has something of a vigilant day in which being a Christian is somehow manifested.

'Mankind was my business!'

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

The over-all theme of the Parable of the Great Supper, heard last Sunday at the Liturgy, had to do with how being "busy" can easily lead to excuse-making of a dubious kind because we then justify postponing our relationship with God based upon those very excuses. But as Christ said in the parable, the Master of the Supper was not impressed. 

 

"Business! Mankind was my business!"

 

This somehow connects in my mind with a certain literary classic. Over the years I have read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (and seen more than one film version!). For me, one of the most effective passages in the book, is toward the beginning, when the Ghost of Jacob Marley visits Scrooge on Christmas Eve. By this time, the miserly and miserable character of Scrooge has been masterfully etched in by Dickens. And to this day, the name of Scrooge is synonymous with avarice, greed, and a joyless and meaningless accumulation of profit. Earlier, Scrooge had articulated some of the utilitarian philosophy of the 19th c. when he coldly said in reference to the poor and prisoners, "If they would rather die they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

The Ghost of Marley returns to haunt Scrooge, but Marley himself is in great torment and anguish. Imprisoned in chains that he cannot free himself of, Marley is doomed to roam the earth as a restless spirit witnessing human suffering that he cannot alleviate because he ignored that suffering selfishly during his time on earth. Of the chains, Marley says:

"I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it."

With a deep, bitter regret, Marley then confesses:

"My spirit never walked beyond our counting-house - mark me! - in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me!... Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one's life opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!"

At this point in this somewhat macabre dialogue between the two, Scrooge begins to grope for some signs of hope and relief as he intuitively realizes that Marley is speaking words of warning to him for his cold-hearted scorn for the rest of humanity. When Scrooge protests the working of an unseen providence, by saying "But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," we then hear what may be the most significant - and well-known - passage in this scene:

"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"

It held up its chains at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.

"At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said, "I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!"

Anticipating the regret of a life not well-lived is a frightening thought. Especially if it comes down to having been too busy!

Good literature is capable of leaving strong indelible images that are much more effective than a well-argued treatise. Dickens' characters were always exaggerated or "larger than life," as we may say. But they then "typify" a great deal about life in the process. 

Besides the necessary business that makes up our lives, and which must be done carefully and responsibly, just what else are we so "busy" with? Does that business also lead us away from charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence? Are we presently scurrying around, making sure that we will have a "Merry Christmas," while also turning our eyes downward so that we too cannot "see" the blessed Star that guides us to the Incarnate Christ? Are we going to somehow be able to "fit" the Church into our "Business?" Both the parable from Sunday and Dickens' classic A Christmas Carol raise the issue of our stewardship of time and the Christian truth that "mankind is our business."

 

 

 

St. Romanos the Melode and the Kontakion

Dear Parish Faithful,

According to the patristic scholar, Fr. Andrew Louth: "St. Romanos (6th. c) is perhaps the most famous liturgical poet of the Orthodox Church, but his genius is such as to command a place among the highest ranks of poets, religious or secular, so that he has been called by Professor Trepanis 'the greatest poet of the Greek middle ages'." 

I begin with this as a brief introduction to a small portion of one of his famous kontakia (singular,  kontakion) that I would like to share this morning in preparation for the Feast of the Nativity.

What we hear today in the Church under this title is a mere echo of the original structure of a kontakion. Again, citing Fr. Louth:

"The verse form that Romanos raised to the highest perfection was the kontakion, a kind of chanted verse sermon, consisting of brief stanzas (each called an ikos), all of which end with the same refrain." 

In other words the kontakion was something of a long and elaborate theological poem that was most likely chanted after the Gospel "with the choir (and doubtless the congregation) joining in the refrain."

The most famous of the many kontakia composed by St. Romanos, was the one now known as the Nativity Kontakion that we will hear when the feast is celebrated.

A pious tradition relates that the Mother of God appeared to him in a dream and gave him a scroll to swallow (see Ezekiel 2:8-3:3; Revelation 9:10-11). This was on Christmas Eve, and when he awoke he went to the church and chanted his famous kontakion in honor of the Feast. What we sing in church to this day for the Feast of the Nativity is merely the Prelude that introduces a poetically structured hymn of 24 stanzas! Yet, brief as it may be, this is truly one of the greatest "Christmas hymns" ever to be composed for its theological depth:

Today the Virgin gives birth the Transcendent One,
and the earth offers a cave to the unapproachable One!
Angels, with shepherds, glorify Him!
The wise men journey with the star!
Since for our sake the eternal God was born
  as a little Child!

It is also most likely that St. Romanos composed the incomparable Akathist Hymn to the Theotokos, perhaps his greatest masterpiece, and a hymn chanted to this day in the church and in personal devotion.

One of the chief characteristics of his kontakia is the endlessly creative use of typology as a way of reading the Scriptures.

Typology allows us to uncover, through persons, places, and even sacred objects, their role as prefigurations for their fulfillment in Christ.  (In Rom. 5:14 St. Paul tells us that Adam was a "type" [Gk. typos] of Christ). Through typological exegesis (biblical interpretation) the Burning Bush of Exodus 3, is a "type" of the Theotokos, who will hold within her womb the fiery Word of God, but not be consumed in the process. This is one of St. Romanos' favorite types from the Old Testament.

Therefore, just to pass on a "taste" of the rich poetic theology expressed by St. Romanos in his kontakia, I am offering the Prelude and stanzas 1 & 13 of his kontakion on the Mother of God. We do not associate poetry and rich imagery with theology, but this is how some of the early Church Fathers expressed their deepest intuitions into the mystery of Christ. This is especially true of the Syriac tradition. (St. Romanos was from Syria and journeyed eventually to make his home in Constantinople).

Notice the refrain after each stanza. That must have made a strong impression on all of the worshipers present, when the choir or the entire congregation sang/chanted that repeatedly throughout the course of the hymn

Prelude

At your conceiving without seed, O Mother of God,
Joseph was struck with wonder as he contemplated what was
   beyond nature.
and he brought to mind the rain on the fleece (Judges 6:3),
the bush unburned by fire (Ex. 3:2-4),
Aaron's rod which blossomed (Num. 17:23),
And your betrothed and guardian bore witness and cried to the priests,

            "A Virgin gives birth, and after childbirth remains
            still a virgin."

Stanza 1

"What I see I cannot understand, for it surpasses the human mind,
how it it that the grass carries fire and it not burned?
A lamb carries a lion, a swallow an eagle and the servant her
   Master. (Isaiah 11:6-8)
In a mortal womb, in a manner uncircumscribed,
Mary carries my Savior as he wills,
so that everyone will say,

        "A virgin gives birth, and after childbirth remains
        still a virgin."

Stanza 13

"So, Mary, sing the praise of Christ, who is carried below in your bosom
and on high is seated  with the Father.
He sucks at your breast and gives mortals divine food from above,
and below he is laid in a cave.
Through love of mortals,

            A Virgin gives birth, and after  childbirth remains
            still a virgin."

For anyone interested in pursuing these hymns further for their rich theology and use of the Scriptures, perhaps the best collection is in the book, On the Life of Christ: Kontakia, compiled and edited by the late Archimandrite Ephraim, considered an excellent translator during his lifetime. I believe that there are eighteen kontakia in this collection.