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“Your Nativity, O Christ our God, has shone to the world the Light of knowledge; for by it, those who worshipped the stars were taught by a star to adore You, the Sunof Righteousness, and to know You, the Dayspring/Dawn from on High. O Lord, glory to You!” (Troparion of Nativity)
Let’s think together, dear friends, about the pagan kind of ‘knowledge’ that led the Magi to come to ‘know’ Christ. We ourselves are burdened, in our Information Age, with much ‘knowledge,’ of a heavy kind. We ‘know’ from our news-sources so many things wrong with our society, our world, and even our church. “ Every bit of knowledge is a little death,” is a quote I like to repeat, because it’s true. In the Bible, the initial death of humanity stems from eating of The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. When Adam and Eve eat of it, they are so overwhelmed, they no longer feel comfortable in their own skins and feel like hiding, from each other and God. We also might feel like self-isolating sometimes, from everything we ‘know’ about our world, ourselves and one another, as did Adam and Eve.
But God comes and finds them. God ‘works’ with the humanity that now ‘knows’ good and evil, offering us new ‘work’ and new places to be ‘fruitful and multiply,’ for example, by tilling the land and producing children. He also ‘works’ with the pagan ‘knowledge’ of the Magi, leading them through it to a new place, Bethlehem or ‘Ephratha’ that means ‘fruitful.’ The ‘work’ He gives us, as He works with us, doesn’t always make sense to us initially, but as we surrender to our vocations and follow where they lead, as did the Magi, as did the Most Blessed Virgin and Joseph, we become ‘fruitful’ in our own ways.
We need not be discouraged, nor self-isolate, burdened and perhaps broken, as we sometimes are, with ‘knowledge’ that we can’t always process. Because God is once again coming to find us, by sending us His Son as a little Baby, and calling us to come out and meet Him. He’s not saying anything; He’s just showing us a little Baby, a new Life. Let’s come out and meet Him, and let ourselves be led to where He leads us next. Let’s let ourselves be still and relax, as we let ourselves behold and celebrate Him and His new Life among us. " For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace” (Is 9:6).
Happy Christmas Eve, dear friends!
