In the Name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Dear brothers and sisters: Christ is Born! Glorify Him!
How blessed we have been to have such wonderful Nativity services in the Oratory Church, blessed by the warmth and generosity of the Oratorian Fathers, knowing that St Alban’s is a place where we are welcome: a place of love, generosity and boundless good will – reflecting the love which is the very meaning of the Incarnation of the Saviour, and of His glorious Nativity.
We celebrate the Nativity as the feast of Love-Incarnate, born in Bethlehem and laid in a manger, where we see the realisation of God’s immeasurable and selfless Incarnate-Love in action: love, which is neither abstract, nor an emotion, feeling or sentiment, but Love Who is a Person – and not any person, but the Creator-Saviour of all things, coming and dwelling among us, through Whom the whole Holy Trinity loves us and embraces us from within humanity itself – as Emmanuel: “God with us”!
Though we shall never be able to fully comprehend the depth of that Incarnate-Love, born in the lowly Bethlehem stable and laid in the manger, we know that it was so strong that the Only-Begotten Son and Word of God came down to earth from heaven, and was ready to not only become man, but the Man of Sorrows, Who would be mocked and beaten, and go to the Life-Giving Cross like a lamb to the slaughter, with love so unshakeable and immovable that He would remain silent, enduring torture and the agony of the Cross for us: agony because He did not simply look human, but was truly human.
Love and mercy would render Almighty God mute and silent, as the works of His own hands beat Him, mocked Him, spat in His face, wounded and pierced Him: such was the power and enormity of His love!
In Him, born in the cave and laid in the manger, we see Love-Incarnate, Who accepted a human heart to overflow with love for His whole creation, and to be pierced on the Cross not only by salvific-love, but by the cold iron of the centurion’s lance;
Love-Incarnate Whose human hands reached out to heal and comfort;
Love-Incarnate Who accepted human feet, to journey the highways and bye-ways with His in His saving ministry of love and salvation, with human lips and tongue speaking the life-giving words of the Gospel;
Love-Incarnate Whose arms opened wide on the Cross to embrace the whole world;
Love-Incarnate Whose shoulders bore not only the Cross – the Tree of Life – but also the sin and weight of all humanity;
Love-Incarnate Whose body – victoriously lifted up on the Cross – flowed with the life-blood offered and shed in redemptive, sacrificial-love for us all.
In the Incarnation, we see the earthly manifestation of the love that is the very nature of God: eternally existing in the loving relationship of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the physical realisation of a love that is the bond of divine-unity, in the reciprocal, self-giving of each of the Divine persons of the Holy Trinity to one another.
From within this perfect but expansive Triune fellowship of love, it was in actively seeking to love something outside of His Triune self, that God created heaven and the earth, with creation as the physical manifestation and material realisation of His love: something external and other than Himself that He could love, care for and sustain.
Within this creation, humanity manifested God’s desire to not only have creation to love, but to have a reciprocal and personal loving relationship with His creation. God created man to love Him, to be loved by Him and to be in a relationship of loving communion!
When humanity rebelled and fell away from God, His wonderful, all-embracing love then became the very meaning of the economy of salvation and the wonder of the Incarnation.
In a divine reaching-down to redeem and restore, this love was the very reason that God entered into creation in humanity itself, clothing Himself in human nature to heal and restore mankind, not to an earthly paradise, but to something far greater: the eternal glory of the Kingdom of Heaven.
As we joyfully announce “Christ is Born!” we contemplate the beginning of this heavenly calling and heavenward journey, lying quietly in the manger, as a new-born babe but a few hours old, worshipped by shepherds and given precious gifts by the eastern magi.
But beyond this apparent newness of this life, we recognise the Pre-Eternal Son, the Word of God, Who created heaven and the earth, and know that the Christ-Child is the same Lord, Who is the maker of heaven and earth,
Yahweh-the-Lord walking and talking with Adam and Eve in the coolness of the day;
the same Lord Who visited Abraham and Sarah to promise them a son and Who stopped the sacrificial hand of Abraham to save Isaac;
the same Lord Who wrestled with Jacob at Bethel;
the same Lord Who spoke to Moses from the Burning Bush and gave Him the Law on Sinai;
the same Lord Whom Ezekiel saw upon the awesome chariot-throne in the heavens;
and the same Lord Who Daniel encountered in the Ancient of Days.
As St John Chrysostom preached in his His Homily on the Nativity:
“The Ancient of Days has become an infant. The One seated on a high and exulted throne is now lying in a manger. The One Who cannot be touched and is bodiless is now held in human hands. The One Who breaks the chains of sin is now wrapped in swaddling clothes, for this is what He willed. He desired to transform dishonour into glory, to clothe shame with splendour, and to show the power of virtue through the humble form of a servant.”
And the whole meaning of this divine condescension can be encapsulated and summarised in that one word, LOVE: love which seeks not justice for humanity, but to overflow with God’s mercy and compassion, and His desire to restore the loving communion which He established when He created man from the dust of the earth and breathed into His nostrils the breath of life.
As we celebrate the Nativity, we must remind ourselves that God created humanity to not simply be a passive and inert recipient of His love, but to grow in perfection and holiness within the relationship and the communion it had, and still continues to have with Him – for despite the fall, and consequential sin and death, our All-Loving God has not abandoned this intention.
In the Incarnation He has restated this calling, through
“The Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.”
(St Irenaeus of Lyons: Against Heresies, Book 5, Preface)
The Incarnation, the Nativity and the whole economy of salvation were acts of God’s new creation, to put right what had gone wrong – our calling to restoration through the Lord’s conjoining of our humanity with His divinity.
Through His love, we continue to be called to be children of God in eternal communion and blessedness with Him, and adopted children and heirs of the promise, called to grow in perfection, holiness, and perfect love.
But, unless we live to love not only God, but also one another, the Nativity and Incarnation become meaningless, as we fail to be icons of the Incarnate Word Who has ordered us,
“A new commandment “I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”
(John 13:34-35, Matthew 22:34-40)
If we fail to love and thereby obey this divine command, we reject the Nativity, and as much as we celebrate the wonder of the birth of Christ, our hymns of praise will be hollow, our prayers meaningless, and our offerings an insult to our Saviour and Lord.
Whether the birth of the Saviour and the Incarnation have any real meaning in our lives will be reflected in whether we accept or reject God’s commandment to love not only Him, but also our neighbour.
By loving, or not loving, we choose whether we accept or reject the Prince of Peace, and whether His birth has any meaning and real significance in our lives.
We repeatedly greet one another and proclaim the feast with the joyful proclamation, “Christ is born!” and the joyful answer’ “Glorify Him!”, but we can only glorify Him if the love of His Incarnation is reflected and manifested in our lives, as the bond of communion, kinship, solidarity and unity with one another as well as with God.
If Christ truly dwells within us, each of our hearts must be a fitful and worthy manger, in which love abides as the condition for His Presence. His expansive and limitless love can only coexist with our reciprocal love, reflecting Him in our lives.
We must each proactively reflect the love-in-action of His Incarnation, and the world must encounter God’s love in us, not as something theoretical but real and tangible, through which the world knows that we are disciples of the Lord, Who was born in Bethlehem to call us to the glory of the Kingdom.
Not only our mouths, but also our deeds must gratefully and lovingly announce “Christ is Born!” and each day of our lives must proclaim “Glorify Him!” And, let them be lives of gratitude to the Lord, Who came from heaven to raise us to its glorious heights.
“Let us not be ungrateful to the Benefactor, but rather bring forth, as much as we are able, faith, hope, love, chastity, mercy, and kindness.”
(St John Chrysostom: Homily on the Day of the Nativity of Christ)
May our love proclaim the wonder of the Incarnation, and that “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us; full of grace and truth.”
Love was His meaning. Let it be our meaning, also – living and abiding in us, for His sake and to His glory.
Amen!