December 1981 Print

 

Michael Davies

"FEAR NOT," said the Angel, "for behold I bring you tidings of great joy, that shall be to all the people: for this day is born to you a Saviour who is Christ the Lord." When the Angel delivered his message of great joy—gaudium magnum—to the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks in the hills near Bethlehem, "the brightness of God shone round about them." These, then, are the themes of Christmas, joy and light. Puer natus est nobis, et Filius datus—"A Child is born unto us, a Son is given to us." This is the cause of our joy. And we respond with a song, a new song because the Child Who has been born has made all things new once more: Cantate Domino canticum novum, quia mirabilia fecit—"Sing to the Lord a new song, for He hath done wonderful things" (Introit, Third Mass of Christmas).

The Season of Christmas is a joyful, bright, and holy season. The Mystery of Christmas is a great and holy mystery. God the Son, the Word of God, whose generation is before the day-star—ante luciferum genui te—is born in time (Gradual, Midnight Mass). A Child is God, a Virgin becomes a Mother and remains a Virgin, a star leads wise men from the East to honor the holy Child, Whose birth is announced not to the great ones of our world, but to humble shepherds. Things divine are mingled with things human. The splendor of the Mystery dazzles the understanding but fills the heart with joy.

ET VERBUM CARO FACTUM EST—"And the Word was made Flesh, and dwelt among us and we saw His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth"—gloriam quasi Unigeniti a Patre, plenum gratiae et veritatis. The very thought of Christmas should fill us with excitement, the briefest consideration of the Incarnation should imbue us with excitement, joy, and gratitude for an event which has offered us a heavenly destiny. If we do not wish to sing and leap with joy, then our spiritual life has begun to wither. We need to enter into the Mystery of Christmas to re-invigorate our faith. A prayer from the Mozarabic Missal epitomizes the only attitude to Christmas appropriate to a believer:

The earth is glad, O Lord, and leaps with joy, for that the Word made flesh dwells in the womb of the holy Virgin. At His coming the whole earth is ransomed from captivity, after having been kept, by Adam's sin, in a dark prison. Now let the sea be moved, and all things that are therein; let the mountains leap with joy, and all the trees of the forest; because God, having become man, has deigned to come through the womb of the blessed Virgin Mary, from heaven into this world. By this His coming, therefore, we beseech Thee, O almighty God, that thou loose the weakness of our flesh from the bonds of sin, and come in Thy overflowing mercy, to the assistance of this Thy family here present before Thee.

This prayer not only conveys the excitement which should animate every believer at the approach of Christmas, it provides a succinct but profound summary of the reason for the Incarnation: "At His coming the whole earth is ransomed from captivity, after having been kept, by Adam's sin, in a dark prison." The doctrine of the Incarnation is a statement about God, about His commitment to us, and the total commitment to Him which the Incarnation should evoke in us. No other response is adequate, in fact, when we consider the implications of the Incarnation any lesser response is a blasphemy. The measure of man's value to God is the fact that, despite our rejection of Him in the person of Adam, He became man in the person of Jesus Christ. The life and death of Jesus Christ denotes the love of God for us, and the value He places upon every individual human being. We are asked to commit our lives not to a remote and unapproachable deity but to a God Who is committed to us, Who loves us, Who has acted on our behalf, and continues to do so through His Church, which is an extension of the Incarnation throughout the nations and the centuries. A prayer from the Gallican Sacramentary from the Mass for Christmas Eve spells out the blessings of the Incarnation with great precision. It is not a prayer to be read through, it is a prayer we should study, meditate upon and use:

O merciful and most loving God, by Whose Will and bounty our Lord Jesus Christ humbled Himself that He might exalt the whole human race, and came down to what was lowest that He might raise up the humble: Who, being God, did become man, born of a Virgin, to the end that He might re-form in man the heavenly image that had been corrupted; grant that this Thy people may cling to Thee, and that they, whom Thou hast redeemed by Thy bounty, may ever please Thee by devoted service.

The most awe-inspiring consequence of the Incarnation is that because Christ shared our humanity, and became our brother, we can now dare, as the Missal puts it—audemus dicere—to call His Father our Father—Pater noster—and actually to share in His divinity. We are "partakers of His divinity," as the Offertory Prayer, Deus, qui humanae expresses it—ejus divinitatis esse consortes. This is a privilege so tremendous that we can never hope to understand or appreciate it adequately during our earthly pilgrimage. It should inspire us not simply with gratitude but with holy fear lest we should jeopardize this incalculable gift by sin. The Christian in a state of grace shares the divine life, sanctifying grace is the divine life, and thus our bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost. Pope St. Leo emphasizes our obligation of gratitude and holy fear in a Christmas sermon:

Let us thank God the Father through His Son in the Holy Ghost, Who took pity on us in the great love He bore us, and Who, when we were dead in sin, gave us life in and with Christ, that in Him we might become a new creature, newly fashioned. Let us renounce our old selves and all that we did then, and having received a share in the Sonship of Christ let us put away the works of the flesh. Christians, recognize your dignity, and having received a share in the divine nature, beware of falling back into your former lowliness. Consider Whose Body it is of which you are a member, and Who its Head. Remember how you were snatched from the darkness and set in God's kingdom of light. Through the sacrament of Baptism you have become a temple of the Holy Ghost. Beware of driving out so great a Guest by your sinful deeds and subjecting yourselves once more to the slavery of the devil. For your ransom was the Blood of Christ. He will judge you in justice, Who redeemed you in mercy.

There is profound symbolism in the fact that Our Lord was born on the twenty-fifth of December. The other two great solemnities of Jesus, Good Friday and Easter Sunday, always take place upon the same day of the week. God created man upon a Friday, and our Saviour suffered death upon that day for our redemption. God created light on a Sunday, and the Resurrection of Jesus, the Light of the World, is always celebrated upon a Sunday. But the Feast of Christmas is kept, by turns, on each of the days of the week, that thus its holiness may cleanse and rid them of the curse, which Adam's sin had put upon them. The Winter Solstice always falls upon or within a few days of the Feast of Our Lord's Nativity. The day of His birth is the day when the days begin to lengthen again, the day when the material sun seems to have been given new life, a new birth, and begins to gain his ascendency over the reign of gloomy night, and show to the world his triumph of brightness.

The day of the Winter Solstice was of great significance to the pagans. They kept the feast of the birth of the unconquered sun—Natalis solis invicti. The Church replaced this feast with that of the Divine Orient, brightness of the light eternal, the Sun of Justice: O Oriens, splendor, lucis aeternae, et sol justitiae. "Who hath raised up the just one from the East?"—ab oriente—asked Isais (41:2). "And behold the glory of the God of Israel came in by the way of the East"—per viam orientalem—prophesied Ezeehiel (43:2). "Behold a man, the Orient is His name,"—Ecce Vir Oriens nomen ejus—is the prophecy of Zacharias (6:12). This prophecy is fulfilled in St. Luke's Gospel: 'The Orient from on high hath visited us" (1:78). The star which heralded His birth also came from the east—stellam ejus in Oriente: "For we have seen His star in the East and are come to adore Him" (Matt. 2:2). The liturgy of Advent reminds us continually not simply of the first coming of our Saviour as the babe in the manger, but of his second coming in majesty to judge the living and the dead. St. Thomas Aquinas refers to the fact that it is from the East that He will appear upon that fateful day. It is, then, no wonder that the tradition in all the Apostolic Churches of East and West is for priest and people to face the East together when celebrating Holy Mass, facing the Just One from the East, the Sun of Salvation—Sol Salutis, begotten before the Day-star—ante luciferum genui te, the Light everlasting and our true redemption—Lux sempiterna, et redemptio vera nostra.

Many Fathers of the Church have commented on the significance of the birth of God's Son taking place at the Winter Solstice, among them St. Gregory of Nyssa:

On this Day which the Lord hath made darkness decreases, light increases, and Night is driven back again. No, Brethren, it is not by chance or by any created will, that this natural change begins on the Day when He shows Himself in the brightness of His coming, which is the spiritual life of the world. It is Nature revealing, under this symbol, a secret to them whose eye is quick enough to see it; to them, I mean, who are able to appreciate this circumstance of our Savior's coming. Nature seems to me to say: Know, O Man! that under the things which I will show thee, there lie Mysteries concealed. Hast thou not seen the Night, that had grown so long, suddenly checked? Learn hence, that the black night of Sin, which had got to its height by the accumulation of every guilty device, is this day stopped in its course. Yes, from this day forward its duration shall be shortened, until at length there shall be naught but Light. Look, I pray thee, on the Sun; and see how his rays are stronger, and his position higher in the heavens; learn from that, how the other Light, the Light of the Gospel, is now shedding itself over the whole earth.

Jesus is, as the Creed teaches us, "God of God, light of light"—lumen de lumine, and in honor of the Incarnation we kneel when the words ET INCARNATUS EST are spoken each time we hear the Nicene Creed at Mass, the incarnate Word of God is the light that shineth in the darkness—et lux in tenebris lucet, as we are reminded each time the first chapter of the Gospel of St. John is read—at the conclusion of Holy Mass, and in honor of the Incarnation we kneel at the words ET VERBUM CARO FACTUM EST in the Last Gospel. This same gospel reminds us of the tragic fact that so many men prefer the darkness to the light, they harden their hearts, and, unlike the shepherds who hastened to the manger, they turn away from the Word made Flesh; like the darkness they do not comprehend the light—et tenebrae earn non comprehenderunt. Thus Christmas can be a cause for joy only to those who have received Jesus as their Saviour: "but as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God."

OUR FIRST DUTY to the Son of God made man is to adore Him. When we kneel before the crib and behold Him in the arms of His Virgin Mother, how can we harden our hearts? This is what Herod did, and there are so many who imitate him today rather than the shepherds and the Magi. "Today," we are exhorted in Matins for Christmas, "if ye shall hear His voice, harden not your hearts"—nolite obdurare corda vestra. The example put before us constantly by Holy Mother Church during the Season of Christmas is the Blessed Mother herself. If we can imitate her love and her humility we can share in her joy, a joy which is beautifully expressed in a prayer from the Ambrosian Liturgy:

 

Let us rejoice too at the Incarnation which will take place not simply at the Mass of Christmas, but at every Mass, when our Saviour Himself is made present upon the altar, not only to be adored but to be received. The privilege of receiving Our Lord in Holy Communion means that we are, truly, more fortunate than the shepherds themselves.

Archbishop Lefebvre often refers to the similarity between the role of the priest at Mass and that of Our Lady. It was the "Fiat" of the Blessed Virgin which made the Incarnation a reality. "Be it done unto me according to thy word," she replied to the Angel. And the effect of her word was that THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH, and dwelt amongst us. Archbishop Lefebvre writes;

Why does the Priest receive a character distinguishing him from all others? It is because he has the power to bring down God Himself, the Son of God, the Incarnate Word, in the Holy Eucharist. Why must the Priest remain celibate? Because he has power over God Himself. What other creature has power such as that? The Priest himself can never conceive .the sublimity, the greatness of his power. When one reflects that by the simple words of the Consecration he is able to make God obey his words! God obeys his words, He has promised that He will obey the Priest's words! It is then meet, right and just that the Priest should be celibate, that the priest should be virgin as was the Virgin Mary also. It was needful that the Virgin Mary should be a virgin since she too, had power over God; when she uttered her "fiat" God came down into her womb. Beings who have such a power over God should remain Virgin.

How fitting it is that the accomplishment of this great mystery should take place in silence, that the words of the priest which bring Our Lord down upon the altar should be audible only to himself. In his great book, The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Dr. Nicholas Gihr writes:

Silent prayer is related to religious silence, and, therefore, expresses the humility, reverence, admiration and awe wherewith the Church administers and adores the Mystery of the Altar. "The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before Him." ...Quam terribilis est haec hora—thus does the deacon cry out to the people in the Syrian liturgy—"How terrible (awesome) is this hour!" While the tremendous Sacrifice is being accomplished on the altar, all present should be immersed in silent contemplation and in devout meditation of the divine Mysteries.

How beautifully this corresponds with the coming of Jesus on that first Christmas night, His coming in silence which is evoked in the Introit for the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas (Wisdom 18:14-15):

 

Throughout the Season of Christmas the heart and mind of the Christian will be filled with thoughts of the crib at Bethlehem, and this is truly right and fitting. But they should also be filled with thoughts of the purpose for which the Incarnation took place, that if we do not harden our hearts and exclude the Light of Christ from our lives, one day we shall behold Him face to face in the inexpressible joy of the beatific vision. This though has been expressed by Cardinal Newman in one of his most sublime sermons, "The Incarnation."

The time will come, if we be found worthy, when we, who now see in a glass darkly, shall see our Lord and Saviour face to face; shall behold His countenance beaming with the fulness of Divine Perfections, and bearing its own witness that He is the Son of God. We shall see Him as He is.

Let us then, according to the light given us, praise and bless Him in the Church below, whom Angels in heaven see and adore. Let us bless Him for His surpassing loving-kindness in taking upon Him our infirmities to redeem us, when He knelt in the innermost love of the Everlasting Father, in the glory which He had with Him before the world was. He came in lowliness and want; born amid the tumults of a mixed and busy multitude, cast aside into the outhouse of a crowded inn, laid to His first rest among the brute cattle. He grew up, as if the native of a despised city, and was bred to a humble craft. He bore to live in a world that slighted Him, for He lived in it, in order in due time to die for it. He came as the appointed Priest, to offer sacrifice for those who took no part in the act of worship; He came to offer up for sinners that precious blood which was meritorious by virtue of His Divine Anointing. He died, to rise again the third day, the Sun of Righteousness, fully displaying that splendor which had hitherto been concealed by the morning clouds. He rose again, to ascend to the right hand of God, there to plead His sacred wounds in token of our forgiveness, to rule and guide His ransomed people, and for His pierced side to pour forth His choicest blessings upon them. He ascended, then to descend again in due season to judge the world which He has redeemed—Great is our Lord, and great is His power, Jesus the Son of God and Son of man. Ten thousand times more dazzling bright than the highest archangel, is our Lord and Christ. By birth, the only begotten and Express Image of God; and in taking our flesh not sullied thereby, but raising human nature with Him, as He rose from the lowly manger to the right hand of power,—raising human nature, for Man has redeemed us, Man is set above all creatures, as one with the Creator, Man shall judge man at the last day. So honored in this earth, that no stranger shall judge us, but He Who is our fellow, Who will sustain our interests, and has full sympathy in all our imperfections. He who loved us, even to die for us, is graciously appointed to assign the final measurement and price upon His own work. He who best knows by infirmity to take the part of the infirm, He who would fain reap the full fruit of His passion, He will separate the wheat from the chaff, so that not a grain shall fall to the ground. He who has given us to share His own spiritual nature, He from whom we have drawn the life's blood of our souls, He our brother will decide about His brethren. In that His second coming, may He in His grace and loving pity remember us, who is our only hope, our only salvation!

We are living in times when, for the faithful Catholic who loves his Church and her beautiful traditions, there appears to be little cause for joy. But we must see everything in perspective, and when we contemplate the Incarnation, and read words like those of Cardinal Newman, we can see what cause for joy we have. The Incarnation is the event which can give us hope and consolation whatever crosses God sends us to bear, and these can never compare to the Cross which was accepted by His Incarnate Son. If we remember the first Advent of Our Saviour, then fix our hopes upon the one that is to come, the sorrows of these times will never overwhelm us. An eleventh century prayer from an ancient French Missal might have been composed especially to help us: