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Christmas Day

at night:

A Reading from a sermon for the Nativity of Christ by Julian of Vezelay

‘While gentle silence enveloped the whole earth, and night was halfway through its course, your all-powerful Word, O Lord, leaped down from your royal throne in the heavens.’ In this ancient text of Scripture, the most sacred moment of time is made known to us, the moment when God’s all-powerful Word would leave the tender embrace of the Father and come down into his mother’s womb, bringing us the news of salvation. For, as it says elsewhere in Scripture, ‘God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son,’ declaring: ‘This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.’ And so from his royal throne the Word of God has come to us, humbling himself in order to raise us on high, becoming poor himself in order to make us rich, becoming human in order to make us divine.

So lost and so profoundly unhappy was the human race, that it could only trust in a word that was all-powerful. Anything less would have inspired in us nothing more than the feeblest of hopes in being set free from sin and its power. Therefore, to give poor lost humanity a categorical assurance of being saved, the Word that came to save us was called all-powerful. And see how truly all-powerful that Word was! When neither heaven nor anything under the heavens as yet had existence, the Word spoke, and they came into being, created out of nothing. He spoke the command, ‘Let there be earth,’ and the earth came into being, and when he decreed, ‘Let there be human beings,’ human beings were created.

But the Word of God did not remake his creatures as easily as he had made them. He had made them by issuing a command; he remade them by dying. He made them by commanding; he remade them by suffering. ‘You have burdened me,’ he told them, ‘with your sinning. To direct and govern the whole fabric of the world is no effort for me, for I have power to reach from one end of the world to the other, and to order all things as I please. It is only humanity, with its obstinate disregard for the law I have given, which has caused me distress by their sins. That is why I have come down from my royal throne; that is why I have not shrunk from enclosing myself in the Virgin’s womb nor from entering into a personal union with poor lost humanity. See, I lie in a manger, a newly born baby wrapped in swaddling bands, since the Creator of the world could find no room in the inn.’

And so there came a deep silence and the whole earth was still. The voices of prophets and apostles were hushed, for the prophets had delivered their message, whereas the time for the apostles’ preaching was yet to come. Between these two proclamations a period of silence intervened, and in the midst of this silence the Father’s all-powerful Word leaped down from his royal throne. In this movement is great beauty: in the ensuing silence the mediator between God and man intervened, coming as a human being among human beings, as a mortal among mortals, to save the dead from death.

I pray that the Word of the Lord may come again this night to those who wait in silence, and that we may hear what the Lord God is saying to us in our hearts. Let us, therefore, still the desires and cravings of the flesh, the roving fantasies of our imaginations, so that we can attend to what the Spirit is saying.

during the day:

A Reading from an oration of Gregory of Nazianzus

Christ is born: let us glorify him. Christ comes down from heaven: let us go out to meet him. Christ descends to earth: let us be raised on high. Let all the world sing to the Lord: let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad, for his sake who was first in heaven and then on earth. Christ is here in the flesh: let us exult with fear and joy – with fear, because of our sins; with joy, because of the hope that he brings us.

Once more the darkness is dispersed; once more the light is created. Let the people that sat in the darkness of ignorance now look upon the light of knowledge. The things of old have passed away; behold, all things are made new. He who has no mother in heaven is now born without a father on earth. The laws of nature are overthrown, for the upper world must be filled with citizens. He who is without flesh becomes incarnate; the Word puts on a body; the invisible makes itself seen; the intangible can be touched; the timeless has a beginning; the Son of God becomes the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and for ever.

Light from light, the Word of the Father comes to his own image in the human race. For the sake of my flesh he takes flesh; for the sake of my soul he is united to a rational soul, purifying like by like. In every way he becomes human, except for sin. O strange conjunction! The self-existent comes into being; the uncreated is created. He shares in the poverty of my flesh that I may share in the riches of his Godhead.

This is the solemnity we are celebrating today: the arrival of God among us, so that we might go to God – or more precisely, return to God. So that stripping off our old humanity we might put on the new; for as in Adam we were dead, so in Christ we become alive: we are born with him, and we rise again with him.

A miracle, not of creation, but of re-creation. For this is the feast of my being made whole, my returning to the condition God designed for me, to the original Adam. So let us revere the nativity which releases us from the chains of evil. Let us honour this tiny Bethlehem which restores us to paradise. Let us reverence this crib because from it we, who were deprived of self-understanding, are fed by the divine understanding, the Word of God himself.

alternative reading

A Reading from a treatise Against Heresies by Irenaeus

Just as it is possible for a mother to give her infant strong food but chooses not to do so because her child is not able yet to receive such bodily nourishment; so it was possible for God on his part to have given human beings the fullness of perfection right from the beginning, but we were not capable of receiving so great a gift being mere children. In these last days, however, when our Lord summed up all things in himself, he came to us, not as he could have done, but as we were capable of beholding him. He could, indeed, have come to us in the radiance of his glory, but we were not capable of bearing it. So, as to infants, the perfect Bread of the Father gave himself to us under the form of milk – he came to us as a human being – in order that we might be fed, so to speak, at the breast by his incarnation, and by this diet of milk become accustomed to eating and drinking the Word of God. In this way we might be enabled to keep within us the Bread of Immortality which is the Spirit of the Father.

alternative reading

A Reading from a sermon of Leo the Great

Dearly beloved, today our Saviour was born; let us rejoice! This is no season for sadness – it is the birthday of Life! It is a life that annihilates the fear of death; a life that brings us joy with the promise of eternal happiness.

Nobody is an outsider to this happiness; we all have common cause for rejoicing. Our Lord, the victor over sin and death, finding no one free from guilt, has come to free us all. Let the saint exult for the palm of victory is at hand. Let the sinner be glad in receiving the offer of forgiveness. Let the gentile take courage on being summoned to life.

In the fullness of time, chosen in the unfathomable depths of God’s wisdom, the Son of God took on himself our human nature in order to reconcile us with our Creator. He came to overthrow the devil, the origin of death, in that very nature by which the devil had overthrown humankind. In this conflict undertaken for us, a war has been waged on the mighty and highest principles of justice. The almighty Lord has gone into battle against our cruel enemy clothed not in his own majesty, but in our weakness. In Christ majesty has taken on humility, strength has taken on weakness, eternity has taken on mortality, and all in order to settle the debt we owe for our condition.

That is why at the birth of our Lord the angels sang for joy: ‘Glory to God in the highest,’ and proclaimed the message ‘peace to his people on earth’. For they see the heavenly Jerusalem being constructed out of all the nations of the world. How greatly then should we mere mortals rejoice when the angels on high are so exultant at this mysterious undertaking of divine love!

Let us, then, dearly beloved, give thanks to God the Father, through his Son, in the Holy Spirit, because in his great love for us he has taken pity on us, ‘and when we were dead in our sins he brought us to life with Christ,’ so that in him we might be a new creation, a new work of his hands. Let us throw off our old nature and all its habits and, as we have come to birth in Christ, let us renounce the works of the flesh.

Christian, acknowledge your own dignity; and now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. Bear in mind who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Remember that ‘you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God’s kingdom.’ Through the sacrament of baptism you have become a temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not drive away so great a guest by evil conduct and become again a slave to the devil, for your liberty was bought at the price of Christ’s blood.

alternative reading

A Reading from a poem by Robert Southwell

The Nativity of Christ

Behold the father is his daughter’s son,

The bird that built the nest is hatched therein,

The old of years an hour hath not outrun,

Eternal life to live doth now begin,

The Word is dumb, the mirth of heaven doth weep,

Might feeble is, and force doth faintly creep.

O dying souls, behold your living spring;

O dazzled eyes, behold your sun of grace;

Dull ears, attend what word this Word doth bring;

Up, heavy hearts, with joy your joy embrace.

From death, from dark, from deafness, from despairs,

This life, this light, this Word, this joy repairs.

Gift better than himself God doth not know;

Gift better than his God no man can see.

This gift doth here the giver given bestow;

Gift to this gift let each receiver be.

God is my gift, himself he freely gave me;

God’s gift am I, and none but God shall have me.

Man altered was by sin from man to beast;

Beast’s food is hay, hay is all mortal flesh.

Now God is flesh and lies in manger pressed

As hay, the brutest sinner to refresh.

O happy field wherein this fodder grew,

Whose taste doth us from beasts to men renew.

26 December

A Reading from a treatise On the Trinity by Hilary of Poitiers

How can we make a fitting recompense to God for stooping down to us so graciously? The one only-begotten God, born of God in a way that cannot be described, is enclosed in the shape of a tiny human embryo in the womb of the Virgin and grows in size. He who upholds the universe, in whom and through whom everything came into existence, is brought forth according to the law of human birth; he at whose voice the angels and archangels tremble, and the heavens, the earth and all the elements of the world melt, is heard in the cries of a baby. He who is invisible and incomprehensible, who cannot be judged by the reckonings of sight, sense and touch, lies wrapped in a cradle. If any consider these conditions unfitting for a God, they will have to admit that their indebtedness to such generosity is all the greater, the less they are suited to the majesty of God.

God, through whom humanity came into being, was under no compulsion to become human himself. However, it was necessary for humanity that he should be made flesh and dwell among us. He made our flesh his home by assuming our body of flesh. We have been raised up because he has stooped down to us: his abasement is our glory. He, being God, made our flesh his residence, that we in turn might be restored to God.

27 December

A Reading from a Hymn on the Nativity by Ephrem of Syria

Your mother is a cause for wonder: the Lord entered her

and became a servant; he who is the Word entered

and became silent within her; thunder entered her

and made no sound; there entered the Shepherd of all,

and in her he became the Lamb, bleating as he came forth.

Your mother’s womb has reversed the roles:

the Establisher of all entered in his richness,

but came forth poor; the Exalted One entered her,

but came forth meek; the Splendrous One entered her,

but came forth having put on a lowly hue.

The Mighty One entered, and put on insecurity

from her womb; the Provisioner of all entered

and experienced hunger; he who gives drink to all entered

and experienced thirst: naked and stripped

there came forth from her he who clothes all.

28 December

A Reading from a sermon of Mark Frank

Christ comes as soon to the low cottage as to the loftiest palace, to the handmaid as to the mistress, to the poor as to the rich; nay, prefers them here, honours a poor humble maid above all the gallant ladies of the world. You will see his humility most if you consider his wrapping up. He that measures the heavens with his span, the waters in the hollow of his hand, who involves all things, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, in whom all our beings and well-beings are wrapped from all eternity; comes now to be wrapped and made up like a new-born child – who can unwind or unfold his humility?

The clothes his dear mother wrapped him in are the very badges of humility; a rag, or torn and tattered clothes: such were the clothes she wrapped him in – such, he is so humble, he will be content with, even with rags. What make we then such ado for clothes? Our blessed Lord here is content with what comes next. But Lord! to see what ado have we about our apparel! this lace, and that trimming; this fashion, and that colour; these jewels, and those accoutrements; this cloth, and that stuff; this silk, and that velvet; this silver, and that gold; this way of wearing, and that garb in them; as if our whole life were raiment, our clothes heaven, and our salvation the handsome wearing them. We forget, we forget our sweet Saviour’s rags, his poor ragged swaddling-clothes and our garments witness against us to our faces, our pride, our follies, our vanities at the best.

Well, but though he was content to be wrapped in swaddling-clothes, and those none of the handsomest, neither, may we not look for a cradle at least to lay him in? No matter what we may look for, we are like to find no better than a manger for that purpose, and a lock of hay for his bed, and for his pillow, and for his mantle too. A poor condition, and an humble one indeed, for him whose chariot is the clouds, whose palace is in heaven, whose throne is with the Most High. What place can we hereafter think too mean for any of us? Stand thou here, sit thou there, under my foot-stool – places of exceeding honour compared to this. What, not a room among men, not among the meanest, in some smoky cottage, or ragged cell; but among beasts! Whither hath thy humility driven thee, O Saviour of mankind? Why, mere pity of a woman in thy mother’s case, O Lord, would have made the most obdurate have removed her from the horses’ feet, the asses’ heels, the company of unruly beasts, from the ordure and nastiness of a stable.

And what of us? Though there be no room for him in the inn, I hope there is in our houses for him. It is Christmas time, and let us keep open house for him; let his rags be our Christmas raiment, his manger our Christmas cheer, his stable our Christmas great chamber, hall, dining-room.

[O thou that refusedst not the manger, refuse not the manger of my unworthy heart to lie in, but accept a room in thy servant’s soul. Turn and abide with me. Thy poverty, O sweet Jesu, shall be my patrimony, thy weakness my strength, thy rags my riches, thy manger my kingdom; all the dainties of the world, but chaff to me in comparison of thee; and all the room in the world, no room to that, wheresoever it is, that thou vouchsafest to be. Heaven it is wheresoever thou stayest or abidest; and I will change all the house and wealth I have for thy rags and manger.]

29 December

A Reading from a sermon of John Henry Newman preached before the University of Oxford in 1843

Little is told to us in Scripture concerning the Blessed Virgin, but there is one grace of which the evangelists, in a few simple sentences, make her the pattern of faith. Zechariah questioned the angel’s message, but Mary said, ‘Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.’ Accordingly Elizabeth, speaking with an apparent allusion to the contrast thus exhibited between her own highly-favoured husband, righteous Zechariah, and the still more highly-favoured Mary, said, on receiving her salutation, ‘Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. Blessed is she that believed for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord.’

But Mary’s faith did not end in a mere acquiescence in divine providence and revelations: as the text informs us, she ‘pondered’ them. When the shepherds came, and told of the vision of angels which they had seen at the time of the nativity, and how one of them announced that the infant in her arms was the ‘Saviour, which is Christ the Lord,’ while others did but wonder, ‘Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.’ Again, when her son and Saviour had come to the age of twelve years, and had left her for awhile for his Father’s service, and had been found, to her surprise, in the temple amid the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions, and had, on her addressing him, vouchsafed to justify his conduct, we are told, ‘His mother kept all these sayings in her heart.’ And accordingly, at the marriage feast in Cana, her faith anticipated his first miracle, and she said to the servants, ‘Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.’

Thus St Mary is our pattern of faith, both in the reception and in the study of divine truth. She does not think it enough to accept, she dwells upon it; not enough to possess, she uses it; not enough to assent, she develops it; not enough to submit the reason, she reasons upon it; not indeed reasoning first, and believing afterwards, with Zechariah, yet first believing without reasoning, next from love and reverence, reasoning after believing. And thus she symbolises to us, not only the faith of the unlearned, but of the doctors of the Church also, who have to investigate, and weigh, and define, as well as to profess the gospel; to draw the line between truth and heresy; to anticipate or remedy the various aberrations of wrong reason; to combat pride and recklessness with their own arms; and thus to triumph over the sophist and the innovator.

30 December

A Reading from a homily of Basil the Great

God on earth, God among us! No longer the God who gives his law amid flashes of lightning, to the sound of the trumpet on the smoking mountain, within the darkness of a terrifying storm, but the God who speaks gently and with kindness in a human body to his kindred. God in the flesh! It is no longer the God who acts only at particular instants, as in the prophets, but one who completely assumes our human nature and through his flesh, which is that of our race, lifts all humanity up to him.

How, then, you will say, did the light come everywhere, through one sole person? In what manner is the Godhead in the flesh? Like fire in iron: not by moving about, but by spreading itself. The fire, indeed, does not thrust itself toward the iron, but, remaining where it is, it distributes its own strength to it. In doing so, the fire is in no way diminished, but it completely fills the iron to which it spreads. In the same manner, God the Word who ‘dwelt among us’ did not go outside himself; the Word which was ‘made flesh’ underwent no change; heaven was not deprived of him who controlled it and the earth received within itself him who is in heaven.

Look deeply into this mystery. God comes in the flesh in order to destroy the death concealed in flesh. In the same way as remedies and medicines triumph over the factors of corruption when they are assimilated into the body, and in the same way as the darkness which reigns in a house is dispelled by the entry of light, so death, which held human nature in its power, was annihilated by the coming of the Godhead. In the same way as ice, when in water, prevails over the liquid element as long as it is night, and darkness covers everything, but is dissolved when the sun comes up through the warmth of its rays: so death reigned till the coming of Christ; but when the saving grace of God appeared and the sun of justice rose, death was swallowed up in this victory, being unable to endure the dwelling of the true life among us. O the depth of the goodness of God and of his love for all of us!

Let us give glory to God with the shepherds, let us dance in choir with the angels, for ‘this day a Saviour has been born to us, the Messiah and Lord.’ He is the Lord who has appeared to us, not in his divine form in order not to terrify us in our weakness, but in the form of a servant, that he might set free what had been reduced to servitude. Who could be so faint-hearted and so ungrateful as not to rejoice and exult in gladness for what is taking place? This is a festival of all creation.

31 December

A Reading from an oration

by Proclus, Patriarch of Constantinople

What we celebrate today is the pride and glory of womankind, wrought in one who was both mother and virgin. Behold, earth and sea are the Virgin’s escorts: the sea spreads out her waves in calm beneath the ships; the earth conducts the steps of travellers on their way unhindered. So let nature leap for joy; women are honoured! Let all the world dance; virgins receive praise! For where ‘sin increased, grace has abounded yet more’.

Holy Mary has gathered us together in celebration, Mary – the untarnished vessel of virginity, the spiritual paradise of the second Adam, the workshop in which the union of human and divine natures is to be forged, the bridal chamber in which the Word is to be married to human flesh. Behold a living human bush which the fire of divine childbirth did not consume. In Mary we see both handmaid and mother, maiden and heaven, the bridge to humankind. She has become the loom of our salvation and the Holy Spirit is the weaver, a powerful worker who overshadows her from on high. The wool the weaver takes is drawn from the ancient fleece of Adam, the warp the unsullied body of the Virgin, the shuttle the immeasurable grace of him who wove it, and the weft the Word who enters her through her ear.

Who ever saw, who ever heard of the infinite God dwelling in a human womb? Heaven cannot contain God, and yet a womb did not constrict him. He was born of woman, God but not solely God, and man but not solely man. Through this birth what was once the door of sin has been transformed into the gate of salvation. Through ears that disobeyed, the serpent once poured his deadly poison; now through ears that obeyed, the Word has entered to form a living temple. In the former case, Cain emerged as its fruit, the first pupil of sin; but with Mary, it was Christ the redeemer of our race, who has sprouted unsown into life. The merciful God was not repulsed by the labour pains of a woman; for the business in hand was life.

1 January

The Naming and Circumcision of Jesus

A Reading from a treatise On Contemplating God by William of St Thierry

O God, you alone are the Lord. To be ruled by you is for us salvation. For us to serve you is nothing else but to be saved by you!

But how is it that we are saved by you, O Lord, from whom salvation comes and whose blessing is upon your people, if it is not in receiving from you the gift of loving you and being loved by you? That, Lord, is why you willed that the Son of your right hand, the ‘man whom you made so strong for yourself’, should be called Jesus, that is to say, Saviour, ‘for he will save his people from their sins’. There is no other in whom is salvation except him who taught us to love himself when he first loved us, even to death on the cross. By loving us and holding us so dear he stirred us up to love himself, who first had loved us to the end.

You who first loved us did this, precisely this. You first loved us so that we might love you. And that was not because you needed to be loved by us, but because we could not be what you created us to be, except by loving you. Having then ‘in many ways and on various occasions spoken to our fathers by the prophets, now in these last days you have spoken to us in the Son’, your Word, by whom the heavens were established, and all the power of them by the breath of his mouth. For you to speak thus in your Son was an open declaration, a ‘setting in the sun’ as it were, of how much and in what sort of way you loved us, in that you spared not your own Son, but delivered him up for us all. Yes, and he himself loved us and gave himself for us.

This, Lord, is your word to us; this is your all-powerful message: he who, ‘while all things kept silence’ (that is, were in the depths of error), ‘came from the royal throne’, the stern opponent of error and the gentle apostle of love. And everything he did and everything he said on earth, even the insults, the spitting, the buffeting, the cross and the grave, all that was nothing but yourself speaking to us in the Son, appealing to us by your love, and stirring up our love for you.

alternative reading

A Reading from a sermon of Mark Frank

This name ‘which is above every name’ has all things in it, and brings all things with it. It speaks more in five letters than we can do in five thousand words. It speaks more in it than we can speak today: and yet we intend today to speak of nothing else, nothing but Jesus, nothing but Jesus.

Before his birth the angel announced that this child, born of Mary, would be great: ‘he shall be called Son of the Highest, and the Lord God shall give him the throne of his father David.’ The angel thus intimates that this was a name of the highest majesty and glory. And what can we say upon it, less than burst out with the psalmist into a holy exclamation, ‘O Lord our Governor, O Lord our Jesus, how excellent is thy name in all the world!’ It is all ‘clothed with majesty and honour’; it is ‘decked with light’; it comes riding to us ‘upon the wings of the wind’; the Holy Spirit breathes it full upon us, covering heaven and earth with its glory.

But it is a name of grace and mercy, as well as majesty and glory. For ‘there is no other name under heaven given by which we can be saved,’ but the name of Jesus. In his name we live, and in that name we die. As St Ambrose has written: ‘Jesus is all things to us if we will.’ Therefore I will have nothing else but him; and I have all if I have him.

The ‘looking unto Jesus’ which the apostle advises, will keep us from being weary or fainting under our crosses; for this name was set upon the cross over our Saviour’s head. This same Jesus at the end fixes and fastens all. The love of God in Jesus will never leave us, never forsake us; come what can, it sweetens all.

Is there any one sad? – let him take Jesus into his heart, and he will take heart presently, and his joy will return upon him. Is any one fallen into a sin? – let him call heartily upon this name, and it will raise him up. Is any one troubled with hardness of heart, or dullness of spirit, or dejection of mind, or drowsiness in doing well? – in the meditation of this name, Jesus, all vanish and fly away. Our days would look dark and heavy, which were not lightened with the name of the ‘Sun of Righteousness’; our nights but sad and dolesome, which we entered not with this sweet name, when we lay down without commending ourselves to God in it.

So then let us remember to begin and end all in Jesus. The New Testament, the covenant of our salvation, begins so, ‘the generation of Jesus’; and ‘Come Lord Jesus’, so it ends. May we all end so too, and when we are going hence, commend our spirits into his hands; and when he comes, may he receive them to sing praises and alleluias to his blessed name amidst the saints and angels in his glorious kingdom for ever.

2 January

A Reading from a sermon of Augustine

Who can know all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden in Christ and concealed in the poverty of his human flesh? ‘Though he was rich, yet for our sake he became poor, so that by his poverty we might become rich.’ When he made this mortal flesh his own and abolished death, he appeared among us in poverty; but he promised riches, riches that were only deferred – he did not lose riches that were taken from him.

How great is the abundance of his goodness which is stored up for those who fear him, which he brings to perfection in those who hope in him! Our knowledge now is partial until what is perfect is revealed. To make us fit to receive this gift, he who is equal to the Father in the form of God was made like us in the form of a slave, in order that we might be transformed into the likeness of God. The only Son of God was made Son of Man, and so the children of earth became the children of God. We were slaves, entranced by this visible form of a slave, and have now been set free and raised to the status of children so that we might see the form of God.

As Scripture says: ‘We are God’s children; it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.’ What are those treasures of wisdom and knowledge? What are those divine riches except that which will truly satisfy us? What is that abundance of goodness except that which fills us?

In the gospel, Philip says: ‘Show us the Father and we shall be satisfied.’ And in one of the psalms it is written: ‘I shall be filled when your glory is revealed.’ The Son and the Father are one: whoever sees the Son is seeing the Father also. So then, the Lord of hosts, the king of glory, will bring us home, and will show us his face. We shall be saved, we shall be filled, and we shall be satisfied.

Until this happens, until God shows us what will ultimately satisfy us, until we drink of him as the fountain of life and are filled – until then, we are exiles, walking by faith. Until then, we hunger and thirst for justice, longing with a passion beyond words for the beauty of the form of God. Until then, let us celebrate his birth in the form of a slave with humble devotion.

3 January

A Reading from a letter of Athanasius of Alexandria

The Scriptures record that the Word ‘took to himself descent from Abraham’ and that therefore it was essential that ‘he should become completely like his brothers and sisters’, and have a body similar to our own. This explains the role of Mary in the plan of God: she was to provide the Word with a human body so that he might offer it up as something that is his own. Scripture records her giving birth, and tell us that she ‘wrapped him in swaddling-clothes’. The breasts that suckled him were called blessed. Sacrifice was offered because this child was her firstborn. The angel Gabriel announced the good news of his birth in careful and prudent language. He did not speak of ‘what will be born in you’, to avoid the impression that a body had been introduced into her womb from the outside. Rather, he said: ‘what will be born from you’, so that we might know that her child originated within her entirely naturally.

The Word adopted this pattern so that by assuming our human nature and offering it in sacrifice, he might both abolish it and invest it with his own nature. As the apostle Paul was inspired to write: ‘This corruptible body must put on incorruption; this mortal body must put on immortality.’

His birth was no pretence, as some have suggested. Far from it! Our Saviour really did become human, and from this has followed the salvation of humankind. Our salvation is no pretence, nor is it the salvation of the body only. The salvation which the Word has secured is of the whole person, body and soul.

What was born of Mary, according to Scripture, was human by nature. The Lord’s body was real – real because it was the same as ours. Mary, you see, is our sister, for we are all descended from Adam.

This is the meaning of the words of St John: ‘The Word was made flesh.’ His words have the same import as others of St Paul: ‘Christ was made a curse for our sake.’ The human body has acquired something wonderful through its communion and union with the Word. From being mortal it has become immortal; though physical, it has become spiritual; though made from the earth, it has passed through the gates of heaven.

4 January

A Reading from a sermon of Bernard of Clairvaux

When God emptied himself and took the form of a servant, he emptied himself only of majesty and power, not of goodness and mercy. For what does the Apostle say? ‘The goodness and humanity of God our Saviour have appeared in our midst.’ God’s power had appeared already in creation, and his wisdom in the ordering of creation; but his goodness and mercy have appeared now in his humanity.

So what are you frightened of? Why are you trembling before the face of the Lord when he comes? God has come not to judge the world, but to save it! Do not run away; do not be afraid. God comes unarmed; he wants to save you, not to punish you. And lest you should say ‘I heard your voice and I hid myself,’ look – he is here, an infant with no voice. The cry of a baby is something to be pitied, not to be frightened of. He is made a little child, the Virgin Mother has wrapped his tender limbs in swaddling bands; so why are you still quaking with fear? This tells you that God has come to save you, not to lose you; to rescue you, not to imprison you.

God is already fighting your two enemies, sin and death – the death of both body and soul. He has come to conquer both of them; so do not fear, he will save you from them. He has already conquered sin in his own person, in that he took our human nature upon himself without spot of sin. From this moment on he pursues your enemies and overtakes them, and will not return until he has overcome them both. He fights sin with his life, he attacks it with his word and example; and in his passion he binds it, yes, binds ‘the strong man and carries off his goods’. In the same way it is in his own person that he first conquers death when he rises as ‘the firstfruits of those who sleep, the firstborn from the dead’. From now on he will conquer it in all of us as he raises up our mortal bodies, and death, the last enemy, will be destroyed.

In his rising he is clothed with honour, no longer wrapped in swaddling bands as at his birth. At his birth, in the wide embrace of his mercy, he judged no one; but at his resurrection he ties around his waist the girdle of righteousness which in some sense must define the embrace of his mercy. Henceforth we must be ready for judgement which will take place when we ourselves are raised. Today he has come to us as a little child, that before all else he might offer all people mercy; but in his resurrection he anticipates the final judgement when mercy must needs be balanced by the claims of righteousness.

5 January

A Reading from the Catechetical Orations of Gregory of Nyssa

That God should have clothed himself with our nature is a fact that should not seem strange or extravagant to minds that do not form too paltry an idea of reality. Who, looking at the universe, would be so feeble-minded as not to believe that God is all in all; that he clothes himself with the universe, and at the same time contains it and dwells in it? What exists depends on the One who is, and nothing can exist except in the bosom of the One who is.

If then all is in God and God is in all, why be embarrassed about a faith that teaches us that one day God was born in the human condition, a God who still today exists in humanity?

Indeed, if the presence of God in us does not take the same form now as it did then, we can at least agree in recognising that he is in us today no less than he was then. Today, he is involved with us in as much as he maintains creation in existence. In Christ he mingled himself with our being to deify it by contact with him, after he had snatched it from death. For his resurrection becomes for mortals the promise of their ultimate return to immortal life.

The First Sunday of Christmas

The Holy Family

A Reading from The Light of Christ by Evelyn Underhill

The new life grows in secret. Nothing very startling happens. We see the child in the carpenter’s workshop. He does not go outside the frontiers within which he appeared. It did quite well for him and will do quite well for us. There is no need for peculiar conditions in the spiritual life. Our environment itself, our home and job, are part of the moulding action of God. Have we fully realised all that is unfolded in this ? How unchristian it is to try to get out of our frame, to separate our daily life from our prayer? That third-rate little village in the hills with its limited social contacts and monotonous manual work reproves us, when we begin to fuss about opportunities and scope. And that quality of quietness and ordinariness, that simplicity with which he entered into his great vocation, endured from the beginning to the end.

The child Jesus grows as other children, the lad works as other lads. Total abandonment to the vast divine purpose working at its own pace in and through ordinary life and often, to us, in mysterious ways. I love to think that much in Christ’s own destiny was mysterious to him. It was part of his perfect manhood that he shared our human situation in this too.

We often feel we ought to get on quickly to a new stage like spiritual mayflies. Christ takes thirty years to grow and two and a half to act. Only the strange dreams Joseph and Mary had, warned a workman and his young wife that they lay in the direct line of God’s action, that the growth committed to them mattered supremely to the world. And when his growth reached the right stage, there is the revelation of God’s call and after it, stress, discipline and choice. Those things came together as signs of maturity and they were not spectacular things. It is much the same with us in our life of prayer: the Spirit fills us as we grow, develop and make room.

We get notions sometimes that we ought to spring up quickly like seed on stony ground, we ought to show some startling sign of spiritual growth. But perhaps we are only asked to go on quietly, to be a child, a nice stocky seedling, not shooting up in a hurry, but making root, being docile to the great slow rhythm of life. When you don’t see any startling marks of your own religious condition or your usefulness to God, think of the baby in the stable and the little boy in the streets of Nazareth. The very life was there which was to change the whole history of the human race. There was not much to show for it. But there is entire continuity between the stable and the Easter garden and the thread that unites them is the will of God. The childlike simple prayer of Nazareth was the right preparation for the awful privilege of the cross. Just so the light of the Spirit is to unfold gently and steadily within us, till at last our final stature, all God designed for us, is attained.

The Second Sunday of Christmas

A Reading from a sermon of Augustine

Beloved, our Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Creator of all things, today became our Saviour by being born of a mother. Of his own will he was born for us in time, so that he could lead us to his Father’s eternity. God became human like us so that we might become God. The Lord of the angels became one of us today so that we could eat the bread of angels.

Today, the prophecy is fulfilled that said: ‘Pour down, heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain down righteousness: let the earth be opened and bring forth a Saviour.’ The Lord who had created all things is himself now created, so that he who was lost would be found. Thus humanity, in the words of the psalmist, confesses: ‘Before I was humbled, I sinned.’ We sinned and became guilty; God is born as one of us to free us from our guilt. We fell, but God descended; we fell miserably, but God descended mercifully; we fell through pride, God descended with his grace.

What miracles! What wonders! The laws of nature are changed in the case of humankind. God is born. A virgin becomes pregnant. The Word of God marries the woman who knows no man. She is now at the same time both mother and virgin. She becomes a mother, yet she remains a virgin. The virgin bears a son, yet she does not know a man; she remains untouched, yet she is not barren.