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The herald of the pending miracle begins. It is the
Eve of the Nativity as these words are sung. The transformation of the world,
the birth of God, is but hours away, and it is through such words that the
faithful are called into attentiveness and anticipation. 'Make ready, O
Bethlehem!' We can see the radiant lights of Christmas just beyond the
horizon, we can taste the sweetness of the miracle that took place beneath a
star; and through the words sung around and within us in the Church, the great
eve of the birth of God is made a reality in our present experience. We make
ready, and we wait.
But this is not the first moment of preparation for
the Feast. For 'forty days', with the usual adjustments to that length for
Sabbaths and Sundays causing it to begin on 15 November, the Church has been
setting herself in readiness, drawing her attention to the mystery to come,
waiting in expectation. She has made use of the great joy that will arrive on
Christmas day as occasion to take up the task considered by so many as opposite
to joy: fasting, with all its rigour, its harshness, its discomfort. These are
the steps which, for Orthodox Christians throughout the world, lead to the
radiant wonder of the Nativity of Christ.
Whence the spirit of this fast, which each year
'stands in the way' of our arrival at Christmas rejoicing? The question itself
helps guide the way to an answer: the fast seems awkward because so often we see
Christmas as joy alone and do not appreciate fully the deep and profound mystery
that is at the heart of our joy. 'Hark, the herald angels sing!', we are eager
to recall; but quietly we forget the universal significance of the event that is
the cause of their singing. It was not just that a babe was born: it was that He
who is without birth was born. He who created all was made a created child. He
who holds the universe in the palm of His hand, was held in the hands of a
tender mother.
Before Thy birth, O Lord, the angelic hosts
looked with trembling on this mystery and were struck with wonder: for Thou
who hast adorned the vault of heaven with stars hast been well pleased to be
born as a babe; and Thou who holdest all the ends of the earth in the hollow
of Thy hand art laid in a manger of dumb beasts. For by such a dispensation
has Thy compassion been made known, O Christ, and Thy great mercy: glory to
Thee.
(Sticheron of the Third Hour, Christmas Eve)
We do not tremble when we think of Christmas, we are
not struck with wonder. Instead, we buy gifts and plan parties, catching a
glimpse of the joy of the Feast, but without a heart immersed in its wonder.
Thus the fast becomes that which we must 'get through' in order to reach that
joyful day. When we arrive there, however, if this has been our attitude, we are
caught askance by the hymns the Church feeds into our hearts. We find ourselves
joined to a celebration of triumphal release from bondage, but we little
understand what that bondage means. We sing songs of joy for deliverance, but we
do not truly comprehend how we are enslaved. We find ourselves suddenly
transported to the mountaintop, but without having climbed there from the valley
far below, the scene we see is only another beautiful picture casually set
before our eyes and not the vision for which we have worked and struggled and
longed with all our being. We may feel joy, perhaps even Christmas joy; but we
will know, deep inside, that our joy is not like unto that which is exalted in
the hymn:
Make glad, O ye righteous! Greatly rejoice, O
ye heavens! Ye mountains, dance for joy! Christ is born; and like the
cherubim the Virgin makes a throne, carrying at her bosom God the Word made
flesh. Shepherds, glorify the newborn Child! Magi, offer the Master gifts!
Angels, sing praises, saying: 'O Lord past understanding, glory to Thee!'
(First sticheron of the Praises, Nativity Matins)
The Fast of the Nativity is the Church's wise solace
and aid to human infirmity. We are a forgetful people, but our forgetfulness is
not unknown to God, and our hearts with all their misconceptions and weak
understandings are not unfamiliar to the Holy Spirit who guides the Church. We
who fall far from God through the magnitude of our sin, are called nonetheless
to be close to Him. Through the fast that precedes the great Feast of the
Incarnation--which itself is the fulfillment of our calling--the Church helps
draw us into the full mystery of what that call entails.
Like Great Lent, the fast of the Nativity is a
journey. 'Come, O ye faithful, and let us behold where Christ is born. Let us
join the Magi, kings from the east, and follow the guiding star'. On the
fifteenth of November, the Church joins together in a journey toward that
salvation which was first promised to Adam in God's curse laid upon the serpent
(Gen 3.14-15). The One who will crush the head of the serpent, of sin and the
devil and all that is counter to God, is Him to whom the star leads us. The fast
of the Nativity is our journey into something new and marvelous, which comes
from God but to which we must approach of our own volition. The gift of a new
land and great blessings was freely given by God to Abraham, but in order to
obtain it, 'Abram went, as the Lord had told him' (Gen 12.4).
A journey is, by its nature, naturally ascetic.
Unless my life is already very humble, I cannot take the whole of my possessions
on a journey. I cannot transport social and political ties along a journey's
path. I can never be too reliant on the plans I have made for my journey; a
control lying beyond the self must be admitted and accepted. This is the spirit
to which the fast calls us.
A journey is an act of movement, of transportation,
of growth. What is old is left behind, newness is perceived and embraced, growth
of understanding takes place. And even if the journey comes to a close in the
same physical location from which it began, that place is transformed for us by
the journey through which we have re-approached it. The aid shelter on a street
corner in London is no different after a journey to the Middle East; but after
witnessing there first-hand the struggles and torments of poverty, the meaning
and importance of that small shelter is indeed different for me.
Here the importance of the fast. As Christmas
approaches, that great feast of cosmic significance and eternal, abounding joy
for which heaven and earth together rejoice, the fast calls me to consider: do
I rejoice? Why do I rejoice? The hymnography of the Church makes
it clear that this is a feast for all the world, for all creation; and the fast
calls me to take my place in that creation, to realize that, despite all my
infinite unworthiness, Christmas is a miracle for my soul too.
Make ready, O Bethlehem: let the manger be
prepared, let the cave show its welcome. The truth has come, the shadow has
passed away; born of a Virgin, God has appeared to men, formed as we are and
making godlike the garment He has put on. Therefore Adam is renewed with
Eve, and they call out: 'Thy good pleasure has appeared on earth to save our
kind'.
Adam and Eve, all of humankind, are renewed and made
alive in the Incarnation of God in Christ, who 'appeared on earth to save our
kind'. Fallen flesh, so long bound to death, is sewn into the garment of Christ
and made fully alive. It has been said truly that humankind drew its first full
breath at the infant Christ's first cry.
We are called, then, to approach this great mystery
as God's condescension into our own lives, personally and collectively. The
Canon of Matins for the Nativity lays it out clearly: 'He establishes a path
for us, whereby we may mount up to heaven'.The Nativity is not only about
God's coming down to us, but about our rising up to Him, just as sinful humanity
was lifted up into the person of Christ in the Incarnation itself.
We are called to arise, then, during the fast that
is the journey into Christmas. 'O blessed Lord who seest all, raise us up far
above sin, and establish Thy singers firm and unshaken upon the foundation of
the faith'.The faithful take up this call through the abandonment of those
things which bind, rather than free, in order that a focus on God as 'all in
all' might become ever more real and central to daily life.
Meals are lessened and regimented, that a constant,
lingering hunger may remind us of the great need we each have for spiritual food
that goes beyond our daily bread. The number of Church services is gradually
increased, that we might know whence comes that true food. Sweets and drink are
set aside, that we might never feel content with the trivial and temporal joys
of this world. Parties and social engagements are reduced, that we might realize
that all is not so well with us as we often take it to be. Anything which holds
the slightest power over us, whether cigarettes or television, travel or
recreation, is minimized or--better--cast wholly aside, that we might bring
ourselves to be possessed and governed only by God.
The fast is an ascetic time, designed by the Church
to strip away common stumbling blocks into sin, to provide us with the means of
self-perception that we lack in our typical indulgence, and to begin to grow the
seeds of virtue. All these are necessary if we are ever to know even partially,
or appreciate even menially, the 'depth of the riches of the wisdom and
knowledge of God'. We must take up the task of our own purification, gifted by
God and achieved only through His grace, that we might approach Him on Christmas
Day as did the Magi and the shepherds in Bethlehem:
Come, O ye faithful, inspired by God let us
arise and behold the divine condescension from on high that is made manifest
to us in Bethlehem. Cleansing our minds, let us offer through our lives
virtues instead of myrrh, preparing with faith our entry into the feast of
the Nativity, storing up treasure in our souls and crying: Glory in the
highest to God in Trinity, whose good pleasure is now revealed to men, that
in His love for mankind He may set Adam free from the ancestral curse.
(Sticheron of the Sixth Hour, Christmas Eve)
The Church journeys toward the birth of Christ God,
steered by the ship that is the Nativity Fast. She does so with the knowledge
that unless she struggles up the mountain that is desperately too steep for her
to climb, she will never know the breadth of the gift that is the mountain's
levelling by the hand of God. Resurrection unto life is the ultimate gift of the
Incarnation, but unless a man understands that he is dead, he will never know
the meaning of resurrection.
The fast is a holy and blessed tool that brings us
closer to such self awareness. It reveals to us who we are, perhaps more
importantly who we are not, and makes us more consciously aware of that for
which we stand in need. Then and only then, with eyes open--even only
partially--by the ascetic endeavor, we will truly know the life-giving light of
the nativity of Christ. We will hear with awe the proclamation of the hymn at
Vespers, taking the mystery presented therein as somehow united directly to us:
Come, let us greatly rejoice in the Lord as
we tell of this present mystery. The middle wall of partition has been
destroyed; the flaming sword turns back, the cherubim withdraw from the tree
of life, and I partake of the delight of Paradise from which I was cast out
through disobedience. For the express Image of the Father, the Imprint of
His eternity, takes the form of a servant, and without undergoing change He
comes forth from a Mother who knew not wedlock. For what He was, He has
remained, true God: and what He was not, He has taken upon himself, becoming
man through love for mankind. Unto Him let us cry aloud: God born of a
Virgin, have mercy upon us!
(Sticheron of Vespers of the Nativity)
We will never fully comprehend this ineffable
mystery; some knowledge is properly God's alone. But by His grace through the
ascetic effort, we will come to understand--perhaps only to the slightest
degree--how this mystery is our own mystery, how His life is our own life, and
how the salvation of Christmas Day is, indeed, our own salvation. And with this
realization, joy: joy far greater than a mere entrance into the temple on
Christmas Day could ever bring us. This is the joy of the age-old journey of
man, our own journey, come to its fulfillment in the awe-inspiring mystery of
God Himself become a man. With this joy in our hearts, we shall embrace the
hymnographer's words as our own:
Today the Virgin comes to the cave to give
birth ineffably to the pre-eternal Word. Hearing this, be of good cheer, O
inhabited earth, and with the angels and the shepherds glorify Him whose
will it was to be made manifest a young Child, the pre-eternal God.
(Kontakion of the Forefeast)
