The Christmas season can well be seen as extending to the Presentation of Christ in the Temple on 2 February. This gives a period of forty days, a parallel to the duration of Lent and Easter, in which to celebrate the Incarnation and give proper regard to the Epiphany themes. Easter must always be at the heart of the Christian faith, leading from the Cross to the assurance of new life. But there would have been no Cross and no Resurrection without the Nativity. The Christian faith is a faith of incarnation, of the mystery whereby God the Son, the second Person of the Holy Trinity, became fully human for the sake of the whole human race. As the Christmas collect says, he came to ‘take our nature upon him and as at this time to be born of a pure virgin.’ Our Christmas hymns, sung repeatedly in December and scarcely ever heard for the rest of the year, remind us of the result of the Incarnation. ‘God and sinners reconciled’ – ‘Born that Man no more may die’ – God's wondrous love in saving lost mankind’ – ‘To save us all from Satan's power’ – ‘To be our Redeemer from death, hell and sin’.
The early Fathers of the Church gave great weight to the Incarnation. They found in it a double consequence, that the act of divinity in assuming humanity unites us in a new way with God, whose perfection we can never approach by ourselves. ‘He took our flesh, to the end that he might show that the law of the flesh had been subjected to the law of the mind’ (St Ambrose). ‘Having become what we were, he through himself again united humanity to God’ (St Gregory of Nyssa). ‘He became Son of Man, who was God's own Son, in order that he might make the children of men to be children of God’ (St John Chrysostom). ‘He was made man that we might be made God; and he manifested himself by a body that we might receive the idea of the unseen Father’ (St Athanasius).
The stories of the birth of Jesus come to us through the Gospels of St Matthew and St Luke. There are differences of detail and it is not possible to harmonize them completely, but they agree on the divine announcement of God's plan, conception by the Holy Spirit and birth at Bethlehem by the Virgin Mary. Luke tells the story through the experience of Mary, which he may well have heard from her own lips. He records her being with the disciples after the Ascension (Acts 1:14). The legend that he painted a portrait of her is probably not true, but it shows that of all the Evangelists, he was particularly associated with her. Matthew sees some of the events through Joseph. As throughout his Gospel, he emphasizes the links with traditional Judaism, but it is he also who records the Magi, the first Gentiles to see the infant Christ. St John has no nativity story, but he gives us a deep reflection on the theology of the Incarnation by which ‘the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.’
St Paul has much to say of the wonderful act of incarnation by which the Son of God ‘emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness’ (Philippians 2:6). ‘God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law’ (Galatians 4:4). For him, the reconciliation between God and sinful humanity makes Christ the Second Adam, restoring through human nature what had been lost by the Fall and all subsequent sin (1 Corinthians 15: 45–9).
The Nativity is the birth of one and the new birth of many, through all the generations of believers that were to come. The events from Good Friday to Easter Day would complete the transformation, but this is where it all began.
Let us then keep Christmas with every sort of rejoicing, but let us honour the Nativity at other times as well. The forty days to the Presentation give us much material for devotion and meditation. During the long summer Trinity season, we can hold together the wonder of both Christmas and Easter, drawing continually on the insights which we have gained at the time of their special observances. Easter lifts us to the things eternal: Christmas affirms this world as God's creation, loved by him in spite of sin, made new by his own gracious act. The two worlds are drawn together, so that whenever we enjoy human pleasures we can offer them also in the light of eternity.
Before the Stations
Almighty God, whose blessed Son took our human nature so that we might regain our lost innocence and be restored to the divine image that was disfigured by sin, grant that as we meditate on the mystery of his humanity we may share the glory of his divinity, who lives and reigns in the unity of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, now and for ever. Amen.
A hymn may be sung: the familiar Christmas hymns tell of the wonder of the Incarnation and the following are particularly suitable:
A great and mighty wonder
Hark, the herald angels sing
In the bleak midwinter
Of the Father's heart begotten
The great God of heaven is come down to earth
1
Zechariah
| V | We adore thee O Christ and we bless thee. |
| R | Because by thy wonderful Nativity thou hast given us new birth. |
In the days of King Herod of Judaea, there was a priest named Zechariah. Once when he was serving as priest before God, there appeared to him an angel of the Lord. The angel said to him, ‘Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear a son, and you will name him John. He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God.’ Zechariah said to the angel, ‘How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.’ The angel replied, ‘Because you did not believe my words, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the days these things occur.’
(Luke 1: part of verses 3–20)
Zechariah was serving the worship in the Temple as it had been done for centuries past. In those years many prophets had declared God's purpose for his people and told of the Messiah who was to come. Now the time was near, and Zechariah would have a son who would be the last prophet of the Old Covenant and the forerunner of the New. It was too much for the old man to believe. He was deprived of speech and sent to meditate in silence until the promise was fulfilled.
We give thanks to God for his patience, the constancy of his love, the assurance of his promises. We give thanks for the teaching of his prophets, for all his words of preparation which were fulfilled in the gospel. We give thanks for his gifts which continually exceed our expectations.
We too are slow to believe, because the good news seems impossible in human terms. We lose hope too readily, grow weary of waiting and turn aside from the way that we should follow. Teach us always to know that your ways are not our ways and that nothing will prevent the fulfilment of your living purpose.
| V | God sent his Son into the world. |
| R | To bring us to eternal life. |
| V | Let us bless the Lord. |
| R | Thanks be to God. |
The time of waiting is time wasted as we count
time in this world.
We fret as we wait for the bus, for the
examination result, for the surgery bell,
and