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