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.
EPIPHANY
God never imparts himself as he is to those
who contemplate him while still in this mortal life,
but he shows forth his brightness scantily
to the blinking eyes of our mind.
Gregory the Great
Reconciling Peace, sent to the people,
Gladdening Flash, who came to the gloomy,
Powerful Leaven, conquering all in silence,
Patient One, who has captured the creation little by little.
Blessed is he who became small without limit
to make us great without limit.
Ephrem of Syria
The date of the Feast of the Epiphany relates to the custom of celebrating the Feast of the Nativity of Christ in the winter solstice. The north European pre-Christian tradition of celebrating the birth of the Sun on 25 December differed from the Mediterranean and Eastern tradition of observing 6 January as the solstice. As often happens, the two dates merged into a beginning and an end of the same celebration. The Western Church adopted ‘the twelve days of Christmas’ climaxing on the eve of Epiphany, or ‘Twelfth Night’. The implication by the fifth century was that this was the night on which the Magi arrived. The complications of dating became even more confused with the change from the Julian to the Gregorian Calendar in the West, the Eastern Church refusing to participate in the change. So the Feast of the Epiphany remains the chief day of celebrating the incarnation in Orthodox Churches.
Proper readings focusing on the traditional themes of the feast, namely, the arrival of the Magi and the mystical significance of their gifts, the Baptism of Christ in the Jordan, and the miracle at Cana of Galilee – ‘the first of the signs that revealed his glory’ – are provided for The Epiphany and for the days that follow until the Sunday after the feast which is observed as The Baptism of Christ. If, for pastoral reasons, the celebration of the Epiphany is transferred to the Sunday between 2 and 8 January, then the provision of readings will need to be supplemented with unused material from the Christmastide section.
The subtitle of the Feast of the Epiphany in The Book of Common Prayer – ‘The