The Eternal Now

Tags

Christmas, Oration 38, St. Gregory the Theologian, St. John Chrysostom, Worship

Section 17 of St. Gregory the Theologian’s Oration 38 and passages like it are the reason I so adore reading the Fathers of the Church. How can one not leap for joy, as St. Gregory exhorts us to do, after reading these words?

In order to understand the power behind these words, and why I love this passage so much, I need to quote the Anaphora of another of the Three Hierarchs — St. John Chrysostom. This is the prayer that immediately follows the words of institution (Eat…Drink…)

Remembering, therefore, this command of the Savior, and all that came to pass for our sake, the cross, the tomb, the resurrection on the third day, the ascension into heaven, the enthronement at the right hand of the Father, and the second, glorious coming.

Note how the second and glorious coming is referred to in the past tense. This is an acknowledgment by the Orthodox Church that what happens within the liturgy does so outside of time as we experience it. When we utter the words, “Blessed is the Kingdom” we enter into the Eight Day, the day that has no end, the day that exists outside of time where time can only be described as the eternal now.

It is in this context that St. Gregory exhorts us to leap for joy. Note that as he moves through all of the various narrative actions from the story of Christ’s birth that we are called to join in. This joining is not something which we do in remembrance of something that has happened in the past, but rather is something which is occurring right now.

When we gather as the Orthodox Church to celebrate the Nativity, we will be witnesses to the event itself. Christ is perfect God and perfect Man. As such, Christ is both in and outside of time. Thus, everything that he has done for us exists both in and outside of time. While the birth of Christ is an historical event that did happen in the past, it is also an eternal reality that we will partake of as the Orthodox Church.

Thus, we can be awed by the census, revere the birth, honor Bethlehem, bow before the manger, know our master and his crib, run after the star to bring gifts, give glory, sing hymns and witness the angels lift up the gates of heaven right now. Amen.

Advertisement

Conclusion

Tags

Christmas, Eucharist, Image and Likeness, Psalm 1, St. Hilary, Worship

St. Hilary concludes his Homily on the First Psalm:

God certainly was not ignorant of the faith of Abraham, which He had already reckoned to him for righteousness when he believed about the birth of Isaac: but now because he had given a signal instance of his fear in offering his son, he is at last known, approved, rendered worthy of being not unknown. It is in this way then that God both knows and knows not—Adam the sinner is not known, and Abraham the faithful is known, is worthy, that is, of being known by God Who surely knows all things. The way of the righteous, therefore, who are not to be judged is known by God: and this is why sinners, who are to be judged, are set far from their counsel; while the ungodly shall not rise again to judgment, because their way has perished, and they have already been judged by Him Who said: ‘The Father judgeth no man, but hath given all judgment unto the Son’ (John 5:22), our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is blessed for ever and ever. Amen.

St. Hilary’s use of the verb to know in terms of Abraham demonstrates that he is playing with various forms of the word and that this translation has been forced to strictly use the verb as to know in order to have it make any sense in English. God knew of Abraham prior to the incident in Genesis 22. God had made promises to Abraham. Having been the recipient of a promise, however, does not make one righteous. All we need do is look upon the history of the Hebrews to see how often God’s chosen people failed at being a righteous people. God knew (recognized) Abraham’s righteousness when the angel had to stay Abraham’s hand.

St. Hilary’s choice for examples here is interesting. Adam as the sinner recalls his role within creation — to tend and expand the garden. Abraham as the righteous is willing to sacrifice his son for the sake of the nations. Our Lord, God and Savior is both the Last Adam — He who fulfills Adam’s original purpose — and is the Son who is sacrificed for the salvation of the nations.

For those of us who are sinners and are on the path to having to face the judgement seat, the reality that Christ is the Last Adam, the Sacrificial Lamb and the Judge offers some amount of hope. It clearly demonstrates that it is not God’s intention to doom His creation to destruction, but rather that we be fulfilled in Him and that He is willing to go to the extreme of the humiliation and death of the Cross for each and every one of us, who (to continue to play with the verb to know) He knew of as God when He marched to Golgotha. If this were a worldly court of Law, Christ would have to recuse Himself because of a conflict of interest.

Indeed, Christ has given us every tool that we need in order to come out of the darkness and seek the path of righteousness. Everything that the Church offers — prayer, fasting, almsgiving, worship, sacrament, liturgy, the cloud of witnesses and (especially) His Body and His Blood — are ways for us to strive for the recognition by God as righteous. As indicated by the huge number of saints revealed to us, this recognition is far from impossible. Indeed, the miracles worked through the saints reveal that it is possible even while we still walk this earth in our fallen form.

However, as St. Hilary has striven to prove, it all comes down to us and our free will. This is a path that we must choose. As the Feast of the Nativity quickly approaches, we have an opportunity to step onto this path by putting away the pressures of the world to make this Great Feast about us, the presents we give, how many presents we receive and how awesome our feast day table is. Instead, let us all focus upon the meal that God has laid out upon His table and the great pains that He went through in order to give it to us.

Let us approach in awe as God, the Creator of all things, is held in the arms of a Virgin Girl named Mary; that through the reordering of all things she is His mother the Theotokos; and that when we approach and partake of this Great Feast set upon God’s Table — His Body and His Blood — that we, too, can not only be embraced by the Virgin Maid as the Body of Christ, but by the Father as His children. Amen.

The Eighth Day

Tags

Divine Liturgy, Psalm 1, St. Hilary, Worship

St. Hilary continues his interpretation of Revelations 22:1:

And all things whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. Never again shall His gift and His statutes be set at naught, as they were in the case of Adam, who by his sin in breaking the Law lost the happiness of an assured immortality; but now, thanks to the redemption wrought by the tree of Life, that is, by the Passion of the Lord, all that happens to us is eternal and eternally conscious of happiness in virtue of our future likeness to that tree of Life. For all their doings shall prosper, being wrought no longer amid shift and change nor in human weakness, for corruption will be swallowed up in incorruption, weakness in endless life, the form of earthly flesh in the form of God. This tree, then, planted and yielding its fruit in its own season, shall that happy man resemble, himself being planted in the Garden, that what God has planted may abide, never to be rooted up, in the Garden where all things done by God shall be guided to a prosperous issue, apart from the decay that belongs to human weakness and to time, and has to be uprooted.

Note the sense of liturgical time that St. Hilary expresses within this passage. There is both the reality of the eschaton (the end times) and the reality of the present (where we still experience time and the consequences of of the old Adam’s rejection of the Law). There is a tension that exists within every Christian’s life between these two realities — especially those of us who are familiar with the Orthodox Christian liturgical life.

When one is accustomed to the language of the Orthodox worship, everything that we do — whether it is celebrating The Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple, the Martyrdom of St. Katherine the Great, the hierarch par excellence St. Nicholas, The Conception of the Theotokos by St. Anne (all feasts we have celebrated over the course of this study) or The Nativity of our Lord, God and Jesus Christ the language is always in the present. We see this in the Kontakion of Christmas:

On this day the Virgin gives birth unto the Super-essential. To the Unapproachable, earth is providing the grotto. Angels sing and with the shepherds offer up glory. Following a star the Magi are still proceeding. He was born for our salvation, a newborn Child, the pre-eternal God.

All this is happening now. The Eighth Day which has no end has already arrived. The Second Coming is referred to in the past in the Anaphora of St. John Chrysostom:

Remembering, therefore, this command of the Savior, and all that came to pass for our sake, the cross, the tomb, the resurrection on the third day, the ascension into heaven, the enthronement at the right hand of the Father, and the second, glorious coming.

And yet, despite our ability to enter into this timeless reality every time we gather as the Church and celebrate the Divine Liturgy, we must return into time. We must face the consequences of the First Adam.

This tension becomes strained when these consequences become overwhelming — when we see the suffering and death of loved ones, when we witness disasters both natural and manmade that affect hundreds, thousands or millions of our fellow human being, or, most especially, when we ourselves are faced with the crippling effects of time, decay and ultimately death.

In other words, we all have a choice: we can stand facing (and therefore meditating upon) the world and place our hope in its riches, its power and its operation; or we can stand to face the Coming Kingdom, which we have already witnessed within the context of our worship, and meditate upon that which is yet to come and yet is already here.

Neither prevents trials and tribulations; however, while the first guarantees not only disappointment, but ultimate failure, the latter promises that all that happens to us within that liturgy is eternal. Thus, the man who meditates upon the Law day and night is and will be eternally conscious of happiness in virtue of our future likeness to that tree of Life.

Life

Tags

Ascension, Christmas, Cross, Holy Spirit, Resurrection, St. Ambrose, Trinity, Worship

Yesterday, I spent time meditating on the title Life as it pertains to Christ the Tree of Life; however, St. Ambrose highlights the title in order to show how it applies to the Holy Spirit. In chapter three of the second book of his treatise On the Holy Spirit he observes:

So, then, the world had not eternal life, because it had not received the Spirit; for where the Spirit is, there is eternal life

Again, because today we are on the Eve of Christmas, let me try to bring this idea to bear upon the Nativity. Yesterday, I noted how the hymnody equated the Incarnation with salvation due to the reality of God becoming a human being and therefore shattering that which separates us from God, as we sing in the Stichera of Vespers for the Nativity:

Come, let us rejoice in the Lord as we declare this present mystery. The middle wall of partition is broken asunder; the flaming sword is turned back, the Cherubim withdraw from the Tree of Life, and I partake of the Paradise of Delight, whence I was cast out before through disobedience.

However, the Tree of Life is also the Cross, therefore more is yet to be done. Note all of the things accomplished by Christ in this prayer from the Anaphora of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom:

Remembering, therefore, this command of the Savior, and all that came to pass for our sake, the cross, the tomb, the resurrection on the third day, the ascension into heaven, the enthronement at the right hand of the Father, and the second, glorious coming.

All of this is necessary in order for what happens next in the Divine Liturgy:

Once again we offer to You this spiritual worship without the shedding of blood, and we ask, pray, and entreat You: send down Your Holy Spirit upon us and upon these gifts here presented.

And make this bread the precious Body of Your Christ.

And that which is in this cup the precious Blood of Your Christ.

Changing them by Your Holy Spirit.

In other words, our access to Christ, the Tree of Life, is through the descent of the Holy Spirit. Without that descent, there is no Incarnaton, no cross, no tomb, no resurrection, no ascension, no enthronement and no second coming. And without any of these, that descent is not accomplished in us.

Remember this the next time we pray Psalm 50(51):

Do not cast me out of your presence: do not take your Holy Spirit from me.

Amen.

Tree

Tags

Christmas, Cross, Holy Spirit, St. Ambrose, Worship

In chapter three of the second book of his treatise On the Holy Spirit, St. Ambrose continues to establish that titles given to the Father and/or the Son are also given to the Holy Spirit:

Let them say, then, wherein they think that there is an unlikeness in the divine operation. Since as to know the Father and the Son is life, as the Lord Himself declared, saying: ‘This is life eternal to know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, Whom Thou hast sent’ (John 17:3), so, too, to know the Holy Spirit is life. For the Lord said: ‘If ye love Me, keep My commandments, and I will ask the Father and He shall give you another Paraclete, that He may abide with you for ever, even the Spirit of Truth, Whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him, but ye know Him, for He is with you, and in you’ (John 17:14,15).

Since we are on the verge of celebrating Christmas and I have spent very little time meditating upon the Nativity, let me try to tie this title Life to the birth of our Lord, God and Savior. During the Vespers of the Nativity, Orthodox Christians sing this Troparion (hymn) of the Prophacies antiphonally between OT readings:

You have dawned from a Virgin, O Christ, You noetic Sun of Righteousness. And a star pointed to You, the Uncontainable, contained within a cave. You have led the Magi to worship You, together with them we magnify You: O Giver of Life, glory be to You.

Thus, the eternal life that we may obtain through our knowledge of God and Jesus Christ is accomplished through the Son becoming a human being. This is further described in the Stichera of Vespers:

Come, let us rejoice in the Lord as we declare this present mystery. The middle wall of partition is broken asunder; the flaming sword is turned back, the Cherubim withdraw from the Tree of Life, and I partake of the Paradise of Delight, whence I was cast out before through disobedience.

Christ Himself, therefore, is called the Tree of Life. Eternal life is granted by our partaking of the Tree once guarded by the Cherubim with their flaming swords (Gen. 3:24). This phrase, however, has many layers in the same way the Orthodox Christian’s answer to the question, “Are you saved?” has many layers:

I am already saved (Rom. 8:24, Eph. 2:5–8), I’m also being saved (1 Cor. 1:18, 2 Cor. 2:15, Phil. 2:12), and I have the hope that I will be saved (Rom. 5:9–10, 1 Cor. 3:12–15).

We partake of Christ the Tree of life because He has taken on our humanity. We also partake of Christ the Tree of Life every time we take communion. In the hymnody of the Orthodox Church the Tree of Life is equated with the Cross. This is done as we pray during the Ninth Hour of the Royal Hours of Christmas:

Master, Lord Jesus Christ, our God, who have long endured our transgressions, and brought us to this hour in which hanging on the life-giving tree you showed the good Thief the way into Paradise and destroyed death by death, have mercy also on us sinners and your unworthy servants.

Thus, though we have partaken of the Tree of Life through the Nativity and we are partaking of the Tree of Life through communion, ultimately we will partake by being crucified with the Tree of Life. Amen.

Trinity

Tags

Holy Spirit, Old Testament, St. Ambrose, Trinity, Worship

Today I begin the second book of St. Ambrose’s treatise On the Holy Spirit. Considering that it took me most of the forty days of the Nativity Fast to get through the first book, I do not have high expectations for finishing even the second book prior to Christmas, let alone book three. This becomes even more obvious reading the Introduction to the second book, in which are a plethora of Old Testament stories interpreted from a Christian point of view.

Rather than neglecting this gold-mine of interpretation and purposefully skimming through the second and third book in a fraction of the time it took me to get through book one, all in the name of completing the task I set before myself at the beginning of the forty days, I plan on continuing my survey of On the Holy Spirit after Christmas, but at a more leisurely pace. This will serve two functions. Firstly, I will be able to give books two and three the attention they deserve. Secondly, it will continue to give me a project that will allow me to blog more often in the afterglow of Christmas than I did this past year.

St. Ambrose begins his second book of his treatise On the Holy Spirit with the first verse of Scripture:

For of the Father it is written: ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth’ (Gen. 1:1). Of the Spirit it is said: ‘The Spirit was borne upon the waters’ (Gen. 1:4). And well in the beginning of creation is there set forth the figure of baptism whereby the creature had to be purified. And of the Son we read that He it is Who divided light from darkness, for there is one God the Father Who speaks, and one God the Son Who acts.

While this particular interpretation of the opening verses of Scripture may be familiar to a lot of Christians, it is worth noting that St. Ambrose is writing this in the fourth century. It should also be understood that when the Fathers of the Church write about something, it represents something that has been passed down to them in some shape or form. So, although this particular interpretation is written down around A.D. 381 or shortly thereafter, it represents a teaching that had been ongoing long before.

St. Ambrose, however, takes this familiar interpretation and takes it one step farther:

But, again, that you may not think that there was assumption in the bidding of Him Who spoke, or inferiority on the part of Him Who carried out the bidding, the Father acknowledges the Son as equal to Himself in the execution of the work, saying: ‘Let Us make man after Our image and likeness’ (Gen. 1:26). For the common image and the working and the likeness can signify nothing but the oneness of the same Majesty.

Note how he ties the image and likeness of God in humanity to the Trinitarian reality of God. Thus, each and every human being is an image of the Trinity. This also means that all the ways that the Orthodox Church describes God in its dogma are in some way, fashion or form applicable to us.

For example, if God is one in essence (nature) and three in hypostasis (persons), humanity is also one in essence and a plethora of persons. Thus, our sins and our virtue affect all of humanity through our shared essence and nature. This is why it is critical for Orthodox Christians to participate in the services of worship. It is how we are able to pray during the Divine Liturgy:

Lord Jesus Christ, our God, hear us from Your holy dwelling place and from the glorious throne of Your kingdom. You are enthroned on high with the Father and are also invisibly present among us. Come and sanctify us, and let Your pure Body and precious Blood be given to us by Your mighty hand and through us to all Your people.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

Name

Tags

Baptism, Holy Spirit, St. Ambrose, Trinity, Worship

During the Christological and Pneumatological controversies of the 4th century, one of the most compelling arguments for the Orthodox understanding of the Trinity came from the rite of baptism. It should come as no surprise, then, that St. Ambrose cites the Great Commission in the thirteenth chapter of the first book of his treatise On the Holy Spirit:

Who, then, would dare to deny the oneness of Name, when he sees the oneness of the working. But why should I maintain the unity of the Name by arguments, when there is the plain testimony of the Divine Voice that the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is one? For it is written: ‘Go, baptize all nations in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit’ (Matt. 28:19). He said, ‘in the Name,’ not ‘in the Names.’ So, then, the Name of the Father is not one, that of the Son another, and that of the Holy Spirit another, for God is one; the Names are not more than one, for there are not two Gods, or three Gods.

The unity signified by the Name of the Trinity also is the answer to the promise Christ give the Disciples in Matthew 28:20 (the final verse of the Gospel pericope read at Baptism):

Lo, I am whith you until the end of the age.

Since Orthodox Christians are sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit Himself, Christ is present always through His unity with the Holy Spirit in every Orthodox Christian. Amen.

Kingdom

Tags

Holy Spirit, Kingdom of Heaven, St. Ambrose, St. Basil the Great, St. Ireneus, Trinity, Worship

Yesterday I made what might be considered an audacious claim: sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit, Orthodox Christians bring with them the Kingdom of Heaven everywhere they go. This statement, however, is not pulled out of thin air — it is based upon the writings of the Fathers of the Church and the way Orthodox Christians worship.

Let me begin explaining how it is that Orthodox Christians might take the Kingdom where ever they are by quoting St. Irenaeus in his treatise Against the Heresies (3:24:1):

Where the Church is, there is the Holy Spirit and the fulness of grace.

Let me continue by examining a couple of statements made by St. Ambrose in the seventh chapter of the first book of his treatise On the Holy Spirit. Firstly, he cites the angel that descends upon the water at the pool near the Sheep Gate (Bethesda) in the fifth chapter of John (5:4). He states:

What did the Angel declare in this type but the descent of the Holy Spirit, which was to come to pass in our day, and should consecrate the waters when invoked by the prayers of the priest? That Angel, then, was a herald of the Holy Spirit, inasmuch as by means of the grace of the Spirit medicine was to be applied to our infirmities of soul and mind. The Spirit, then, has the same ministers as God the Father and Christ. He fills all things, possesses all things, works all and in all in the same manner as God the Father and the Son work.

If it is true that the Holy Spirit has the same ministers as God the Father and God the Son because He is God, than the Father and the Son fill all things, possess all things and work all and in all because they are God like the Holy Spirit. St. Ambrose goes on to say:

The Apostle found nothing better to wish us than this, as He himself said: ‘We cease not to pray and make request for you that ye may be filled with the knowledge of His will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding walking worthily of God’ (Col. 1:9). He taught, then, that this was the will of God, that rather by walking in good works and words and affections, we should be filled with the will of God, Who puts His Holy Spirit in our hearts. Therefore if he who has the Holy Spirit is filled with the will of God, there is certainly no difference of will between the Father and the Son.

We who are filled with the will of the Spirit are also filled with the will of the Father and the Son.

Taking these statements together, it is easy to expand upon St. Ireneaus and claim that where the Church is, there is the Father and the Son as well as the Holy Spirit. Now note the first words said by Christ in His ministry (Matt. 4:17):

Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.

The Kingdom of Heaven is the presence of Christ, for He says (Matt. 12:28):

If I cast out demons by the Spirit, surely the Kingdom of God has come upon you.

Note how this reinforces what St. Ambrose said above — where the Spirit is, so is the Son.

This same Spirit is described in the Anaphora of the Liturgy of St. Basil thusly:

The spirit of truth the gift of Sonship, the pledge of our future inheritance, the first fruits of eternal blessings, the life giving power, the source of sanctification through whom every rational and spiritual creature is made capable of worshiping You and giving You eternal glorification, for all things are subject to You.

Taken together, all of these things lead to the conclusion made by Alexander Schmemann is his book The Eucharist (p. 36):

In other words, where there is the Holy Spirit, there is the Kingdom of God.

Since Orthodox Christians are sealed with the Holy Spirit, there is the Kingdom of God, there is the Father, there is the Son — where ever they may go. Amen.

Baptism

Tags

Baptism, Chrismation, St. Ambrose, Worship

In the sixth chapter of the first book of On the Holy Spirit by St. Ambrose, there is an interesting witness to the rite of baptism:

There are, however, many who, because we are baptized with water and the Spirit, think that there is no difference in the offices of water and the Spirit, and therefore think that they do not differ in nature. Nor do they observe that we are buried in the element of water that we may rise again renewed by the Spirit. For in the water is the representation of death, in the Spirit is the pledge of life, that the body of sin may die through the water, which encloses the body as it were in a kind of tomb, that we, by the power of the Spirit, may be renewed from the death of sin, being born again in God.

There are three things I’d like to highlight about this passage:

Firstly, though he doesn’t quote it, St. Ambrose does a marvelous job of explaining St. Paul’s claim in Galatians 2:20:

I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

In baptism, our fallen selves are crucified and buried in the tomb of water. When we are sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit, we are united to the humanity that sits at the right hand of the Father in perfect communion with the Holy Spirit — Christ. Through the baptismal rite we have been created anew in the image of Christ Himself, no longer of the world but of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Secondly, St. Ambrose implies that baptism by water and baptism by the Spirit are two separate actions within the baptismal rite. This is confirmed a few paragraphs later:

Do we live in the water or in the Spirit? Are we sealed in the water or in the Spirit? For in Him we live and He Himself is the earnest of our inheritance, as the Apostle says, writing to the Ephesians: ‘In Whom believing ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, Who is an earnest of our inheritance’ (Eph. 1:13,14). So we were sealed by the Holy Spirit, not by nature, but by God, for it is written: ‘He Who anointed us is God, Who also sealed us, and gave the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts’ (2 Cor. 1:21) . . . For although we were visibly sealed in our bodies, we are in truth sealed in our hearts, that the Holy Spirit may portray in us the likeness of the heavenly image.

This appears to be a witness to the Orthodox practice of chrismation — when Orthodox Christians are anointed with myrrh and sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit Himself at their baptism. In Western Christendom, this practice was separated from the baptismal rite and became known as confirmation, and in process, lost its original liturgical significance.

Finally, note how this act of chrismation — sealing — is ontological in nature (ontology means the study of being — from the Greek ὄντος meaning that which is and-λογία meaning study). This isn’t a life-style choice or something limited to reason and rational thought. It is a radical change in our very being. Once sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit, we are no longer beings of the fallen world — we are the children of God who bring with them the Kingdom of Heaven, in the presence of the Holy Spirit, everywhere we go. Amen.

Gift

Tags

Christmas, Cross, Holy Spirit, Resurrection, St. Ambrose, Worship

For a series of blogs that is ostensibly an exercise for the Nativity Fast, there has been very little in terms of actually speaking about Christmas since I began meditating on the writings of St. Ambrose. I would be remiss, therefore, if I didn’t discuss his use of Isaiah 9:6 — a verse strongly associated with Christmas — in the fifth chapter of the first book of his treatise On the Holy Spirit:

This good gift is the grace of the Spirit, which the Lord Jesus shed forth from heaven, after having been fixed to the gibbet of the cross, returning with the triumphal spoils of death deprived of its power, as you find it written: ‘Ascending up on high He led captivity captive, and gave good gifts to men’ (Ps. 67[68]:18). And well does he say ‘gifts,’ for as the Son was given, of Whom it is written: ‘Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given’ (Isa. 9:6); so, too, is the grace of the Spirit given. But why should I hesitate to say that the Holy Spirit also is given to us, since it is written: ‘The love of God is shed forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, Who is given to us’ (Rom. 5:5). And since captive breasts certainly could not receive Him, the Lord Jesus first led captivity captive, that our affections being set free, He might pour forth the gift of divine grace.

Growing up, I despised Christmas. I hated the fights that would inevitably erupt over the trimming of the tree. I hated the disappointment of seeing gifts fall short of their imagined expectation. I hated the emphasis America placed upon a feast that ought to play second fiddle to the Resurrection. Even today it is difficult to stomach the advertising we see associated with Christmas, the horrific behavior of shoppers on Black Friday and the characterization of St. Nicholas as the head of some secret high-tech corporation whose job it is to deliver presents around the world every December 24th.

It is only since I have paid close attention to the hymnody of the Orthodox Church and the writings of the Church Fathers that I have learned to love this great Christian feast. This quote from St. Ambrose is a perfect example of why I am now able to look beyond the ridiculousness exhibited by the culture around me and see the beauty of a Child born unto us, a Son that is given unto us.

Note what St. Ambrose juxtaposes the Nativity with — the Cross and the Holy Spirit. Observe that on Christmas day, while Christians around the world are heralding the Incarnation of Christ, the Orthodox Church sings this during the Ninth Ode of the Christmas Canon:

Herod ascertained the exact time the star appeared; by the guidance of which the wise men with gifts in Bethlehem worshipped Christ; by Whom they were directed to go to their country by another way, abandoning that terrible, ridiculous infanticide.

In case we miss this, the Orthodox Church reads Matthew’s account (2:13-23) of Herod’s horrible crime the Sunday after the Nativity. On those years where Christmas falls on a Sunday (as it does this year) and the Sunday after the Nativity is superseded by the the Circumcision of Christ and St. Basil, the Orthodox Church reads this pericope on the 26th — the day after Christmas.

It is a reminder that though the Nativity is one of the most monumental moments in all of human history, the Incarnation in and of itself does not complete the salvific work of God. The great enemy death still holds sway. The sting of death will not be blunted without crucifixion.

St. Ambrose also reminds us of what it is that God accomplishes by sending His Son to the Cross:

And since captive breasts certainly could not receive Him, the Lord Jesus first led captivity captive, that our affections being set free, He might pour forth the gift of divine grace.

God’s plan for our salvation goes deeper than either the Cross or the Resurrection. There is a reason why we celebrate Ascension and Pentecost every year. The Risen Christ ascends into heaven with our humanity to sit at the right hand of the Father in glory and in perfect communion with the Holy Spirit. Our very nature is then prepared and readied to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit Himself — to become the tabernacle of God.

In our fallen nature — ripped away from God — we are incapable of being the dwelling place of God. Yes, we can have contact with Him — this is shown by the prophets, through whom the Spirit spoke — but we are incapable of crossing the divide that humanity created when we knew a world without God. Renewed in the Risen Christ, however, we are united with the New Adam — the new humanity — that sits at the right hand of God. We are therefore able to fulfill the image and likeness of God within us — we are able to become like Christ and experience the indwelling of the Spirit.

In turn, it is the Spirit that descends upon us and the gifts we set forth. It is because of this descent that we are able to partake of Christ Himself, in the Body and the Blood and thus experience the foretaste of the love of God the Father.

All this is made possible by the Nativity. This is why I have learned to love Christmas, to learn to love crying out:

Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given!