“But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.”
It is, I have to admit, one of my favourite Scriptural passages. It captures in a phrase the essential meaning and activity of the Church. The Church is, if nothing else, Marian, precisely in this attitude of mind and activity of soul presented in this passage. It is all part of the wonder and mystery of Christmas and how that wonder and mystery is meant to stay with us. How so? By keeping all these things, and pondering them in our hearts. In a way, it is as simple as that. We are what we contemplate.
Christmas is more than a one-day, a three-day or even a nine-day wonder. There are the twelve days of Christmas that keep us at that holy scene, that bid us abide at Bethlehem and contemplate the great mystery of God with us. Today is The Octave Day of Christmas, the eighth day, which like the musical scale, takes us home again but with an heightened sensibility and higher understanding. This morning we are presented with Luke’s poignant account of the Shepherds’ Christmas: their coming “with haste” by acting upon the Angelic message; their “[finding] Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger”; their “see[ing] this thing which has come to pass”, literally, “this saying that has happened,” and, perhaps, above all else, their “ma[king] known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child”. Luke as always is wonderfully restrained and yet precise.
The effect of the Shepherds “ma[king] known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child” is especially noteworthy. It goes to the heart of the mystery of Christmas. “And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.” Wonder and awe. Wonder and awe awakened by what was seen, spoken about and heard. Mary takes this wonderment one step further. She “kept all these things,” meaning all the things that were said about this child, “and pondered them in her heart.” They remain with her and within her and continue to define her very being.
There is an important inwardness of the soul in Mary’s action. It belongs to the Church to proclaim and make known all the things that were said “concerning this child” and it belongs to the being of the Church to be the place where these things are contemplated. That is the peculiar challenge, the challenge to be what we contemplate. Only so can we find our place in this mystery, the mystery of God with us. But where are we? Mary’s activity counters our busy distractedness and our mindless busyness.
The Octave Day of Christmas offers a certain richness of things to contemplate within this essential idea of contemplation. The eighth day marks the Circumcision of Christ. For our sexually confused age, this may seem a rather uncomfortable idea, at once exclusive, it might seem, and controversial, too. But in the mystery of “the fullness of time,” as Paul puts in the passage from Galatians read on The Sunday after Christmas, it has to do with the very meaning of the Incarnation itself. This particular child is God with us, born into time and born, as we all are, at a certain place and time and into a particular culture and set of customs. The birth of Christ and the subsequent birth of Christianity as a religion are set within the context of the conjunction of the Jewish religion, Greek culture and philosophy, and Roman law and order. Paul makes the point, the inescapable point that Christ was “made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might as he puts it receive the adoption of sons.”
Wow. God becomes a child that we might become the children of God. It happens within the very things that define the Jewish cultus and culture, namely, the circumcision of males on the eighth day of their birth. Redemption can only happen by Christ assuming all that belongs to our humanity in its particularity; through these specific aspects of the story we learn about the universality of redemption. It is for all through the One who is our Redeemer and Saviour. Salvation is of the Jews but not restricted or restrained to the Jews.
That is why the story of the circumcision is important. It sets the Incarnation within the context of the Jewish religion and, especially, the holy texts of the Hebrew Scriptures. It doesn’t mean that circumcision is a physical requirement for Christians necessarily; the Collect makes clear that what is required is “the true circumcision of the heart,” the idea of the law and the spirit of the law being written in our hearts. But there is a further emphasis associated with the circumcision of Christ; his being named Jesus. The King James translation of Luke’s text capitalizes all the letters in the name Jesus. It is a way of calling attention to the importance of that name. The reading from Isaiah also talks about the titles of the Messiah, referred to as names, but they are really titles: “Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” They speak to the mystery of God with us, the mystery of Jesus as Saviour. The further interest in Luke is that the name of Jesus is designated by the heavenly angels as well as given by Mary and Joseph, on earth as in heaven, as it were.
There is something essential about the naming of the child. He is named in relation to the purpose of his birth, the divine purpose of God with us. But only by pondering the mystery of revelation, the mystery of the things made known to us can we begin to see what that means for each of us. Our task and challenge is to be like Mary, keeping all these things, and pondering them in our heart. Only then shall we be what we contemplate and celebrate.
It is as well New Year’s Day, the beginning of a new civil year. How wonderful that we begin with this celebration of the mystery of Christ’s holy birth. We begin with contemplation, recognizing that all of the events and affairs of the year ahead are to be gathered into the mystery of what we contemplate.
“But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.”
Fr. David Curry
Octave Day of Christmas, Circumcision of Christ, New Year’s Day
January 1st, 2013