by CCW | 1 January 2017 15:00
There is a rich fullness to all of the celebrations of Christmas; a kaleidoscope of images in a whirl of sounds and light surrounds us. How do we make sense of it all or indeed of any of it all? It may seem like a whirlwind of things that serve to distract us either to amuse us or destroy us. How are to make sense of the rich fullness of Christmas especially on this The Octave Day of Christmas? It is a day, to be sure, which is also designated in other terms at once secular and sacred. It is The Octave Day of Christmas which brings us home and into the eternal mystery of Christ’s nativity, gathering into one all of the particulars of our Christmas celebrations. It is The Circumcision of Christ which marks another aspect of the mystery of the Incarnation. And to top it off, it is also New Year’s Day so as to bring the secular ordering of time into the mystery of God with us. A rich fullness indeed. How are we to make sense of it all?
We are to be like Mary who having heard “those things which were told them by the shepherds”, “kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.” She doesn’t just hold onto these things zealously clinging to them as we might to our favourite gifts. No, she keeps them “and ponder[s] them in her heart”. It is a very rich phrase. The things that have been said and heard are weighed and considered; they are thought upon. To ponder is to give something serious consideration. It is to be attentive to the meaning of what has been said and heard, seen and done.
For what are “all these things” which she keeps in her heart? They are all the things which cluster around the angelic announcement to the shepherds about “a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger”, a child who is “born this day in the city of David [as] a Saviour, Christ the Lord”. It is “good tidings of great joy”, to be sure, but even more a mystery to be considered. The shepherds say one to another, “Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass,” this thing “which the Lord hath made known to us”. They are themselves evangelists, the bearers of good news. They do not keep this to themselves but “made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child”. All who heard it “wondered at those things which were told them”. Mary, too, it seems, but even more she “kept all these things and pondered them in her heart”. That is the mystery of the Church and her purpose and being. We are to be like Mary.
Such is the meaning of our Liturgy. It is altogether about our “keep[ing] all these things and ponder[ing] them in [our] hearts”. “This thing which is come to pass” is, literally, ‘this saying that has happened’. It is, in other words, the Word made flesh, God made man, a wonder to be sure, a wonder to be kept and thought about now and ever, a wonder that we can never exhaust. Christmas is precisely about the fullness of images and not the emptying of images as in Buddhism, for instance. It is about thinking upon the mystery and letting the mystery penetrate our hearts and minds.
Part of the mystery concerns The Circumcision of Christ, following a custom and practice in Israel of the consecration of males on the eighth day to the things of the Law – a form of spiritual identity signalled through a mark in the body. The Litany in its original English translation from the Latin by Thomas Cranmer coupled together the nativity and the circumcision, accepting these things together as belonging to the very nature of the Incarnation in terms of God’s embrace of the particularity of our humanity in order to redeem the whole of humanity. As one of our Anglican divines, John Hackett wonderfully observes, “Christ is man born of woman to redeem both sexes”. It is also about the role of Israel in the working out of human redemption. Christ embraces the Law to fulfill the Law. For all of our squeamishness about something so physical and so bodily, there is something else about the circumcision which belongs profoundly to the Christmas mystery. There is blood in Bethlehem, we noted already in the disturbing feast of Holy Innocents; the blood of the little ones already joined to the sacrifice of Christ. But here too there is the shedding of blood, the blood of Christ; the circumcision already points us to the Cross and to the form of our spiritual identity as signed with the cross in our baptisms. The circumcision belongs to the bodily reality of Christ, to the reality of the Incarnation and to its deeper meaning. We can only ponder – think about – these things and so attend to the mystery of God’s engagement with our humanity and our world.
Only Luke tells us about the custom of circumcision and connects it with the naming of the child. The naming and the circumcision go together even as for Christians, baptism and naming or ‘Christening’ go together. The lesson from Isaiah is a joyous hymn of praise to the idea of a redeemer whose ‘names’ signal redemption and salvation, names that are like titles which open us out to the rich fullness of the mystery of Christ’s holy birth. Here too is the prophetic word of Isaiah that informs the angel’s word to the shepherds. “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given,” Isaiah says. “For unto you is born this day … a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord,” the angel says, the anointed one of God who is God with us. “And his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace”. Wonderful words full of weight and meaning, to be sure. Wonderful words which complement the Gospel for this day and season.
New Year’s Day is a later add-on. It wasn’t until the mid-eighteenth century that England caught up to the rest of Europe in changing and updating the Gregorian calendar, itself a correction to the Julian calendar. For centuries the new year began with The Feast of the Annunciation to Mary celebrated on March 25th, the proper beginning, we might say, of Christ’s Incarnation since that feast marks his conception in the womb of Mary through her active acquiescence to the Word and Will of God. “Be it unto me according to thy Word”. That Word takes flesh in her and comes to birth now in this holy season. Out of the darkness of her womb, out of the darkness of nature, out of the greater darkness of our darkened and despairing world comes the great light of God’s Word and Son and Light who comes to bring us joy and hope.
But only if we ponder “all these things”, all the things which belong to the witness of God’s engagement with our humanity. Mary’s “keeping all these things and pondering them in her heart” signals the life and mission of the Church. It belongs to the fullness of this Christmas gathering that we ponder and think upon the riches of God’s Word coming to us. We have to think it in order to enter into its meaning for us.
Our service of Christmas Lessons and Carols, itself a kind of extension of the great Advent Service of Nine Lessons and Carols, is one way in which we are like Mary both keeping these things – all the things that are connected to the mystery of Christ – and pondering them in our hearts and voices. We listen and think but we also stand and sing. The carols are one of the conduits of our thinking upon the great mystery of Christmas, one of the ways in which the joys of the season penetrate our hearts, at once making us more thoughtful but also moving us to act upon what we have heard, seen and sung. By keeping and pondering these things like Mary we are gathered more fully into the mystery of God with us and set into motion in the things of the new year, our wonder becoming our witness to all these things.
Fr. David Curry
Octave Day of Christmas, 2017
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2017/01/01/sermon-for-the-octave-day-of-christmas-8/
Copyright ©2026 Christ Church unless otherwise noted.