by CCW | 1 January 2018 15:00
Today we ponder with Mary the things that were said about “this child” by the Shepherds who have now come to Bethlehem to “see this thing which is come to pass”. Yesterday, we were with Joseph thinking “on these things”, namely the difficult mystery of Mary’s being with child of the Holy Ghost. There is an inescapable intellectual quality to Christmas.
So much so that the ideas about its meaning go before us in our coming to Bethlehem. In the linear narrative, it is only in the Gospel for the Octave Day that we have the shepherds going now “even unto Bethlehem”. Like the Easter mystery, so too with Christmas, we witness to the way in which the mystery comes to light and takes birth in our souls. We witness to the ways of pondering and thinking upon these things in the discovery of their truth and meaning.
Truth and meaning. These are inseparable. Meaning by itself might simply mean what is true for me which is not necessarily truth at all. But put truth and meaning together and then you have something powerful and wonderful, something worth pondering about our commitment to truth without which it has no meaning in us. Truth and meaning together have entirely to do with our participation in the mystery of Christ and his holy nativity.
The Octave Day of Christmas within Christmastide is rich with symbolic significance. It marks for the Gregorian calendar, a major upgrade to the Julian, the beginning of a New Year. It marks in the catholic understanding of the mystery of Christmas the symbolic significance of Christ’s earliest submission to the Law in his being circumcised, at once the sign of Jewish identity, on the one hand, and the first shedding of blood, the sign of his coming as redeemer of all mankind, on the other hand. The passage from Isaiah proclaims through a series of titles and names something of the significance of the one who comes as light and liberator. The child who is born, the son who is given, is the one upon whose shoulders rests the government of God for all mankind. “His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, the everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace”; but even more, he is named JESUS, in capital letters as the translation tradition has maintained, indicating a kind of strong affirmation.
The circumcision of Christ fulfills the Jewish law and inaugurates what will become Christian baptism. For in baptism we are baptised into the death and resurrection of Christ. Thus there is blood even in Bethlehem, the blood of Christ even before the blood of the Holy Innocents; the blood of Christ in anticipation of his Passion and Crucifixion. Christmas cannot not remind us of the weary and wicked state of the world as well as the weary and wicked state of our own hearts which Christ comes to redeem. The sacraments of the church mean nothing apart from our incorporation into the one who is Incarnate; they are the means of our participation in the saving work of God for our humanity and world. To ponder this and to think upon its mysteries is our life’s work. It begins with Bethlehem and in a way, Bethlehem stays with our thinking. O come let us adore him, Christ the Lord.
In the secular calendars of our culture, today is New Year’s Day, a day perhaps to recover from the frolic and folly of the night before but even more a day to begin again in our pondering and thinking upon the significance of Christ’s Holy Nativity.
We need the humility of Joseph and the humility of Mary; they are our superb exemplars on this Octave Day of Christmas. It is only in the state of humility that we can be open to angelic truth, to the word of God on the wings of angels. Like Mary, Joseph accedes to the direction of the angel; his acting complementing Mary’s fiat, her “be it unto me according to thy word.”
Humility means our openness to God and to what God gives to us especially in the wonder of the Christmas message. Only by pondering and thinking upon it, like Joseph and Mary, can we begin to enter more fully into its meaning. It not only brings us to Bethlehem but keeps Bethlehem with us, in our hearts and minds.
Fr. David Curry
Octave Day of Christmas, 2017
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2018/01/01/sermon-for-the-octave-day-of-christmas-9/
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