Year: 2019

When the fullness of the time was come,
God sent forth his Son, made of a woman

There is a rich fullness to Christmas, a fullness of images seen and heard, in crècheand carol, in sacrament and word. It highlights an important feature of the Christian faith. It is about the fullness of images rather than an emptying of images. But the images of Christmas are not nothing. They are not mere images, empty signs; rather they are signs that signify a fullness of meaning. They have, as it were, a sacramental quality to them. They point to the reality of Emmanuel, “which being interpreted, is,” as Matthew states, “God with us.” All of the images of Christmas dance and swirl around the mystery of God and of God with us; the idea of the sign and the thing signified have very much to do with our incorporation into the life of God through Christ’s incarnation. Such is “the fullness of the time.”

This has a profound significance for how we think about what it means to be human. God’s intimate engagement with our humanity in Christ’s holy nativity signals something profound about our humanity. It signals that our humanity finds its truth and fullness in God. As the reading from Galatians indicates, this means a certain preparation and readiness through God’s will at work in time and, more importantly, in the intersection between time and eternity captured, I think,  in Paul’s rich phrase “the fullness of the time.” It suggests a certain moment of rightness, of the making adequate of our humanity for this realization in time that gives time and our humanity its truth and meaning. The concept of “the fullness of the time” also applies to humankind historically in terms of cultures and individual lives.

“There came,” T.S. Eliot says in ‘Choruses from “The Rock,”’ “at a predetermined moment, a moment in time /and of time,/ A moment not out of time, but in time, in what we call history:/ transecting, bisecting the world of time, a moment in time but not like a moment of time,/ A moment in time but time was made through that moment:/ for without the meaning there is no time, and that moment/ of time gave the meaning.” As he explains, “it seem[s] as if men must proceed from light to light, in the/ light of the Word,/ through the Passion and Sacrifice saved in spite of their negative being; /Bestial as always before, carnal, self-seeking as always before,/ selfish and purblind as ever before,/ Yet always struggling, always reaffirming, always resuming their/march on the way that was lit by the light; /Often halting, loitering, straying, delaying, returning, yet following no other way.”

For there is no other way than the way of God despite our “negative being” and our wandering ways of deceit and confusion, of certainty and uncertainty, of sin and folly. God makes our way to him through the way of his coming to us at “the fulness of the time.” This is the wondrous mystery which we behold in the Christmas scene of the Word made flesh, of the babe of Bethlehem wrapped in the swaddling bands of our humanity, “incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary.” Christ is “that pure one,” as Irenaeus so beautifully puts it, “opening purely that pure womb which regenerates men unto God and which he himself made pure.” “Made of a woman,” says Paul, “made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.”

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These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth

If the reality of the stoning of St. Stephen was more than we can bear, how shall we ever bear the heart-rending story of the Holy Innocents? And how shall we possibly make sense of it in relation to the sentiments of the Christmas season. How is this joy and peace and goodwill? How is this truth and love, mercy and grace? And yet it is.

No feast of Christmas week speaks more profoundly, albeit disturbingly, to the reality of Christ’s holy birth. Here is a story which disturbs or should disturb us and yet belongs to the tragic realities of our world and day, a world which witnesses to the endless sufferings and death of countless little ones. They are, as in Matthew’s account, the innocent ones, those who are unable to harm and yet are harmed themselves. They are the victims of the convenience of others, the victims of the machinations of individuals and nations. They are those whose deaths seem so utterly pointless and meaningless.

There are the sad realities of abortion, of the slaughter of children in the war zones of the world, of the deaths of the little ones through famine and pestilence. These are some of the inescapable realities of our world; complicated and complex, to be sure, but also terrifying and heart-rending. How amazing that during the Christmas season which celebrates the birth of God as a child we are asked to contemplate the deaths of the little ones!

Christ is God’s “great little one.” He takes his humanity from the blessed Virgin Mary. There is a sense of wonder in his birth, a sense of joy and an awakening to hope and peace, good will and harmony. Yet the Christmas story is very much about the dark realities of the human condition, about the stark realities of sin and evil. “He came unto his own and his own received him not,” you might remember from Christmas Eve. “There was no room for them in the inn,” you might recall from Christmas  Day.

Christmas does not hide from view such realities. It gives us a way to face them and to do so in the paradox of God’s grace signalled in the lesson from Revelation. The Holy Innocents are seen as the pure and innocent ones who “follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth.” Yet the Holy Innocents are the little children of Bethlehem whom Herod, seeking to remove a potential rival to his throne, has killed. His violent act recalls the ancient policy of infanticide inaugurated by Pharaoh to contain and control the Hebrews. The phrase “out of Egypt have I called my Son” references the story of the Exodus. In every way, these lessons seek to connect the deaths of the little ones to Christ and to the purpose of his coming.

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That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you

The Feast of St. John the Evangelist immediately recalls the wonderful words of Christmas Eve. “That which was from the beginning” is the Word which “was with God and was God” without which “was not anything made that was made.” Christ is the Word of God, the Divine Word and Son. It can only follow that “the world itself could not contain the books that should be written” about all the things which Jesus did. Such is the contemplative meaning of God with us.

Christ’s Incarnation does not exhaust the riches of God; rather it enfolds us in its mystery and truth which is always more and never less than what we can imagine and know. The witness of John the Evangelist in his Gospel and in his epistles contributes greatly to the understanding and development of Christian doctrine. The Christmas message of John emphasizes the divine reality of Christ as Word and the human reality of his embodiment in the flesh of our humanity; in short, the Word made flesh is real.

It is not fake news. The Epistle and the  Gospel make a claim to the truth of the witness not just by assertion but by argument. The argument is the idea of the Incarnation itself as being the Word, and Son, and Light of God come into the world in Christ, a light which is greater than the darkness of sin and evil. “We have seen, and bear witness, and declare unto you” John tells us, again and tellingly in parenthesis, “that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us.” There is in this a sense of urgency and a sense of contemplative wonder.

This is the corrective to all our mistaken notions about God which reduce God to our agendas and concerns as if we have taken God captive to our desires. Such is the vanity of our attempt to absolutize the finite and so to deny the infinite. Christ’s Incarnation is about God and our humanity, each in their integrity and fullness, and yet one in Christ. The Christian mystery seen with the eyes of John is about God making us adequate to himself through himself becoming man in Jesus Christ. The Incarnate Son of God is the eternal Son of God. “There was not when he was not” (Athanasius). Incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, as the Creed puts it does not mean that he ceases to be God. Such is the wonder and the mystery of God and of God with us that John the Evangelist so powerfully presents to us. Such is the great wonder of Christmas. It is always more and never less than what we can imagine and know.

These things have been written not only for our learning but as John says “that our joy may be full.” And what is that joy? Fellowship with one another and with God: “that ye also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.” This is the great joy of Christmas and the meaning of our fellowship with one another. It is grounded in our fellowship with God. Such is the Christmas message of love-in-contemplation.

That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you

Fr. David Curry
Feast of St. John the Evangelist, Xmas 2019

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Lord, lay not this sin to their charge

“Human kind cannot bear very much reality,” T.S. Eliot observes in his 1935 drama, Murder in the Cathedral. That play along with the well-known and well-beloved Christmas Carol, Good King Wenceslaus, written by John Mason Neale in 1853 and sung to a 13th century spring dance melody (Tempus Adest Floridum), offer an intriguing commentary on the Christmas mystery. In Eliot’s play, a sermon preached by Archbishop Thomas a Becket Christmas morning serves as prologue to his martyrdom on December 29th, 1170. The sermon focuses on the Feast of Stephen which falls immediately after Christmas Day. The hymn draws upon a 12th account of a 10th century Duke of Bohemia’s generosity and service towards the poor.

St. Stephen is the proto-martyr, the first martyr and prototype of martyrdom in the Christian understanding. He was also one of the first set of deacons in the nascent and emerging Christian community. Thus, sacrifice and service are intimately connected. The hymn makes no direct reference to the Nativity of Christ but narrates a story of service to the poor on “the Feast of Stephen.” The sermon in the play makes explicit the connection between Christ’s birth and Stephen’s martyrdom and in so doing illuminates the deeper meaning of Christmas.

It is no accident that the Feast of St. Stephen follows directly upon the Feast of the Nativity of Christ. It highlights the deeper reality of the meaning of Christ’s holy birth. “Just as we rejoice and mourn at once, in the Birth and in the Passion of Our Lord; so also, in a smaller figures, we both rejoice and mourn in the death of martyrs.” We celebrate Christ’s birth by remembering his Passion and death; such is the sacrament. “Do this in remembrance of me.” We cannot conceive of Christmas apart from the reality of his Passion and Death for us. “We celebrate at once the Birth of Our Lord and His Passion and Death upon the Cross.” This is all part of the reality from which we shy away but which the special feasts of Christmas remind us, starting with St. Stephen’s day. As Eliot has the Archbishop note, “as the World sees, this is to behave in a strange fashion. For who in the World will both mourn and rejoice at once and for the same reason?” But that is exactly the Christian reality.

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