Day: January 3, 2021

“Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass”

Christmas is more than a three-day wonder or even a nine-day wonder. The festival of Christmas extends to twelve days, an octave and a half, as it were. The readings from the Octave Day of Christmas are appointed to be used until the Epiphany. The Gospel reading from St. Luke continues directly from the Christmas morning Gospel. The shepherds, having heard the angelic Gloria, make their way to Bethlehem.

Along with the poetic, prophetic and philosophical reading from Isaiah, these readings bid us ponder more carefully and more thoughtfully the wonder of Christ’s holy birth. The shepherds say one to another, quite literally, “let us now go even unto Bethlehem and see this saying which has happened”, capturing something of the very idea of the Word made flesh, the very wonder of Emmanuel, the great Christmas name of Jesus, we might say. The emphasis of these readings is on that which is heard and seen and which occasions two things: the “mak[ing] known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child”; and the sense of wonder “at those things which were told” by the shepherds.

The quiet focus of this Gospel reading is on the activity of Mary in relation to the making known and to the sense of wonder. Her activity is the profoundly spiritual activity of the Church. It is, first and foremost, about contemplation, the highest activity of the human spirit, as Aristotle teaches. Mary is the theotokos, the God-bearer, the one who bears God into the world, the mother of God, as the orthodox faith confesses. Not the source of divinity which she cannot be but the human source of God becoming man in Jesus Christ. What that means concerns the more radical meaning of what it means to be human and in ways that challenge and counter our contemporary assumptions about the autonomous self. That more radical meaning is captured wonderfully in Mary’s fiat mihi at the Annunciation, “be it unto me according to thy Word”, her willing acquiescence, her ‘yes’ to God so central to the mystery of God with us. But it is equally captured in this Gospel reading: “Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart”. That is to attend to God in his Word and in his Word with us.

Pondus meum, amor meus. “My love is my weight”, Augustine famously says in his Confessions (Bk. 13). The entirety of his being, he has come to recognise, is defined by the love of God, just like Mary. Her activity here is the activity and mission of the Church. It is about our constant and steadfast attention to the Word of God and to the motions of his grace in our lives. To keep all these things and to ponder them in our hearts is to pay serious attention to all that is said concerning this child.

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