The Shepherd, December 2004
THE COMING MONTH
DECEMBER is taken up with the observance of the Lord’s Nativity. The first twenty-four days continue the fast that we have to prepare for the feast. The twoSundays before the feastday itself commemorate the Old Testament Forebears of the Saviour, who by their lives and teaching, and sometimes even by their very names, prepared the way for the coming of the Messiah and prophesied His coming. From the day of the feast itself (25th December / 7th January) until the end of the month, we keep festival celebrating the Birth of Jesus Christ at Bethlehem.
On the day after Christmas Day, the second day of the feast, we honour the Ever-Virgin Mary for her ministry in the sacred event, and on the Sunday after the day of the feast, which this year falls on the third day of the feast, we have the Synaxis of the Kinsmen of the Lord. These “kinsmen” are St Joseph the Betrothed, the holy Prophet, King and Psalmist David, and the Holy Apostle James the Brother of God, who later became the first bishop.
St Joseph is honoured for his extraordinary ministry, serving as the ostensible father of Our Lord, during His childhood. As a descendent of King David and as a kinsman of the Virgin - (he was her uncle by marriage as well as being a distant cousin) - he was elected to be the guardian of her virginity. The Scriptures speak of him as a righteous man, and it was to him that the Angel announced the need to flee into Egypt, and to him that he also revealed when they should return and how they should settle in Nazareth. He cared for the Boy in His earliest years, and died somewhen during our Saviour’s teens. In the life of St Peter of Athos, it is recorded that he turned in prayer to St Nicolas for deliverance from prison, and the holy hierarch bade him ask the help of St Simeon the God-receiver, who had greeted the Infant Christ in the Temple, when he was a forty-day old baby. St Nicolas pointed out that St Simeon had great boldness in prayer because he had then been deemed worthy to take the Saviour in his arms. How many times,St Joseph must have done that same thing! How many things he suffered for the sake of the Saviour and His Mother: the doubting thoughts when believing himself to have been betrayed by the Virgin when he realised she was pregnant, caring for her and the Infant at the Birth itself, exile in Egypt, re-establishing himself in Galilee, and all the other cares that a father has. What boldness he must have in prayer before Him,Who was not ashamed to be thought his son. Therefore in celebrating the birth we also honour St Joseph.
St David is also honoured because by his life and his words he prophesied the coming of the Lord in the flesh. His poetry, the psalms, to this day make up the greater part of our church services. He is also important in that the Messiah, which was awaited, was to be of the house and lineage of David. So, David is celebrated on this day emphasising that fact that our Saviour was of that lineage, and was in truth the awaited Messiah.
So St Joseph is honoured as one whose ministry to the Saviour was exercised during His earthly life, and St David as one who, through he lived centuries before, yet was a blood-relative of our Saviour and one who served as a prophet and a prototype of His Coming. The one in the present and the other in the past. St James points us to the future. His ministry was, of course contemporaneous with our Saviour, but it continues after the Saviour’s earthly sojourn. He was, according to some accounts, the son of Joseph and, according to others, his grandson. It is because of this close family link, that he is called “the Brother of God.” He served, as we have seen in the article above about the flight into Egypt, as a helper and guardian during this event in the Saviour’s infancy, and must have grown close to Him during their stay inEgypt. Of the four sons (or grandsons) of Joseph, all of whom became disciples, he was the first to recognise Who the Saviour was. He points us to the future, however, in that he was later consecrated as the first Bishop of Jerusalem, and indeed as the first bishop. Thus his ministry continued beyond the time when our Saviour walked among us on earth. The Bishop’s ministry in some ways parallels that of Joseph and James, in that they were ostensibly caring for Christ, when, of course, in reality it was He Who was holding and sustaining them. So the Bishop ostensibly cares for the Body of Christ, the Church, and yet, while he is faithful, it is Christ that holds and sustains him. In these three persons, all of whom were blood relatives and therefore kinsmen of our Saviour, we see those who are His kinsmen serving Him before His Incarnation, at His Birth, and after His Nativity in the flesh. They call us to serve Him likewise and thus to become His kinsmen, children of Abraham, members of the household of faith, of the company of those, who because they are His, are being saved. 
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