The Shepherd, December 2005
THE COMING MONTH
DECEMBER is devoted wholly to the Saviour’s Nativity. The first twenty-four days fall within the fast, during which we strive to prepare ourselves spiritually for the worthy celebration of the festival. The last seven days are the days of the feast itself. They are kept as fast-free days and on nearly every one of them, there is a special commemoration linked to Christmas.
The day of the feast itself falls on a Saturday this year, and so the second day, which is kept as a feast of the Mother of God, is also the Sunday after the Nativity, on which we celebrate the Kinsmen of the Lord: Joseph the Betrothed, David the King and Psalmist, and the holy Apostle James the Brother of God. The third day, is kept as a commemoration of the first martyr, St Stephen. In the ancient Church, this feast, as the hymns appointed for the day indicate, was kept on the second day of Christmas, as it is even today in the Roman Catholic and Anglican communions, but it was shifted back a day to accommodate the celebration of the Theotokos on the second day, because of her unique ministry in bringing the Lord Incarnate into the world. St Stephen is celebrated immediately after Christmas Day, because he was the first of the martyrs and so his festival comes immediately after the revelation of Christ to the world. In fact, this link, between the manifestation of Christ in the world and martyrdom, is stressed on the following two days as well. On the fourth day of the feast, we remember the Twenty-Thousand Martyrs of Nicomedia, who were slain in earliest days of the fourth century as they celebrated the Nativity. On the fifth day, we have the Holy Innocents, who were slain by Herod the King in his attempt to destroy the new-born Christ. The sixth day continues the keeping of the feast, although on this day there is no special added commemoration linked directly to the Nativity, and on 31st December, we celebrate the leavetaking of the feast, and then enter into January with the Circumcision of the Lord. In the feast of the Circumcision, we see the Lord Himself shedding His Blood for the first time, as a harbinger of His own martyrdom.
Our modern, one might say Americanised, view of Christmas is that it is a time of family gathering, of peace and goodwill, and yet the Church, as we see above, in her celebration continually links the Nativity with martyrdom. This link is even emphasised by the number of times over the festival we hear Matthew 2:13-23 read as the Gospel lection. It speaks of the flight into Egypt, the slaughter of the Innocents, and the lamentation of Rachel. This tells us something fundamental about our Christian confession: that it is not about worldly comfort, or about earthly peace and goodwill. The peace we are promised and granted through the Incarnation is not that of the compromise of our principles, but that inner peace which comes from victory over evil. The victory presupposes a war. The intimate link which the Church makes between the Birth of the Saviour at Bethlehem in Judæa and suffering, brings us face to face with the full import of the Saviour’s words: “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34).
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