| It’s that time of year again – the time when the clash between the secular and the religious becomes most obvious. We hear arguments that make many of us cringe, while others rub their hands together with joy, pleased with the debate they have provoked again. As shoppers roll their carts out of the malls with 60-inch televisions, as elaborate menus are planned for conspicuous overeating and liquor cabinets are stocked, as we settle into a collective anxiety about “getting ready for the holidays”, the question comes to mind: “Where is Jesus?” In 1870, when President Ulysses Grant declared Christmas as a federal holiday, he noted “Since Christmas is loved by everyone, this national holiday becomes a symbol of our nation’s unity and healing.” Really? Where is Jesus? Increasingly, Christmas has been seriously secularized and we Orthodox Christians see repeated the event in Luke’s Gospel where we are told: “And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.” (Luke 2:7) There was no room for them. To earth came the Son of the Most High, and there was no room for Him.
Our faith teaches us that the Nativity is the birth of the Incarnate Word of the Father – nothing less. Metropolitan Anastasios of Albania expresses this truth: “There are two births of Christ. One unto this world in Bethlehem, the other in the human soul when it is spiritually reborn. Both result from a kind of “Divine invasion.” This means that humanity is inextricably intertwined with Divinity, that the nature of who we are as human is bound up with the nature of the Son of God Who is God Himself. He defines our humanity. He is the answer to the question “What is the purpose of my life?” He came unasked, unexpected, and revealed what St. Cyril of Alexandria called “the image of God in man.” St. Cyril wrote: “For we were made like Him when He was made like us. Our transfiguration to Christ is a spiritual, a supernatural, a divine thing; we are image of Divinity.” This is at the heart of the celebration of Christmas: Christ was born as one of us, revealing to us how we can reveal Who He is in our world!
Yet despite the spiritual majesty of that event long ago in Bethlehem, still St. Luke’s words ring true: “…there was no room” for Him. In many respects, still there is no room. It was in his mother’s womb, He was told that at the door of the “inn” – no room. He was told a similar thing as He hung on the Cross: “We don’t have room for you in this world.” – no room. Wasn’t the message one of utter rejection? One of the most powerful descriptions of this was given by a monastic of the West, Fr. Thomas Merton: “Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for Him at all, Christ comes uninvited. But because He cannot be at home in it, because He is out of place in it, and yet must be in it, His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world. He is mystically present in those for whom there seems to be nothing but the world at its worst.” (The Time of the End Is the Time of No Room) There was no room for Him.
If the world closes its door to Him are you and I part of the problem? Do we really have room for God when He seeks to enter under our roof? Do we have time and space for Him? Is there room for Him in our feelings and desires? More often than not, we want ourselves. We desire what we can seize hold of, we want happiness within our reach here and now. Our egos push us to such lengths that we become so full of ourselves that there is no room left for God. I suggest that there are three reasons why we make no room for God in our lives. Our lives are too crowded, too distracted, and too busy – or so we rationalize them to be. Too crowded. We fill our lives with too much and too many. There are schedules and lists, responsibilities and jobs, time spent on the computer, computer games, surfing the web, watching television, exercising, eating, sleeping and a host of other things. We enjoy being with people, often with many people. Life gets crowded and somehow God gets crowded out, He fades from our minds, our prayer life disappears, reading the Scripture doesn’t happen, even Church attendance can become “second priority.” We need to reestablish our priorities with God at the center and learn to be comfortable alone with God in prayer. Anything less means that we are still saying: “There is no room for you in my life.” Have you crowded Jesus our of your life?
Too distracted. The ascetic Fathers of the Church wrote of the danger of the λογ?σμοι (logismoi) – distracting thoughts and images that bombard our minds and can ultimately lead to sin if left unchecked. We commonly call these logismoi “temptations.” These thoughts or images can cause us to lose our spiritual focus, “to lose sight of the prize”, to even change our life priorities such that we are left trying to squeeze God and Godly things into a tiny fraction of our lives, rather than living with Him at the center of our existence. Human persons were created with the powers of the soul centered on God. Immediately after the ancestral sin of Adam and Eve, this single memory was split up, divided, thrown off-center. St. Thalassios the Ascetic teaches that the three causes for this “personal fragmentation” are the senses, the memory, and our body temperament. By misplacing our spiritual focus in life, by allowing ourselves to live unexamined, unchecked, feckless lives – we make a bargain with the world and the evil one, in a sense “selling our souls” in the manner of Faust to Mephistopheles (whose name translated from the Hebrew means “scatterer” or “disperser”) We thus become scattered and divided because we have surrendered our true center, “evicting” Christ from our attention and efforts, in effect, saying to Him: there is no room! Has you life lost its spiritual center and focus?
Too Busy. This is the primary excuse we use to explain (read “rationalize”) why we have no room for Christ in our life – we are very busy people. This speaks to the nature of time, how we use it, organize it, craft it hopefully in such a way that God is the first to whom we give our minutes, our hours, our lifetimes. Unfortunately, God is often left standing in line, waiting for us to see and feel Him, trying to get our attention, craving our time so He can love us with an everlasting love and with lovingkindness call us to Himself. Our defense? “I have so much to do,” or “There aren’t enough minutes in the day,” or “I have my family and I’m doing many good things for them.” What about Jesus? We so easily forget St. Paul’s admonition: “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of time because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish but understand what the will of the Lord is.” (Ephesians 5: 15-17) Honestly examining just how we use our time everyday will give us new insight into how much we squander it when that could be time given to the One who knocks at the door of our hearts waiting for us to answer. Do you have time to give Jesus that room?
As we draw closer to the commemoration of the Lord’s Nativity, let us pause and reflect on these thoughts and come up with honest answers. How can I make room for the Christ of God in my life – not just at Christmas – but everyday? It’s the greatest gift you could ever give Him! Your faithful servant, Fr. Dimitrios |
