| Tomorrow, November 15, we begin the Nativity Fast. Some approach the fast mindful of the nature of the pre-Nativity period – spiritual and physical cleansing as we “wait in joyful hope.” For others, a feeling of dread comes over them: “Oh no, another fasting period!” as if heavily burdened by this spiritual discipline. Then there are those that simply ignore the fast entirely – especially with Thanksgiving coming and all the parties, get-togethers, and over-eating and drinking. While each of us honestly must place ourselves in one of these categories, it is useful to understand the reason why there is a Nativity Fast, why we prepare ourselves for the real “reason for the season.” It is because God became human, Heaven touched the firmament, and the journey from manger to the empty tomb would now begin. This is why we fast and prepare. To lose sight of this would be to squander salvation history in the muck and mire of the Christmas sales. It would be to turn the holy into the profane. Before all of the secular celebration starts — STOP and consider the spiritual meaning of the upcoming season. In the year 1099 AD, Anselm of Bec, a Benedictine monk and Abbot, who became the Archbishop of Canterbury 39 years after the Great Schism from Holy Orthodoxy, penned a manuscript entitled Cur Deus Homo? (Why did God Become Man?) It seems an apt query as we approach ever closer the commemoration of the birth of Jesus the Lord. Why did God become human? Why did God send Jesus as a man? What was the purpose? Anselm’s answer to those questions would become the paradigm, the “boilerplate” response for how the Western Christian churches, both Catholic and Reformation, understood the Incarnation of the Word. Simply put: it was satisfaction. Christ provided the substitute, the revenging satisfaction for the infinite dishonor God suffered at the ancestral sin of Adam and Eve. Based on the 12th century model of feudal society, a crime against the King requires more satisfaction than any other crime. In Anselm’s thinking, finite man could never make satisfaction to an infinite God, therefore only a God-man could make things right eternally. Hence, Christ was born to make that Divine satisfaction, the ultimate expression of which was His death on the Cross. As the old 19th century Protestant hymn proclaimed: “Are you walking daily by the Savior’s side? Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb? Do you rest each moment in the Crucified? Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?” Why did God become man? – to satisfy the wrong done to Him by humans who now must be washed in his blood.
Orthodox Christian theology, on the other hand, while affirming fervent repentance and reconciliation for the forgiveness of sins, accomplished through Christ’s self-giving on the Cross and in His glorious Resurrection from the dead, answers the question in a far broader, more personally existential way. ] Why did God become man? – To show man how precisely to become God. In other words, the point of the Incarnation of the Word was theosis, also known as deification. St. Gregory Nazianzen wrote: “Let us seek to be like Christ, because Christ also became like us: to become gods through him since he himself, through us, became a man.” Blessed Augustine described the Incarnation in one phrase: “For even as Christ became a human being, so now human beings could become like Christ.” St. Clement of Alexandria expressed the mystery in this way: “He who obeys the Lord and follows the prophecy given through him, becomes a god while still moving about in the flesh.” St. Irenaeus of Lyons wrote: “God became what we are in order to make us what He is himself.” Far less legalistic and juridical than Anselm’s feudal “satisfaction” concept, the preponderance of evidence from the Church Fathers points to the reason Christ was born — He came to finally restore relationality (covenant) with God, not to satisfy an infinite anger or assuage divine resentment. He came not to appease an angry deity, but to give love a face, to cancel death’s grip on us, and to convince us that we are not only saved from something (sin/death) but we are saved for something – to be dwelling places of the Most High God – new temples in whom God would “pitch His tent.” (John 1:14) St. Peter assures us of this: “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence.…that by these things you may escape from the corruption that is in the world and become partakers of the divine nature.” (I Peter 3-4) Far from static, theosis is an ongoing process, to use the Patristic terms, from purification (cleansing), to illumination (knowledge/awareness), to divinization (vision of the Divine Light, theoria). It is divine grace at work in us, transforming us, lifting us up to our sublime nature as persons – restoring the eternal bliss that existed in the moment before Adam’s sin. The Son of God became man to make clear that we have a higher nature, a nobler calling, a spiritual destiny that shapes our ends. We are unique as human persons because God Himself consecrated our humanity in the Word-made-flesh. The celebration of Christmas is the celebration of our better nature, a nature taken fully into the essence of God Himself. He became who we are so that we might become who He is – and all would be well with out souls! St. Nikolai of Zicha summed it up in this way: “Orthodoxy is Orthodoxy through the God-man. And we Orthodox, by confessing the God-man, indirectly confess the Christ-image of man, the divine origin of man, the divine exaltation of man, and thus also the divine value and sacredness of the human person.” (The Struggle for Faith, p. 102) Theosis is the prompting of grace from God. It is a life-long process of realizing that we are made in God, for God, for spiritual reasons and causes, for a God-centered identity and a limitless destiny where God dwells at the center and we live, move, and have our being around Him. St. Gregory of Nyssa termed our spiritual nature using the word epektasis – “stretching out”, “reaching out”, “in ascent” (upward movement). Though we are made in God’s image, we are, as St. Basil teaches, “artisans of the likeness of God”, ever called to stretch beyond ourselves towards the vision of Light eternal. Our identity as humans is and can be more than meets the eye. It certainly can be more than confusing image which the too, too much with us world offers us. This is the sum and substance of the Great St. Athanasius’s remark that “God became man so that man might become god.” No, we don’t become divine, we can never equal His essence Who is far greater than that which can be thought. We participate in God’s other-directed loving nature, we assume its qualities, we adopt its selflessness, we shed our ego-centeredness so that our higher lives can reflect its brilliance – the blinding brilliance of Tabor — all, if we allow His transforming grace to work its wonder in us. It is for this reason that Jesus the Christ was born, that Christmas bells ring, that darkness and despair are conquered by hope. God came to rest in our timid flesh allowing us to come to rest in the arms of His divine love! He came as who we are so that we might know and become who He is – persons who are glory-bound, persons with a higher calling that is not tied to this vale of tears we call our earthly home. The heavens were rent that starry night to make the point, for that time and for all time, that God is here, that He walks the earth with our feet, He touches the yearning soul with our hands, He speaks in gentle yet compelling tones with our poor voices, and wonder of wonders, He reveals the truth that to understand humanity, we must understand the Incarnate God. To be fully a human being, we must live striving to be the likeness of the Thrice-Holy God. The birth of the Christ-Word was, in fact, His first Theophany in that He was revealed as fully human thereby giving humanity its elevated identity as “sons and daughters of the Most High God.” Theology becomes anthropology becomes theology! It is the circle of salvation history and the story of the history of salvation. This is the Nativity’s most profound meaning. Fr. John Chryssavgis writes: “The Incarnation is considered as part of the creative plan and not simply as a response to the human fall….it is perceived not only as a revelation of God to humanity, but primarily as a revelation to us of the true nature of humanity and the world itself.” (Beyond the Shattered Image, p.55) This realization, this theosis, is not magic nor will it happen in some robotic way. It can happen to each of us only if we want it to, only if we pay attention and know our souls, only if we make the effort to cleanse our spiritual house of the ego-driven, destructive sides of the passions, and only if we allow God, through fervent prayer, fasting, participation in the Divine Liturgy, and immersion in Sacred Scripture and spiritual writers – to get our attention, to wake us up to “the one thing needful” — the care and healing of our souls. We delude ourselves if we believe that anything else, anything at all, is of greater importance for our lives. This is why we make ready through fasting. Honestly, standing before the Loving God who offered this precious life-giving gift to us, is this too much to ask? Your servant in the Lord,
Fr. Dimitrios (Please find attached Sunday’s Bulletin for your prayerful preparation.) |
