Brothers and sisters, I proclaim that today is a new beginning. Having begun the new Church year last week, we celebrate this day the first Great Feast of the ecclesiastical year, the Nativity of the Most-Holy Theotokos. And so, we’re presented by God’s grace with an opportunity this day even as her birth brings about the beginning of the renewal of the human race.
Everything temporal thing begins and comes to an end, but everything born of God grows in perpetuity to eternal life. At Vespers we sing Psalm 104, “the sun ariseth, and man goeth forth unto his work and to his labor until the evening.” That sun knows its setting, but the Sun of righteousness, born of the Virgin in means past human comprehension, knows no evening, and has, according to the Apostle James, “no variableness neither shadow of turning (Js. 1:17).
Of this Light we proclaim each Vespers, singing the Phos Hilaron, Gladsome Light. Christ God is this Light. He alone dispels the darkness and fills our souls with His light which is His truth.
The economy of His salvation, of His renewal of the human race, begins with this miraculous birth of the Virgin Mary. Her yes to God is preceded itself by a great number of miracles, signs of God’s provision and preparation through the ages for that glorious and life-saving moment. Christ, having entered into human nature as man, has redeemed it as God, healing that nature and restoring it to new life in Him for all who put Him on in baptism and bear fruit of that baptism.
The origin of that saving Incarnation, death, burial, resurrection, and glorious ascension, the Gospel of Jesus Christ we proclaim and celebrate every Sunday, has its origin on this first Feast: the Virgin, Mary is born of the barren parents Joachim and Ana, who in great old age and after years of prayerful perseverance miraculously conceive. Her miraculous conception mirrors that of Abraham and Sarah, who likewise barren and childless, give birth in old age to Isaac, the Fore-Father of Israel. Mary of the rod of Jesse, gives birth to Christ, the Father of the New Israel, the Church, of which we are His Body.
Now heaven’s opened to all: there’s neither Jew nor Greek, male or female, slave for free; everyone is invited to the Marriage Feast of the Lamb. The Church proclaims today liberation for all those enslaved to the passions. No one is exempt from this calling, no one is beyond Christ’s God healing if we avail ourselves of His new life and persevere in our prayers.
The new Adam invites us into the New Israel, His Church. He gives us here a new name, a new identity, or rather, the promise of growth into that new identity that He has proclaimed to us, that He freely bequeaths to us, by virtue of our new life in Him—that life that He has assumed and, therefore, healed, made whole, and endowed with true and eternal life.
The Virgin born this day is the mysterious new paradise, the new Eden. Her womb is the new Ark of the Covenant. But here is more: the Giver of that Covenant is here, the Maker of that Garden is here. The “bush that was not burned of old is born this day and begins to be prepared to contain within her virginal womb Him whom the universe cannot contain.
By virtues of the sacred hymnody of this Feast and the sacred readings of the Holy Scriptures we have heard last night and today, you and I are witnesses to the power and love of God manifested in the miraculous birth of the Virgin to her barren parents, Joachim and Ana.
But our knowledge of this Miraculous Feast and of the greatness of God by its very nature motivates us to go further than simple acknowledgement of its wonder. We’re urged this day to make a new beginning, to persevere ourselves, to go deeper in our faith and koinonia with God and with each other. We’re given the opportunity this day to renew our devotion to God by exercise the virtues of faith and perseverance in that faith that Joachim and Ana exemplify in their conceiving of the Theotokos. They didn’t give up on God’s faithfulness—even as they grew into old age and still found themselves barren and past the age of childbirth.
We’re invited today to examine our souls, to invite Christ God into any part of us that is barren and fruitless, closed to God’s healing and grace, to open ourselves up to Him, to make real spiritual progress, to redouble our commitment to living out our baptism, to practice repentance (that is, exercising a change of heart and will) with renewed zeal, so that we may conform our steps, our thoughts, our words, to that which is God-pleasing and, therefore, life-giving.
This is a day we’re asked to look beyond a simple declaration of our faith in Christ with our tongues. The fruit of our labors, of our cooperation with the work of the Holy Spirit in us and through us, is manifested in our growth in the virtues that testify to those around us that God is Life and Truth, that there’s hope for all those who put their trust in Him and avail themselves of His life and all the tools of salvation found in His Church.
The birth of Mary the Theotokos is, then, an “evangelion,” it’s the proclamation that God’s salvation of the human race has drawn nigh. So, in our lives, our reception of this Feast, our internalizing of its truth, means that we too can more faithfully bear witness to the Good News of Christ. As always, the Virgin Mother, even in her birth, points us to her Son, the Sun of Righteousness, the Light that knows no evening, who is born of her for our salvation.
I urge you this day as I urge myself, not only to contemplate this divine mystery of the Virgin’s birth to her barren parents, but to seize this day to put to work inside you the fruit of this Feast. Remember God’s faithfulness to Saints Joachim and Ana. Present your petitions to our Lord and God Jesus Christ, asking the intercessions of His Mother Mary, the Theotokos, to aid you in prayer. Ask God for growth in the virtues you need to grow in and for the healing of soul from the vices you need to repent of. Beseech the Holy Mother to pray for you before Her Son and our God that you may discipline your soul and body to be freed from bondage to sin and be empowered to witness more fully to the Way, the Truth, and Life that is Jesus Christ.
My prayer for each one of us is summed up in these words of St. Gregory Palamas on the Feast, “If we persevere in our prayers, as well as the other virtues, continuing in God’s temple with understanding, we shall find stored up within ourselves that purity of heart, which holds God and manifests Him to us.” May it be so! Christ is in our midst!
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
Fr. Robert Miclean
Sunday of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos
8 September 2013
Epistles: Gal. 6:11-16; I Cor., 9:2-12; Phil. 2:5-11,
Gospels: John 3:13-17; Matt. 18:23-35; Lk. 10:38-42; 11:27-28
