Dear Friends
Our world is always trying to get ahead of itself. Christmas seems celebrated by our secular—and even religious—neighbours throughout the month of December. Christmas meals will be eaten, parties to celebrate the festive time of year, presents exchanged to mark the passing of the year. Christmas Day itself, then, acts as something of an anticlimax, a day for children while adults build resentment and animosity.
And this pattern of celebrating beforehand is repeated in other festivities. Firework displays start in October, Lent is a period of Easter egg consumption. These days of special significance have been robbed so much of their rituals that post-modern society has only “anticipation” with which to fill them. And if we stop, think and reflect on this we realise its futility, its meaninglessness, its folly.
On this day the Virgin cometh to the cave to give birth to God the Word ineffably, Who was before all the ages. Dance for joy, O earth, on hearing the gladsome tidings; with the Angels and the shepherds now glorify Him Who is willing to be gazed on as a young Child Who before the ages is God.
Kontakion of the Preparation of Christ’s Nativity (Third mode)
And we prepare. Yet our preparation is not one where we fill ourselves to overflowing before the feast but where we hold ourselves in moderation and sobriety so that we may celebrate fully. And celebrate we will. Because ours is a faith of fulfilment and of completion rather than mere anticipation—we anticipate but we do not place all meaning in it.
Join, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the Church in her preparations for and celebrations of Christmas. God is calling you to deepen your faith and trust in him as we contemplate a great mystery: God, of infinitely higher stature than his creation, humbles himself to be born a poor nobody in a province far removed from society and wealth in Rome.
Join and enter into this mystery, beyond human understanding. Join both the preparation and the celebration not according to our society but according to the Church that we too may be present in the cave in Bethlehem and receive the incarnate Saviour.
Sermon
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God, Amen.
In all that we do we look to the example of Christ. He is the Saviour, the Redeemer, the Mediator between God and humanity. It is through Christ, and only through Christ, we are saved.
And yet, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, he is the God-man, Theanthropos, perfect God and perfect human: one person who reconciles us to God; if, on the other hand, we look for one who is merely human we can see no one greater than the Mother of God, the Theotokos, whose Entry into the Temple we celebrate today. And we hear today’s Gospel reading, and we pause and wonder, how is she the All-holy one when Scripture recounts a strange exchange. A woman in the crowd raised up her voice to Christ and said, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!” In other words, “Blessed is your mother.” To this the Lord replies, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”
Read last Sunday’s sermon, Glory to God!
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Archive of Past Sermons.
Services this week
Friday 26th November
Discussion on the book of Genesis, 8 pm
Online only
Saturday 27th November
Vespers, 6.30 pm
At St Francis’ Hall, Eastleigh
Sunday 28th November
Divine Liturgy, 9.30 am
At St Francis’ Hall, Eastleigh
Online session is via Google Meet: please get in contact for the details.
Please join us: all are welcome, come and see.
Attending Church
We will be meeting at St Francis’ Hall, Nightingale Avenue, Eastleigh, SO50 9JA. We ask you to wear a mask unless exempt. Come and See.
Can I help you?
I am here for you, you need only ask. Is there a way I can support your life of faith? Get in touch.
Can you help the mission?
Yes, absolutely. Offer yourselves to the Lord: pray! Make available to him all your talents and ask him how he would like you to use them — listen for his reply.
Your prayers!
With love in Christ
Fr Alexander
[email protected]