In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, Amen.
The Lord comes and we expect victory, the Lord enters into Creation, the Beginningless begins, and we want parades and triumphs, we want kings and emperors brought to their knees before the God of all. And yet, as a small and vulnerable child he must flee to Egypt and fourteen thousand infants are massacred. And we are scandalised by this, “Why the suffering, O Lord?” we call out in distress, “Why the murder of so many innocents?”
“Christ is born, glorify Him,” St Gregory the Theologian tells us,
Christ from heaven, go out to meet Him. Christ on earth; be exalted. Sing unto the Lord all the whole earth; and that I may join both in one word, Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad, for Him Who is of heaven and then of earth. Christ in the flesh, rejoice with trembling and with joy; with trembling because of your sins, with joy because of your hope.
St Gregory the Theologian, Oration 38, I
Christ came not to tour His creation, to make a flying visit, but to redeem the creature whom He loves. God has promised us,
I will never again curse the ground for man’s sake, although the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done.
Genesis 8:21
God has come to save us, to save me, from the consequences of my sin. But what He has to work with is us, and we have been killing each other, exploiting each other and stealing from each other from the beginning. And at this moment, the moment of Christ being born in Bethlehem of Judea, humanity continues in our cruelty and malice.
“Why the suffering, O Lord?” This question ignores the history of humanity, a history where hundreds of thousands died during Alexander’s conquests, where Julius Caesar boasts of killing a million Celts and enslaving a million more in the Gallic Wars and where tens of millions died under British rule from Ireland to India and beyond. And we are scandalised by this brutality because we know—in Christ and through Christ—that it is not right, that each person has value and worth, that each is made in the image of God.
Christ comes and bears the consequences of our inhumanity, as was spoken by the Prophet Isaiah,
All we like sheep have gone astray;
Isaiah 53:6–9
We have turned, every one, to his own way;
And the Lord has laid on Him [on Christ] the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He opened not His mouth;
He was led as a lamb to the slaughter,
And as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
So He opened not His mouth.
He was taken from prison and from judgement,
And who will declare His generation?
For He was cut off from the land of the living;
For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.
And they made His grave with the wicked—
But with the rich at His death,
Because He had done no violence,
Nor was any deceit in His mouth.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, when we see suffering and violence they are not good, and we must do all we can to stop them and alleviate their consequences: but know, too, that Christ has come and Himself enters into that suffering and He fills it with Himself. “I now rejoice,” says the Apostle,
in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His Body, which is the Church,
Colossians 1:24–29
of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God which was given to me for you, to fulfil the Word of God,
the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints.
To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.
To this end I also labour, striving according to His working which works in me mightily.
Let us, therefore, see that through suffering we may be joined to Life and that by imitating and being joined to Christ—Who demonstrates His humility and love through His incarnation, His teaching, His miracles, His suffering, His death and His resurrection—by ourselves being humble and loving, by the grace of God we are shown to be heirs of the Promise and inheritors of eternal Life.
May we ever, therefore, be drawing closer to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through our love and our service, and offer Him true praise, glory and worship, together with His unoriginate Father and the All-holy, Good and Life-giving Spirit, Amen.
Brethren, I would have you know that the gospel which was preached by me is not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it; and I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and had called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia; and again I returned to Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and remained with him fifteen days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord’s brother.
— Galatians 1:11–19
When the wise men departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there till I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” And he rose and took the child and his mother by night, and departed to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt have I called my son. Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they were no more.” But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead.” And he rose and took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaos reigned over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there, and being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee. And he went and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, “He shall be called a Nazarene.”
— Matthew 2:13–23