God is with us through Jesus, if only we desire it, in all the states and adventures of our life; so that even if we suffer, we may suffer with Him, and with Him we shall be glorified (Rom 8:17); if we die, we can die to the Lord (14:8).

In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, God is with us, Christians, always and in everything; only let us not cease to be with God, through remembrance of Him, through prayer to Him, through faith and love, through unceasing exercise in what is pleasing to God and what brings us closer to God. Amen.

1824

Homily on the Nativity of Christ, 1826[133]

Let this be thought of in you, even in Christ Jesus: Who, in the image of God, was not equal to God in the rapture: but made Himself small, and took the form of a servant, being in the likeness of a man, and was found in the likeness of a man (Phil. 2:5-7)

If, according to the words of Solomon, the time is for every thing under heaven (Ecclesiastes 3:1), then is it not now time to speculate with the Apostle about the wondrous self-abasement of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, when we see Him humbling Himself even to the measure of infantile age, humbling Himself even to the manger of beasts?

People who were partial to earthly greatness were often tempted by the belittling of Jesus Christ. But when it has already been known by the experience of so many centuries that God has exalted Him, that at His name every knee has indeed bowed, both in heaven and on earth and under the grave (Phil. 2:9,10), for since the days of His resurrection and ascension, thousands of witnesses have seen how the powers of heaven slavishly carried out His commands, how, on the contrary, the powers of hell were cast down into the abyss by His name, but the earth-born millions find their blessedness in the worship of His name, and after this, and before the people who have gathered together to bow down before the name of Jesus, we can free ourselves from the labor of defending and justifying His inferiority, and nothing prevents us from looking upon His diminishment with the same reverence as we do His greatness.

Oh, how the Son of God humbled Himself in His incarnation! This belittling must be all the more striking for us, since it is in a certain opposite correspondence with the original exaltation of man himself. For it is not without intention that the word of God uses one and the same expression to depict these opposites: Image and likeness. Let us make man, said God the Creator, in our image and likeness [Gen. 1:26]. And the Apostle says of the incarnation of the Son of God: "Thou hast received the form of a servant, having been in the likeness of mankind, and thou shalt be found in the likeness of a man" [Phil. 2:7]. A certain ruler does not need to belittle himself much in order to appear in the form of a slave. But when the great and high Lord, Who also bestows upon His servants the image of the Lord, Himself appears in the form and likeness of a servant, that is, in a state of complete slavery and deep humiliation, which is characteristic of slavery, then such an extreme depreciation of the great cannot be looked upon without a special feeling of wonder, extending either to tenderness or to horror. And in this way the Son of God humbled Himself in His incarnation.

But how much more He humbled Himself in the circumstances of His earthly birth! It was necessary to choose the people into which He would be born, and for this purpose He chose the smallest of all the peoples of the earth, having no government of its own, repeatedly enslaved and close to a new enslavement, once blessed, but already almost rejected. It was necessary to choose a city, and He chose Bethlehem, so small that even the Prophet who favored it cannot hide this reproach against it and finds no other way to exalt it than in the name of the diminished Jesus who is born in it. And thou, O Bethlehem, the house of the Euphrates, art little food, if thou art in the thousands of Judah! For from thee shall come forth an elder, if thou shalt be a prince in Israel, and proceed from the beginning from the days of the world (Micah 5:2). It was necessary to choose a mother, and in order to conceal the mystery of the Incarnation from the unbelievers for the time being, it was necessary by the bonds of the law, but not of the flesh, to unite to her also the imaginary father, and so the royal descendants were chosen, so that the promises and prophecies might be fulfilled, but already one woodworker, and the other a poor orphaned virgin. And what else? If the Lord had been born in Joseph's small, own or hired dwelling, and Mary had laid Him in a poor cradle, the image of a servant, which He accepted, perhaps not everything would have had the features that can make it up, for there could have been a slave's dwelling smaller than Joseph's, and a cradle poorer than Mary's.

Lay Him in a manger: for there is no place for them in the monastery (Luke 2:7).

If we look further from the God who belittles Himself into the expanse of the world in which and for which He is diminished, the miracle of diminishment will present us with new striking views. Here the picture of the descent of the Word of God from heaven to the land of Egypt, drawn by the writer of the Book of Wisdom, comes to my mind. To quiet silence I contain all, and in the night in its course the almighty Word of Thy almighty Word, O Lord, from heaven from the thrones of kings a warrior descended into the midst of the land of destruction (Wisdom 18:14,15). And at the descent of the Incarnate Word of God on the land of Israel, did not the night in the same way break in its course, when at the very moment of His birth the shepherd was in the same country, watching and watching the night for his flock (Luke 2:8)? Was it not a quiet silence that contained everything on earth, when only the voice of the angels was heard, and heard by a few shepherds in the wilderness? Terrible obscurity, in which the punishing Word of God descended upon the pernicious land of Egypt, to fulfill all death (Wisdom 18:16) through the defeat of the firstborn of Egypt! However, this obscurity not only did not diminish, but even magnified the glory of God the Avenger, Who, without visible means, without perceptible actions, with one inaudible command, or, one might say, with one silence, executes the life of the Word that speaks everything, executes the wicked. Different, but no less terrible, is the obscurity in which the saving Word of God, being born in the flesh, comes to visit the whole earth, which is perishable because all those born on earth have sinned and are deprived of the essence of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) – it comes not as a cruel warrior who threatens all who live with death, but as a newborn child, bringing the hope of regeneration and life to the whole realm of death; comes, but the pernicious earth does not meet, does not embrace, does not glorify, does not even see its Savior and does not hear the Word of God, silent in the manger. Almost in vain is the glory which Jesus Christ had with God the Father, before the world was (John 17:5), in the mouth of the angels it pursues Him, Who descended into the world, and reaches after Him even to the earth: on the perdition earth there are almost no ears that are not deafened by vanity and are able to hear it. Almost in vain, the wisest and most famous of the stars makes an extraordinary path in order to point out the Sun of Righteousness shining through the deep night: there are hardly two or three people who are able to comprehend this instruction and are ready to follow it, and then only among those who sit in darkness and the mortal shadow of paganism and star-worship. And Judea, where God is known (Psalm 75:2)? She does not know that God is manifest in the flesh (1 Timothy 3:16). And what about Jerusalem, the city of God (Psalm 86:3)? He is not in joy with Christ, who came to save, but in confusion with Herod, who seeks to destroy. And what about the chief priests and scribes, who were to be especially close to God and His mysteries, through prayer and the understanding of the law? They perfectly solve the scientific question: Where is Christ born (Matthew 2:4)? - and they are so pleased that they do not find it necessary to take any further care to find out if He is really born. Thus, not only in the midnight of natural time, but in the equally deep night of men's ignorance and forgetfulness of Thee and Thy destinies, Thy almighty Word, O Lord, descended from heaven from the thrones of kings into the midst of the perishing earth, and in spite of the fact that almost no one glorifies Him, no one knows Him or seeks to know, He does not utter a punitive commandment, but he is silent in the long-suffering that saves those who are perishing! Thus not only did He humble Himself in the image of God, and He who is equal to God, and He also took on a new form of diminishment from the ignorance and negligence of those out of love for whom He humbled Himself!