Nativity of Christ

6 January 1979

In the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.

Whenever we receive Communion we say prayers the first line of which sounds as follow: ‘I believe, Lord, and I proclaim that Thou art of a truth the Christ, the Son of the Living God’. Today, nearly 2000 years ago this Christ, the Son of the Living God, became the Son of man: а babe was born in Bethlehem which was with all the fullness and all the glory of the Godhead God Himself come into the world. We are born into the world out of radical absence; to be born to us means to begin. To be born for Christ meant that the Eternal One entered into the limits of time. Him Who is boundless entered into the limits of space. He Who is immortal entered into the realm of death. He was born to die because God in His love for us wanted to share with us everything which was our destiny, and died, sharing with us our destiny of death that we, men, may share His eternal life. Truly was God incarnate; Saint Paul recognises Him as the Living God, the Apostles recognised and proclaimed that in Him the fullness of Godhead abided embodied in the flesh. Glory be to this love of God and let us learn from Him so to love as He loved us. He came to us, defenseless, helpless, frail as love is, giving Himself to us, and He expects from us that we should be able to respond by love to love. Are we not going to do this? He gave His life that we may believe that God believes in us, that God hopes all things from us, that He is prepared to share all our destiny so that we may share His eternity. Let us then work upon ourselves, to shake off our coldness and indifference and hatred and prejudices, all those things which are contrary to the freedom and the exaltation of love, and let us build together, in God's name, in the name of the greatness of man make manifest in the Incarnation, a city of men worthy of the Son of God become Son of Man. Amen.