Whoever approaches the Lord Jesus Christ with obedience and humility will never want to be separated from Him. The beginning exercises of the newly-recruited army of Christ are the exercises of obedience and humility.
With obedience begins a new world, a new creature, a new mankind. The old world trampled upon obedience to God and humility before God, and thus destroyed the bridge between earth and heaven. The spiritual building materials for restoring this bridge are first of all, obedience and humility. As long as Adam was rich in obedience and humility, he could hardly introduce a difference between his own spirit and the Spirit of God, between his own will and the will of God, between his own thoughts and the thoughts of God. He could not feel, want, and think anything that could not have been in God and from God. Like the angels of God, so too did Adam stand in direct proximity to God, and because of this direct proximity he contemplated the Primary Source of light, wisdom, and love. Living within the sun itself, he had no need to light any candle of his own. His candle would not have burned or given off light within the sun.
But when Adam violated obedience and lost humility—and these are always lost or acquired at the same time—then his direct communion with God was broken, the bridge destroyed, and he fell into terrible darkness and rotten dankness, which he was forced to light up with his own candle given to him nevertheless by God’s mercy when God’s righteousness cast him out of Paradise. Then he not only began to feel the difference between himself and God, between his own will and God’s will, his own feeling and God’s feelings, his own thoughts and God’s thoughts—he not only began to be aware of the difference, but only in rare hours of enlightenment was just barely able to notice his own divine likeness.
Alas, into such an abyss was he cast down by his disobedience and pride who had been first created in the image and likeness of the Most Holy and Divine Trinity! (“In man, the incorrupt image of God was the source of blessedness, while in fallen man it was [only] the hope of blessedness” St. Philaret of Moscow. Homily on the Entrance.) Alas, all of us, descendants of Adam, all are low outgrowths from the stump of the felled cedar that once majestically towered and rose over all God’s creation in Paradise—low sprouts, smothered by the tall thistles of crude nature, which have come down like a veil between us and the First Source of immortal love.
Just look at how, as if at the wave of a magic wand, the disobedience and pride of mankind’s forefathers immediately changed all creation around him, and he was immediately surrounded by a whole army of the disobedient and proud!…
Take a look now at our Lord Jesus Christ and His those around Him. They are all obedience and humility themselves! Archangel Gabriel, a representative of angelic obedience and humility; the Virgin Mary—obedience and humility; Joseph—obedience and humility; the shepherds—obedience and humility; the Oriental Magi—obedience and humility; the stars of heaven—obedience and humility. Obedient storms, obedient winds, obedient earth and sun, obedient people, obedient animals, and even the tomb itself is obedient. All is obedient to the Son of God, the New Adam, and all humble themselves before Him, for He Himself is infinitely obedient to His Father and humble before Him…
The obedient and humble Virgin Mary is at the same time adorned with chaste simplicity. It is the same with righteous Joseph, the apostles and Evangelists. Only see with what inimitable simplicity the Evangelists describe the greatest events in the history of man’s salvation, in universal history! Can you imagine how broadly and theatrically a worldly author of literature would have described, for example, the resurrection of Lazarus should he have been the accidental witness to that event? Or what a high-sounding and pompous drama he would have written about all that happened in the soul of Joseph, an obedient, humble, and simple man, in the moment he found out that his ward and betrothed was pregnant? But the Evangelist in today’s [Nativity] Gospel reading describes all of this in but a few simple sentences:
St, Nikolai Velimirovic. Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost (Mt. 1:18). Before this the Evangelist described the genealogy of the Lord Jesus Christ, or more precisely, the genealogy of Righteous Joseph of the tribe of Judah, the seed of David. In this genealogy the Evangelist enumerates people born of people in the natural way and manner, as all mortals are born in the world. Then suddenly he begins to describe the Nativity of the Lord and says, ??? ?? ????? ??????? ? ???????? ????? ??…, wanting by this ?? (“now,” “however”) to show the unusualness and supernaturalness of His Birth, which is completely different from the manner of birth of all the enumerated ancestors of Joseph. His mother was betrothed to Joseph not in order to live in marriage, but in order to avoid marriage… Holy Hieromartyr Ignatius says that the Virgin was betrothed “so that His Birth would be hidden from the devil and so that the devil would think of Him as born from a lawful wife, and not from a virgin.”…
Before they came together—these words do not mean that they later united as husband and wife; the Evangelist does not even think about this. The Evangelist is interested in this case in the Nativity itself of the Lord Jesus Christ, and nothing else. And he writes the words cited above in order to show that His Nativity happened without the unification of husband and wife. Therefore, you should understand the words of the Evangelist exactly as if he had written: and without their uniting it happened that She was with child in her womb from the Holy Spirit. Only from the Holy Spirit could be born He Who was to restore the Kingdom of the Spirit of light and love amidst the kingdom of darkness and wickedness…
Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily (Mt. 1:19). He wants to do this in accordance with the law of God… But no sooner did Joseph come up with a convenient way out of this uncomfortable situation, than heaven suddenly intervenes in his plans, giving him an unexpected command: But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost (Mt. 1:20). The angel of God, who before had announced to the Most Pure Virgin the coming into the world of the God-Man, now goes to prepare the way for Him and make His paths straight. Joseph’s doubts are one of the obstacles on His path, and a very powerful and dangerous one at that. These obstacles must be removed. In order to show how easy it is for the powers of heaven to do what is very hard for people, the angel appears to Joseph not openly but in a dream... For that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost... From the angel’s message to Joseph it is clear that the Virgin Mary never told the latter about the appearance of the great archangel to her earlier; it is likewise clear that now, when Joseph intended to put her away, she did not justify herself in the least. The archangel’s tidings, like all the heavenly mysteries that were gradually revealed to her, she kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart (Lk. 2:19; 2:51)… The same angel who revealed to her the great mystery of her Conception now rushes to speak, instead of the silent Virgin… The angel instructs Joseph to treat the Newborn as would a real father, and therefore he says, and thou shalt call his name Jesus, which means, “Savior”. That is why the second sentence begins with for; which means: And you shall call Him Savior, for he shall save his people from their sins…
What the archangel spoke to Joseph was enough so that in obedience to the new and direct law of God, he would reject his own thoughts, as he did the plan to put Mary away. Heaven commands, and Joseph submits. But the usual method of heaven is to not give people a command without an appeal toward human understanding and self-determination… God does not simply command Adam. The Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, and he immediately adds, for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die (Gen 2:16–17). By this last sentence God gives man an argument for his mind and a motivation for his will, so that he won’t eat of the forbidden tree. For the day that you taste of it, you will surely die. The archangel does the same now with Joseph. Having given him the command to accept Mary and not put her away, and explaining that the Fruit of her Virgin womb is from the Holy Spirit…
In any case, there is one thing that is clearer than anything in the world: That there is no salvation for this world if God does not come into it; and there is no medicine for us people if God is not with us.If God is not with us, and at that not as an idea or a beautiful dream but with us, like us: with a soul, like us; in the flesh, like us; in sorrows and suffering, like us; and finally, in what makes us most different of all from God—in death—like us. Because every faith is false that teaches that God did not come in the flesh and cannot come in the flesh, for it imagines God as powerless and unmerciful…
The Evangelist tells about the miracle of the Nativity of the Savior. For him the most important thing is to show that this Nativity came about it a miraculous way…
It is told of St. Ammon (Lives of the Saints, October 4) that he was lawfully married for eighteen years without having any physical union with his wife. Holy Great Martyr Anastasia (December 22) also lived several years in marriage with Publeus, the Roman senator, without having any physical contact with him. We give only two examples out of thousands. In her most pure virginity, before Childbirth, in Childbirth, and after Childbirth, the Virgin Mary throughout the history of the Church provided inspiration for virginal life to thousands and thousands of maidens and youths. Beholding her virginity, many lawful wives tore up their marriages and dedicated themselves to virginal purity. Beholding her, many inveterate harlots rejected their depraved lives, cleansing their defiled souls with tears and prayer. So then how could anyone think that the Most Pure Virgin, the pillar and inspiration of Christian purity and virginity over so many centuries, could be lower in virginity than Anastasia, Thecla, Barbara, Catherine, Parasceva, and numberless others? Or how could anyone think that she who bore in her body the passionless Lord could at any time have had even the shadow of bodily passion? She, who bore God and gave birth to God, “was a Virgin not only in body but also in spirit,” says Holy Hierarch Ambrose. St. Chrysostom, comparing the Holy Spirit with a bee, says, “As a bee will not fly into a foul-smelling vessel, do also the Spirit will not enter an impure soul.”
But let us interrupt our conversation on what should be given less talk and more admiration. Where there is obedience to the living God and humility before Him, there is also purity. God heals His obedient and humble servants from all earthly passions and lusts. Therefore, let us dedicate ourselves to cleansing our consciences, our souls, our hearts, and our minds, that we also might be counted worthy of the grace-filled power of the Holy Spirit; that the earth would finally cease to sow its seed in our inner man—and the Holy Spirit would conceive a new life and a new man within us, like unto our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be honor and glory, with the Father and the Holy Spirit—the Trinity One in Essence and Undivided, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
St. Nikolai (Velimirovic), “The Nativity of Christ. The Gospel of the Firstborn” (main passages of the sermon)
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