Jean Jouvenet, 1692
Translation of the Epistle for Sunday within the Octave of Christmas
Brethren, As long as the heir is a child, he differs nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all: but is under tutors and governors until the time appointed by the father: so we also, when we were children, were serving under the elements of the world. But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that He might redeem them who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because you are sons, God hath sent the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying: Abba, Father. Therefore now he is not a servant, but a son, and if a son, an heir also through God.
Continuation of the Holy Gospel According to St. Luke
At that time Joseph and Mary, the mother of Jesus, were wondering at those things which were spoken concerning Him, And Simeon blessed them, and said to Mary His Mother: Behold this child is set for the fall and for the resurrection of many in Israel: and for a sign which shall be contradicted: and thine own soul a sword shall pierce, that out of many hearts thoughts may be revealed. And there was one Anna a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser. She was far advanced in years, and had lived with her husband seven years from her virginity. And she was a widow until fourscore and four years: who departed not from the temple, by fastings and prayers serving night and day. Now she, at the same hour, coming in, confessed to the Lord: and spoke of Him to all that looked for the redemption of Israel. And after they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth. And the Child grew and waxed strong, full of wisdom: and the grace of God was with Him.
Saving Words of the Gospel.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Transcription of Sermon
We see a certain juxtaposition of concepts and words in these readings, a certain notion of being a child in the sense of one who doesn’t know, being a child as one who’s early on in one’s existence, and Paul’s referring to the childhood of those who have not yet found Christ, who makes us truly children of God. So, there’s a certain childhood of alienation, and then there’s this subsequent childhood that comes about, which is a divine filiation which we are adopted into the family of God. There’s also this contrast that he makes between those who know Christ and those who are subject to the world, and we know that salvation only comes through Jesus Christ, and those who are not subject to Christ end up being subject to the world, the flesh, and the devil.
The entrance antiphons spoke about this literally pregnant silence in which Our Lord comes into a dark world in the middle of the night. For pagans, the darkness is a source of fear. For us, as we see in Scripture, beautiful and sublime things happen in silence and in the darkness when curious eyes are not paying attention. And that’s why Our Lord chooses the night for many mysteries such as the Birth, such as the Resurrection. Things that escape material eyes and are not subject to a microscope, but there’s a certain awareness of what has happened when we see the effects of this mystery played out in our world. And so, for us, the night is not something we fear, the dark is not something we fear, the silence of God is not something we fear.
Fear says Cicero in this fascinating document that he wrote called De Divinatione. Fear, he says, is at the root of superstition. Now this is a pagan who is now, who has studied, he lived in Greece, he lived in Rome, and he was a well-educated man, and he studied all of these other pagan religions surrounding him, and he said the common denominator was fear. And in fact, the word superstition comes from superstes, which means “to survive,” because he said that for the pagans, their understanding of the spiritual life was to try and bribe the gods in order to spare them. So, much was out of their control, whether illness, death, onslaught of enemies, etc. So, much was out of their control that all they could do was try and bribe the gods. And that’s why they would be called if they came out alive superstes. They were survivors. And so, Cicero says that this is the root of all pagan worship. It’s a sort of a manipulation of laws that one cannot control.
And we see that Our Lord doesn’t manipulate laws. In the Gospel, He subjects Himself to the Law expounded by His Father in the Old Testament. He’s not going against the Law, He’s not subverting it, He’s fulfilling it. When God came into our world as a child, as a crying child, He didn’t come in power. He didn’t come in majesty. He didn’t come with noise, – maybe there was some crying – but didn’t come much with all of the worldly trappings that we might associate with a conquering king. And He didn’t come, as we see in the Greek and Roman mythology, as transformed into a man.
Rather, He remained God, took upon Himself our human nature, and in doing so, enters into our experience, enters into our milieu, enters into sorrow, joy, suffering. Imagine God who doesn’t have emotions, now has emotions in His sacred humanity. He can, in His body, in His sacred humanity, He can feel tiredness. He can sweat. As a baby, He needed His diapers changed. And so, in this radical humility, He enters into our experience, not as the leader of an NGO to do away with hunger and poverty, He comes to sanctify those things that the pagans feared, things that were out of their control. All sorts of maladies that might come our way, all of a sudden because He entered into our experience, took upon Himself our nature, truly, these things are no longer a curse but can become a way to intimacy with Him, union with God, great holiness.
Paul describes this, he says in Chapter 2 of Philippians, that Though He was God, He didn’t grasp at being God. Now, the reference there is Adam and Eve grasping at the fruit that they thought would make them like gods. Though He was God, He didn’t grasp at being God but became a slave. And he says… How did he do this? By κένωσις (kenosis). This word means self-emptying. He emptied Himself of Himself in order to be one of us. He’s still a divine person, but now He emptied Himself in His radical humility by taking upon Himself our nature, our milieu, our experience. And so, this is what we remember at Christmas, this radical mystery that happened in time and space, this radical revelation of divine humility.
And nonetheless, many still live in fear, fear of those things they can’t control, fear of what might happen. And some people even, who call themselves Catholics, have recourse to divination, to pagan practices. They think they’ve traded Adoration and mental prayer for so-called self-betterment in yoga. They’ve traded trust in God by going to psychics and reading horoscopes. And all of this is rooted in a lack of trust, which denotes a certain pagan fear.
The Fathers make this distinction between servile fear, the fear of a slave who’s afraid of being punished, and filial fear. We see this also in the trajectory of the spiritual life. Those who perhaps have had a profound conversion and are now trying to live the life of grace, sacraments, and prayer can sometimes be kind of consumed with regret for their past sins. Notice too that in all of this, the focus is on self, not on Our Lord. And so, they’re still in a certain sense, perhaps not committing sins, but prisoners of their effects. And it keeps one focused on oneself, whereas Christ frees us from the self to focus on Him.
Saint Veronica Giuliani, who experienced the souls in Hell, the souls in Heaven, the souls in Purgatory, she said the souls in Purgatory don’t regret their sins and don’t even think of their sins because they’re not thinking of themselves. There’s no regret because their hearts and their minds are hyper-focused on Our Lord that they do not possess completely and that’s their suffering. Their suffering is the distance of God. And this distance is self-imposed as an effect of their sins.
Our Lord bridges that distance when He becomes a baby. He becomes one of us, so to say. And so, our relationship is not one of manipulation of laws and designs that are beyond our power, but it’s relational. It’s intimacy of one who is like us, and at the same time is divine. It’s not contractual.
Sometimes some Catholics can even fall into a certain cycle of sacrilege in which they commit sins, confess, and go to Confession, commit those same sins, confess, and go to Communion. And so, what happens in this cycle is there’s no, there’s no notion of a deep relationship with Our Lord, because if I had a deep relationship, why would I be committing these horrible sins? A mortal sin kills my soul, brings tremendous sorrow to Him. And so, that’s more contractual. So, that’s really teetering on paganism. And after a while, those Confessions and those Communions become sacrilegious.
And so, our fear, the only fear that we have is not of the dark, not of what may happen or what is around me. Difficulties, illnesses, wars, what’s going to happen in our country, and in the Church. Our fear is: I know myself and I know my weakness and I can easily offend One who is so good. So, that is servile. That is what’s called filial fear, the fear of offending One who is so good because I know my own weakness. So, how do we overcome even the offense of Him? Again, it’s in adoration of the One who became like us, spending time with Him, loving Him, giving Him our hearts, our minds, our passions, our temptations, our all, so that when we’re hyper-focused on Him, these other things fall into the proper place.
Temptations serve us because in choosing Christ over the temptation, I didn’t dodge a bullet; I grew in holiness and I gave Him great glory. And so, the Incarnation is all of this, and it makes trust possible. It helps us overcome every fear since Christ became one of us.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen
~Fr. Ermatinger