A Most Glorious Mystery

A homily on the Nativity of our Lord and Savior by Archbishop Philaret (+1985).

A strange and most glorious mystery do I behold: the cave is Heaven; the Virgin, the throne of the Cherubim; the manger, the place wherein lay Christ God Whom nothing can contain…

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With these sacred words, in which the glad tidings of the great mystery of the Son of God are proclaimed, the Holy Church solemnly announces the radiant days of the feast of the Nativity of Christ.

They were heard first long before the feast itself, on the eve of another great feast—the Entrance into the Temple of the Mother of God. And thereby the Church begins quite early on to prepare Her children to greet the Feast of the Nativity in a fitting manner

And if the holy hierarch Gregory the Theologian, speaking of our great feasts, refers to them as mysteries, thereby indicating the richness of their spiritual content and the exalted mysteries of the Faith which are disclosed therein, then perhaps this profound thought of the oecumenical teacher may be even more aptly applied to the feast of the Nativity of Christ, which is called a strange and most glorious mystery. And Paul, the preeminent Apostle, speaking in brief of the essence of our Christian evangelical task, said: Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh. (I Tim 3:16).

Blessed was the night of the Nativity. In the fields of Bethlehem the flocks grazed peacefully. And round about them were the shepherds, keeping watch over their flocks by night. (Lk 2:8). There is a tradition, according to which these humble and faithful laborers were conversing on the peaceful night about the exact time of the advent of the Messiah, the Saviour of the world. And suddenly the angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them.

Man cannot encounter denizens of the world above without experiencing fear and trembling; and the shepherds were sore afraid. Yet with what did the celestial herald begin his good tidings? Fear not; for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. (Lk 2:10). And this great, this sacred joy the Church has received, and preserved, and proclaims to Her faithful children yearly during the radiant days of the Nativity of Christ.

Well nigh two thousand years have passed. For two thousand years the Holy Gospel has been proclaimed to the world; and therein the Church, yearly, over and over again, announces the glad tidings of the birth of Christ and takes up the angels’ doxology: Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace, good will among men. (Lk 2:14). But does contemporary humanity pay it any heed?

On the night of Christ’s birth when Heaven came down to earth and earth became Heaven, in that God appeared on it incarnate, only the lowly shepherds of Bethlehem heard the angelic doxology and worshipped the Newborn, according to the Gospel. All the rest of mankind slept a deep sleep, unaware of the great event that had taken away our sorrow-filled and trying days; many are those who sleep a sound spiritual sleep from which they do not wake, who do not hearken to the good tidings of the Church! They pay no heed to the angels’ song; it does not touch them. And if it reaches them in church, it leaves no trace in their souls; they are lost in earthly vanity and are not mindful of heaven.

The holy angels sang of peace, and on earth peace... Truly it is thus! For He Whom the Prophet called the Prince of Peace came to earth: He came Who, when He bid farewell to His beloved disciples, said to them; Peace I leave with you; My peace I give unto you. (Jn 15:27). Oh, if only mankind, which has lost peace, yet yearns for it and seeks after it, would but listen to these holy words of the Prince of Peace and ponder on them!

When the faithful Christians see the desperate attempts and efforts of the children and sages of this age to establish peace on earth in our time, they bring to mind the dreadful prophecy of the Prophet: There is NO PEACE, saith my God, for the wicked. (Isa 57:21). Nay, nor shall there be! And pathetic are all the attempts of the lovers of peace to attain an external peace!

It is not for naught that the Lord, after speaking of the peace which He bestows upon His disciples, added: Not as the world giveth, give I unto you. (Jn 14:27). And the Gospel tells us plainly that the Lord has said of the outward (political) peace for which the learned men of this age are striving: Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword. (Mt 10:34). Therefore, in vain are the reproaches of those who maintain that Christianity has "failed," that it has promised men peace, but has not delivered it. For the angels chanted on the night of the Saviour’s birth, and the Saviour Himself spoke, not of an outward peace, but of a spiritual peace, a peace between God and man, the peace of one’s conscience, an inner peace. The Lord never promised an external peace; on the contrary, having foretold wars and rumors of wars, He added: See that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. (Mt 24:6-7). He tells us that on earth there will never be that outward, political peace for which the propagandists are screaming.

The world is blind, has lost its senses, is entangled in its own passions and errors. Oh, if you could now but behold, see the light of knowledge, and understand what advances peace and your salvation.

Yet, alas! This is hidden from your eyes, for over them lies the impenetrable blindfold of vanity and the passions. The light of knowledge of God shines forth from the manger of Bethlehem, yet you do not perceive it; He Whose good pleasure it was to lie in that manger cries out to you: Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. (Mt 11:28)--but you pay no heed to this saving call; you follow after your own wise men, of whom the word of God said long ago that professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. (Rom 1:22). And with yet greater and greater clarity, one senses in you the fetid breath of the approach of the one who will rise up before you as the full and dreadful incarnation of evil, sin and opposition to God.

Once, in the early days of the spreading of Christianity, the holy Apostle Peter, warning the first Christians, cried out: Save yourselves from this perverse generation. (Acts 2:40). By perverse generation the Apostle had in mind the implacable foes of Christ among the Jewish nation, as well as the entire pagan world, which to a great extent was depraved and debauched.

Prior to the birth of Christ, paganism had already become obsolete and moribund, having completely lost sight of the true meaning and significance of life. Christianity brought the light of understanding to pagan peoples and gave them new powers—and in Christianity pagans were regenerated spiritually. But what we see now in our own times is incomparably worse and more perilous than what took place of old. Now the Christian world has become depraved. Christians have become depraved—those whom the Saviour commanded to be the light of the world, with the awesome warning: Ye are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has lost its savor, with what shall it be salted? (Mt 5:13).

Is this not taking place in our midst, right before our eyes? Are not today’s Christians turning into salt which has lost its taste?

Flee this dreadful spiritual destruction, O faithful child of the Church! Save yourself from this perverse generation! Lo! In these radiant days the Church commemorates the Nativity of Christ and glorifies the newborn Saviour of the world; make haste in your faith to the manger of Bethlehem, following after the simple shepherds, pure of heart, and the wise magi who laid all their wisdom and knowledge down before that manger. Bring your own gifts to the divine Infant—faith in Him, trust in Him, love for Him—and then in your faithful and devoted heart the wondrous doxology of the angels will sound: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will among men! 

Metropolitan Philaret 

Source-http://www.orthodoxheritage.org/MOM%2012%202012.htm

St. Philaret the Confessor-On Modesty and Will

Our Lord Jesus Christ, instructing His disciples and apostles, imbued in them the necessity of observing purity of heart and thought. From the thought and from the heart proceed our sinful impulses: "But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart," says the Saviour; "and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witnesses, blasphemies" (Matt. 15:18-19).
The Saviour pointed to this farther with the following words:


"Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery; But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart" (Matt. 27-28).

This law of the psycho-political nature of man is well-known to contemporary perverters, who are consciously striving to corrupt our youth. We remember how in Russia those who prepared the revolution, and then the communists, began the spiritual weakening of that nation by imbuing the youth with shamelessness and depravity. Special circles were organized for this, which spread contempt for the ordinary laws of morality. Such propagation of "free morals" which surrounds us now more than ever, is frequently being spread even among school age children.

In our days, as in pre-revolutionary times in Russia, this propagation has the definite goal of corrupting contemporary society. This is an old method. History is filled with examples of nations which perished from the spread of depravity; The Lord turned Sodom and Gomorrah. Babylon fell. The Roman Empire perished. The free West could be subjected to this same corruption... What do we see in the life which surrounds us? Indecency and shamelessness in clothing; shameless kissing and embracing on the streets and in public places; shameless advertisements, filthy pornographic literature... All of this dissoluteness and perversion pours into life in an immense wave. Truly, there is no less shamelessness now, if not more, than in pagan times when the Holy Apostles and their successors had to exhort Christians with especial zeal in the observance of modesty.

Man's nature is such that the sins of the flesh, the active role belongs on the one hand to the male sex, while on the other, the temptation comes from women. Because of this, Christian cultures everywhere established customs which helped the preservation of good morals, as well as modest dress for women, so that the exposure of the latter should not evoke sinful thoughts and tempting inclinations in anyone. The more elevated the spiritual culture, the more modest was the dress of the women.

Modesty in dress is our first line of defense. It must guard the purity of women and keep men from the temptation of sinful desires. Meanwhile, the evocation of precisely these feelings characterizes contemporary fashion.

What was peculiar before to a fallen woman, who, in plying her base trade, dressed provocatively with the goal of evoking sensuality in men, is now becoming the mode and norm for young women who are often unconscious of the meaning and consequences of this fashion which enslaves them. We know that the fight against sin which surrounds us on all sides is not an easy matter. The path of salvation is made narrower in proportion to the intensification in the world of evil and apostasy. But the ancient pagan world which surrounded the handful of the first Christians was no less corrupt. These latter, however, did not accede to the temptations of the pagan modes, even as some now do not accede to contemporary temptations.

The Holy Apostle Paul in his epistle to the Philippians wrote that they shone as lights in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation (Phil. 2:15). A lofty spiritual disposition and irreproachably clean, strictly, chaste life; these were the characteristic traits of the Philippian Christians, for which the Apostle Paul praised them. We live in later times; nineteen centuries separate us from those days in which the Apostle Paul wrote his epistles. But now, just as the Christians of the first centuries, we are encircled by an environment full of shamelessness and perversion. May the high and holy example of the ancient Christians teach us to be as steadfast and firm in the observance of the laws of Christian morals, and not accede to the temptations which surround us.

The moral character and moral value of man's personality depends most of all on the direction and strength of the will. Of course, everyone understands that for a Christian it is necessary to have first, a strong and decisive will, and second, a will which is firmly directed toward the good of his neighbor, toward the side of good and not evil. How is one to develop a strong will? The answer is simple: above all through the exercise of the will. To do this, as with bodily exercise, it is necessary to begin slowly, little by little. However, having begun to exercise one's will in anything (e.g., in a constant struggle with one's sinful habits or whims) this work on oneself must never cease. Moreover, a Christian who wishes to strengthen his will, his character, must from the very beginning avoid all dissipation, disorder and inconsistency of behavior. Otherwise, he will be a person without character, unreliable, a reed shaking in the wind, as we read in Holy Scripture.

Discipline is necessary for every one of us. It has such vital significance that without it, a correct, normal order and success in our endeavors is impossible. This is of primary importance in the ilk of each individual; for inner self-discipline takes the place here of external school or military discipline. Man must place himself in definite frameworks, having created definite conditions and an order of life, and he must not depart from this.

Let us note this, too: man's habits are of great significance in the matter of strengthening the will. Bad, sinful habits are a great obstacle for a Christian moral life. On the other hand, good habits are a valuable acquisition for the soul and, therefore, man must teach himself much good so that what is good becomes his own—habitual. This is especially important in the early years, when a man's character takes shape. It is not in vain that we say that the second half of man's earthly life is formed from habits acquired in the first half.

Probably no one would argue against the need for a strong will. In life we meet people with varying degrees of strength of will. It often happens that a person who is very gifted, talented, with a strong mind and a profoundly good heart, turns out to be weak willed and cannot carry out his plans in life, no matter how good and valuable they might be. On the other hand, a less talented person who is stronger in character and has great strength of will, this person often succeeds in life.

What is more important than strength of will is its direction: does it act for good or evil? A well intentioned but weak-willed person is seldom of great use to society; while a person with a strong will bent on evil is very dangerous. From this it is clear how very important are those principles, those basic foundations and rules by which man's will is guided.

What is the source from which man's will can draw suitable principles of guidance? For a non-believer, an answer to this is extremely difficult and essentially impossible. Are they to be drawn from science? In the first place, science is interested primarily in questions of knowledge and not morals, and secondly, it does not contain anything solid and constant in principles because it is constantly changing. From philosophy? Philosophy teaches about the relativity of its truths and does not claim their unconditional authority. From practical life? Even less. This life itself is in need of positive principles which can remove from it unruly and unprincipled conditions. But while the answer to the present question is so difficult for non-believers, for a believing Christian the answer is simple and clear. The source of good principles is God's will, and this is revealed to us in the Saviour's teaching, in His Holy Gospel. It alone has an unconditional, steadfast authority in this regard; and it alone teaches us self-sacrifice and Christian freedom, Christian equality and brotherhood (a concept stolen by those outside the Faith). The Lord Himself said of true Christians, "Not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father" (Matt. 7:21).