NATIVITY ENCYCLICAL OF HIS EMINENCE,

One of the most beautiful and compunctionate hymns of the vigil for our Saviour’s Nativity is the Exapostilarion of Matins. The text of this ancient hymn is as follows:

In one concise hymn, God’s plan for our salvation is here set forth. This hymn is yet another example of Orthodox Christianity’s rich spiritual wealth, and of its ability to convey to us the mystery of God’s economia for mankind.

In the Dayspring of the East we have indeed found the light and the truth. Despite the materialistic spirit prevalent in our society, many are desperately searching for the truth. This, indeed, was the headline in one nation-wide journal: "U.S. Culture Desperate for Spiritual Influence."*

The article goes on to describe how the percentage of those who believe in miracles, pray daily, never doubt the existence of God, and who believe that all will have to answer to God for their sins on the day of judgment, has risen significantly in the past ten years. But it also notes that, in the past twenty-two years, the number of people who believe in New Age concepts — such as Spiritualism, Astrology, Reincarnation, and Fortune-telling — has arisen even more dramatically. The author of the article writes that many people now "worship a postmodern God — a composite deity that combines the most useful aspects of any religion at hand."

That is to say, many in our "postmodern" society are returning to the syncretistic attitudes that were prevalent when Christ our Saviour was born in Bethlehem of Judea.

But why is our society called "postmodern"? Because people have begun to lose confidence in our modern technology. They see that, despite the many advances and conveniences that science has given us, there is also the darker side: the terrible weapons of destruction, the chemical and radioactive contamination of our earth, air, and water, the violence and the moral pollution spread by our electronic media. Hence, as even the above-mentioned article reports, more and more people are turning elsewhere for solace. Unfortunately, due to the ecumenistic spirit of our times, they are also turning to the "composite God" of the New Age.

That is to say, as in antiquity, so now once again, mankind is fashioning its own gods. Although our God and Redeemer continues, by grace, to fashion man in His own image, men are once again fashioning "composite" gods in their own image. But alas, the gods that man will fashion in his own fallen image will, as might be expected, likewise be fallen. Like the ancient gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus, they will be rapacious, selfish, adulterers, murderers, deceivers, and scoundrels that is, exactly like the fallen mortals who fashion them. And since these gods and goddesses are "composite," they, like all else that is composite, will die and "de-compose" together with their mortal creators, and leave the world, as before, "in the shadow and the dark."

Contrary to this, the Unwaning Dayspring of the East, Christ our Liberator has, by His Incarnation, shined the beams of His grace on all creation and transformed it. This good transformation of creation is evident in the countless millions of holy men and women who have given Him their hearts and souls, and have filled the earth with the fragrance of their prayers, and with the grace of the miracles they work in His Name; it is manifest in the holy martyrs, both those of ancient times and those of our own times, in their steadfastness in confession of the Holy Faith in the face of bitter persecution and martyrdom. In their holy lives, we see sin purged, depression turned to joy, unbelief turned to fervent and loving faith, disease banished, corruption transformed into incorruption, and death into life everlasting.

This is the fruit that proceeds from the spiritual warmth and light of the true Dayspring — our Lord Who "hath been born today of a holy Virgin." This is not the abstract or composite god of the nations, but the living and incarnate God Who created time and all that is. This is the God of Whom the holy Apostle Peter speaks:

We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the Daystar arise in your hearts.

"For we have not followed cunningly devised fables" (ibid.) as the fallen nations do; for in the mighty acts which He accomplished for our salvation, in the wondrous deeds brought to pass in His Saints down through the ages, in the holy confession of the Faith oftentimes even unto cruel martyrdom of those who have been re-born unto life everlasting, we become "eye-witnesses of His majesty" (ibid.).

Wherefore, my beloved, as ones who have received mercy from God and have found the truth, let us walk worthily of these spiritual gifts, that we may be counted worthy of the portion of the Saints in the glory and illumination of that day that has no end, in the presence of Christ, the Sun of Righteousness. Amen.