In chapter 8, Metropolitan Hilarion outlines the major feasts in the Nativity Cycle. The Nativity Fast is mentioned in the East and the West between the 6th and 9th c. Many of the Old Testament prophets and righteous are mentioned in the commemorations and readings. On the Sunday of the Holy Fathers the genealogy of Christ is enumerated as well as the righteous patriarchs. Just as Adam generates our race through birth and death, so Christ regenerates our race through spiritual rebirth and our resurrection after death. This Sunday commemorates the Prophet Daniel and the Three Holy Youth in the Furnace, who foreshadow the birth of Christ. The Virgin’s womb is the fiery furnace that doesn’t burn the body or soul but is like gentle dew. Like much of the Old Testament foreshadowing, where there is Christ there is the Theotokos too. She is both “chosen” before the generations and the “fruit of all the previous generations.”
Our spiritual regeneration happens in the quiet night of our heart. What renews the spirit renews the body. The incarnation is transfiguring body through the spirit, and it’s a preparation for the universal resurrection. An important note highlighted in the chapter is that Christ “voluntarily” through the perfect will of the Father came into this world as a human and took on the form of our bodies. And all the circumstances surrounding his birth and death are completely in God’s will. No one forces him to die this way or to be born this way. After so much sin, negligence and violence, God the Father sends the most innocent and precious person to Him, His Son Jesus Christ. God the Father sends an infant in the middle of a lost cause and bloody conflict on earth among this human race. That the Holy Trinity willed it to be this way to correct humanity is the most counterintuitive action to us. Many cultures like the Greeks and Romans considered the past civilizations as purer than current ones like the dilution of metals or the worship of a heroic age of peoples. Metropolitan Hilarion doesn’t answer whether or not “the fullness of time” was a subtle praise of Rome’s political power and or Hellensim’s intellectual height. But a reading of the Gospels should give us a picture of what that could mean. Christ’s volition is perfectly united with his body and divinity with His Father. Christ willingly took the census under emperor Augustus Caesar. There is no necessity driving Christ’s will to be born, baptized, enrolled, circumcised, and crucified. It’s all out of love for humanity who really doesn’t have much of a choice like the Israelites in Egypt or the Jews in Babylon. Just as there is no necessity coercing the Holy Trinity to express His love for us or give us grace through the incarnation and crucifixion, so too there is no coercion or necessity that controls how God will deal with punishment and judgment. That much is taught at least in the Holy Scriptures.
Christ was born a king, but not according to the standards of Herod or Caesar. Christ did not ever cause, as it seems, or ever seek to cause the fall of the Roman Empire during his lifetime. He was worshipped by strangers and outsiders. The shepherds of Judea and the star-gazing Persians followed the Light and came to worship the true emperor of universe. In the Menaion, the vespers on the Eve of the Nativity teaches us that the transfiguration has already worked in the world, “Whom do you seek? … You have the appearance, but not the thoughts, of Persians.” The poetess Cassia the Nun teaches that Christians are “enrolled in the Name of the Godhead” instead of putting our hope in imperial Rome’s destiny. A bad character in the Nativity Feast is the Jewish King, Herod. The source of his murderous actions is his “faithlessness.” Metropolitan Hilarion points this idea of faith out. Earthly thinking and living does not produce “fruit.” Roman Augustus, Herod, some of the Pharisees may have leaves and trunk, but nothing to show for it. But why are the Persians and Jewish shepherds ready to receive the Light of the world in true worship? Maybe they had the faith that drew them closer to the heavenly star. They might have devoted themselves to better pursuits, or they might have had a better perspective of their mortality so that they didn’t forget their real position in the universe. A faithless world is cause of hostilities and destruction. The saints and martyrs are witnesses with Christ that our innocence and kindness will be returned for hatred and a cross, and they give evidence that a faithless life is destructive. Trust and faith in God is grown in the body and soul while we live here. It’s a time for planting and sowing and tilling the soil.
The compline of the Forefeast of the Nativity teaches, “Adam the prisoner has been set loose and freedom has been given to all the faithful ….” Christ is the New Adam and the Theotokos is the New Eve. Origen and many other church fathers taught that the end is like the beginning, and this is called a “fathomless mystery.” How can the Orthodox liturgical texts speak of a God who saves all our race, that is Adam, and punishment for the wicked, when there still exists incorrigible sinners and obedient saints? In the Menaion, the stichera at the praises for the Nativity matins teaches, “O Lord past all interpretation, glory to Thee.” And the great vespers of Nativity teaches, “O pre-eternal God, have mercy on us.”
Many Protestant Christians will object to blessing objects, especially by ordained clergy members. Of course, it’s true God doesn’t have to use water, circumcision, oil, and incense to do anything. But because we too are material and bodily, we must use our bodies to be saved like Christ showed us. Orthodoxy is unique among Christian groups in that we do not tend to look down on the body as an obstacle to our sanctification and healing. Orthodoxy locates the point of salvation in our bodies. Our thoughts and spiritual states do affect our bodies, but when our wills have been so damaged over the years by habits that sometimes we have to get down to the basics of behavior and practicing the disciplines of the Church through our bodies. This practical way is the remedy for becoming free of the captivity of the passions – many Orthodox monastics and saints have taught this to be true by experience and sound teaching. God planned before eternity to come into a body like ours to heal and correct our wandering ways.
God’s “pre-eternal” plan is the Holy Trinity’s will before all kinds of time, even beyond eternity itself. One of the goals for us is “to restore the image of God in man.” Our body is an image. Our body can either take a beating from our soul’s destruction or be lifted by it through Christ. The body is extremely important in Holy Orthodoxy for combating passions, saving our souls, and preparing for a good departure. St. Demetry of Rostov taught in his homily, “the saving name of Jesus was reserved by the pre-eternal counsel of the Holy Trinity.” Images like icons always have a name or an inscription, and it becomes an identity of the form. The Feast of the Circumcision, then, commemorates another willing and loving action of Christ for our salvation. Because Christ was voluntarily circumcised according to the very Laws that he created for us to follow, now the Gentiles can enter into Church without that physical sign. Our whole body should be “circumcised” or rather circumscribed by Christ in our noetic heart. The sign of the covenant through circumcision was fulfilled in Christ’s body, and we are the body of Christ. The Feast of the Theophany also speaks of sanctifying the waters and earth through his voluntary baptism in the Jordan River. An emphasis that is found in this chapter and the Nativity Cycle is the voluntary aspect of Christ’s life and death. There isn’t much analysis or detail on man’s will except to show that it is held captive one way or the other. There are many Old Testament types of baptism in Genesis, Joshua, Judges, 1-2 Kings, Exodus, and Isaiah. These types are incorporated into the liturgical texts in the form of monologues or dialogues. St. John the Forerunner, for example, exclaims to the Jordan River, “Though Thou are the child of Mary, yet do I know Thee to be the pre-eternal God.” The children slain at Bethlehem by Herod are given through baptism. In the Menaion, the matins service in canon 1, ode 3 teaches, “For through water and the Spirit sons have been borne to Thee …” Instead of Herod professing his mortality and helplessness, instead of crying out in self-condemnation and humility and remembrance of his own death, the children and their parents cry out for mercy. They too have a kind of baptism. Yet we are told in this chapter that baptism brings enlightenment. Theophany is called “The Day of Lights,” in St. Gregory the Theologian’s homily, and it’s a feast where the Holy Trinity is made manifest for the first time. Athanasius wrote a creed that stated, “There are not three eternals, but one eternal.” The “pre-eternal plan” of the Godhead, the Holy Trinity, endures, never fails, and saves all. The waters were sanctified through Christ’s presence and obedience to God’s will. That light and fire too are sanctified would be a logical extension.
The Meeting of the Lord is celebrated on February 2 on a fixed feast date in the calendar. In the Menaion, the stichera of the great vespers service teach that, “He is brought as an offering to Himself, setting us free from the curse of the Law and granting light to our souls.” Part of the Gospel and “good tidings” preached in Hades is to have the freedom to see the fiery glory of Christ’s Light and His loving energies. Metropolitan Hilarion explains that this feast is simultaneously of the Lord and of the Theotokos. The feasts of the Church follow an inner logic that isn’t always strictly linear. The Theotokos is glorified as the “throne of the cherubim” and the “cloud of the Light.” It makes one wonder if She too will be on the same cloud of light that Christ ascended as when he returns at his Second Coming, since She is glorified also as “the portal of heaven.” The next chapter discusses the divine services from the Sunday of the Publican and Pharisee until Great Saturday, and how great sinners can become saints by opening up the gateway to Paradise.