“NATIVITY DAY
LOVE”
Saint John 1.
1-14
The Nativity of
Our Lord—The Feast of The Christ Mass
25 December Anno
Domini 2013
Fr. Jay Watson
SSP
In The Name + of
Jesus
Of course God has no birth day. The Holy
Trinity has no nativity or moment of conception, delivery, or arrival. God is
not just omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent, God is both infinite and
eternal. God is without beginning, middle or end. God is.
I AM. The Lord is truly alpha and omega but not
in a way that we could ever understand.
“In
the beginning” doesn’t mean that God had a beginning but that the
created universe did…Scripture as reduced to stone, animal skin, papyrus, and
paper had a beginning. The Church had a beginning. The Scriptures, the Bible,
had a beginning…but THE WORD had no origin. The Word which you confess in The
Creed… “was begotten of His Father before
all worlds…God of God…” This is deep
primary theology, “God talk” that
bespeaks the Son of God’s existence outside time and His total sharing of the
Godhead in essence and substance. There is One God in three persons. There has
always been a Triune One Lord and
God. The Word was before Genesis 1.1…but not in a time-line kind of way, in a
Godly I AM kind of way!
The blessed Apostle and Evangelist Saint
John the Divine, “the theologian,”
the beloved Disciple, did not know the Son of God when He was the pre-incarnate
Malek Adonai, the “Angel of the Lord” the way Adam and Eve
did; the way Abraham and Jacob did; the way Moses, Aaron and Joshua did; or the
way Samuel and David did. John was blessed
far above all these Old Testament titans of the faith. Or as John’s
contemporary fellow deacon wrote to the Hebrews in diaspora: “God, who at sundry
times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the
prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom He hath
appointed Heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds; Who being the
brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person, and upholding all
things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat
down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.” [Heb. 1.1-3]
John’s prologue is the appointed Gospel for
Christmas Day because Christmas is about the Incarnation into the Flesh of God
the 2nd Person. God the Father is Spirit. God the Holy Spirit is
Spirit. But The Son enfleshed is both God and Man.
The Son, as God, was before Genesis 1.1 and
in Genesis 1, along with the Spirit and the Father was active and working
creation. “All things were made by Him,” Him being
the Son of God, “and without Him,” the
Son, “nothing was made that was made.” This God Who was born in time, in a place,
according to the plans of the Trinity: “but
when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a
woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we
might receive the adoption of sons.” [Gal. 4.4-5] He was given the Name above all names:
Jesus—which means Savior, but He was the Christ, the Anointed One sent to
Redeem…buy back by the purchase price of His physical work and obedience and by
His own Body and Blood. This is what the Christ Mass is all about. You don’t
have Spirits, the 1st and 3rd Persons of the God Head,
fixing the mistake, the sinful treason and destruction of Eden, the poisoning
of all mankind, and the attempted murder of God, by being the Second and
Perfect Adam…they can’t…they are not flesh and blood. But the Son of God could
and did obey where Adam, Abraham, the Israelites, David, the Baptist, John the
Evangelist, and all of you do not obey. The Son of God with His Body was nailed
to the Tree—did bleed the cleansing Flood of Grace to wash away all your sinful
trespasses. The Christ Mass makes possible the Easter Mass, The Ascension and
Pentecost Mass, and all of your Communions with the Godhead and it’s Apostle of
your Peace—the God/Man Christ Jesus!
The Baptist, says John Zebedee, was the
Voice for that’s what Angelic Heralds do—they announce, trumpet, and broadcast
the Good News of the Good One! The
Evangelist wants you to know that the Son of God is not only Our Man/God,
the Crucified Suffering Servant of Esaias, but also the God/Man Who is “light of light, very God of very God,
begotten not made.” John’s Gospel
uses this motif of “light” wherein
the other Three Evangelists do not. Light…something
fallen man understands.
The experts tell us that all babies are born
with three instinctual fears: the fear of falling, the fear of loud noises, and
the fear of either reptiles or the dark…which is the same thing as Satan the
serpent is darkness, spiritual black.
Darkness has no positive being but is the absence of light. Before
Genesis 1.1 when all there was, was the Beatific Inter-Trinitarian Love and
Communion of the Godhead…it was pure Light.
Light gives light, life gives life, and love shares love with the
beloved—all of you, beloved of your Father, In The Son, + through the
Spirit. Blackness, darkness, is the
sinful decay and rot of the good, true, and beautiful.
Adam and his offspring was not just plunged
into a world of thorns, pain, dust, sweat, and decay leading to death, but also
into the dark…the cold and lonely dark.
Jesus reverses all of that. Jesus takes away the long dark night of your
soul by filling you up with Light: The Light of His tender touch—His soothing
Word of forgiveness and acceptance. Everyone wants to belong, to have a home
that is warm and welcoming. Everyone needs food, water, clothes, and
shelter…everyone needs medicine for pain and balm for wounds…yes, but more than
all of these things everyone needs to be needed, to be embraced and kissed and
loved. The Light of Jesus’ face giving faith to receive His Grace is Your
Christ Mass.
As a plant, a sunflower for example, turns
towards the sun up in the sky, indeed, follows it during the course of the
day—turning to always receive its warming and growing rays of radiance, so too
the Christian, the brethren of Christ and children of the Father, turn by the
Holy Ghost to receive Jesus’ countenance through His Word and through His
Sacramental Word. The Word is always the
same: “I love you, I have made all things
well, come to me and have Peace—have Me!”
“And
the Word was made Flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory
of the only begotten of the Father, full of Grace and Truth.”
Come now and have Him dwell in you again: A
Blessed Christ Mass.
In The Name of
The Father and of The + Son and of the Holy Ghost.
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