is to be married to human flesh. Behold a living human bush which the fire of divine childbirth did not consume. In Mary we see both handmaid and mother, maiden and heaven, the bridge to humankind. She has become the loom of our salvation and the Holy Spirit is the weaver, a powerful worker who overshadows her from on high. The wool the weaver takes is drawn from the ancient fleece of Adam, the warp the unsullied body of the Virgin, the shuttle the immeasurable grace of him who wove it, and the weft the Word who enters her through her ear.
Who ever saw, who ever heard of the infinite God dwelling in a human womb? Heaven cannot contain God, and yet a womb did not constrict him. He was born of woman, God but not solely God, and man but not solely man. Through this birth what was once the door of sin has been transformed into the gate of salvation. Through ears that disobeyed, the serpent once poured his deadly poison; now through ears that obeyed, the Word has entered to form a living temple. In the former case, Cain emerged as its fruit, the first pupil of sin; but with Mary, it was Christ the redeemer of our race, who has sprouted unsown into life. The merciful God was not repulsed by the labour pains of a woman; for the business in hand was life.
1 January
The Naming and Circumcision of Jesus
A Reading from a treatise On Contemplating God by William of St Thierry
O God, you alone are the Lord. To be ruled by you is for us salvation. For us to serve you is nothing else but to be saved by you!
But how is it that we are saved by you, O Lord, from whom salvation comes and whose blessing is upon your people, if it is not in receiving from you the gift of loving you and being loved by you? That, Lord, is why you willed that the Son of your right hand, the ‘man whom you made so strong for yourself’, should be called Jesus, that is to say, Saviour, ‘for he will save his people from their sins’. There is no other in whom is salvation except him who taught us to love himself when he first loved us, even to death on the cross. By loving us and holding us so dear he stirred us up to love himself, who first had loved us to the end.
You who first loved us did this, precisely this. You first loved us so that we might love you. And that was not because you needed to be loved by us, but because we could not be what you created us to be, except by loving you. Having then ‘in many ways and on various occasions spoken to our fathers by the prophets, now in these last days you have spoken to us in the Son’, your Word, by whom the heavens were established, and all the power of them by the breath of his mouth. For you to speak thus in your Son was an open declaration, a ‘setting in the sun’ as it were, of how much and in what sort of way you loved us, in that you spared not your own Son, but delivered him up for us all. Yes, and he himself loved us and gave himself for us.
This, Lord, is your word to us; this is your all-powerful message: he who, ‘while all things kept silence’ (that is, were in the depths of error), ‘came from the royal throne’, the stern opponent of error and the gentle apostle of love. And everything he did and everything he said on earth, even the insults, the spitting, the buffeting, the cross and the grave, all that was nothing but yourself speaking to us in the Son, appealing to us by your love, and stirring up our love for you.
alternative reading
A Reading from a sermon of Mark Frank
This name ‘which is above every name’ has all things in it, and brings all things with it. It speaks more in five letters than we can do in five thousand words. It speaks more in it than we can speak today: and yet we intend today to speak of nothing else, nothing but Jesus, nothing but Jesus.
Before his birth the angel announced that this child, born of Mary, would be great: ‘he shall be called Son of the Highest, and the Lord God shall give him the throne of his father David.’ The angel thus intimates that this was a name of the highest majesty and glory. And what can we say upon it, less than burst out with the psalmist into a holy exclamation, ‘O Lord our Governor, O Lord our Jesus, how excellent is thy name in all the world!’ It is all ‘clothed with majesty and honour’; it is ‘decked with light’; it comes riding to us ‘upon the wings of the wind’; the Holy Spirit breathes it full upon us, covering heaven and earth with its glory.
But it is a name of grace and mercy, as well as majesty and glory. For ‘there is no other name under heaven given by which we can be saved,’ but the name of Jesus. In his name we live, and in that name we die. As St Ambrose has written: ‘Jesus is all things to us if we will.’ Therefore I will have nothing else but him; and I have all if I have him.
The ‘looking unto Jesus’ which the apostle advises, will keep us from being weary or fainting under our crosses; for this name was set upon the cross over our Saviour’s head. This same Jesus at the end fixes and fastens all. The love of God in Jesus will never leave us, never forsake us; come what can, it sweetens all.
Is there any one sad? – let him take Jesus into his heart, and he will take heart presently, and his joy will return upon him. Is any one fallen into a sin? – let him call heartily upon this name, and it will raise him up. Is any one troubled with hardness of heart, or dullness of spirit, or dejection of mind, or drowsiness in doing well? – in the meditation of this name, Jesus, all vanish and fly away. Our days would look dark and heavy, which were not lightened with the name of the ‘Sun of Righteousness’; our nights but sad and dolesome, which we entered not with this sweet name, when we lay down without commending ourselves to God in it.
So then let us remember to begin and end all in Jesus. The New Testament, the covenant of our salvation, begins so, ‘the generation of Jesus’; and ‘Come Lord Jesus’, so it ends. May we all end so too, and when we are going hence, commend our spirits into his hands; and when he comes, may he receive them to sing praises and alleluias to his blessed name amidst the saints and angels in his glorious kingdom for ever.
2 January
A Reading from a sermon of Augustine
Who can know all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden in Christ and concealed in the poverty of his human flesh? ‘Though he was rich, yet for our sake he became poor, so that by his poverty we might become rich.’ When he made this mortal flesh his own and abolished death, he appeared among us in poverty; but he promised riches, riches that were only deferred – he did not lose riches that were taken from him.
How great is the abundance of his goodness which is stored up for those who fear him, which he brings to perfection in those who hope in him! Our knowledge now is partial until what is perfect is revealed. To make us fit to receive this gift, he who is equal to the Father in the form of God was made like us in the form of a slave, in order that we might be transformed into the likeness of God. The only Son of God was made Son of Man, and so the children of earth became the children of God. We were slaves, entranced by this visible form of a slave, and have now been set free and raised to the status of children so that we might see the form of God.
As Scripture says: ‘We are God’s children; it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.’ What are those treasures of wisdom and knowledge? What are those divine riches except that which will truly satisfy us? What is that abundance of goodness except that which fills us?
In the gospel, Philip says: ‘Show us the Father and we shall be satisfied.’ And in one of the psalms it is written: ‘I shall be filled when your glory is revealed.’ The Son and the Father are one: whoever sees the Son is seeing the Father also. So then, the Lord of hosts, the king of glory, will bring us home, and will show us his face. We shall be saved, we shall be filled, and we shall be satisfied.
Until this
