Our Saviour, dearly-beloved, was born today: let us be glad. For there is no proper place for sadness, when we keep the birthday of the Life, which destroys the fear of mortality and brings to us the joy of promised eternity. No one is kept from sharing in this happiness. There is for all one common measure of joy, because as our Lord, the destroyer of sin and death, finds none free from the charge, so He comes to free us all. Let the saint exult in that he draws near to victory. Let the sinner be glad in that he is invited to being pardoned. Let the Gentile take courage in that he is called to life. For the Son of God in the fullness of time which the inscrutable depth of the Divine counsel has determined, has taken on Him the nature of man, thereby to reconcile it to its Author: in order that the inventor of death, the devil, might be conquered.

– St. Leo the Great, Sermon 21 on the Nativity of Christ

The universality of what is begun in Christ’s coming to our earth should give us all hope. He did not come only as the Messiah of the Jews, but also as the Christ Who invites all of us to life. He did not come only to give salvation and victory to the saint but also pardon and gladness to the sinner, transforming him into a saint.

The nature that the Son of God took upon Himself was the human nature, the one nature that we all share with each other and now, as God ordained, with Him as well. We therefore cannot do anything other than to look into one another’s eyes and see our common humanity, our brotherhood which we have had from our very creation. But even more than that, we look into one another’s eyes and see there the very image of God, the face of Jesus Christ according to Whom we were made from the beginning.

So let us love one another as He has loved us by His oneness with us. This is the spirit and the meaning of Christmas, that we set aside our selfishness and join as brothers and sisters in the warmth and love of our universal Savior Jesus. Christ is born! Glorify Him!

Yours in Christ,

Rt. Rev. Bishop THOMAS (Joseph)
Auxiliary Bishop, Diocese of Charleston, Oakland, and the Mid-Atlantic

Beloved in Christ,

Greetings in the name of our incarnate God and Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ!

Let us strive to comprehend the mystery. The reason God is in the flesh is to kill the death that lurks there. As diseases are cured by medicines and assimilated by the body, and as darkness in a house is dispelled by the coming of light, so death, which held sway over human nature, is done away with by the coming of God. And as ice formed on water covers its surface as long as night and darkness last but melts under the warmth of the sun, so death reigned until the coming of Christ; but when the grace of God our Saviour appeared and the Sun of Justice rose, death was swallowed up in victory, unable to bear the presence of true life. How great is God’s goodness, how deep his love for us!

– St. Basil the Great, Homily II on the Nativity of Christ

We rejoice in the coming of our God in the flesh precisely because He has come to do battle with death and to kill it. In these words of St. Basil, we see how great is the blessing and goodness of God to us, that He Himself would come and expel the darkness of our souls, cure the diseases that sicken our human nature, and set us on the path to resurrection. He Himself entered into humanity so that His power and love could conquer the corruption that had infected us.

This is why we celebrate Christmas. We are not only celebrating that God came to dwell among us. We are celebrating His coming because of what He came to do. He came to save us from death by destroying its power forever by uniting our humanity to His divinity. And so we will ever sing of His glory and His compassion for mankind.

Christ is born! Glorify Him!

Yours in Christ,

Rt. Rev. Bishop THOMAS (Joseph)
Auxiliary Bishop, Diocese of Charleston, Oakland, and the Mid-Atlantic