The birthday of the head is also
the birthday of his body.
the birthday of his body.
God’s Son did not
disdain to become an infant. Although with the passing of the years he moved from
infancy to maturity, and although with the triumph of his passion and
resurrection all the actions of humility which he undertook for us were
finished, still today’s festival renews for us the holy childhood of Jesus born
of the Virgin Mary. In adoring the birth of our Savior, we find we are
celebrating the commencement of our own life, for the birth of Christ is the
source of life for the Christian people, and the birthday of the Head is the birthday
of the body.
Every individual
who is called has his own place in the body, even though all the sons of the Church are separated
from one another by intervals of time and place. Nevertheless, just as the entire body of
the faithful is born in the font of baptism, and crucified with Christ in his passion, and raised again in his resurrection, and placed at the Father’s right hand in his
ascension, so with Him are they born in this nativity.
For it is true
of any believer in whatever part of the world, that once he is reborn in Christ, he abandons the old paths of his original nature and passes into a new man, by
being born again. He is no longer counted as part of our earthly father’s stock, but rather among the offspring of the Savior, who became the Son of man in order that we might
have the power to be the sons of God.
Unless He
came down to us in this humiliation, no one could reach to his presence by any
merits of his own. The very
greatness of the gift conferred demands of us reverence worthy of its
splendor. For, as the blessed Apostle teaches: We have received not the spirit
of this world but the Spirit which is of God, that we may know the things which
are given us by God.
That Spirit can in no other way be rightly worshipped,
except by offering him that which we received from him. But in the
treasures of the Lord’s bounty, what can we find so suitable to the honor of
the present feast as the peace which at the Lord’s nativity was first
proclaimed by the angel-choir? For it is that
peace which brings forth the sons of God. That peace is the nurse of love and
the mother of unity, the rest of the blessed and our eternal home. That peace
has the special task of joining to God those whom it removes from the world.
Thus those that are
born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of
God, must offer to the Father the unanimity of peace-loving sons. And those that are adopted parts of the mystical Body of Christ must converge in the
First-Begotten of the new creation. He came to do not his own will but the will
of the one who sent him. Likewise, the Father in his gracious favor has
adopted as his heirs, not those that are discordant nor those that are unlike
him, but those that are one with him in feeling and in affection. Those who are
re-modelled after one pattern must have a spirit like the model.
The birthday of
the Lord is the birthday of peace, for as the Apostle says: He is our peace,
who made both one; because whether we are Jew or Gentile, through Him we have
access in one Spirit to the Father.
From a Sermon of St. Leo the Great,
Office of Readings, December 31
Office of Readings, December 31