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EPIPHANY, January 6, 2008

 Lessons: Isaiah 49:1-7; Ephesians 3:1-12; St Matthew 2:1-12

Hymns:  53 Salzburg Offertory:  Choir Anthem    Comm.  48 Stuttgart  52 Dix

            Sacred gifts of mystic meaning: Incense doth their God disclose,

            Gold the King of kings proclaimeth, Myrrh his sepulcher foreshows. 

There had to be more to it than I’d supposed.  – Then I found the very same thought in St Irenaeus, ca. 180AD! -- St Irenaeus knew St Polycarp of Smyrna, a disciple of St John!  This theology of the three gifts had to be original, apostolic, not a mere pageant gimmick.

Our images of Epiphany, ~ arrival of the Magi, &c, bear a good deal of freight from the Old Testament.  St Matthew, who wrote largely for Jewish-Christian readers, emphasizes that gentiles had come to honor the new-born Messiah of Israel.  Contrast this to St Luke, who wrote largely for Gentile-Christian readers: Luke emphasizes the Jewishness of Jesus; the poor shepherds, the lowest class of Jewish society, are among the witnesses he mentions.

     St Matthew doesn’t call them ‘kings’, give their number, or origin.  He just calls the foreign visitors ‘magoi’ – literally, a class of astronomers, originally Persian. {It’s from this class we get the word “magic”.}  The mosaic in Bethlehem¹ showed them dressed as Persians, so when the Persians invaded the Holy Land in 614, destroying churches, they recognized their countrymen & left the Church of the Nativity intact.  The distinctive garb was the leggings, for only the Persians had figured out how to tailor them – a garment called in Persian ‘pay-jamah.’  What magoi were famous for, of course, was astrology, which is forbidden in Judaism – & in Christianity.  So the KJV translated them as “wise mén”, to avoid the taint of prohibited activity.  Why are the Magi depicted, then, as kings? 

Look at our lesson from the OT today.  It is from a “Servant Poem” of 2^nd Isaiah.  It speaks prophetically of Jesus’ miraculous birth, & how He will be ‘a light to the gentiles’ (the goyim) – but then, despised; yet, “Kings shall see & arise; princes, & they shall prostrate themselves…” [Is 49:7]  -- Prostrate is exactly what St Matthew said the magi did before Mary & Jesus!  They knelt down, then touched their heads to the ground.  ~ How Very Oriental!  But there is much more.  Ps. 72:11 spoke of a just king, after David:  “All kings shall fall down before him; * all nations [read: goyim, gentiles] shall do him service.”  “Unto Him shall be given of the gold of Arabia; prayer shall be made ever unto him, & daily shall he be praised.”[v. 15]  “The kings of Tarshish [i.e., Spain] & of the isles shall give presents; the kings of Arabia & Saba [i.e., Ethiopia] shall bring gifts.”[v. 10].    We can see how the international imagery congregates.  Another passage from Isaiah 60 says, “All nations shall come to thy light, & kings to the brightness of thy rising [~ star!]… the wealth of the goyim shall come to thee.  A multitude of camels shall cover thee, the young camels of Midian & Ephah; all those from Sheba shall come.” [This is where the camels get their stage cue.] “They shall bring gold & frankincense, & shall proclaim the praise of the LORD.” [3, 5b-6]  -- In light of this prophecy, Myrrh was something of a surprise.  (It is meant to surprise us in the Gospel, too! – That means, we’re supposed to know our Old Testament thoroughly.  – So, to some, I say, Get Busy!)

What we see, now, is that the prophecies add a depth of meaning to the events of our Lord’s Nativity.  Even the very first Christians knew that Christ had come for all the world, for the goyim as well as the Yehudim.  The first Christian generation did not yet see all kings, or all nations falling down before Christ, but they knew that day would come!  It might seem far off, in face of persecution; but they trusted God to fulfill all they had already seen in JESUS.  They knew ‘the Rest of the Story.’  The vision of prostrate kings before the Infant Jesus is a Prophetic Statement.  To some degree, it has been fulfilled, as nations became Christian, & their kings worshipped Christ.  There is further fulfillment to come.   It is not ‘fanciful imagination’ to hold fast to what God has shown through His prophets.  There is truth here that academics [or Druids] cannot debate.

Then I found, to my dismay, that an error had crept into We Three Kings.  How it got there, I do not know.  Look at your Hymnal, #51, v. 3, about the Incense:  Melchior sings:                            

 “Frankincense to offer have I; Incense owns a Deity nigh:

Prayer and praising, All men raising,

Worship him, God on high.”

The pronoun “Him” refers, despite failure to capitalize, obviously to JESUS.  Yet at the moment Melchior is making his offering, Jesus is right before him!  He is not “on high” just then, but truly “nigh”.

So the Oxford Book of Carols does its theology better than the 1940 Hymnal:

                            “Worship Him, God MOST high.”

And that is the statement Epiphany is making about JESUS!  HE is the “Deity nigh”!

Why can’t Unitarians get this?  They made a stab, too, at another favorite Epiphany hymn, I found, -- because my parish in England was using the English Hymnal, which didn’t tamper with texts:  The original version of “As with gladness men of old..” (#52) reads, at the end of the first stanza,

            “So most gracious GOD may we / Evermore be led to thee!” 

(i.e., to JESUS!)

(Arian heretics, --& 1940 editors,-- were okay with calling Jesus ‘Lord’, -- but not GOD.)  (One day, we shall have to undertake a sensible & sound hymnal correction.)

To be Christians, we must first of all believe rightly about Jesus Christ.  Epiphany presents Him to us as King (receiving the gift of gold).  It presents Him to us as God (receiving the gift of frankincense).  Then it presents Him to us as mortal (receiving the gift of myrrh, used in burial); we know that this points to His death on the Cross ~ as Sacrifice.  This is just what the carol, We Three Kings intends to teach us.  Though we are not singing it today, I commend it to you (--as amended!) for your meditation.

Today, we can join the Magi in worshipping Him, giving Him our costly devotion.  Or ~ we could hold back, if we chose, doubting, disputing details, denying His Deity, objecting to His rightful rule as King over us, quibbling that we didn’t really need a self-sacrificing Savior.  We ~could~ be like Herod, rejecting every claim of God on our life.  But a true Christian cannot withhold giving whole-heartedly.  To know Christ Jesus truly draws us to be more like Him, to honor Him for Who He Is, to give freely to Him. 

Those who worshipped the stars were taught by a star to worship their Creator, ~ even in His crib.  We have no need of Astrology, that attempt to out-guess God, or deny the responsibility of our human wills.  But we know God has provided us what we truly need in Christ JESUS – our King & God & Savior, by Sacrifice.

Honoring Christ as King, we set our hearts & minds to know & to do His will, surrender our willfulness, tame our wayward thoughts & habits.

Honoring Christ as God, we adore Him alone, & set our priority on His worship.

            [O, come, let us adore Him: --  Adore means ‘give divine worship to’.  The devil has worked hard to drain the word of meaning; we can’t adore someone’s new mauve sweater, or someone’s flashy car, or new baby – other than JESUS!]

Honoring Christ as the Savior who sacrificed Himself for us, & for the whole world, we acknowledge our own sinfulness & our need for the Savior; we devote sacrificially from our possessions for the spread of His Gospel to the world.  We look for those around us who need to know Him as we have come to know Him.

¹  This Bethlehem mosaic was destroyed by the Muslims, but is probably faithfully represented by mosaics in Ravenna, Italy, picturing the adoration of the Magi.  The Ravenna mosaic predates the Persian or Arab invasions of the Holy Land.

CHRISTMAS I            December 30, 2007 Sixth Day of Christmas

Lessons:                  Isaiah 9: 2-7     Galatians 4:1-7  St Matthew 1:18-25  Hymns:   30 First Nowell  Offertory:     321 Margaret                    40 God rest ye merry 

 If you look in your Prayer Book, you will see that January 1 is marked as the Feast of the Circumcision.  I was present in Seattle in 1967, at a General Contention of the Episcopal Church, when a lay deputy proposed changing the name of that day from ‘Circumcision’ to “The Feast of New Year’s”.  Obviously, a profound & blushing embarrassment moved the poor deputy.  He certainly hadn’t studied his Bible very well.  (Most Episcopalians didn’t, -- which is why they wound up in so much trouble.)

But a certain blush appears elsewhere, too, as other titles have been substituted – ‘The Feast of Mary, the Mother of God’ – good in itself, but shy of the mark; & even “Holy Name of JESUS” – good in itself, but shy of the whole truth, deliberately, deceptively dodging Jesus’ male-ness [so gnostics could substitute some androgynous myth more to their liking]. 

Biblical Christians appreciate the reality of Christ’s birth.  It was a very ‘earthy’ event – in a dank cave.  His wee, damp body was wrapped in swaddling cloth, just like any baby today.  After the snug compartment of the womb, babies appreciate the tight wrap; it makes them feel more secure in their first days ‘out’.  {My dad was amazed when Elizabeth was presented to him, swaddled, in her first hour after birth.  It was the closest he’d been to any birth, since his own!  He thought swaddling was something just done ‘in old time.’}  Jesus is layed in a feed-trough, handy in a stable.  [Too many kids think a manger is just a normal place to put a baby.]  There need be no academic dispute over this: An ox or ass probably was close by; it was their feed-trough, after all.  And as Isaiah said, “They knew their Master’s crib.”  Isaiah meant a feed-trough, not a bed.  And why should this be?  He Who was born of Mary is indeed ‘the Bread of Heaven’ from all Eternity.  He is born at Bayt-Lehem, literally the ‘House of Bread’.  He is wrapped – in a bread-wrapper, & layed in a feed-trough, to tell us that He comes to feed US.  That’s why Christmas without Communion spurns GOD’s Gift!  Luke reminds us, on His 8^th Day, like any Jewish boy, He was circumcised. Thus He sheds His precious Blood to fulfill the Covenant of Abraham.  He comes to fulfill the Law & the Prophets.  In this, He is our model.  So on Jan. 1, we put our civil ‘new year’ under the Sacred Name of JESUS, & under His Blood.  [Join us for a candlelight midnight Mass tomorrow, starting @ 11:30pm.]

When God asks us to make a sacrificial offering to Him, He asks that we give Him ‘something of ourselves.’  That may even hurt.  (If it doesn’t phase us, we are probably holding back on God.)  But what He asks is always something we can ‘afford to lose’ to Him.  And when we give what is of worth to us, He blesses & consecrates.  “Give, & it shall be given unto you…” [Lk 6:38]

The whole story of Christmas is giving.  God so loved the world that He gave. [Jn 3:16] 

If we love God, we, too, give.  Learning to give is learning to be godly.

I want to illustrate this in a true story.  A missionary to an unreached people in New Guinea made his way through miles of swamps to a small tribe that had never seen a white man.  He built a small hut outside their village & began to cultivate their company.  After a while, he got one of the men to begin teaching him their language.  He carefully made notes.  It was a long, hard process.  Eventually, he felt he knew enough vocabulary & grammar to tell them the story of Jesus.  He gathered the men together.

He told them of the loving God, the Father, who sent His Son to be born miraculously of a Virgin Mother.  He told of His growth, His baptism, His teaching and healing ministry.  He told of His raising Lazarus, & His triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  (They had never seen a city of any kind.)  He told them about Jesus’ Seder in the Upper Room.  (They had never seen a hut with two floor levels.)  Then he told them about Judas & the night-time betrayal in the Garden.

The New Guinea men roared with laughter!  They thought this was the high point of his story!  They were delighted!

You see, in their culture, cultivation of the friendship of someone from another tribe was considered an art of great cunning.  When the other finally trusted completely, then he was savagely killed, -- to warn the other tribe to keep its distance!

The missionary felt he’d failed completely, & could never make this savage people, barely out of cannibalism, understand the Gospel.  He cried to God, wanting to abandon this project as hopeless.  God told him to stay:  He loved even these.

Heart-sick, the missionary kept at his labor, seeking a key to this cruel, alien, war-riven, deceitful culture that seemed so hard-hearted as to glory in betrayal.  His translator worked on with him.

Then a notable event occurred.  Another tribe’s chief came to the village with a gift:  It was his own son.  He presented his new baby boy to the chief of this village.  This, the man learned, was called “a Peace Child”.  The local chief would raise this boy as his own, & peace would grow, as the child grew, between the two hostile tribes.

At last, here was the key. The missionary could see: JESUS is the Father’s Peace Child.  He is the gift, freely given, to establish peace between heaven & earth, between God & all our fallen, sinful, savage race.  NOW he could tell the story of the Incarnate Savior, the Baby of Bethlehem.

Today, that tribe is profoundly Christian, & has sent missionaries -- & martyrs-- to many other New Guinea tribes.  They rejoice in the Gospel of the Peace Child.  When I was still there, another Abp of Canterbury paid a visit to New Guinea, to bless a cornerstone for a new church there.  The picture made the front of the London Times:  There was the Abp in cope & mitre, with the Senior Warden of the church – decked with exotic feathers, a great, curled boar’s tusk through his nose, & incense wafting skyward.

Everyone who has ever come into this world (we are assured in Scripture) has some inkling of ‘the Light that lighteneth’ all [Jn 1:9].  The gift of Christmas is the Child destined for Betrayal & the Cross.  By willingly shedding His Own Blood, His Own Life, He makes His Way.  From this point forward, He walks the Way of the Cross.  He bids us join Him.  He wants His story told.  Each of us knows at least a time or two when we have betrayed Him, yet He returns with love.  Share your love of Christ with someone, tell His story, & you will know His Presence.  This is the Way of Glory.

CHRISTMAS DAY, December 25, 2007

Lessons: Micah 4:1-5, 5:2-4, Hebrews 1:1-14, St John 1:1-14

Hymns:     12 Adeste, Fideles     Post-Comm:     42 Gloria,   319 Handel: Antioch

 “Political correctness” has become a strident theme in our day, with officious, bullying advocates.  The attacks upon Christmas are well known.  Too many Christians have been cowed into behaving as if they can no longer express ‘Merry Christmas’ to people they encounter, whether friends, or strangers.  Well, just remember, the message of the angels of God is first, “Fear Not!”  [This command occurs 365 times in the Bible – surely no accident!]

There are Twelve Days of Christmas, beginning today, & you may continue to wish people Merry Christmas still!  It’s a great occasion, when they act surprised that you are still saying it, to tell them about how the Partridge & the Pear Tree are really symbols of Christ & His Cross, & how ‘our True Love’ is God the Father, Who gives us that Greatest of all Gifts on Christmas Day.  [I developed this further in a sermon Advent III.]

 But attacks on Christmas are not new.  There have been allegations for centuries that Christmas Day was merely a baptized version of the Roman Saturnalia.  In Cromwell’s day, English Christians were forbidden by law from celebrating what the snarling, so-called Puritans labeled “the Pope’s Massing Day”.  The English were obliged to keep it as a fasting day instead, -- or be fined 5 shillings! [big money then!]  The Puritan Thought-Police must have made many a raid on private homes.  Humbuggery seems to have been a particularly Puritan affliction, modeled so well for us by Scrooge.

 One of the problems with the so-called Puritans is that they were running around with a sawed-off Bible:  Theirs had no Apocrypha.  [When the King James Bible was published, the Archbishop imposed a year in prison on any printer who published the sawed-off version!]  In the Apocrypha is the genuine history of the Maccabees, who fought the paganization of Jerusalem in 167BC; they reclaimed the Temple & purified it, establishing the feast of Hanukkah, in 165.  This is on the 25^th day of the Winter month.  [‘Apocrypha’ does NOT mean ‘fiction’ – that is a false calumny.  We should never use the word that way, or allow it in our hearing.]  Hanukkah, as you know, is a feast of Lights.  It is a feast that Jesus kept; I think for special reason.  Translating the Hebrew lunar month, Khislev, to the Roman calendar’s solar month, December, was a natural thing to do.  This occurred even before Constantine became a Christian, well before 300.  St Clement of Alexandria mentions it, just 100 years after St John died.  It was gradually adopted by almost all Christians.

 Turning back to Moses, & to the least read of his books, Leviticus, we come to Ch. 23.  This gives us the Hebrew Calendar Year.  It sets out the lunar dating for seven feasts, beginning with Passover, on the 14^th day of the first month.  This leads to the feast of Unleavened Bread, marked the next morning, & the Feast of First-Fruits, on the Sunday in that week:  Three feasts.  50 days later, is the Feast of Weeks, known to us as Pente-cost.  A long summer season passes, until the beginning of the 7^th month, when the Feast of Trumpets is the first day.  [In Babylon, this was the new year, so that got layed on top of the older Hebrew Calendar.]  Ten days later is Yom Kippur, the day of Atonement, with ancient offering of blood for sin, as God decreed.  Then comes a week-long feast of rejoicing, Tabernacles, when they are supposed to live outside in booths, in the open air, & eat their meals “under a thousand stars.”  -- Seven feasts revealed to Moses.

 I won’t now go into full detail, but each of the feasts has a symbol.  For instance, not everyone could come to Jerusalem in the days of the Temple, to have a lamb for Passover night; so those who could not come still had to ‘offer a life.’ – An egg was the simplest form of a whole life.  Planting Seed was the symbol of the Week of Unleavened Bread.

 ‘It happens’ that each of these symbols, in order & spacing, traces out the course of human gestation.  The details of infant development, microscopic in their early details, could not possibly have been known in Moses’ day, or until relatively recent time.

But we now know that the baby is developing steadily, from conception onward.  When the baby reaches 7 months, all the sensory systems are complete & functional, but the only sense that works from within the womb is – hearing:  The Feast of Trumpets!  Shortly afterward, the blood-circulatory system is finished, coinciding with Yom Kippur, if you will, & then the lungs are ready for air, at about time for ‘Tabernacles’.

 Now add the eighth feast of Judaism, Hanukkah, the week-long Feast of Lights, not kept in Moses’ day, it falls nine months from the beginning of our cycle.  It is the point at which a baby first ‘sees the light’… [Not all babies come on their ‘due date’.]

This completion is hardly by chance.  It is Providential:  The ideal course of human gestation retraces the Eternal Pattern set, in time, in our Lord’s Own life.

There is historical reason [we know, for instance, when the priestly clan of Abijah served in the Temple – early September] to believe that the Annunciation to our Lady took place in the Spring, -- perhaps even at Passover.  That is the true Feast of Our Lord’s Incarnation.

Nine months later, we are celebrating His Nativity today.  His development in her womb traced this course.  And so, we may estimate that He Himself was born at Hanukkah, the Eighth Feast.

 To me, this shows the marvelous Providence of God.  It echoes the very words we hear every Sunday in the Last Gospel – today, the Gospel of this Mass:

“In Him was Life, & the Life was the Light of men… That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.”

Every baby, in the womb, follows the ideal, eternal pattern of our Lord, begotten of the Father before all ages.  Every baby is made by God in order to know Jesus!

 We know that there is nothing in all creation that is not made by Christ, the Eternal Word.  The earth itself follows His design.  The darkness of winter, & the “rebirth of light” that so fascinated the pagan world, was a sign from the Creator of All.  If Romans celebrated this, it was because they caught a glimpse of the Eternal.  As Scripture says,

“He has not left himself without witness.”  [Acts 4:17]   If German pagans celebrated the evergreen tree as proof that harsh winter could not snuff out life, they perceived a truth of God, however imperfectly.  If the ancients worshipped stars, & carefully traced their courses, the Magi were then taught by a star to worship the Maker of stars.

 The Lord Jesus comes, the Dayspring from on high, to reveal Truth long sought by prophets & sages of all nations.  The truth He teaches is by revelation; it does not come by mere rational search & discovery; but Creation points to it in many different ways.  We rejoice that God chose to make Himself known, the Invisible God became one of us in Christ, that He might demonstrate the way of Life & Peace. 

 This 3^rd Mass of Christmas Day celebrates the Birth of Jesus in the hearts of believers, as well as the Eternal Sonship of the Word-made-flesh.  Let the God of the Universe empower you to be His witness.  Creation points to Him, its Creator.  Every time we hear this in the ‘Last Gospel’, let it remind us how He came to be among us, to empower us.

We are NOT powerless.  We are not confounded by the strident screeching of Political Correctness, or the nastiness of those who accuse us of adopting mere pagan practices.

The Truth is mighty & will prevail.  God will bless us when we witness to His glorious Coming as our humble Redeemer.  Do not hide the Light from those in darkness.  Let them see Christ in you, the Hope of Glory.  Speak a word in season to glorify Him.  And He will glorify you.  Be bold!  Wish them all a ‘Merry Christmas!’

ADVENT III: Rose Sunday / O Sapientia    December 16, 2007

St Mary of the Angels, Hollywood                                                                          

Lessons: Isaiah 35: [1-10]  I Corinthians 4: 1-5     St Matthew 11:2-10

Hymns:     Pro.  2  Veni, Emmanuel, Off.  4  Greenland, Rec. 9  Merton

I didn’t understand this until I’d lived in England:

There the warm season isn’t long enough to ripen pears, if the tree stands in an orchard.  So the tree is planted in an enclosed garden, right against a south-facing brick wall.  The bricks absorb heat all day, & radiate it back at night, ripening the pears.  (Even tomatoes depend on night-time temperatures to ripen; this is why we are sometimes left with green tomatoes on the vine, even with warm autumn days.)  To maximize fruiting, the pear limbs are trained on a trellis; thus the Pear Tree takes on the shape of the Holy Cross.  [St Peter often speaks of Jesus being crucified “on a tree” (Acts 5:30; 10:39; IPt2:24).]  The branches then hang with the “fruit of immortality” (represented by the pears), the very Body of Christ.  Partridges will feign injury in order to decoy a predator away from the nestlings, & even risk death for their young; so Christ draws Satan after Himself, & away from us, even to His Own death, that we might live:  “The Partridge in the Pear Tree” -- Christ Crucified -- is God’s greatest gift.  This is how God offers us the Fruit of the Tree of Life:  Christ Himself in His Blessèd Sacrament.  – Opportunity will come: Share this insight with someone this week.

So we count the 12 days, beginning Christmas Day – to January 5^th, the Twelfth Day; Epiphany starts a new season.

Advent season was originally, like Lent, a preparation for baptisms, -- at Epiphany. In Egypt, the great Nile was shown to be inferior to the Jordan!  This Third Sunday, Rose Sunday, was the midpoint, just as is Rose Sunday in Lent.  It was the day when those to be baptized were officially presented as Candidates, & specially prayed for.  Mother Church rejoiced in their coming near to New Birth.  So our Gospel today features St John Baptist.  The Mass text to day is marked with “Rejoice!” [hence the refrain in Veni Emmanu-El]; & its color, is not penitential purple, but rose.  This practice in fact pre-dates the keeping of Christmas Day [12/25]; so when Christmas was inserted, changes were made.

But how do we find ourselves in these days?  Rushing like the rest of the horde of lemmings, plunging into the down escalator at the Galleria?  Stalled in lines of left-turning traffic, stuck by an unyielding stream of ‘steelhead’ swimming the other way?  Steaming behind our wheel?  Running from shop to shop, or frustrated by the clog on our computer voyage into Consumer Space?  Busy with this task & that, anxious that if we don’t get X or Y done, our ideal Christmas won’t happen?  Ah, the maelstrom at Nordstrom’s! --  In this whirlwind season, we can get the Joy sucked right out of us!

My sister says, “If the devil can’t make us bad, he’ll make us busy!” – and don’t we know it!

The truth is, we need to be on our knees to approach Christ, & His Birth!  Holy Church urges us to keep Advent, & approach Christmas in joyful quiet, reverently, penitently.  Today we move into Late Advent, with its special character, to help us prepare properly.  -- It is very practical!  Hear me out.  Listen!

December 16^th is marked in the English Prayer Book Calendar as “O Sapientia” – “O Wisdom” – the first of the “Great O-s”.  [The rest are implied.]  These are the Antiphons sung before & after Magnificat at Vespers.  They celebrate, one by one, the O. T. prophecies of Christ.  We know them as versified in, “O come, O come, Emmanu-El.”  Each verse is the antiphon of a different day {O Emmanuel was originally next to last.  Alas, the 1940 Hymnal left one out – the one that celebrates His birth from the Virgin!  Hmm!}  It is tonight, also, that Las Posadas begin in Mexico, re-enacting the search by St Joseph & the Blessèd Virgin for housing.  Missionaries encountered an Aztec winter festival of going from house to house, which they adapted to this existing Christian observance.

Here at St Mary’s these are marked by the profoundly moving weekday Rorate Masses, before dawn.  These, in candlelight, give us quiet time – on our knees – to dwell on the awesome Mystery of the Incarnation, in which the Blessèd Virgin coöperated with the Holy Spirit in the fulfillment of God’s Eternal Plan of Redemption.  She is our model.  I invite you to incorporate these into your Advent devotions.  “Be still, & know the Lord!”

But count the days:  Any child can tell you:  It is Nine days to Christmas.  ~ Why Nine?  This is clearly a Novena.

That should always make us think of the First Novena – the one kept by the 1^st Apostles & the 120 men, women, & children with them, in the Upper Room between our Lord’s Ascension & the Day of Pentecost.  A Novena is nine days of intense & focused corporate prayer.  People pledge to one another their own steadfastness in the joint work of prayer, often adopting a particular cóllect as a uniting element among them [like the one for the Advent Season]. 

The Lord’s Resurrection is, of course, the principal Feast for Christians, followed by Pentecost.  So, having a Novena before Christmas makes it a kind of ‘little Pentecost’.  Do you think that odd?  Look at the Christmas Cóllect:

[Almighty God, Who hast given us thy only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him, & as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin: Grant that we being regenerate, & made thy children by adoption & grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who liveth, & reigneth with thee & the same Spirit ever, one God, world without end.  AMEN.]

 It speaks of us as ‘made [God’s] children by adoption & grace’ (as contrasted with Jesus, Who is God the Son, by Divine Nature).  It speaks of us being ‘regenerate’ – re-born by grace; & it asks that we be ‘daily renewed by [the] Holy Spirit’.   Grace means gift.

If you detect an echo from the Confirmations of last Sunday, you are right:  The Bishop prays: Defend, O Lord, this thy Child with thy heavenly grace; that he may continue thine for ever; & daily increase in thy Holy Spirit more & more, until he come unto thy everlasting kingdom.  Amen.

If we “get it” about Christmas, The Gift we are getting in Christ is His abiding Spirit, to dwell in us.  The Fruit of the Cross that Christ bestows is His Life in us, the Presence of the Holy Spirit.  [Of all the Presents we need at Christmas, this Presence is the best!]  Are we ready?  St John Baptist preaches to us the way of readiness:  the Way of Repentance.  It is not by running & racing that we prepare for the Feast, but by quiet & stillness.  The devil wants us to wear out, at frantic pace, so we will be exhausted by Christmas – & pack up the dry tree & toss it out Christmas afternoon, tired of the carols, bored by the bright lights, deflated because we didn’t get what we wanted.  But let’s take another way to the Manger, & proceed upon our knees:   Find our way to confession & peace, opening our hearts to Him Who Comes ‘to love us so dearly.’

Christopher Smart, in 18^th C. England, was so in tune with God that his contemporaries locked him in an asylum:  Look at his hymns, 314 & 320, & tell me who was crazy!

“O the magnitude of meekness!

Worth from worth immortal sprung;

O the strength of infant weakness,

If Eternal is so young! ...” 

With awe, let us all be so crazy, --for God

I bid you join in a corporate, daily, focused effort of prayer, to the intent that we all be “daily re-newed by the Holy Spirit.”  That is God’s Will for us, to know Him in us alway.