Christ Is Born! Receive Him! - Sermon for the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ (2025)

Who knows the inner meaning of this Feast? They alone who have experienced barrenness and deadness of soul and now feel pulsing within their very veins the life-giving energy of God Who dwells within them.

To taste life, we must experience death. To be thankful for sweetness, we must endure bitterness. To be conscious of spiritual exaltation, we must suffer humiliating and painful things. To feel the Fullness of the Godhead Bodily form His very self within us, we must feel the activity of our lawless passions, our weakness, and the temptations and thorns of the demons. To feel the freedom and growth of Christ which enlarges the heart and stills the soul, we must feel the suffocation of the passions and experience the stretching and straining of our spiritual muscles.

Have we even made a beginning? No? Let us strive to do so today. Let us never despair. If we were able to obtain goodness by our own power, God would not have come down to save us! Let us therefore endure His medicines and physician’s art of healing, even if He amputates or cauterizes.

For, our passions sometimes grow so close, so deep, and become second nature, that it takes a very long time for this tumor of sin to be cut out. The Lord could miraculously take it away, but it might kill us, we might feel great shock and our world would turn inside-out too quickly for us. For, all that we knew to be life and joy would be dissolved immediately and we would not be ready, nor trained, and we would have no time to adjust. The Lord could straightaway cut out all our passions and diseases of soul all at once, but we might bleed to death. We need a slow surgery, for our Lord knows the strength of our bodies and souls, the depths of the passions’ roots and our ability to work with Him.

Moreover, we must endure the bitterness of healing and the helplessness that we experience amidst our sins and evil habits. For, if we endure trials and afflictions, a much greater capacity will be hollowed out in our hearts, and therefore a much greater reception of grace will be able to fill them, and then a much greater joy of conscious thankfulness to our Physician, and an accordant amount of humility of mind, will be ours.

We must feel our spiritual barrenness before we can rejoice in the filling up of our soul with grace. We must feel the deadness of the womb of our soul before we can be assured of its spiritual pregnancy. We must be aware of our interior helplessness before we experience the Christ forming Himself within us—He Who is Power, Wisdom, Life Itself.

We must go through sorrow and trial and travail of soul before we can give birth in Christ to the new man hidden in Christ who shall come alive in us by the grace of Christ. When this new man is born and raised up in our souls, all our former sorrow will be swallowed up and forgotten. Only the consciousness of joy and delight in God will be present. The only memory of our sorrows will be a faint feeling of their passed existence as something from very long ago. Our new-found freedom will appear all the more marvelous in comparison. A humble thankfulness will well up within us because we know Who indeed has saved us and from what.

Christ is born today, and our souls are reborn!

Christ is born, and the world is made new!

Christ is born, and the emptiness and barrenness of human nature is over-filled with the grace and life of the Godhead!

Christ has formed Himself within us!

Christ has given growth and increase to His very Person in our hearts!

Christ has brought to fruition the spiritual labors of the Fast which we have offered, poor though they may be!

Christ has planted His Kingdom on earth!

Christ is born! God is made man! Heaven is open! Angels sing with shepherds! Irrational beasts bow down before the Mind and Reason of all! Earth is made heaven! Men become God! The Virgin becomes a mother! The Virgin is virgin still! Our barren soul is filled with spiritual fruit! Our once deadened souls now rejoice in unspeakable delight!

Christ bowed down the heavens and came down. Let us then bow ourselves down in body and soul and cry out: Christ comes from the heavens! Receive Him, O my soul!

How do we receive Him? How do we make an abode worthy for Him in our hearts? He has told us, and before doing so He has already done it: become a little child, and the Kingdom is yours. And what is the Kingdom? It is Christ the King enthroned and ruling. Ruling where? In His household, in His temple. And this is where? In our very bodies and souls, all of us individually and collectively knit together in His Spirit.

Become a little child and this is yours. Become simple, unaffected by vainglory and hypocrisy. Cut out judgment, complaining, wrath, and vengefulness. Receive all with a most pure smile. Cry out to the Father when you are in need. Embrace Him when you are full and protected. When in danger, tug at the hem of His garment. When fallen, cry out, and before you do, He will exalt you. His eyes are filled with watchful care, anticipating your folly and waywardness, and before you wander too far, He has prevented you and saved you. Cling to the Father through the name of the Only Rightful Son, Sweetest Jesus, and you will be engrafted within the Family of heaven by the grace of adoption.

Weep a few tears if you can! If you can’t, then fall down on your face before your icons and confess the wretchedness of your heart. If you are closed up, shut fast like a sealed tomb, then humbly admit it, and you will see the evil dissolved, the darkness banished, the light shining, the joy renewed, the purity of God cleansing every fiber of your soul. If not immediately, then sometime later when God knows best.

Christ is born! Let us fall down and weep before Him Who has created us! Let us beg for a new beginning! For, He receives the humble. He receives the repentant. He receives those who are sick and bound and sinful, in need of a Healer, as long as they admit that this is so!

He does not need the healthy! He does not need the righteous! He does not need your intelligence! He does not need your cleverness! He does not need your strength! He does not need your skill! He does not need the self-reliant! He does not need the proud and self-assured! He does not need the self-sufficient!

He needs—no! more than this—He wants, He desires, He yearns for, He thirsts for the weak, the ignorant, the honest, those who confess their own uselessness while confessing His mercy, love, and power. He desires those who do not hope in their own wisdom and strength! He desires children—children in heart, children regarding malice, children who are fully dependent on the Father and Life of all, children who cry out simple prayers, begging help at every moment! Receive Christ like this, and the Kingdom is yours.

Christ is born! Offer Him an un-despisable contrite heart!

Christ is born! Worship Him with the sacrifice of praise and joy!

Christ is born! God is with us! Understand, O ye nations, for God is with us! He is not with you!

What are these nations? The demons, and the passions and sins they effect within us. God is with us, the lowly and afflicted. God is with us, and not with the demons. God is ready to empower us, and He does everything to slay the demons, deflate passions, and cut out sin.

If again the demons, passions, and sins strengthen themselves within us, again they shall be vanquished, for God is with us!

Understand, O unbelieving nations—that is, doubtful thoughts of our own souls—understand that God is with us more than we ourselves are.

He is closer to us than we are to ourselves!

He loves us far more than we love our own selves!

He desires to save us far more than we desire salvation from Him!

Let us fall down and worship Him with the Magi!

The Magi were pagans, star-worshippers, idolaters!

Let us who love and worship the idols of our own passions be converted with them and learn how to worship Truth Himself!

They saw a Babe, but fell down before God Incarnate!

They saw a Virgin, but venerated a miraculous birth!

They offered earthly gifts, but expected divine blessings in return!

Do you have only a feeble sigh? Offer it to Him Who desires to overfill you with His Spirit.

Do you have only an ounce of heartfelt contrition? Offer it to Him Who is able to set aflame your entire spirit, soul, and body!

Do you have only one small tear drop born of human effort? Offer it to Him Who is an Ocean of divine grace and able to undam the floodgates of your heart!

Do you have only a half-dead impulse of faith which seeks to fly away from this world of sin? Confess it to the Word of God Who is able to interpret your heart’s condition to His Transcendent Father, the Father Who desires to dwell within your tiny heart together with His Only-Begotten Son and His All-Holy, Good, and Life-Creating Spirit, always now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen!

Christ is born!