Prepared by Fr Djuro Krosnjar

Nativity Fast

The Church is preparing us once again for Her celebration and participation in the Mystery of the Feast of Christ’s Birth. This is a time for us to rejoice, for sadness has no place on the Birthday of Life Himself, for the fear of death has been fully destroyed, thus filling us with gladness because of our own promised immortality. No one is shut out from this Feast because we all share the same reason for rejoicing. Our Lord, Victor over sin and death, finding no man free from sin, came to free us all, each and every one.

Let the saint rejoice as he sees the palm of victory in his hand. Let the sinner rejoice as he receives the presentation of forgiveness. Let the Gentiles rejoice for they are called to Life. For the Son of God, in the fullness of time, has borrowed our flesh and taken for Himself the nature of our humanity, as the unfathomable Wisdom of God has decreed, in order to reconcile it with its Creator. He came to overthrow the devil, the origin of death, in that very same nature by which he, the devil, had previously overthrown mankind.

The contest that was undertaken by God for us was waged in accordance with a great and wondrous law of equity. For the Omnipotent God engaged in combat with His most bitter enemy, not in the strength of His own Majesty, but rather in our own human nature, our human infirmity. God confronted Satan with our very form, as well as with our nature, sharing our mortality, but free of all sin.

The Nativity of Christ is unlike our own, of which we read: For a mortal born of a woman is short-lived, and full of wrath. Or he falls like a flower that has bloomed; and he departs like a shadow, and cannot continue. Hast thou not taken account even of him, and caused him to enter into judgment before thee? For who shall be pure from sin (uncleanness)? Not even one; if even his life should be but one day upon the earth; and his months are numbered by him; thou hast appointed him for a time, he shall by no means exceed it. (Job 14: 1-5; LXX) In Christ’s Nativity, there is nothing of the concupiscence of the flesh, nothing has been transmitted or descended in this unique conception. Saint Leo went a step further and said that a royal Virgin of the House of David was chosen as the bearer of the Sacred Fruit and that she had conceived her divine and human Offspring in her soul before she conceived Him in her body.

The Virgin, the Theotokos, did not know the divine plan until she heard from the Archangel Gabriel that she would conceive by the Holy Spirit and bear a Son. She was not fearful; why should she be afraid of fruitfulness promised through the power of the Most Highest? The faith is confirmed by witnessing a miracle, and the Theotokos had witnessed a miracle in her cousin Elizabeth. Saints Zachariah and Elizabeth had given up looking for a child because of their age. Who, then, could doubt that He, Who had granted the barren to conceive, would likewise bestow, through His promise, the same to the Virgin?

The Word of God, therefore, God, the Son of God, Who was in the beginning with God, by Whom all things were made; and without (Whom) was not any thing made that was made (John 1 : 2-3), became Man, that He might free man from eternal death; bending down to take upon Himself our lowliness, without diminishing His own Divinity, so that remaining what He was and where He was, He took to Himself that which He was not, that He being in the form of God, and Who thought it not robbery to be equal with God (Philippians. 2:6), might thus link both natures perfectly so that the divine nature would not swallow up the human nature, nor would the human nature lessen the divine.

Preserving, therefore, the substance of both natures and uniting them in One Person, lowliness then is assumed by Majesty, corruptibility by Power, mortality by Immorality; and in order to sacrifice Himself for us, the inviolable Nature is united to our suffering one; and true God and true Man are together in the unity of One Lord. To heal and save us, the one Mediator of God and men, being both human and divine, suffered death by the one, and by the other, did rise from the dead. There are those who deny the Virgin Birth, but the Birth of our Salvation did not bring corruption to the Virgin, for the birth of Truth is the defense of virginity.

Such a birth befits Christ, the Power of God, and the Wisdom of God; whereby He would be joined to our lowliness, yet remain far above us in His divinity. If He were not true God, He could not bring us salvation; and if he were not true man, He could not offer us an example. At this news, the angels sing in exultation: Glory to God in the highest, and they proclaim: and on earth, peace, good will towards men, as they see the heavenly Jerusalem built from all the peoples of the earth. With what joy may we, the lowly, not rejoice in this ineffable work of God’s mercy and compassion, when the angels in heaven so greatly rejoice?

Let us, therefore, give thanks to God the Father, through his Son, in the Holy Spirit, Who because of His exceeding great love for us took compassion on us; Who, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved (Ephesians 2:5), so that in Him we might be His new creation, His new clay. Let us put off the old мan with his deeds (Colossians 3-9); for being made partakers of the Birth of Christ through our Baptism, let us renounce the deeds of the flesh.

At all times, remember the dignity that is yours, for you have been made a partaker of the Divine Nature. Do not, by an unworthy manner of living, fall back into a former life. Be mindful of Whose Body you are a member. Having been wrested from the powers of darkness, you are now translated into the Light and the Kingdom of God. By the Mystery of Holy Baptism, you have become the temple of the Holy Spirit. Keep your heart a fit dwelling place for the Holy Spirit and do not, by any false deed, drive out from you such a One dwelling within you and submit yourself once again to the bondage of sin, because your price was the Blood of Christ (I Corinthians 6:20); for in strictness shall He judge you, who in mercy He has redeemed, Who with the Father and Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth ever.