By. St. Nikolai Velimirovic, from “Homilies, vol. I, ”
Lazarica Press, Birmingham (1996), pp. 13-23.
Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When
as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was
found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph her husband, being a just man,
and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily.
But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared
unto him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto
thee Mary thy wife; for that ivhich is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.
And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he
shall save his people from their sins. "Now all this was done, that it
might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold,
a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call
his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. Then Joseph being
raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto
him his wife: And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son;
and he called his name Jesus.
[Mt 1:18-25]
He who, in obedience and humility, draws near to the
Lord Jesus Christ will never again desire to be separated from Him.
The first exercise for a recruit in Christ’s army is practice
in obedience and humility. Ihe new world, the new creation, the
new man: all began with obedience and humility. The
old world trod obedience to God underfoot, together with humility towards Him,
and by this destroyed the bridge linking earth and heaven. The spiritual
materials for the rebuilding of this bridge are, before all else, obedience and
humility.
While Adam was rich in obedience and humility, it was
hardly possible to differentiate between his spirit and the Spirit of God,
between his will and thoughts and those of God. He could feel, desire or think
nothing that was not in God and of God. As the angels of God stood in the full
presence of God, so did Adam (in a direct closeness), and from this closeness
gazed on the Source of light, wisdom and love. He had no need to light a candle
of his own, living as he did in the Sun Itself. His candle would, in the light
of that Sun, neither have burned nor given light.
But when Adam violated obedience and lost humility—and
those two are always gained or lost together—then his direct communication with
God was cut off, the bridge was demolished and he fell into a fearsome,
stagnant darkness, in which he had to light himself with his own candle, the
candle that the mercy of God had given him when God’s righteousness drove him
out of Paradise. He then began not only to make a difference between himself
and God, between his will and the will of God, his feelings and those of God,
his thoughts and those of God—he not only began to make and see a difference,
but was scarcely able (only now and then, in moments of enlightenment) to be
aware of his likeness to God.
Alas, in what a miserable and abysmal state, through
his dis-obedience and pride, does he find himself who was originally created in
the image and likeness of the Holy and Divine Trinity Itself! (St. Philaret of
Moscow says, in his homily on the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple:
In man in a sinless state, the image of God was the source of blessing; in
fallen man, it was [only] the hope of blessing). Alas, we are all descendants
of Adam, all low shoots from the stump of the felled cedar that had once
majestically been raised up above all God’s creatures in Paradise; low shoots
overcome by the tall weeds of cruel, brutal nature, which had grown up like a
curtain between him and the Source of immortal love.
Only see how, as at the waving of a magicians wand,
the disobedience and pride of mans forefather all at once change all creation
around him, and he becomes surrounded by an army of the disobedient and the
proud!
While Adam was obedient and humble before his Creator,
all around him breathed obedience and humility. But what a change came about in
the twinkling of an eye! At the moment of Adam’s fall, he was surrounded by the
disobedient. Here was disobedient Eve beside him. Here was the chief
disseminator of disobedience and pride, the spirit of disobedience—Satan. Here
was the whole of nature—disobedient, rebellious and full of fury. Fruit, that
had till then melted with sweetness in man’s mouth, began to smite him with its
bitterness. Grass, that had wrapped itself around his feet like silk, began to
scratch him like needles. Flowers, that
had rejoiced in giving their scent for their lord to breathe, began to smother
themselves with weeds, to keep him away from them. Wild beasts, that had fawned round him like lambs, began to
spring on him with sharpened teeth and eyes aflame with fuiy. Everything took a
wild and aggressive stance towards Adam. And the richest of all creatures felt
himself to be the poorest. Clothed formerly in angelic glory,
he now felt himself humiliated, lonely and naked; so
naked that he was forced to borrow clothing from nature to cover his nakedness,
both physical and spiritual. For his body, he began to borrow skins from the
animals and leaves from the trees; and for his spirit, he began to borrow from
all creatures—from creatures!—knowledge and skills. He who had formerly drunk
from the overflowing Fount of life was now forced to go with the animals, to
bend down in the mud and drink at the trough in order to slake his physical and
spiritual thirst.
Look now at the Lord Christ. All is obedience and
humility. The Archangel Gabriel, the representative of angelic obedience and
humility; the Virgin Mary—obedience and humility; Joseph—obedience and
humility; the shepherds—obedience and humility; the wise men from the
East—obedience and humility. Storms obedient, winds obedient, sun and moon
obedient, men obedient, beasts obedient; the grave itself obedient. All is
obedient to the Son of God, the New Adam, and all is humble before Him, for He
also is unconditionally obedient to His Father, and is humble before Him.
It is known that, together with much that man sows in
the earth and cultivates, other plants and herbs readily spring up, that have
been neither sown nor cultivated. So it is with the virtues: you may carefully
sow and cultivate obedience and humility in your soul, and you will see that a
whole bouquet of other virtues will quickly shoot up beside them. One of the
first will be simplicity, both within and without. The obedient and humble
Virgin Mary was adorned at the same time with childlike simplicity. This was
also true of righteous Joseph, and also of the apostles and evangelists. Only
look at the unparalleled simplicity with which the evangelists record the
greatest events in the history of man’s salvation, in the history of the
universe! Could you imagine in what detail and with what theatricality a
secular writer would write, for example, about the raising of
Lazarus, were he to have witnessed that event? Or what
sort of prosy and pretentious drama he would have written about all that came
to pass in the soul of the obedient, humble and simple Joseph at the moment
when he discovered that the girl under the protection of betrothal to him was
pregnant? This is recorded by the Evangelist in a few, simple sentences: But the
birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as His mother Mary was espoused to
Joseph, before they came together she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.
Before this, the Evangelist had given the genealogy of the Lord Jesus, or, more
precisely, that of righteous Joseph, from the Tribe of Judah and the House of
David. In this genealogy, the Evangelist listed men, born of men in a natural
way, such as all mortal men on earth are born. He then suddenly begins to
record the Lords birth, and says: But the birth of Jesus Christ was on this
wise as though, with this “but”, he wants to show the unusual and supernatural
nature of His birth, completely divorced from the manner of birth of all
Joseph’s recorded forebears. Mary, His mother, was betrothed to Joseph. In the
eyes of the world, this betrothal was seen as an introduction to married life;
but, in the eyes of Mary and Joseph, it could not be seen like this.
Sought with tears from God, the Virgin Mary was
consecrated to God by her parents’ vow. She, on her part, voluntarily took this
vow made by her parents upon herself, as is seen in her many years of ser-vice
in the Temple at Jerusalem. Could she have followed her own inclinations, she
would undoubtedly have spent the rest of her life in the Temple, like Anna the
daughter of Phanuel (Lk 2:36-37), but the law ruled otherwise, and so it had to
be.
She was betrothed to Joseph, not to live in marriage
with him but in order to escape marriage. All the details of this betrothal,
and its meaning are to be found in the Church’s tradition. And if men were to
value tradition with reference to the Mother of God, to righteous Joseph and to
all the people involved who are mentioned in the Gospel, as much as they value
traditions—some of them of the wildest—about the rulers, leaders and wise men
of this world, the meaning of the betrothal of the Most Holy Virgin Mary to
Joseph would be clear to all.
St Ignatius says that the Virgin was betrothed that
His birth should be concealed from the devil; that the devil should think of
Him as born of a married woman, and not of a virgin. This is also found in
Jerome’s Commentary on Matthew and in Gregory of Neocaesarea’s Second Talk on
the Annunciation.
Before they came together... These words do not mean
that they afterwards came together as man and wife, or that this was in the
Evangelist’s mind. The Evangelist is, in this case, interested only in the
birth of the Lord Jesus, and nothing else, and he writes the above words in
order to show that His birth was without the coming together of man and woman.
Therefore understand the wise words of the Evangelist, as though he had
written: and without their coming together, she was found to be with child of
the Holy Spirit. Only by the Holy Spirit could He be conceived who was, in the midst
of the kingdom of darkness and evil, to found the Kingdom of the Spirit of
light and love. How would He be able to fulfill His divine mission on earth if
He had come on earth through all the usual earthly channels, blocked as they
are by sin and stinking of mortal corruption? In that case, new wine would have
stunk of old wineskins, and He who had come to save the world would have been
in need of salvation. The world could only be saved by a miracle from God; this
was the belief of all men on earth. And when God’s miracle is wrought, it must
not be doubted but venerated, and healing sought from it, and salvation.
How did Joseph react to the knowledge of the Virgin
Mary’s pregnancy? And Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to
make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. He acted, we
see, in obedience to God’s law. He was obedient to God’s will insofar as it
had, up till then, been revealed to the Israelites. He also acted in humility
before God. Justify not thyself warns wise Solomon (Sir 7:5). That is: do not
force too much justice on those who sin, but feel your own weakness and your
own sins, and strive with mercy to lighten justice towards sinners.
Imbued with this Spirit, Joseph did not consider
giving the Virgin Mary over to justice for the suspected sin: and not willing
to make her a public example (he) was minded to put her away privily. This plan
of his shows us what an exemplary man Joseph was, exemplary in justice and in
mercy, such a one as the Spirit of the old Law was able to instruct. With him,
all was as simple and clear as it could be in the soul of a God-fearing man.
Righteous Joseph had only just found a suitable way
out when heaven intervened in his plan with an unexpected command: But while he
thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a
dream, saying: ‘Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy
wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. "The angel
of God, who had earlier proclaimed to the most pure Virgin the coming into the
world of the God-Man, now comes to clear the way before Him and level it out
beneath His feet. Joseph’s doubt was a hindrance on His way—a very great and
dangerous hindrance that must be removed. In order to show how easy it is for
the heavenly powers to do things that are very difficult for men, the angel did
not appear to Joseph in a vision, but in a dream. With these words to Joseph the son of David, the angel
wanted both to reward him and to warn him. As a descendant of King David, you
should rejoice at this divine mystery more than other men, and you should also
understand better than others.
But how is it that the angel refers to the Virgin as
his wife: Fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife? In the same way that the
Ivord said from the Cross to His mother: Woman, behold thy son! and to His
disciple: Behold thy mother! (Jn 19:26-27). Indeed, heaven is sparing with
words, and says nothing superfluous. If it had not been necessary to say this,
why did the angel say it? If this calling Mary the wife of Joseph is a
stumbling block to some unbelievers, it is a defense of purity against the
impure powers. For God’s words are not listened to only by men, but by all
worlds, both good and evil. He who wishes to penetrate to the heart of all
God’s mysteries, the same must have God’s view of all things, visible and
invisible.
That which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.
This is God’s act, and not man’s. Don’t look to nature, or be fearful of the
law. This is the action of Him who is greater than nature and stronger than the
law, without Whom nature would have no life, nor the law force.
From this that the angel announced to Joseph, it is
clear that the Virgin Mary had told him nothing of her earlier encounter with
the great archangel, as it is clear that now, when Joseph intended to put her
away, she did not justify herself in anyway. The angel’s message, as all the
heavenly mysteries that were gradually revealed to her, she kept, and pondered
in her heart (Lk 2:19; cf. 2:51). In her faith in God and obedience to Him, she
shrank from no humiliation at the hands of men. If my sufferings are pleasing
to God, why should I not endure them!, said some of the Christian martyrs
later. Living in constant prayer and pondering on God, the Most Pure was also
able to say: If my humiliation is pleasing to God, why should / not endure it!
Only let me be righteous before God, who knows the heart, and the world can do
what it likes with me. She knew this: that the world could do nothing to her
unless God allowed it. What gende humility before the living God this is, and
what wonderful devotion to His will! And further—what a heroic spirit is seen
in this delicate maiden: The secret of the Lord is among them that fear Him.
(Pss 24/25:13). While sinners, in our day as in all days, bring even false
witnesses to testify for them, the Virgin Mary, who had no man to testify for
her, but God almighty, did not justify herself; she was not disturbed, but
remained silent—and waited for God, in His good time, to justify her. And God
hastened to justify His chosen one.
This same angel who had revealed to her the great
mystery of her conceiving, made haste to speak now in place of the silent
Virgin. Explaining, then, to Joseph that which had already come to pass, the
angel of God went further, and explained to him that which was to be: And she
shall bring forth a Son, and thou shalt call His name Jesus; for he shall save
His people from their sins. Chrysostom says: He does not say: “she will bear
you a son, ” but simply “will bear, ” because she does not bear for him alone,
but for the whole world. The angel told Joseph to behave towards the Newborn as
though he were His real father, and he therefore says: “and thou shalt name Him
Jesus. “Jesus” means “Savior”, and so the next sentence begins with “for”,
meaning: thou shalt name Him “Savior”, for He shall save His people from their
sins.
The Archangel is God’s true messenger. He speaks that
which he learns from God; he sees the truth in God. For him, nature with all
its laws is as though it did not exist. He knows only the almighty power of the
living God, as Adam once knew it. In saying: “He shall save His people from
their sins”, the Archangel foretold the greatest of Christ’s acts. Christ was to
come and save men, not from some external evil but from the greatest evil, from
sin, that is the source of all the evil in the world. He is to save the tree of
humanity, not from a host of caterpillars that descends on it one year, but
from the worm at its roots, from which the whole tree withers.
He comes, not to
save man from men, or people from peoples, but to save all men and all peoples
from Satan, the sower and lord of sin. He comes, not like the Maccabee
brothers, or Barabbas or Bar-Kohba, to stir up rebellion against the Romans,
who had descended like a host of caterpillars on the Israelite people to
devastate them, but like an immortal and universal doctor, before whose coming
the Israelites and the Romans, the Greeks and the Egyptians, and all the
peoples on earth, sick and more than sick, were fading away from one and the
same virus - from sin. Christ was later perfectly to fulfil the archangel’s
prediction. “Thy. sins are forgiven” was His victorious pronouncement
throughout the whole of His earthly ministry among men. These words contained
both the diagnosis of the sickness and the medicine. Sin: the diagnosis of the
sickness; the forgiveness of sins: the medicine. And Joseph was the first of
mortal men in the New Creation to be made worthy to know the real purpose of
the Messiah’s coming, and the true nature of His ministry.
That which the Archangel has told Joseph up to now is
enough for the latter, in obedience to this new and direct command from God, to
break off his thoughts and also his plan to put Mary away. Heaven
commands—Joseph obeys. But it is not heavens usual way to give commands to men
without an appeal to their understanding and free response. It was, from the beginning,
God’s will that man act as a free being. In freedom, in mans free decision,
rests all the beauty of man’s being. Without freedom, man would only be an
artificial, mechanical thing of God’s making, held and activated by God solely
by His will and power. There are plenty of such things made by God in nature,
but He destined a special place for man, giving him freedom to decide for God
or against Him, for life or for death. A position full of honor, and at the same time
full of danger. The command that God gives to Adam is not, therefore, just a
simple one:
Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it, and God
immediately adds: or in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
(Gen 2:16-17). In this last sentence, God gives man a reason for his
understanding, and a motive for his will, not to eat of the forbidden tree—-for
in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. The angel acts in
the same way now with Joseph. Having given this command to take and not put her
away, and having explained that the fruit of her virgin womb was of the Holy
Spirit, the Archangel reminds Joseph of the clear prophecy by the great
prophet: Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his
name Emmanuel. (Isa 7:14), and Matthew adds this further clarification: which
being interpreted is “God with us. ”
That which has already been said: And thou shalt call
His name Jesus, does not stand in opposition to what is said here: and shall
call his name Emmanuel; which being interpreted is; “God with us. ”In the first
case, Joseph is told to give Him the name Jesus (Savior), and in the second
case, it is stated that the young child shall be called, by peoples and
nations, Emmanuel (God with us).
The one name and the other, each in its way,
gives profoud expression to the reason for Christ’s coming into the world and
His ministry within it. He will come to forgive sins, to have mercy on men and
save them from sin, and so will be called the Savior—Jesus. “ Who can forgive
sins but God only? (Mk 2:7). No-one in the world: no-one either in heaven or on
earth has the right to forgive sins and save from sin but God Himself, for sin
is the worm at the heart of this world’s sickness. No-one knows the abysmal
horror of sin as God, who is sinless; and no-one can dig out the worm of sin
but God. So, as Jesus forgave sin and thus made men whole, He is God among men.
If one were to place the names in order of causality, the name “Emmanuel” would
come before the name “Jesus.” For the Newborn to be able to carry out the work
of salvation, He had to be Emmanuel—to come as God among us. But, whichever way
round, they have the same meaning: Emmanuel is the Savior, and the Savior is
Emmanuel. In any case, one thing is clearer than anything else in the world,
and that is that there is no salvation in this world if God does not come into
it, and that there is neither healing nor salvation for us men if God is not
with us, not as some idea or lovely dream, but with us as we are—with a soul as
we have, a body as we have, in poverty and suffering as we are and finally, in
that in which we are most different from God—in death as we are.
Therefore, every faith that teaches that God did not
come in the flesh, and that He cannot come in the flesh, is false, as it presents
God as both weak and uncaring: it presents Him as a stepmother, and not as a
mother. It presents Him as weak, because it always keeps Him back from the
greatest battle—the battle with Satan, sin and death. Satan must be bound; the
first growth of sin must be uprooted from the human soul; the snake’s tongue of
death must be crushed—a labor must be undertaken that is greater and harder
than that of Atlas in bearing the world on his shoulders.
Our God fought this
battle, and did so victoriously. Men of other faiths fear, even in their
thoughts, to allow their gods such a battle, in which their opponents might be
victorious. What sort of a mother
would it be who would not bend down to the earth out
of love for her child, to comfort it, rock it and croon over it? And how much
the more if the child were in danger of fire or wild beasts? O Lord, forgive us
such questions! How couldest Thou be the compassionate Creator of the world and
not have come down in Thy mercy among us? How couldest Thou, only from a misty
and painless distance, have looked on our wretchedness and placed no cool
finger on us in the flames nor moved into the den where we are attacked by wild
beasts? In truth, Thou hast come down among us, even lower than any sort of
earthly love demands.
Thou wast born in the flesh, to live and save those in
the flesh; Thou didst drink of the cup of all Thy creatures’ suffering, sharing
with none this cup of bitter communion, but Thyself draining it. Thou art
therefore our Savior, for Thou hast been God among us: Thou hast been God among
us because Thou wast able to be our Savior. Glory to Thee, o Jesus our
Emmanuel!
To go back to Joseph: he, with fear and trembling, saw
more and more clearly that a tapestry was being woven around him, more
penetrating than the sun’s light and more all-embracing than the air; a
tapestry of which the canvas is the Almighty, and the angels and all creation
the silken strands. It fell to his lot to serve as God’s instrument in the
center of the tapestry of the New Creation. While a man is unaware that God
acts through him, he is weak and feeble, hesitant and cautious. But when a man
senses that God has taken him into His hands, as a blacksmith takes iron to
make a shoe, he feels at the same time both strong and humble, decisive in his
actions and upheld by his God.
When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel had
commanded him, and took the Virgin Mary to himself again, and knew her not
until she had brought forth her Firstborn Son, and he called His name Jesus.
When we read the Gospels, we must enter into the Evangelist’s mind, and not
project our mind into the Gospel. The Evangelist himself marvels as he speaks
of the wonder of the Savior’s birth. His main task is to show that this birth
came about in a wondrous manner. This that the Evangelist Matthew emphasizes is
already the fourth proof of this. Firstly, he says that the Virgin Mary was
only betrothed to Joseph; secondly, that she found herself with child of the
Holy Ghost, thirdly, that the angel, in a dream, showed that her pregnancy was
wondrous and supernatural and, fourthly, we see here that the angel now repeats
this same thought with the words that Joseph knew her not until she had brought
forth her Firstborn Son.
It is, therefore, as clear as day that the Evangelist
has no thought of saying that, after this birth, Joseph had carnal relations
with Mary. That which was not so until she had brought forth her Son was not so
afterwards, when she had borne Him. If we say of someone that, during the
celebration of the Liturgy in church, he paid no attention to the priest’s
words, we do not mean that, once the service was over, he became attentive to
them. Or, when we say that a shepherd sings while the sheep graze, we do not
think that he stops singing when the sheep stop grazing. St. Theophylact says: As it was said at the time of the Flood,
that the raven did not return to the Ark while the earth had not dried out, it
naturally did not return to it afterwards, or as Christ said: “1 am with you
always, even unto the end of the world, ” does that mean that He will not be
afterwards.
The word “firstborn” therefore applies exclusively to the Lord
Jesus (Pss 88/89:28; cf. 2 Sam 7:12-16; Heb 1:5-6: Rom 8:29), who is the first
among all kings and the firstborn among many brethren (Rom 8:29), which means:
among all saved and adopted men. If the word “firstborn” were to be written
with a capital letter, as a special title, there would be no doubt of its
meaning. Or, if a comma were placed before the word “firstborn, there would be
no doubt or confusion. This is how it must be read: as though “Firstborn” were
a title, with a comma before it: and she brought forth her Son, the Firstborn.
The Lord Jesus is the Firstborn as the Creator of the New Kingdom, as the New
Adam.
It is said of St. Ammon (Oct. 4th) that he spent eighteen
years in wedlock without having physical relations with his wife. The holy
martyr Anastasia (Dec. 22nd) also spent a number of years married to Publius, a
Roman senator, without consummating the marriage. We quote here only two
instances among thousands of others. By her most pure virginity, before, during
and after giving birth, the Virgin Mary has turned thousands of girls and young
men to a life of virginity throughout the Church’s history. Looking to her
virginity, many married women have broken off their marriage and devoted
themselves to virginal purity.
Looking at her, many leading a deeply immoral
life have turned from their immorality, cleansing their mired souls with tears
and prayer. How, dien, could it be imagined that the most pure Virgin, the
pillar and inspiration of Christian purity and virginity through the ages, was
on a lower level of virginity than that of Anastasia, Thecla, Barbara,
Katharine, Paraskeve and all the rest, without number? Or, how would it be
possible to imagine that she who bore in the flesh her passionless Lord could
ever have known the shadow of physical passion? She who carried and gave birth
to God was a virgin, not only in the flesh but in the spirit, as St. Ambrose
says. And Chrysostom compares the Holy Spirit with a bee, saying: As a bee will
not enter a stinking vessel, so the Holy Spirit will not enter into an impure
soul.
Let us stop speaking about this, about which we should
speak less and marvel more. There where obedience and humility towards God have
their abode, there is purity. The Lord heals His obedient and humble servants
of every earthly passion and lust. Let us give ourselves over to the cleansing
of our consciences, our souls, our hearts and our minds, that we may be made
worthy of the blessed power of the Holy Spirit; that the earth may once more
stop sowing its seed in our inner man, so that the Holy Spirit may begin in us
new life and a new man, like to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be
glory and praise, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit—the Trin¬ity
consubstantial and undivided, now and forever, through all time and all
eternity. Amen.
NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2017 BROTHERHOOD OF ST. POIMEN
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