The
Birthday of the Lord is the Birthday of Peace
God’s Son did
not disdain to become a baby. 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 Saviour, we find we are
celebrating the commencement of our own life, for the birth of Christ is the
source of life for Christian folk, and the birthday of the Head is the birthday
of the body.
Every
individual that is called has his own place, and all the sons of the Church are
separated from one another by intervals of time. Nevertheless, just as the
entire body of the faithful is born in the font of baptism, crucified with
Christ in his passion, 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 this 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 reborn. He is no longer counted as part of his earthly father’s
stock but among the seed of the Saviour, who became the Son of man in order that
we might have the power to be the sons of God.
The very
greatness of the gift conferred demands of us reverence worthy of its
splendour. 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 honour 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.
So those who 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 all of them, adopted parts of
the mystical Body of Christ, must meet 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;
and so too the Father in his gracious favour 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 thus says the Apostle, 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.
Source: The Liturgy of the Hours – Office of
Readings
From a sermon of Pope St Leo the Great
Image taken from Wikimedia Commons
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