Today we observe the Feast of St. Joseph the Betrothed, their ancestor, King St. David, and his Joseph's son St. James, the Lord's brother. Our Gospel reading also recounts the Slaughter of the Holy Innocents, which was the feast we observed yesterday, ordered by Herod the Great, who was not a descendant of King David, but rather descended from Arabs on both sides of his family. He put out the claim that he was descended from the Returnees of the Babylonian Exile, promoting the idea that they alone were "the real people of God" having passed through "the Second Exodus."
Following King Herod's execution of three sons (two by strangulation), Augustus Caesar quipped, "I would rather be Herod's pig (his `υ̃ς / hũs) than his son (his `υιός / huiós )," (Macrobius, Saturnalia, 2.4.11). For Herod was scrupulous to appear to be pious, observing the dietary laws, but in fact presented before God the heart of a monster. (and, no doubt, he slipped away from time to time to get a bacon cheeseburger and clams.) The atmosphere in his household was famously one of deception, conspiracy, and murder — a poisonous atmosphere that would claim the life of the pure one, St. John the Baptist, and play a part in the Crucifixion of the Holy One, Jesus.
Thus we have two mirror images:
St. Athanasius (De Incarnatione) wrote the Creator entering Creation with His Own Person produced a cosmic shock sufficient to flip our telós from death to life. St. Irenaeus (Against Heresies) wrote that Jesus entered our lifeworld as an infant that He might complete (recapitulate) the unfinished life of Adam, reconciling us to God.
Do you see? He heals and the Creation by the Creator touching it with His Own incommensurably Holy Person, producing an organic shock throughout. Then He shows us to way through this New Creation by living His Life in it. He finishes the course Adam left unfinished.
Yes, Jesus heals the Creation at His Conception, but that is only a beginning .... a world-changing beginning, but still a beginning. He has opened the way for us with His lived life. Up ahead, the path to Heaven is no longer blocked by that insuperable impediment, death, for Jesus has redrawn the blueprint of human life and destiny. As I say, He flipped the telós.
How do we keep that new blueprint alive within ourselves? I mean, Adam had been given the original blueprint. All he had to do was live in it unto godly, eternal life. Noah was given a new blueprint. A whole new pristine world! But they defiled the blueprint. They ruined it through grave sin. By giving way to their animal lusts. Adam's sin was uxoriousness — the overweening love (i.e., lust) for his wife. Noah's family, having the ultimate privacy — no onlookers on the earth — immediately fell into father drunkenness and mother incest.
And now, with the Nativity of Jesus, we are given a new blueprint. Some people think we are just swept into Heaven on account of that. Orthodox Christians reject that. How do we keep the new blueprint alive and fresh and new within ourselves? Athanasius says, we must fix our eyes on Jesus only, and must contemplate only Him. This is the advice Orthodox elders give as the remedy to demon's tormenting us with bad thought and mental pictures. "Think on Jesus! Say the Jesus Prayer!"
In the end, it is inescapably true that we must complete the upward trek ourselves. We have the map. But we must complete the trek in our own boots. We must ascend through through high mountain passes. We must prevail in the war against our passions; we must resist the temptations of demons who seek to insinuate themselves like snakes into our thoughts; we must put an end to worldly life and seek the company of God and His angels only.
St. Paul, in our Epistle lesson, describes how he was once of the false descent but now has been grafted on to the true:
|
God .... separated me from my mother's womb and called me through His grace, to reveal His Son
in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles. I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood, .... but I went to Arabia, and returned again to Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and remained with him fifteen days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord's brother. (Gal 1:11-19) |
By the grace of God, Paul has been excised from his former family line. His life has been surgically removed from that line — one in which, he says, he had "advanced in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers." You see, this is descent. It is a lineage. And he has been cut out of it and grafted on to a new family line. He has now been reborn into the line of Jesus. Jesus, he says, is in him. And after receiving the Divine seed (1 John 3:9) on the Damascus road, Paul went to Arabia for three years as a kind of gestation period devoting his days to uninterrupted contemplation of Jesus so that this new life could be born. He spoke to no one.
I knew a bishop who had a problem: gossiping priests. They had to make know how they felt and their position on every issue. It was a matter of integrity, and a free speech issue. Facebook and Instagram only made the problem worse. The bishop said, "Paul received the Holy Things. But he did not respond by blogging. He went to Arabia for three years and spoke to no one.
And when Paul emerged, he emerged a new creation of God confirmed in his new lineage, as his bountiful correspondence and divinely-inspired insights have attested. We know the proof of that pudding.
Moreover, he is accepted into the family line of Jesus as the welcome accorded by the Lord's brother James (whom commemorate today in festal style) signifies: "and stayed with them fifteen days." When we receive house guests, we may secretly hope that they leave after an hour or so. But they welcomed Paul for fifteen days.
In this season of Christmastide and now looking forward to the Lord's Baptism, — His Nativity, His Baptism — let us hold ever close to mind Jesus and lineage. He has offered it us. It is truly royal. We are to be born in Bethlehem. We are to be baptized in Jordan stream. And our Father, the King of Heaven, watches us. He watches every footfall as we ascend through those high mountain passes toward Him. But "be not afraid," for He is always with us. And He will not leave us. His Son is always with us, for that is His Name. And He has promised through His descendant, David,
|
I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will guide you with My eye. (Ps 31/32:8) |
He will guide us with His eye. For we are of His kin, His own bone and blood. Our sense of right and wrong is His sense. He sees the right, and when we choose the wrong, don't we feel it! Our knowledge of good and bad is His knowledge. It was written on the fleshly tablets of our hearts before it was ever chiseled in stone (2 Cor 3:3), St. Paul says. We are His!
Growing up in a household of godly and loving parents, do we really have to be taught which is good and which is bad? The family tree of Jesus is the tree that produces goodness. He says,
| "Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit." (Mt 7:17) |
This tree doesn't need a catechism or an instruction manual to produce good fruit. It simply bears good fruit.
And what are the genes that link together Joseph the Spouse, the Most Holy Theotokos, James the Just, the Apostle Paul, and every soul whom the Lord calls
|
".... My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of My Father in Heaven
is My brother and sister and mother ...." (Mt 12:46-50) |
It is so simple.
It is so plain.
It is so well-known to all us from the time we are born
and
through our early years.
Our only confusion comes from our lineage in the world
(Jn 15:19, 1Jn 2:15):
our materialism,
our pridefulness,
our egos,
....
in a word our evil.
But if, like St. Paul (later in life),
we will open our eyes (Acts 9:18),
then we will see the way plainly before us.
Indeed,
we will remember it from our distant memories.
For no less a trusted Guide than "the God and Father of all" (Eph 4:6) is watching.
He is watching us with His eye.
And He has given His Angels,
Ministers of His Divine Will and Goodness,
charge over us.
In Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.