Gospel [Matthew 2:13-23 (§4)]

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Dear Father, brothers and sisters: Christ is Born! Glorify Him!

Congratulation to you all on the Afterfeast of the Nativity of our Lord and God and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Christ is Born! Glorify Him!Last Sunday and the Sunday before we were commemorating all the ancient ancestors of Christ, those who preceded Him amongst the sons of David and before that the sons of Abraham: the prophets and the Patriarchs. This Sunday we especially remember King David, as both Joseph and the Theotokos came from the Davidic line, as well as Christ’s immediate family: Joseph the Betrothed and James the Brother of the Lord. In our Gospel reading today we move with speed from the narratives describing the Birth of Christ, the Magi and the Shepherds, to the Flight of the Holy Family to Egypt and the dark and terrible events which took place in Bethlehem. Let us understand our Gospel reading with the help of our holy father Bede the Venerable of Jarrow and Monkswearmouth.

for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.

There is something so perverse, so monstrous, so wretched so fallen about this short line of the Gospel. It is almost enough to make one weep. At last at the end of the ages, at the point in human history when almost all hope was gone, then at that moment Emmanuel comes, the Pre-Eternal Light descends into the abyss of this dark fallen world and comes to save us and heal us. He, Whom the Cherubim and Seraphim, dare not gaze upon, the King of All Creation visible and invisible, descends not with Triumph and Glory, with Power, Might and Majesty, as would befit Him. No – He comes with awesome and profound Humility and deigns to be born into our world as a tiny child. Yet just at this incredible moment in Salvation history when God stoops down to save His suffering Creation what does He find? Does His Creation provide Him with a King’s Palace, with honour and with Pagentry? No – His Creation not only does not provide a Palace, but this Divine Child, does not even have a house, or a room for His first resting place amongst His creatures, but rather the coldest and meanest of Caves. God comes and we leave Him outside in the bitter cold in the Manger with the animals. And then as we hear in this Gospel reading, no sooner is the Christ-Child born, and worshipped by Simple Shepherds as well as Wise Men from the East, we then hear of Herod’s maniacal zeal to kill Christ. To destroy the Life and the Light of the World. To kill God-in-the-Flesh. There is perhaps no better embodiment about all that is wrong all that is so unnatural and deformed with fallen human nature than this. What a dark, dark world the Saviour of all has come into. A darkness which is of our doing. A darkness which each one of us knows and shares in.

So, no sooner has He arrived, that this Holy Family is on the move, fleeing from their homeland into a place unknown – into Egypt. But despite these terrible and lamentable events, St Matthew the Evangelist continues to draw our attention to God’s Providence, and to the Mysterious way in which this fulfilled the prophets –

that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son.

In his homily on this Gospel passage, St Bede explains that the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt would also symbolize how –

The elect will very often have to flee from their places, or even be condemned to exile, because of the outrageous behaviour of the wicked.

The Venerable Bede then goes to see our Lord’s exile from Bethlehem to Egypt as Him showing us by deed what He would later teach by His Word as later on in the Gospel of Matthew 10:23 our Lord says – ‘When you are persecuted in one city, flee to another’.

Our own Russian Church Abroad was itself started in exile by the Russian emigres, exiled from their Homeland, during the horror of the Bolshevik Revolution. Our Church Abroad has always had a very special place in its heart for those who are persecuted and in exile. Today amongst us we have Ukrainian clergy who are in exile, fleeing war and persecution. We have a priest, Fr Ioan, who is fleeing persecution from his own homeleand of Cuba.

Finally, St Bede draws out another important theological meaning in our Lord’s early experience of exile into the land of Egypt. At the time, of course, Egypt was one of the very greatest centres of the Pagan learning, culture and civilization. St Bede sees in this our Lord’s desire, from the very earliest days of His life in the Flesh to reach out, and to go to the Gentiles, those in the darkness of paganism. Although, as we have heard and celebrated these past couple of weeks – our Lord was of clear Jewish stock and ancestry, He did not see His Mission to be limited to just the sons of Israel, but a Mission to heal, enlighten and to save the whole world – jews and gentiles.  

Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men.

As if Herod’s desire to kill the Christ child was not monstrous and depraved enough, look at the crazed and devilish zeal with which he seeks to realise his evil intention: ordering the slaughter of innocent babes and tiny infants. This is known as the slaughter or massacre of the Holy Innocents which in Church Tradition numbered some 14, 000. There is such a cruel juxtaposition here between the joy of Emmanuel’s birth and the mindless and incomprehensible tragedy of the slaughter of so many pure and innocent ones. We hear the angels singing, we hear the Shepherd’s carolling but we also cannot block out the sound of Rachel’s weeping. Few lines are as poignant and bleak as this simple verse from our Gospel –

In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.

Over these fast-free days of Christmas when we have celebrating the joy of Christ’s Nativity, we have also had a number of grim commemorations – the stoning of the Protodeacon Stephen – the First Martyr of the Church on Thursday and then on Friday the 20,000 Martyrs of Nicomedia who were all burned alive in their Cathedral on the Feastday of the Nativity of Christ in 302 at orders of a new Herod Maximian. In our fallen world we find Joy and Sorrow; Light and Darkness are all mixed up together into a strange and curious pattern. And yet, each one of those Innocents, killed in place of Christ, became a Martyr in Heaven, and as St Bede writes in his homily, would represent the precious death of all Christ’s martyrs.

Moreover, St Bede finds a deeper meaning in, as he says,

The fact that they were killed, but Christ, who was being sought, escaped alive, suggests that bodies can be deprived of life by the godless, but that Christ, for whom the whole persecution raged, could in no way be taken from them …

My dear Father, brothers and sisters: Christ comes to us and from the very first, from the very beginning shares in not only in our joys but also in our very sorrows and grief. The One Who would be shrouded in Light; Risen in Glory; Ascending with Angels is also the same one Who would be scourged, beaten, spat upon, abandoned and Crucified. To those who would  suffer for Christ, would die for Him, Christ promises Life in this topsy-turvy world of the Kingdom of God – For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.

As St Bede concludes his homily:

One day in the courts of Christ will be better than thousands, when Rachel will not bewail her children, but ‘God will wipe every tear from their eyes’ and give them the voice of gladness and of eternal salvation in their tabernacles’

Amidst the joy and the feasting let us not forget the blood of the martyrs that reminds us that for all the comfort we feel in this world we are all exiles from Paradise our True Home.

Christ is Born! Glorify Him!

Amen.