Daily Christmas

In the very act in which we are reverencing the birth of our Savior, we are also celebrating our own new birth. For the birth of Christ is the origin of the Christian people; and the birthday of the head is also the birthday of the body. - from a sermon by Saint Leo the Great, pope

We may generally consider Pentecost as the "birthday of the church," but in the eternal scheme of things there is probably no single event of Jesus' earthly life which by itself represents the beginning of our life in him. There may be a single point in our own lives to which we might point as our conversion experience - that is certainly the case for me - yet many of us can also identify ways in which God was already at work in our lives preparing us to accept him as our Lord and Savior. So each of the historical events in Jesus' life that have significance for us can be celebrated with reverence for their connection with the life of Christ within us, without which we need not bother celebrating any of them! Saint Leo continues:

For every believer regenerated in Christ, no matter in what part of the whole world he may be, breaks with that ancient way of life that derives from original sin, and by rebirth is transformed into a new man. Henceforth he is reckoned to be of the stock, not of his earthly father, but of Christ, who became Son of Man precisely that men could become sons of God; for unless in humility he had come down to us, none of us by our own merits could ever go up to him.

There are at least two parts of that last sentence that I feel as if I should spend a little attention on. I believe I'll address that latter one first. The modern rejection of the concept of substitutional atonement seems to reduce Christ to the role of teacher revealing the way to God, rather than Christ actually being the only Way himself. All we need, some suggest, is to follow his example. They reject as quaint and outdated the concept that we are born into a kingdom in which our sinfulness is the central truth of our existence and transferred to the kingdom of God by the grace that flows from Jesus' life, death and resurrection. I believe that our rejection of this concept is a great hindrance to our effective preaching of the gospel. 

Our being the stock of Christ rather than our earthly heritage is a truth that comes to greater fulfillment as we walk with him throughout our lives. It isn't that we're saved a little at a time, or gain our new heritage little by little, but it is often true that we are transformed in it through a lifelong process of growth. For the longest time following my own conversion I continued to act in - and experience the impact of - the earthly influences that abounded in my youth and early adulthood. I did not know all the ways that my former nature had its roots still sunk into me, if you will, and I often nurtured those roots either intentionally or unwittingly. It is good for us to take stock of our stock, and to allow the Holy Spirit to reveal those ways in which we must continue to grow into our new heritage and kill off our old one.

This Christmas rebirth which we celebrate is not a singular historical event in Jesus' earthly life nor in our own. Rather, we should seek to embrace our rebirth each day so that its roots may kill off what remains of our old ones.