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

The Incarnation of the Word of God is what the world has, and always has had great difficulty accepting, because it is all about the putting on of humanity of the Son of God. All sorts of people, somehow, cannot swallow the fact that God would empty Himself in this way. These people cannot bear to face that God took flesh, that Jesus Christ really is the Son of God, that this Baby who was born in a manger is the Love of God incarnate. They invent all sorts of other theories about WHO HE IS in order to satisfy themselves. They reduce Him to some sort of philosopher, or social “nice guy”, or an avant-garde activist of some sort. However, that He would be simply the Love of God incarnate, come to earth to restore communion between us, and God the Father, is beyond them. All the substitution theories by the way, all those other theories that people have come up with in their desire to make Christ more "palatable", don't work, logically speaking.

The only way reconciliation could be achieved between us, and God the Father was by the Incarnation, exactly as it happened. You, and I, two thousand years later, are singing the same hymns, more or less, and reading the same Gospel stories, as Christians have been doing all this time. We have been encountering personally the same one Lord, Jesus Christ that the Apostle Paul encountered, and by whose love he lived: the same one Lord, Jesus Christ that all of the Apostles encountered, and in whose love they lived, and died. It's the same one Lord, Jesus Christ, that Christians have been encountering personally all along. My favourite old man that I love to quote from my childhood, Ole Olson, always used to say over and over again, quoting from the Epistle to the Hebrews: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). That’s how it is, exactly. He is the one, same, Lord, Jesus Christ, whom we are encountering, all of us, in whatever time we live, and wherever in the world we live, and in whatever culture we live. It is the one Lord, Jesus Christ, whom we are encountering, in whose love we live, and in whose love we die.

It is really important for us to keep this in mind especially now, at this time of the year, because remembering it now might help us to remember it the rest of the year. Being an Orthodox Christian is not an intellectual exercise. To be an Orthodox Christian does not require a degree in philosophy. To be an Orthodox Christian requires love enough to do as the Mother of God did, and always has been doing: that is, to say Yes to His love. We have to live according to His love.

In order to live according to His love, our hearts have to be in communion with Jesus Christ. We have to be talking with Him regularly. We have to be refreshing in our hearts our experience of Him by reading the Gospels regularly, and the Epistles, too (and that is not to exclude the Old Testament, because it’s all bound up together). We can’t have the New Testament without the Old Testament: it’s all one. Jesus Christ sums everything up in God. The whole Old Testament prepared for Him. As we were hearing, prophecies were fulfilled in the movements of Joseph, and his family in accordance with the Scriptures. No-one would know what to expect, if the way of the Lord had not been prepared.

Even though the Lord came as promised, He didn’t come as people had decided He must come. In their minds they turned Him into a political figure, not a Child in a manger, in a cave in Bethlehem, the lowest of the low, apparently. They expected Him, as did the three Wise Men, to be born a king in a palace. However, He was not. The Lord is always dealing with us in paradoxes. Our hearts have to be attuned to Him so that we can recognise Him in our hearts.

As they have been my whole life, people these days are frantic about the Second Coming, and the Antichrist, and so forth. Fear, fear, fear. Fear is the primary instrument of the devil. Fear is not the characteristic of people who love the Lord. In fact, the Apostle said: “Perfect love casts out all fear" (1 John 4:18). If we really are Christians, if our hearts are attuned to the Lord, and we are living in Him, our lives should be marked by lack of fear. Whenever the Antichrist may or may not show up as a person, we, in our hearts, have to know the difference. We will not know the difference, according to the Scriptures, by how things look, by glitzy activities. We won’t know the difference by all sorts of fancy argumentation. Like the Apostles on the road to Emmaus, it will be because our hearts burn within us, and witness to the love of Jesus Christ that we will be able to tell the difference between the true, and the false Christ. It requires a communion of love in our hearts.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America