Yesterday evening and this morning we observed the liturgical beginning to the Nativity Fast in church with the appointed lenten-style Vespers and Matins. The lenten troparia and the prayer of St. Ephrem the Syian with prostrations break the routine of regular weekday Vespers and help us enter into the spirit of fasting even as our country looks ahead to the feasts of Thanksgiving and the “Christmas season” (really “pre-Christmas” season). Ahead of us is a journey through forty days of ascetic effort to reach a place where we may see Jesus of Nazareth for who He truly is and to worship him with the Magi.

One obstacle to reaching this place is our intellectual familiarity with the story, and that familiarity, if it falls short of breeding contempt in this case, may still generate a barrier to deeper apprehension of the Truth. Yes, we know Jesus, the Son of God was born of the Virgin Mary in the cave with singing angels and lowing oxen, and we celebrate that at Christmas (do we?). Our mind knows the facts of the story. But do we truly apprehend for ourselves the One who came and what His coming portends for us humans made in God’s image?

The Magi saw the star heralding the birth of the King of the Jews. They undertook a long, dangerous journey to come worship Him (and notice that their worship in part involved bringing costly gifts). The distinctive services marking the beginning of the Fast rise as a star calling us to set out to draw near to our rightful King. We need this journey back to Christ’s side. In the course of the year, we may wander from Christ, forget Him, or even keep Him in a small compartment in our life, forgetting that He needs to fill the whole. The fast calls us back to His side to apprehend Him for who He is—the God-man, the second Person of the eternal, holy Trinity made man for us—Emmanuel, God with us. Yes, we know this, too, intellectually, but we need to apprehend with the our spiritual eyes and our heart, to gaze on the eternal God made man to make man by grace to be what He is by nature, and it is by the Fast—prayer, almsgiving, and fasting—that our spiritual sight is cleared that it may apprehend Him.

Fasting may be misunderstood. It is not merely the fulfillment of a legalistic religious requirement to be in good standing with the Church. The Church calls us to fast, but not as an end in itself, only as a means to an end, an end that can scarcely be attained without fasting. It is not a misery creating effort in self-denial to impress God or win his favor. He has no need for our fasting, and it cannot impress Him. But we need fasting to help subdue the body to the soul, to collect our scattered thoughts, to reintegrate our vision to focus on the One who matters most, the One whose coming marks the decisive turning point in history, the One about whom all history turns and in whom it finds its only meaning.

Fasting at this time of year is particularly difficult. The world spends the time leading up to Christmas in feasting, not fasting, in self-indulgence, not self-denial, and then when the Feast comes, the world, satiated with its excess, is ready to put up the decorations, put out the trees, and go on a diet. Christians deny themselves of physical food that they may receive the spiritual Bread from heaven, and only having seen Him on Christmas morning do they keep the Feast with joy.
As we begin the Fast, we may see ourselves as beginning the journey of the Magi to culminate in seeing the eternal Son made flesh through the Virgin Mary. May God grant us all to arrive at that destination and to be changed by the encounter.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 15th, 2007 at 12:10 pm and is filed under Christmas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.