Monthly Archives: December 2019

SS. Isaac and Symeon, “On the Nativity”

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(Illumination from the “Golden codex” of Pułtusk, a town in Poland, that is one of the oldest, surviving medieval codices in Poland today.)

This Christmas night bestowed peace on the whole world;
So let no one threaten;

This is the night of the Most Gentle One –
Let no one be cruel;

This is the night of the Humble One –
Let no one be proud.

Now is the day of joy –
Let us not revenge;

Now is the day of Good Will –
Let us not be mean.

In this Day of Peace –
Let us not be conquered by anger.

Today the Bountiful impoverished Himself for our sake;
So, rich one, invite the poor to your table.

Today we receive a Gift for which we did not ask;
So let us give alms to those who implore and beg us.

This present Day cast open the heavenly doors to our prayers;
Let us open our door to those who ask our forgiveness.

Today the Divine Being took upon Himself the seal of our humanity,
In order for humanity to be decorated by the Seal of Divinity.

– St. Isaac the Syrian (7th century), “Sermon on the Nativity“

And from Saint Symeon the New Theologian:


…the Logos descended (Jn 10.36)

and dwelt entirely in the womb of the virgin,

and He was wholly in the Father and wholly in the womb,

and wholly in the universe, being uncontainable.

Not reduced, not diminished at all, He went entirely in

and remained unchanged. He took the form of a slave

and having been begotten He became human in every way (Phil 2.7).

The whole of Him went through the womb and He came into

the world;

again He was taken up from whence He was not separated (Mk 16.19).

Glory to You, Father, and Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Boundless Divinity, indivisible by nature,

prostrate, we all worship You in the Holy Spirit,

we who have your Spirit, as we have received from You.

Hymn 21, St. Symeon the New Theologian (excerpted from “Divine Eros: Hymns of St. Symeon the New Theologian”)

Conception of the Mother of God: East vs. West?

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In this 16th century icon of the Conception of the Mother of God, SS. Joachim and Anna tenderly embrace, standing before a bed. Without being explicit, it tells us that the conception of St. Mary happened through natural means.
(In the corners of the icon, Joachim and Anna are shown separately. According to the Protoevangelium, in his grief Joachim retired to the desert in fasting and prayer for forty days, while Anna remained lamenting at home. An angel was sent to each of them to announce that their entreaties had been heard by God and that they should return to each other to conceive; the main scene shows the happy meeting.)

The Conception of the Mother of God by Saint Anna is commemorated by the Orthodox Church on December 9 while the Western Church celebrates on December 8. St. Anna, the mother of the Virgin Mary, was the youngest daughter of the priest Nathan from Bethlehem, descended from the tribe of Levi. She married St. Joachim, who was a native of Galilee. For many years, St. Anna was childless and the couple suffered much reproach for her barrenness. When they were in Jerusalem to offer sacrifice to God, the High Priest, Issachar, upbraided Joachim, “You are not worthy to offer sacrifice with those childless hands.” Both spouses gave themselves to fervent prayer, and the Archangel Gabriel announced to them separately that they would be the parents of a daughter who would bring blessings to the whole human race.

The Orthodox Church does not accept the teaching of the Immaculate Conception, but has also always believed that the Virgin Mary was, from her conception, filled with every Grace of the Holy Spirit in view of her calling as the Mother of Christ our God. The Immaculate Conception is a Western Christian teaching which asserts that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was preserved by God from the transmission of original sin at the time of her own conception. Specifically the doctrine says she was not afflicted by the privation of sanctifying grace which afflicts mankind, but was instead filled with grace by God, and furthermore lived a life completely free from sin. It is commonly confused with the doctrine of the virginal conception of Christ, though the two doctrines deal with separate subjects.

The feast is not exactly nine months before the feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos (September 8) as it is in the West, but one day later. Many have taught this is to show that God alone is perfect.

St. Nicholas is Coming to Town!

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An icon of St. Nicholas with scenes from his life around the edge. Christ and the Mother of God are shown returning his vestments to him, based on a dream-vision he had while he was in prison, deprived of serving his flock because the emperor disagreed with his theology.

St. Nicholas was a bishop in 4th-century Turkey but is commonly known as “Santa Claus” in much of the Western World. He brings gifts to good children on his feast day (December 6) or on Christmas Day; in some places, he is said to take away bad children in his empty gift bag. He is sometimes accompanied by a servant or devil who takes away the bad children or leaves switches for their parents to beat them.

His tomb is in Myra (a small town in modern Turkey) but many of the remains were stolen by Italian sailors and taken to Bari in 1087. The sailors from Bari only took the main bones of Nicholas’s skeleton, leaving all the minor fragments in the grave. The city of Venice had interest in obtaining the remaining fragments of his skeleton and, in 1100, a fleet of Venetian ships sailed past Myra on their way to Palestine for the First Crusade. The Venetians took the remaining bones of Saint Nicholas, and brought them to Venice. This story was lent credence in two scientific investigations of the relics in Bari and Venice, which confirmed that the relics in the two cities are anatomically compatible and may belong to the same person.

In the late 1950s, while the crypt was undergoing much-needed restoration, the bones were removed from it for the first time since their interment in 1089. A special Pontifical Commission permitted Luigi Martino, a professor of human anatomy at the University of Bari, to examine the bones under the Commission’s supervision. Martino took thousands of measurements, detailed scientific drawings, photographs, and x-rays. These examinations revealed the saint to have died at over seventy years of age and to have been of average height and slender-to-average build. He also suffered from severe chronic arthritis in his spine and pelvis.

Another test in 2017 in Oxford involved radiocarbon dating, which confirmed that the bones date to the fourth century AD, around the same time that Saint Nicholas would have died, and are not a medieval forgery.