Беседа о воплощении Господа нашего Иисуса Христа. Святого Прокла, архиепископа Константинопольского

Frequent and varied celebrations of festivals bring joy to human life: a holiday will come, and the tedious worries of this miserable life will turn into joy. It is known how much sailors who have endured many storms rejoice when, leaving behind them the waves of a hostile sea, they enter the harbour, as into the safest bosom of life: similarly, every person, when, after many different worries from daily activities, a holiday comes, rejoices at it as a day of calm from worries, as liberation from labor. Truly, a holiday is the oblivion of sorrows, the pacification of worries, the source of joys, the communion of joy, the time of prayer, the harvest for the poor, the decoration of the Church, the triumph of cities, the cessation of enmity, the beginning of friendship, heaven on earth. But why spread too much? - the holiday is the fruit of the resurrection, as the Prophet speaks about this: Celebrate Judah, your holidays: before you came up from the earth, you breathed into your face (Nahum. 1:15; 2:1). There are many holidays, but not all of them are equally beneficial. For some of them were established by God, others were invented by the devil, and of these, some naturally serve to corrupt souls, others to satiate the belly, and others, finally, completely remove the human race from salvation. Behold, the pagans celebrate their festivals, but since they idolize shameful passions and vices, they draw from them only the uncleanness of corruption, with which they defile themselves. The Jews also celebrate their holidays, but their god is their belly, and the holidays, due to satiety, serve as a source of iniquity for them. When they celebrated a holiday while traveling through the desert, they worshiped the golden calf (Ex. 32:8); during their fasts they were fed up with quarrels and strife (Is. 58:4); and in Jerusalem, celebrating the feast day, they erected a cross for the Lord. Oh, these Jewish holidays! in them both joy is delusion, and pleasure is murder. But Christian celebrations are divine and wonderful; these are the sources and treasuries of salvation. Thus, our first holiday glorifies the coming of God to people. Behind him, the next one depicts the consecration of the waters and the baptismal font. The third preaches the destruction of death, the triumph of the cross, the gift of resurrection, the freedom of the forefathers. The fourth proclaims the ascension of our Firstborn into heaven and His sitting at the right hand of the Father. The fifth, with a trumpet voice, sings of the descent of the Holy Spirit and the abundant dew of grace. These are the holidays that the Lord Himself sanctified: let us rejoice and be glad on these! And in this celebration (which we celebrate today), isn’t everything marvelous, isn’t everything new, isn’t everything full of greatness, glory, and awe? What exactly is wonderful about this holiday? But first, I beg you, listen to me with grace: for my word, with which I dare to tell you and explain the mysteries of God, is meager and powerless. So, what’s wonderful about this holiday? – The inexplicable mystery of the union of the Divine with humanity: here what was born was not defiled by the impurities of birth; the incarnation dispassionately clothed in human image the One who is alien to every image and form of the sensual. Truly a wonderful birth! He who is born has both a beginning and no beginning: for according to humanity He has a beginning, but according to Divinity He is eternal and without beginning. He who is the image of the Father's hypostasis (Heb. 1:3) took on human form, and yet the Trinity was not multiplied into a quaternity. Two natures were united, and yet one Son was born. The Word and the flesh were united without confusion, and the One who was born yesterday according to the flesh, since he is from the Father, is God, and since he is from me, man. Oh, a terrible and wonderful mystery! Who has ever seen a king put on the clothes of a slave? or that the eye of a mortal should embrace with its vision the whole sun?... When did the flesh, without changing in essence, unite with God - when if not today? After the Holy Virgin prepared Her womb, the Word penetrated through the ear, and the Holy Spirit formed a living church; The Almighty humbled Himself to the form of a slave, and the Virgin womb finally revealed this sacrament of the Divine economy. O womb, the most spacious of heavens! O fruit, vessel of salvation. Oh, the womb, which contains both the substance and the Educator!... Oh, the mystery, the essence of which I am not able to explain! Oh, birth, which informed all people and joyfully and solemnly announced not the beginning of God’s existence, or the change of His being, not the decrease in His power, not the separation, finally, of the Son from the eternal Parent; but about the essential unity of God and the flesh, about the blessed fruit of the womb, about the coming of God, about a miracle hidden in God from eternity, about the release from the oath and the destruction of condemnation, about the eternal existence and, ultimately, about the birth according to the flesh from the Virgin - one and the same Son, and, finally, about the worship that all creation renders to Him! To him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen 65. Curs. Compl. Patrolog. Migne. series graeca, volume LXV, col. 703–708, pp. "Christian Reading" 1832, XLVIII part, 265–270 pp. You might be interested in: