I was just telling my kids this week that the “Gregorys” from history were popes, and none of them were all that great. But I forgot about the desert fathers! And here’s a great Christmas sermon from my namesake from Nazianzus:
Christ is born, glorify Him! Christ from heaven, go out to meet Him! Christ on earth, be exalted! Sing to the Lord all the whole earth… let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad, for Him who is of heaven and then of earth.
Christ in the flesh: rejoice with trembling and with joy… with trembling because of your sins, with joy because of your hope.
Again, the darkness is past; again Light is made…The people who sat in the darkness of ignorance, let them see the great Light full of knowledge. Old things have passed away, behold all things have become new. The letter gives way, the Spirit comes to the front. The shadows flee away, the truth comes in on them.
He who was without Mother becomes without Father (without mother of His former state, without father of His second). The laws of nature are upset; the world above must be filled. Christ commands it, let us not set ourselves against Him.
O clap your hands together all you people, because unto us a Child is born, and a Son given unto us, whose government is upon His shoulder (for with the cross it is raised up), and His name is called The Angel of the Great Counsel of the Father. Let John cry, prepare the way of the Lord; I too will cry the power of this Day. He who is not carnal is Incarnate; the Son of God becomes the Son of Man, Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever. Let the Jews be offended, let the Greeks deride; let heretics talk until their tongues ache. Then shall they believe, when they see Him ascending into heaven; and if not then, yet when they see Him coming out of heaven and sitting as Judge.
This is our present Festival; it is this which we are celebrating today, the Coming of God to [Humanity], that we might go forth, or rather (for this is the more proper expression) that we might go back to God – that putting off the old [person], we might put on the new; and that as we died in Adam, so we might live in Christ, being born with Christ and crucified with Him and buried with Him and rising with Him. For I must undergo the beautiful conversion, and as the painful succeeded the more blissful, so must the more blissful come out of the painful. For where sin abounded grace did much more abound; and if a taste condemned us, how much more does the passion of Christ justify us?
Therefore let us keep the Feast, not after the manner of a heathen festival, but after a godly sort; not after the way of the world, but in a fashion above the world; not as our own, but as belonging to Him who is ours, or rather as our master’s; not as of weakness, but as of healing; not as of creation, but of re-creation.
St. Gregory of Nazianzus, AD 380
Gregg, thanks for posting these wonderful sermons and thoughts from the early church fathers. They are all wonderful. Each in its own way embellishes (one of my favorite theologians) Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright’s conclusion that “when the Word became flesh, it was the coming together of heaven and earth.” I continue to be amazed and awed by what our God did through the incarnation, and these sermons surely remind us and enlighten us.