The Nativity Fast: Living in Hope of Good Things to Come
Calling the Magi by a star, heaven brought the first fruits of the Gentiles unto Thee, a Babe lying in the manger: and they were amazed to see neither sceptre nor throne but only utter poverty. For what is meaner than a cave, what is humbler than swaddling clothes? Yet therein shone forth the wealth of Thy divinity: glory to Thee, O Lord. -Hypakoe for Matins of the Nativity, Tone Eight.
How can we best prepare for the Lord’s coming among us in mystery at the great Feast of His Nativity? The Church’s traditional means are always with us, of course: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. We know these tools of the spiritual craft and desire to employ them, but often we fail to do so. It is true that frequently we fail because of lack of resolve or our various passions, but often it is due to long-term or temporary ignorance: either we have never understood or we have temporarily forgotten who we are and what our position is in this world and what our attitude should be towards it.
To acquire – or re-acquire – this correct attitude, let us look to our fathers in the One Faith of Christ, the holy ones who lived before His coming. During the season of the Nativity Fast, Holy Church holds up the Old Testament prophets to us frequently, calling us to hearken to their words, imitate their lives, and, above all, acquire their inexpressible love and longing for the presence of God. On November 19 (Old Style), we had the feast of the Prophet Obadiah. On December 1 – Prophet Nahum, December 2 – Prophet Habakkuk, December 3 – Prophet Zephaniah, December 16 – Prophet Haggai, December 17 – Prophet Daniel and the Three Holy Youths. On the two Sundays preceding the Nativity, we remember all of the great holy ones of the Old Testament, the forefathers of Christ, as well as all the prophets, patriarchs, and righteous that preceded the Advent of God in the flesh.
What did all of these great figures have in common, and how can we imitate them? What we see in their lives is this:
1. They were surrounded by unbelief. From Adam through Seth through Noah through Abraham through Jacob, there were a very tiny number of people who actually worshipped the real God. After the multiplication of the offspring of Jacob’s sons, the twelve patriarchs, there were hundreds of thousands or millions of the Chosen People, but very few really cared for God, and they frequently fell back into idolatry. The righteous and prophets were always few in number and hated by the majority, either pagans or Hebrews who were either outright idolaters or simply immoral and indifferent.
2. They lived in hope. Just think: The great saints of the Old Testament, men like Moses, who conversed with the Lord “as a man with his friend,” or David, who was a man after the Lord’s own heart, knew that after death they would go down to Hades, for the Messiah had not yet come to deliver man from the sting of death. Yet they lived in great hope of the coming of Christ. Of the three evangelical virtues, hope is the one of which we hear about the least and certainly do not talk about enough. While faith is belief in God, and love is desire for God, hope is confidence in God. When we get discouraged about our lives or the world around us, let us pray for more confidence in God’s providence and power over our lives. Let us remember the faithful of the Old Testament, who knew the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection only in shadowy symbols and figures, yet who lived in hope. We, who now possess the reality, must do no less.
3. They lived as strangers and pilgrims in this transitory life. Let us recall the great words by which St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, describes the life of the Old Testament saints: “…and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection. And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.”
Dens and caves of the earth! “For what is meaner than a cave?”- yet in a cave the Lord of the Prophets and Patriarchs was born a man. We too must flee to the dens and caves of the earth if we are to find Salvation, as the Magi found Him originally in a cave, 2,000 years ago. “Caves and dens” means several things:
We must flee to the cave of the heart. Frequently the Holy Fathers speak of our heart as a hidden cave like that in which the Christ Child dwelt. We must daily, constantly, shut out the noise and desires of the world to force our mind with attention into the heart. This is where God dwells.
We must make our Church and homes hidden dens and caves away from the temptations and despair of the world. If we cut out worldly influences and create an atmosphere of prayer and “joyful sorrow,” longing for heaven, in our homes, the angels of God build an invisible wall around us. If we abide in the temple of God “day and night,” like the Prophetess Anna, we become detached from the kingdoms of this world and realize our heavenly citizenship. And if we seriously ask the Lord for means of income which allow us quiet, prayer, and a moral atmosphere, so that we can abide in the cave of the heart while still supporting our families, He may surprise us and give what we ask!
When we are destitute, afflicted, and tormented, we must not complain. The more we try to become citizens of the heavenly homeland, the more we will become like those “wandering about in sheepskins and goatskins.” Remember that the Pioneer of our Salvation Himself had nowhere to lay His head. As we begin to feel estranged from this world, let us accept this state of “not belonging,” with all of its social, psychological and material consequences, joyfully. The pain of this "not belonging” drives us more deeply into our “cave,” the heart, because, deprived of earthly joys to which we once turned for consolation, we long more and more for God.
The fruit of this abiding in the “dens and caves of the earth” is that a man becomes pure in heart and sees God: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” The prophets abode in hope, because their great purity of heart enabled them to perceive the Son and Word of God noetically and know that He Is and that He saves us. We too, to acquire this hope, must acquire purity of heart through forcing ourselves to frequent prayer within the framework of a life formed by consciously anti-worldly life choices.
They awaited the First Coming. We await the Second. But our hope is the same: Our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ. May the prayers of those “of whom the world was not worthy” enable us with hope to “endure to the end,” that we may be saved.