BEGINNING NATIVITY FAST
(Friday, November 15)
”Rejoice, Bethlehem! Prepare yourself, O Ephratha! / The Lamb is on her way to give birth to the Chief Shepherd she carries in her womb. / The God-bearing forefathers will rejoice, beholding Him, / and with the shepherds, they will glorify the Virgin nursing Him.” (Kontakion-Hymn, Forefeast of the Nativity)
This hymn will only be chanted in our churches a few days before Christmas, but I’m thinking about it today, because New Calendar folks in our Orthodox Churches are beginning the 40-day Fast leading up to Christmas. The hymn is unusual, because the Virgin is called “the Lamb.” It’s usually Christ we think of as “the Lamb,” as in Isaiah’s prophecy: “He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.” (Is 53: 7)
But the Theotokos shares this “lamb-likeness” with her Son, as do we, on our journey of the Nativity Fast and in general, on our cross-carrying journeys. The Mother of God, who is the image of the Mother-Church, demonstrates our common church-vocation of being led, on the way of the cross, to the place where we become birth-givers to the Word in this world. She is “being led” in “silence” to Bethlehem and beyond it, to the flight to Egypt and then back to Nazareth, and eventually to Jerusalem and to the Cross, upon which she is to see her Son die, and through which He will bring us new life and new joy in His resurrection.
So, in these days leading up to the feast of the Lord’s Nativity, we celebrate not “only” the Self-offering of her Son, Who comes into our world to share our humanity and its pain, as One of us, but also her self-offering, as one of us. It couldn’t have been easy, as, according to Tradition, she was just 14 years old when she gave birth to the Son of God in a lonely cave in Bethlehem. Let us let ourselves be led on this quiet journey to Bethlehem, my friends, by the prayers of the Theotokos, – even if or especially if God has us giving birth to His Word in lonely caves.
