The DOW is Down 427 Today - Could This Be A Christmas Blessing?

Dec 01, 2008 by Fr Luke Palumbis

The celebration of our Lord’s Nativity appropriately calls us to recognize and appreciate the great number of blessings in our lives; our health, families, friends, church communities, etc.  Although the blessings are worthy of recognition and appreciation through out the year, the Nativity season affords us a particular opportunity by serving as a catalyst evoking a great consciousness toward God’s love for us, and the blessings He has given us.  Yet during the Christmas season, after a moment of reflection and perhaps nostalgia, our minds often turn to another track, full of stress and anxiety—leading away from a greater sense of gratefulness, toward varied forms of despair or even resentment!

In this Nativity season of 2008, how much more pronounced is this track of melancholy and misery, in light of the current economic recession impacting our great nation and the globalized economy.  Retailers have already expressed their woes at the prospect and experience of a weak consumer showing, and the superficial phenomena known as “consumer Christmas” will seemingly have a much more humble expression in the year 2008.  Yet perhaps this material experience of humility holds the particular blessing of this year’s Nativity season?

Saint Athanasios the Great wrote extensively concerning the reality that God became man!  It is unfathomable to comprehend the love God possesses for us as His children, which would provoke Him to such an extreme act of humility; whereby the Creator becomes His very creation!  This is precisely what took place when the eternal Word of God (reference John 1:1) became man (reference Luke 2:1-7), and was born in a Bethlehem manger.  Humility beyond measure!

This Nativity season a more financially humble expression of Christmas celebration may be the greatest blessing we receive.  By celebrating with material humility we may begin celebrating and living with a greater sense of internal humility—a virtue which ultimately honors the humility of our Lord to have become man.  Saint Athanasios the Great expands that, God became man, so that man could become like god.  God’s act of loving humility, to have become man, suffer crucifixion and be resurrected for our salvation, demands our honor and respect—manifest powerfully when we strive to live our lives with humility of divine standards.  Through humility we place ourselves in a position to receive God’s mercy, and ultimately our salvation, which affords us the experience of being god-like, as Saint Athanasios the Great explains, when we share in the life and energies of our Father who is in Heaven! ...when we enter into the Kingdom of God!

This Nativity season, let us embrace a humble expression of celebration at it’s most appropriate time—as we honor the humility of God manifest in the incarnation of His Word!  May the blessings of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who condescended to be born in a cave, be upon us all as we strive toward the divine virtue of humility this Christmas season! 

Christ is Born!  Glorify him!