Galatians 6:11-18; John 3:13-17
It is easy to fall into despair when the deepest desires
of our hearts go unfulfilled. When that happens, we suffer but also have an
opportunity to learn to entrust ourselves to God in a way that is not focused
simply on getting what we want. In our pain
and disappointment, we may learn to find joy as we receive unanticipated
blessings that enable us to fulfill our distinctive vocations. It is by embracing the struggle to take up
our crosses in humble obedience in such circumstances that we become “a new
creation” as those transformed personally by the gracious divine energies of
our Lord.
The Savior’s grandparents Saints Joachim and Anna had
despaired of fulfilling their role in the ongoing life of the Hebrew people due
to their childlessness well into old age.
God heard their prayers, however, and miraculously blessed them to
conceive a daughter, whom they offered to the Lord by taking her to live in the
Temple as a three-year old. That is where she grew up in purity and prayer as
she prepared to become the Living Temple of the Lord, the Theotokos who would
contain the Son of God in her womb as His Virgin Mother. Her parents had
learned through decades of bitter disappointment that there was much more to
life than getting what they wanted on their own timeline. Through their patient endurance, they were
prepared to receive the unlikely blessing of a daughter who would give birth to
the Messiah. That is how they fulfilled
their unique role in the life of Israel in ways well beyond their own
expectations.
Christ Himself fulfilled the hopes of the Hebrew people
in a surprising fashion. In today’s epistle reading, St. Paul argues against
fellow Christians of Jewish heritage who thought that Gentile converts had to
be circumcised in obedience to the Old Testament law. He rejected that
practice, “For in Christ Jesus,
neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new
creation.” As St. Paul taught, “you are all sons of God through faith
in Christ Jesus.
For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There
is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither
male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are
Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Gal. 3: 26-29) By conquering death through His Cross and resurrection,
the Savior has opened the gates of Paradise to all who respond to Him with
faith, regardless of their ethnic or religious background. As He said to Nicodemus in today’s gospel
reading, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever
believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent His
Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved
through Him.”
Our Lord was lifted up upon the Cross because, contrary
to the expectations of the Pharisees, even the strictest obedience to the Old
Testament law could never have made us “a new creation.” The cycle of birth and
the grave had reigned ever since the corruption of our first parents for those
who had the law and for those who did not. The path out of slavery to
corruption was not through obedience to religious rules, but in being healed by
the gracious mercy of God, Who blessed an elderly, righteous Jewish couple with
a long-awaited daughter named Mary. She, in turn, received the
unique blessing of becoming the Virgin Mother of the New Adam, Who would set
right all that the first Adam had gotten wrong. The Theotokos is the New
Eve through whom Life came into the world. Her birth foreshadows the coming
of the Savior in Whom we are born again for the life the Kingdom.
In Christ’s conversation with the Pharisee Nicodemus, He spoke
not of law, but of the life into which we enter by faith, saying that “as Moses
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up,
that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” He
refers here to an event described in Numbers 21:8-9, when the Hebrews were
saved from deadly snake bites when they looked at the bronze snake held up by
Moses in the desert. Christ does not describe Moses here in connection
with the Ten Commandments, but instead as foretelling His victory over death
through the Cross. Against those who trusted in their obedience to the law, St.
Paul wrote, “far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus
Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.” Through
His Cross, Christ has liberated us from obsession with self-justification so
that we may become “a new creation,” being born again into the eternal life
that He has brought to the world
In order to find the healing of our souls in Him, we must
embrace the struggle to take up our crosses like Joachim and Anna, who bore the
heavy cross of childlessness for decades. When God miraculously blessed them
with the conception and birth of a daughter, they offered her to grow up in the
Temple. After decades of faithfulness amidst disappointment, they knew
that God’s blessing was not their private possession but a calling to offer even
the greatest desire of their hearts to Him.
The Theotokos followed their example by bearing the unbelievably heavy
cross of seeing her Son lifted up for the salvation of the world. As St. Symeon prophetically told her, “a sword
will pierce your own soul also.” (Luke 2:35)
As members of Christ’s Body, the Church, we reap the
blessings of the faithful obedience of Joachim and Anna and of the Theotokos. We must now take up our own crosses as we unite
ourselves more fully to Christ in His great Self-Offering for the salvation of
the world. It is only by dying to our
obsession with getting what we want from God on our terms that we will be able
to know the joy of becoming His “new creation.” We will condemn only
ourselves if we celebrate the faithfulness of the Theotokos and her parents
while not following their holy examples.
They did not try to use God to serve their agendas or justify themselves.
They humbly entrusted themselves to Him in ways that required deep faith and personal
sacrifice. We must do the same as we endure
the struggle to “seek first the Kingdom of God” with the assurance that He will
grant what is best for us, our loved ones, and our world. (Matt. 6:33)
We will remain enslaved to the corruption of the first
Adam and Eve if we refuse to crucify the disordered desires and unholy habits
that keep us wedded to the self-centered misery and despair from which Christ
came to set us free. The birth of the
New Eve foreshadows our salvation in the New Adam through His Cross. “For God sent His Son into the world, not to
condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” Let us
celebrate the Nativity of the Theotokos by freely taking up our crosses as we
turn away from all that distracts us from entering into the great joy of the
fulfillment of the ancient promises to Abraham to which the Savior has shockingly
made us heirs by faith. “For
in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision,
but a new creation.” That is precisely who
our Lord, the New Adam, calls us all to become as those transfigured personally
by His grace.
