Spiritual Contemplations for those who serve the Lord |
This is our present Festival; it is this we celebrate today, the coming of God to man, that we might go forth, or rather that we might go back to God that putting off the old man, we might put on the new, and that as we died in Adam, so we might live in Christ (1 Corinthians 15:22), 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 abounded much more" (Romans 5:20); and if a taste condemned us, how much more does the Passion of Christ justify us? Therefore let us keep the Feast, 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. And how shall this be? Let us not decorate our porches, nor organize dances, nor adorn the streets. Let us not feast the eye, nor enchant the ear with music, nor enervate the nostrils with perfume, nor prostitute the taste, nor indulge the touch, those roads that are so prone to evil and entrances for sin. Let us not be effeminate in soft, flowing clothes, whose beauty consists in their uselessness, nor with the glittering of gems or the sheen of gold (Romans 13:13) or the tricks of color, belying the beauty of nature and invented to do despite to the image of God. Not in rioting and drunkenness, with which are mingled, I know well, in fornication and wantonness, since the lessons which evil teachers give are evil, or rather the harvest from worthless seeds is worthless. Let us not set up high beds of leaves, making shrines for the belly of what belongs to debauchery. Let us not toast with fragrant wines, the specialties of cooks, the great expense of perfumes. Let not sea and land bring us as a gift their precious refuse for this is how I have learned to estimate luxury and let us not strive to outdo each other in intemperance (for to my mind every superfluity is intemperance and everything which goes beyond absolute need), and this while others, who are made of the same clay and in the same manner, are hungry and in want. Let us leave all these to the Greeks and festivals of the Greeks, who call by the name of gods beings who rejoice in the stench of sacrifices, and who consistently worship with their belly evil inventors and worshippers of evil demons. But we, the object of whose adoration is the Word, if we must in some way have luxury, let us seek it in word, and in the divine Law, and in histories, especially those that are the origin of this feast, so that our luxury may be akin to and not far removed from Him Who has called us together. Or do you desire (for today I am your host!) that I should set before you, my good guests, the story of these things as abundantly and as nobly as I can, so that you may know how a foreigner can feed the natives of the land, and a rustic the people of the town, and one who cares not for luxury those who delight in it, and one who is poor and homeless those who are eminent for wealth? We will begin from this point; and let me ask you who delight in such matters to cleanse your mind and your ears and your thoughts, since our discourse is to be of God and divine, so that when you depart you may have enjoyed delights that really do not fade away. And this same discourse shall be at once both very full and very concise, so that you may neither be displeased at its deficiencies, nor find it unpleasant through excessiveness. * Adapted from Oration 38, On the manifestation of God in the birth of Christ - St Gregory Nazianzus
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