Psallam​​ TIBI​

IN OCTAVA NATIVITATE DOMINI

ET MEMORIÆ MATRIS DEI

1 JANUARY 2016

 

MONSTRA TE ESSE MATREM

 

SHOW YOURSELF TO BE A MOTHER, for it is in your holy motherhood that all mankind have gained the inheritance of sons of God. For God did not choose to appear among men in the blinding light of His heavenly glory, but chose to take to Himself your flesh, our flesh, and become Son in time, among men, as He is Son in the eternal Godhead. And it is in the embracing of the flesh He created, being born true God, true Man, of the Virgin Mary, that all mortal flesh receives, not the punishment due for our sin, but redemption from it, clothed in Him who on this Christmas day clothed Himself in us.

 

This unthinkable act of love is recalled in an ancient offertory hymn from the third-century Divine Liturgy of St. James, its mystery unravelled with a delicacy that trembles in awe as the truth of the Word made Flesh is made known:

 

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,

And with fear and trembling stand;

Ponder nothing earthly minded,

For with blessing in His hand,

Christ our God to earth descending

Comes our homage to demand.

 

King of kings, yet born of Mary,

As of old on earth He stood,

Lord of lords, in human vesture,

In the body and the blood;

He will give to all the faithful

His own self for heavenly food.

 

Whose flesh could abide His coming, to become Mother of her Creator, but the Immaculate Virgin’s? For by His grace conceived without sin, it was Mary’s flesh He took, and from her womb, inviolate, He chose to become the Emmanuel: very God made flesh, that same flesh to give, so that man may be made as God. And so she, whose fiat was not just her own but on behalf of all mankind, bore God for the perfect love she had for Him, and for each of us who would know Him; for she knew who grew within her: her Son, her Lord, her God; the Saviour of the world.

 

Owe we not, then, our salvation to the Incarnation of God in the womb of Mary? And owe we not the name ‘sons of God’ that makes our mortal flesh immortal, to the flesh that God took as Son of Mary? Then shall we understand this Octave Day of Christmas as no less than the Feast of our Salvation, for we declare that Mary is Mother of God. For if she bore not God as her own Son, we should not be made sons of God by Him. Rejoice, then, with exceeding joy for this is the appointed day of which the Apostle speaks when “God sent his Son, born of a woman, born a subject of the Law, to redeem the subjects of the Law and to enable us to be adopted as sons.” (Gal. 4:4-5)

 

So may we ever seek the patronage of the Bearer of God, and, ever following Christ our Lord, make ourselves subject to her as the Evangelist tells us Christ also made Himself subject. For as our God found her worthy, so she became the singular vessel of His grace. And as the Christ-child was obedient to her, so may we obey her call to love Him with the perfect love of her fiat with which the Word took Flesh and was born among us.

 

 

Υπο την σην ευσπλαγχνιαν καταφευγομεν Θεοτοκε. τας ημων ικεσιας μη παριδης εν περιστασει, 

αλλ’ εκ κινδυνων λυτρωσαι ημας, μονη αγνη, μονη ευλογημενη.

Prayer to the Theotokos from the ancient coptic liturgy of Christmas

Beneath thy compassion, we take refuge, O Theotokos: do not despise our petitions in time of trouble,

but rescue us from dangers, only pure one, only blessed one.