Christmas Greetings From the 4th Century

I'll be away from blogging for a couple days. On this Christmas Eve, I leave you with excerpts from the Christmas sermon of Gregory of Nazianzus:

Christ is Born, glorify ye Him. Christ from heaven, go ye out to meet Him. Christ on earth; be ye exalted. Christ in the flesh, rejoice with trembling and with joy; with trembling because of your sins, with joy because of your hope. Christ of a Virgin, with out Mother, becomes without Father (without Mother of His former state, without Father of His second.) He Who is not carnal is Incarnate; the Son of God becomes the Son of Man....

Therefore let us keep the Feast, not after the manner of a heathen festival, but 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 recreation.

Now then I pray you accept His Conception, and leap before Him; if not like John from the Womb, yet like David, because of the resting of the Ark. Revere the enrollment on account of which thou wast written in heaven, and adore the Birth by which thou wast loosed from the chains of thy birth, and honour little Bethlehem, which hath led thee back to Paradise; and worship the manger through which thou, being without sense, wast fed by the Word....

Look at and be looked at by the Great God, Who in Trinity is worshiped and glorified, and Whom we declare to be now set forth as clearly before you as the chains of our flesh allow, in Jesus Christ our Lord, to Whom be the glory for ever. Amen.