As a Child [Christmass Eve, Zion's Children's Program]

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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• St. Luke 2:1-16

 

Mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.
 
Jesus speaks to us, this Christmass Eve, from His holy Scripture and His many hymns, created by His Church. 
 
According to the Lord we need salvation as only a child can give. That message is so needed today, because we need faithful fathers to teach their households in order to produce faithful children. For having children around is having the Christ-child in our midst. That each time we see a child, faith is reminded of the childhood of our Lord and God.
 
Children are a gift from the Lord because He was one Himself. The world hates children, but the Lord loves them all. In the pregnancy and delivery of St. Mary, the mother of God, we see what St. Paul means in 1 Timothy 2:15 when he says in the Spirit, “Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.”
 
Not that if you have more kids you will be more saved, but that through the childbearing of St. Mary, woman is saved. Whether she has 0 children or 20, the biological fact that she can have children reminds her that as a child, her God entered this world to suffer and die for her. That when she incubates and nurtures and raises a child, she is imitating that great hero of faith, St. Mary.
 
How did the Lord bring us here? Through six barren mothers: Sarah the mother of Isaac, Rebekah the mother of Jacob, Rachel the mother of Joseph, Samson's mother, Hannah the mother of Samuel, and Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist. She is sixth in the line of women whose miraculous maternity betokens the seventh and greatest. For the seventh is greatest because she alone is not merely barren, but a virgin, and her Son is not merely man but God. 
 
So the birth of our Lord is foretold in the blessed motherhood of its forerunners. 
And of those forerunners Elizabeth and her son are greatest, for John will be great in the sight of the Lord: greater than Isaac, for not merely his parents, but many will rejoice at his birth; 
greater than Jacob, for not merely the inheritance, but the gift of the Holy Spirit shall fill him; 
greater than Joseph, for having honor not merely above his brothers and parents, but, among those born of women none greater than John was born; 
greater than Samson, though he too shall drink neither wine nor strong drink, yet unlike Samson he shall not be blind, but behold the Lamb of God; 
greater than Samuel, for he shall anoint not David, but the Son of David Himself. 
 
But even John, the sixth type, is not greatest, for seventh is the Lamb of God, who was born twice, once from the Virgin, and again from the tomb: as it were, the eighth barren womb, into which birth and resurrection are all the baptized joined forevermore. (Every day will I bless Thee, p.24)
 
It is the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in our sight (Ps 118:23). Not just of children, but of everything in life. When we breathe, we can remember the first breath God gave to Adam. When we eat, we can remember the Last Supper of our Lord. When we wash, we can recall the cleansing blood of Christ, poured out generously upon us. Such is the Life of Faith, grounded in Word and Sacrament, instituted by the Christ Child, born to save His people from their sins.