‘The Eternal Awesomeness of the Holy Nativity Each year we are blessed by Holy Tradition to celebrate once again the Holy Nativity of Our Lord and Savior, the COnly-Begotten Son of God, and especially n this particular year to reflect on the many blessings in the many new Churches that have come to jin with us in the sharing of Holy Orthodoxy. Each year we renew our praise to the Holy Trinity in the ‘worship of that particular Holy Night, and each year we benefit from the many graces and spiritual insights that this observance provides for us. Yet, as with all things spiritual, no matter how ebullient an observance we may have had on this occasion, there are always necessarily aspects of this Feast that remain incomprehensible to our limited, albeit grace- grazed, human minds. ‘The worshipful observance of the Church's many services for Holy Nativity that we have just gone through, are, of course, an extended celebration of the Mystery of the Incarnation, a concept that we will celebrate soon once again on the Holy Feast of the Annunciation to the Holy Theotokos (March 25""/ April 7), falling some nine months before the celebration of next year’s Christmas. Yet the meaning of the Incarnation is baffling to the human mind, no matter how easily we can accept it by Faith. In the words of our father St. Leo the Great of Old Rome, "How different is This Child's Birth from all others." It'is, after all, a concept that describes the meeting of Heaven and Earth, the intermingling of God's spiritual Kingdom and His mate‘ial creation. In the course of history, there are many other such encounters, however, most notably, the very moment of creation itself. For, no matter how science chooses to describe the beginning of this material universe, even science must reconcile itself to the idea that a temporal-spatial material universe can only have had its very existence from a source that was eminently non-temporal and non-spatial, i€., a source not bounded by time or space. Of course, for we who are believers in the Holy Trinity, this concept remains obvious to us all, for the etemal presence of the Divine and Holy Trinity definitively describes precisely such a wondrous source to the created universe. Likewise, at the time of the original event of the Holy Annunciation, this etemally timeless and unlimited entity, which is the very Person of the Son of God, became a part of the spatial-temporal world that we ourselves are a part of. As the Nativity liturgies restate so succinctly and yet so profoundly: “That which the whole universe could not contain was enclosed within thy womb, O Holy Theotokos." Yet, this mingling of Heaven and Earth is not limited merely to these awesome events in past history, for every time the Divine Liturgy is celebrated, this commingling of Heaven and Earth takes place on the ‘surface of our Altars, and we the unworthy ones are able to behold in our own sight an event similar to the events that only the Angels of Heaven beheld at the -moment of the temporal universe's creation, and at the awesome event which the salutation of the Archangel Gabriels presence invoked in the reply of the Theotokos: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it done unto me according to thy word.” Such Is the miracle that occurs within the moments of the Anaphora of the Holy Eucharist, and which is thus made present before our eyes at every Divine Liturgy, and of such a concept is the reason for the announcement of the Angels to the shepherds: “For unto you is bom this day, in the City of David, @ Savior which is ‘Christ the Lord.” Let us then continue with this year's somewhat early observance of the season of Great Lent, remembering that the words the shepherds heard which are so familiar to us in English as *Christ the Lord,” would have been in the Aramaic language of that time period the words: "Messiah Adonai,” or “Messiah Yahweh.” These words would be to them the hearing again in their own language the words that conveyed the meaning of the Name of God which they knew the Burning Bush on Mount Sinai spoke unto Moses as the Name by which He should be called, saying: “Say this unto Pharaoh that Thy God is called: ‘He will be the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Christ.” He itis that has sent me." Let us keep the awesomeness of these words in our hearts and souls at each and every Liturgy throughout Great Lent, until we come to see it in its full glory oon the Night of Holy Pascha. Unworthy servant, ‘Archbishop John