From the Virgin's Womb to an Empty Tomb
This is a contemplation on the chorus refrain of the Monday Theotokia of the Coptic Psalmody in the spirit of Fr. Matthew the Poor.
"He shone in the flesh, taken from the Virgin, without a human seed, in order to save us."
Those are the words that we chant on Sunday eve right after we would have celebrated the Sunday Liturgy, the day of resurrection.
This is an icon of the whole life of Christ; a self-illuminating child brighter than the sun breaking the darkness of night at the dawn of a new day and new experience. This is the child of the manger who has shone in the darkness of our life giving us new experience and rather new nature bursting with life and overflowing to others who seek life. And just like the old creation started with light in the darkness, even so the light of Christ had to shine in our darkness.
This child's birth shines the light over my past, exposes my nature which fell in that garden while in the loins of Adam, who was exposed in the sight of God through sin. Yet with the start of the new creation in Christ, sin was given to condemnation rather than flourishing. Looking at my dark past, I see that my own nature longed to be like God, but without God, or even in opposition to God, not knowing that separating one’s self from God is separating one’s self from Life, and if I separate myself from life, I am dead. This was me, a corpse living its death.
As dead corpse, I needed not just life, but a whole new nature. My old nature had death engrained in it. My only way then to life is a new nature, a nature free from sin, or rather full of life (since sin is lack of life or death). And like in the old creation where man was created through the word of God, the new man had to be created now from the Word Himself, who had taken the form of man and now revealed in the flesh.
Looking more in this icon of Christ shining in the darkness, I see red marks in His hands, which turns out to be wounds! At first, this may seem like a stain to the beautiful icon of the new man, but this is in fact the main feature of the new man. So why and how can this be? Where does it fit in the picture? If you ask the Father, He would say, "This is the mystery of godliness!" and as Christ would put it, "for this hour of crucifixion I have come." The mystery of incarnation is void and null if it is separated and divorced from from the Crucifixion.
I wondered: Why the cross? Why should Life be stained by death? Again, I was carried back to my nakedness in the sight of God and the sentence that I laid upon myself knowing the consequence of my action in the garden. I was sentenced to death! But why would the new man be sentenced to the same thing? If anything, the new man should have no dealing with death, since he should be Life-granting. This thought widened the gap between the new man and myself, since I see that he has nothing in me, no common factor that I can relate to or accept. At this moment, the wounds of the child of the manger suddenly made sense; it is that cross that bridged the gap between the two opposite natures! It is then I realized that for me to obtain this new man, the sentence of death had to be executed on Him so that He can approach me, mind you even when this new man passed through death, it never stained His life-giving nature. And the signs of the wounds on the hands of this child had become an important evidence of the sentence that had dropped.
But the wound is not bleeding; it is healed! Meaning that death did not rule over Him, moreover, He ruled over it, otherwise how can He grant life? Yet the mark of it is eternal on Christ's hands. Suddenly again, I understood what this Spirit-inspired icon from the Psalmody meant by shining in the flesh. The radiant rays of Christ are the rays of victory over death; it is His resurrection! The resurrection is the proof to the whole creation that Christ has everlasting life and that the new man has been revealed and is now within reach. Resurrection is another sign in the new man proclaiming that He has Life in Himself and is able to radiate it to others.
Now we see the new man in that manger with all His glory and magnificence. How can we partake of Him? In other words, how can I enter into that icon as one of the painting’s strokes that drew Christ the child?
On the day of Pentecost, The apostle Peter was faced with the same question and the answer was as simple: "Believe and be baptized". It is that simple for me to partake of the new man; believe that Christ was born, crucified and resurrected to grant you life, and take on the new dye in the waters of baptism through the Spirit. Baptism is not just a mere process of bodily cleansing, but according to Christ Himself, when He spoke to Nicodemus, it is a new birth through water and Spirit. If this birth gives us the new man, then it is in fact the birth of the new man in me, and seeing that the Child of the Virgin is the new man, who was born to be crucified and resurrected, I know that I am granted to be on that same image of Christ. Therefore, the Incarnation cannot be taken lightly; it is not just an occasion in the life of Christ that we celebrate, but also it is an occasion in our new Life that we live and nourish.
Being in the icon myself, I can see the criticality of the Incarnation as an event that never ceased to end; I am a bone of him and a flesh of his. The birth of Christ is my own! Christ is incarnate and so I live, but rather Christ lives in me. Christ shone His light in the darkness of my soul, and so I reflect His light to the souls of others as part of my new nature.
"Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen."
