Vigils Reading – Nativity of the Lord

THE NATIVITY KERYGMA

By Thomas Merton3

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In its prayers, the Church plunges us into the Light of God shining in the

darkness of the world, in order that we may be illuminated and transformed by

the presence of the newborn Savior, and thus that he may be born and truly live

in us by making all our thoughts and actions light in himself. What joy, then,

that he who dwells eternally in the inaccessible light and peace of the Father has

left the throne of his glory and descended to be one of us! Or rather, without

leaving the bosom of the Father, veiling the too brilliant light of his glory in the

cloud of human nature, he who is enthroned above the cherubim takes up his

abode among us in a poor manger.

This Child who the shepherds, dazzled by the brilliance of the angelic

host, can scarcely see in the darkness of the cave lit by Joseph’s lantern, this

Child is (by his divinity) the Ancient of Days, the Creator and Judge of Heaven

and earth, of whom the prophet Daniel wrote: “I beheld till thrones were placed

and the Ancient of Days sat, his garment was as white as snow, and the hair of

his head like clean wool; his throne like flames of fire: the wheels of it like a

burning fire. A swift stream of fire issued forth before him: thousands of

thousands ministered to him and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stood

before him.”

This, is Daniel’s vision of the divinity of the Word Who, in his human

nature, lies here helpless in the dark. But the Son of Man, who is here born, is

himself the Word, consubstantial with the Father. To this only-begotten Son,

who is equal to the Father in all things as God, but less than the Father in so far

as he is human, all power is given by the Father. So, Daniel says again: “I beheld

therefore in the vision of the night, and lo one like the Son of Man came with the

clouds of heaven, and he came even to the Ancient of Days and they presented

him before him, and he gave him power and glory and a kingdom, and all

peoples, tribes and tongues shall serve him, his power is an everlasting power

that shall not be taken away and his kingdom that shall not be destroyed.” This,

then is the King promised from the beginning of the world and of whose

Kingdom there shall be no end.

Do not be afraid of him. God has emptied himself and come to us as a

child, in order that we who have not been saved by fear, but only destroyed by it,

may now take heart and be saved by confidence. In “Emptying himself” and

taking the form of a servant the Lord laid aside his majesty and his divine power,

in order to dwell among us in goodness and mercy.

3 SEASONS OF CELEBRATION by Thomas Merton (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, NY 1965) pp. 108-08.9