Nativity's present meaning

In this season of joyful expectation, I am writing to you about the celebration of the birth of our Lord, the Nativity of Christ.
During the Nativity season, Orthodox Christians greet one another with the words, "Christ is born" to which the response is, "Glorify him."
What do we mean by these words? Notice that the phrase is not "Christ was born" but "Christ is born." That's because the Feast of the Nativity of our Lord is not simply the commemoration of some historical event that happened more than two millennia ago; it is something that is in the present. God is with us, here and now. The union of God with man continues throughout all eternity.
We number our years B.C. (Before Christ) and A.D. (from the Latin Anno Domini, which means "the year of our Lord") because in that one spectacular moment -- the moment of the Incarnation -- the past, the present and the future were united in eternity. As St. Athanasium put it, "God became man that we might become divine."
That is to say, Christ shared our poverty that we might share the riches of his divinity -- that we become sons of God by adoption (Galatians 4:5). This is possible because of Christ's incarnation through which we participate in our Lord's passion and resurrection by the grace of the Holy Spirit received in baptism. But we have to cooperate with the grace of God and actively and consistently choose to obey his will.
Personal responsibility
Although the birth of Christ occurred in a particular time in history, in the days of Caesar Augustus, when Cyrenius was governor in Syria (Luke 2:1-2), in the days of Herod the King (Matthew 2:1), it is a moment that transcends time and space. But this event also has to happen personally in each of our lives. Like the Virgin Mary, each of us has to become a God bearer, that is, we have to conceive Christ in our hearts and bring him forth into the world.
So it is not enough to simply know intellectually about this mystery of the Incarnation. We have to do something about it. Like the Virgin Mary, we must say, as she did at the moment of the Annunciation, "Let it be done unto me according to thy word" (Luke 1:38).
We have to humbly accept the will of God and struggle to maintain our purity of heart, to overcome the passions and to repent our sins. In this way, Christ becomes incarnate in our lives.
The path from Bethlehem leads us to Golgotha. Some of the hymns sung in the Orthodox Church on the Eve of the Feast of the Nativity are parallel to those sung on Good Friday. This is intentional because the purpose of the Incarnation was to make possible the union with God. Christ's death on the cross and his final triumph over death through his Resurrection on the third day were the means to this end.
In Orthodox icons of the Nativity, the manger is shown to be inside a cave as a reminder of the tomb of Christ. And the manger in which our Lord is laid is often drawn back to look like a sepulcher. Thus the link between the Nativity and the Resurrection is graphically illustrated.
Acceptance
True peace can be found only in humbly embracing the cross of Christ, forgiving others, being filled with love, sharing what God in his mercy has provided us with. We share with those in need and with the church. The church is the body of Christ; it provides a spiritual home for us, heals us of our spiritual diseases and reaches out to those in need on behalf of the faithful. Each Christian must individually repent of his or her sins in order to enter into the mystical life of the church, and begin the process of overcoming the passions and building up the virtues of cooperation with the grace of God.
On the day of his Nativity, as Orthodox Christians, we reaffirm our faith in Jesus as our Lord and our God and our Savior. On this day, we are especially mindful of the angels' message to the shepherds watching their flocks that night -- "For there is born to you this day in the city of David, a Savior who is Christ the Lord." This message holds true for us today as it did for them and as it does for all mankind forevermore.
Basically, it tells us that Jesus, who is eternal and the son of God, was born as a little child for our sake and our salvation. He becomes one of us so that we may become one with him. That is what the celebration of his Nativity is all about.
The Rev. Daniel Rohan is the pastor at St. Mark Orthodox Church, Liberty.