Feast of the Holy Name - Tuesday, January 1, 2019

Holy Cross Monastery , West Park, NY

Br. Bob Pierson, OHC
Holy Name - Tuesday, January 1, 2019

Numbers 6:22-27
Galatians 4:4-7
Luke 2:15-21

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.

At the beginning of a New Year, many people are thinking about their New Year's resolutions, wondering what aspect of their lives they want to focus on and try to improve.  I have learned over the years to avoid making such resolutions because I know that I will eventually let them go.  Change does not happen in my life by guilting myself into self-improvement.

What works better for me is the realization that any real change in my life comes from focussing not on me, but on God.  As I grow closer to God, things in my life begin to change.  So rather than trying to lay on the guilt, I think we all need to remember who we are, and that realization can help provide the grace we need to grow and become who God calls us to be.

Paul reminds the Galatians that “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”  So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.”  As I have said before, we are members of the GOD family, and our status as children of God is something that we would do well to ponder over and over again in our hearts, just as Mary pondered the words and events of the birth of her child.

What a tremendous privilege we have to be adopted members of God's family.  St. Athanasius,
bishop of Alexandria, put it this way:  “God became a human being so that human beings could become like God.”  That is our call, and pondering that call can create in us the desire to be who we already are.  Pondering can help us to be grateful for the gift of God's life, and that gratitude can move us, just like the shepherds, to glorify and praise God for the tremendous gift of God's life in us.

Last night at Vespers, we heard St. Basil the Great say it this way:  “Let us give glory to God with the shepherds, let us dance in choir with the angels, for 'this day a Savior has been born to us, the Messiah and Lord.'  He is the Lord who has appeared to us, not in his divine form, in order not to terrify us in our weakness, but in the form of a servant, that he might set free what had been reduced to servitude.”

And that's why we gather here on this first day of a New Year, to hear God's word and to give thanks and praise to God for the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, our brother, and our God.  As we receive his Body and Blood, we become what we eat, The Body of Christ, given for the world.