On this feast of the Nativity of Our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, I would briefly suspend my reflections on St. John’s Ladder and, rather, speak to the spirituality of the Christian East relative to the Nativity of Jesus. It is, as you might expect, different from that of the Christian West. The emphasis in the East is not placed on a baby in a crib but, rather, on the impact of God making Himself known as a human being. The Church recognizes that for God to come into the world as a real human being, He should go through the birthing process and enter as an infant and then grow intellectually, spiritually, emotionally and socially like all humans. That is just a given! We don’t celebrate, however, that He was an infant but, rather, that He is with us and one of us. This is the great mystery!

So there is not an emphasis on His being an infant. Our Christmas Icon does not stress His infancy as much as it does the revelation that God became a human being. This truth has brought light (i.e., knowledge and truth) to the world, blotting out the darkness of ignorance.

Further, the fact that the infant Jesus is placed in a dark cave, serve as a prophecy that He will grow as a human and then face death, burial and resurrection. The Eastern Church stresses these events that are a part of being human: Birth, Life, Death and Resurrection. What is true about Jesus is true about all humans. This is human life. So in the Icon this is also represented.

So our celebration of the birth of Jesus does not dwell on the event of His birth as much as it does on God’s revelation to us about the human life that we have. This revelation, hopefully, allows us to embrace the way of living that God showed us through Jesus – a way that will allow us to grow spiritually to the fullest and truly become the children of God as He intended.