The birth of Jesus is announced to the world as a proclamation of great joy. The archangel Gabriel comes first to Zacharias the priest when he is offering incense at the altar and tells him that his wife Elizabeth will give birth to a son who will be the forerunner of the Messiah. “You will have joy and gladness,” he tells him, “and many will rejoice at his birth” (Lk 1: 14). The same messenger of the Lord comes to the Virgin Mary, and the message is the same. Mary’s “soul magnifies the Lord,” and her “spirit rejoices in God” her Savior (Lk 1: 46-47). For her Child will be the Messiah Himself, “called the Son of the Most High,” to whom the Lord God will give “the throne of His father David, and He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of His kingdom there will be no end” (Lk 1: 32-33). And the birth is announced to the world again by the angel of the Lord. It is an announcement of “glad tidings of great joy which shall be to all people (Lk 2: 10).
And she gave birth to her first-born Son and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. And in that region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. And the angel said to them, “Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will among men!” (Lk 2:7-14).
The joy of the Messiah’s appearance abounds in the Church’s liturgical services of the Winter Pascha. When the “Hail” of the angelic salutation is translated “Rejoice,” as it often is in the Church services since in Greek that is what it literally means, there is an even greater presence of the “good news of great joy” for the faithful, since they, together with the whole of creation, are greeted with this salutation again and again in the songs of the festal celebration.
Let creation exceedingly rejoice,
For the Creator fashions Himself as a creature.
And he who was before all things now manifests Himself as God newly revealed.
Let the wise men go to meet Him with their gifts;
Let the shepherds clap their hands in faith at the wonder;
and let mortal men join the angels with rejoicing.1
Be joyful, O earth!
Behold, Christ draws near to be born in Bethlehem.
Be glad, O sea!
And dance for joy, O company of prophets,
For today you behold the fulfillment of your words.
Rejoice, all you righteous!
Let the kings of the whole earth sing with rejoicing,
And let the nations be in exceeding joy!
Mountains, hills, and valleys,
Rivers, seas, and the whole of creation:
Magnify the Lord who now is born.
Rejoice, O Virgin,
The Theotokos who of the Holy Spirit
Has borne Life into the world
For the salvation of all!2
One of the most devastating accusations that can be made against Christians is that they have no joy. Joyless Christians are a contradiction in terms. People who are bitter, complaining, condemning, accusing, dissatisfied, and depressed are certainly not Christians. They can only be people whose life is untouched by grace, people whose existence is confined to the suffocating limitations of “this world” whose “ruler” is the devil and whose “form . .. is passing away” (Jn 12:31; 1 Cor 7: 31 ). They cannot possibly be those who belong to Christ and the kingdom of God. For Christians by definition have Christ’s “joy fulfilled in themselves” (In 17:13). They are people whose joy, which no one can take away, is literally full and complete (In 15:11; 16:22, 24).
In his famous book For the Life of the World, Father Alexander Schmemann speaks about the joy of Christians. From its very beginning, he says:
Christianity has been the proclamation of joy, of the only possible joy on earth. It rendered impossible all joy we usually think of as possible. But within this impossibility, at the very bottom of this darkness, it announced and conveyed a new all-embracing joy, and with this joy it transformed the End into a Beginning. Without the proclamation of this joy Christianity is incomprehensible. It is only as joy that the Church was victorious in the world, and it lost the world when it lost that joy, and ceased to be a credible witness to it. Of all accusations against Christians, the most terrible one was uttered by Nietzsche when he said that Christians had no joy.3
Father Alexander goes on to say that before Christians can do anything else with all of their “programs and missions, projects and techniques,” they “must recover the meaning of this great joy.” He says that joy “is not something one can define or analyze. One enters into joy. ‘Enter thou into the joy of thy lord’ (Mt. 25 :21),” And one enters into this joy, this exceeding great joy, he insists, only by entering into the liturgical, eucharistic life of the Church herself. Here, and only here, as in the celebration of the Nativity of Christ and His Epiphany in the world, can a person partake of that joyful reality for which the world itself was created in the beginning.
Come, let us greatly rejoice in the Lord,
As we tell of this present mystery!
The dividing wall has been destroyed;
The flaming sword turns back;
The cherubim withdraw from the Tree of Life;
And I partake of the delight of paradise,
From which I was cast away through disobedience.
For the Express Image of the Father,
The very Imprint of His Eternity,
Takes the form of a slave,
And without undergoing change [to His divinity],
He comes forth from a mother who has not known a man.
For what He was, He remains: True God.
And what He was not, He takes upon Himself,
Becoming man out of His love for man.
To Him let us cry aloud:
O God born of a Virgin, have mercy on us!4
All the angels in heaven rejoice
And greatly celebrate today.
The whole creation leaps for joy,
For the Savior and Lord is born in Bethlehem
Every error of idolatry has ceased,
And Christ reigns throughout all ages.5
~Adapted from Thomas Hopko, The Winter Pascha: Readings for the Christmas-Epiphany Season
1 Compline of the final day of the prefeast of the Nativity, December 24.
2 Matins of the final day of the prefeast of the Nativity, December 24.
3 For the Life of the World, p. 24.
4 The first verse sung on “Lord, I Call” at the vesperal liturgy on the eve of the feast of the Nativity.
5 Litya verse at compline of the feast of the Nativity. Because the vespers of the feast is a eucharistic liturgy with the anaphora of Saint Basil the Great, the festal vigil of the Nativity begins with compline.
