"Having obtained a share in the birth of Christ let us renounce the works of the flesh." ~ The Ancient Church Fathers on the Nativity of Christ

Fresco portrait of Pope Saint Leo the Great (enhanced) from the Church of Santa Maria
Antiqua in Rome, dated to the early 8th century—about 350 years after his death.

As explained in a previous post, the Nativity of Jesus has been celebrated by Christians on December 25 since antiquity. The feast of the Nativity has always been an opportunity for homiletic fireworks on a grand scale, and the Fathers of the Church took full advantage of the sacred day to wax eloquent.

In keeping with this theme, here are a few excerpts from some of the earliest extant homilies delivered by various Church Fathers to commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God.

The first comes from Pope Liberius who reigned in the mid-4th century AD. You may remember from a previous post, that Liberius was ejected from the papal see by the Roman Emperor Constantius II, son of Constantine the Great, for the crime of being insufficiently tolerant of Arianism. 

The excerpt below from Liberius was recorded by Saint Ambrose in a letter to his sister Marcellina. Pope Liberius had delivered this sermon on the occasion of Marcellina taking the veil as a consecrated virgin—an event which apparently took place on Christmas day, likely in AD 353 or there abouts. In the sermon, Liberius leans heavily into the nature of the incarnation of Christ, and one can clearly discern the familiar echoes of the Nicene Creed and its refutation of Arianism: 

"Today, indeed, He was born after the manner of men, of a Virgin, but was begotten of the Father before all things, resembling His mother in body, His Father in power. Only-begotten on earth, and Only-begotten in heaven. God of God, born of a Virgin, Righteousness from the Father, Power from the Mighty One, Light of Light, not unequal to His Father; nor separated in power, not confused by extension of the Word or enlargement as though mingled with the Father, but distinguished from the Father by virtue of His generation." [Pope Liberius (AD 352-366), as quoted by St. Ambrose in a letter to his sister Marcellina]

This next excerpt is from Saint Ephraim the Syrian who flourished the mid-4th century. Ephraim is known particularly for his hymns, and the excerpt below is taken from one of the score or so that he wrote for the celebration of the Nativity of Christ. Interestingly, this hymn seems to indicate that the birth of Christ happened at about the same time as the winter solstice (December 21) when "He came forth from the womb in this month in which the sun gives longer light."  

"At the birth of the Son the king was enrolling all men for the tribute-money, that they might be debtors to Him: the King came forth to us Who blotted out our bills, and wrote another bill in His own Name that He might be our debtor. The sun gave longer light, and foreshadowed the mystery by the degrees which it had gone up. It was twelve days since it had gone up, and today is the thirteenth day: a type exact of the Son's birth and of His Twelve.

Moses shut up a lamb in the month Nisan on the tenth day; a type this of the Son that came into the womb and shut Himself up therein on the tenth day. He came forth from the womb in this month in which the sun gives longer light.

The darkness was overcome, that it might proclaim that Satan was overcome; and the sun gave longer light, that it might triumph, because the First-born was victorious. Along with the darkness the dark one was overcome, and with the greater light our Light conquered!" [Saint Ephraim the Syrian, Fourth Hymn on the Nativity of Christ, written prior to AD 373]

Scenes from the Nativity and infancy of Christ from the Ivory throne
of Maximianus, Archbishop of Ravenna, early 6th century AD.

This next excerpt is from the aforementioned Saint Ambrose of Milan and may be traced back to AD 377, a mere three years after he had been made bishop by acclamation even prior to his baptism, having been baptized and ordained bishop on the same day. This tract demonstrates that he had successfully made the  transition from able Roman provincial administrator, to spiritual father of a major metropolitan see, while retaining his well-known and appreciated humility: 

"Therefore Christ became a little one, He became a child, so that you might become a perfect man. H was wrapped in swaddling bands, so that you might be freed from the bonds of death. He lay in a manger so that you might be raised to the altar. He dwelt on earth so that you might live among the stars. There was no room for him at the inn, this was so that you might have many rooms in the heavenly mansions. 'He who was rich made himself poor for your sake, so that you might be rich.' (1 Cor 8:9). The Lord's poverty is my inheritance and His weakness is my strength. For Himself He preferred poverty and want, so that for others He might have abundant wealth. It is I who am washed by those tears that He shed as a crying infant, it is my sins that are wiped away by those tears. [St. Ambrose of Milan, from Commentary of Saint Ambrose on the Gospel of Luke, Book II, Chapter 41]

Finally, given the regnal title of the reigning pontiff, we present a passage taken from a sermon given by the original, Pope Saint Leo the Great about 75 years after Saint Ambrose. In this excerpt, Leo wraps up his Christmas sermon with an admonition to his flock to adhere to the moral commands of Christ and resist the urge to live according to the desires of the flesh—a fair warning to all Christians, ancient and modern alike:

"Let us then, dearly beloved, give thanks to God the Father, through His Son, in the Holy Spirit, 'Who for His great mercy, wherewith He has loved us, has had pity on us: and when we were dead in sins, has quickened us together in Christ' (Ephesians 2:4-5), that we might be in Him a new creation and a new production. Let us put off then the old man with his deeds: and having obtained a share in the birth of Christ let us renounce the works of the flesh. Christian, acknowledge your dignity, and becoming a partner in the Divine nature, refuse to return to the old baseness by degenerate conduct. Remember the Head and the Body of which you are a member. Recollect that you were rescued from the power of darkness and brought out into God's light and kingdom. By the mystery of Baptism you were made the temple of the Holy Ghost: do not put such a denizen to flight from you by base acts, and subject yourself once more to the devil's thralldom: because your purchase money is the blood of Christ, because He shall judge you in truth Who ransomed you in mercy, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit reigns for ever and ever. Amen." [Pope Saint Leo the Great, Sermon 21, mid-5th century AD]

"At the season of the nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, masses should be celebrated during the night" ~ The ancient origin of Midnight Mass at Christmas

Fresco from the subterranean basilica of Saint Clement in Rome, showing
Pope Saint Clement (1st century AD) saying Mass. The fresco was likely
 done in the 8th or 9th century, though possibly based on much earlier work.  

As Christmas approaches, it is well to remember that many of the traditional Nativity practices of the Church were instituted deep in antiquity. One such is the celebration of Mass at midnight on Christmas eve. There is evidence that this tradition began as early as about AD 130 and was instituted by Pope Saint Telesphoros. We find the following passage in the Liber Pontificalis which was likely first compiled in the 5th or 6th century:

"[Telesphoros] appointed that at the season of the nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, masses should be celebrated during the night, for in general no one presumed to celebrate mass before tierce, the hour when Our Lord ascended the cross. And that at the opening of the sacrifice, the angelic hymn should be repeated, namely: 'Gloria in Excelsis Deo' etc. but only upon the night of the Lord's nativity." [Taken from Loomis: Liber Pontificalis (Book of the Popes), p. 12]

In her notes, Loomis says that this passage is the earliest mention of midnight Mass at Christmas in the extant literature, though she remains skeptical about the passage's accuracy.

As for the institution of the Gloria, it should be kept in mind that the earliest language of the Roman Church was likely Greek, and that the Liber identifies Telesphoros himself as Greek by birth and an anchorite. Therefore, the Gloria was probably incorporated into the Christmas Liturgy in its Greek form. According to tradition, the hymn was not translated into Latin until the time of Saint Hilary of Poitiers around AD 350. But the provenance is confused. A good attempt at clarification may be found here.

In a further note, Loomis says that the Gloria would later be incorporated into Pontifical Masses, and until the Middle Ages, none but the Pope were permitted to include it.

According to the Liber, and confirmed by Irenaeus and Eusebius, Pope Telesphoros died a martyr during the reign of either Hadrian or Antoninus Pius. His feast day is January 5.

For a related post on the earliest sources for the dating of Christmas, see:

• "Eight Days Before the Kalends of January" ~ The Earliest Sources for the December 25 dating of Christmas

"Where God wills, the order of nature yields" ~ St. John Chrysostom on Christmas

Adoration of the Child by Gerard van Honthorst, ca. AD 1620.

In celebration of the feast of the birth of Jesus, here are some snippets from one of the Christmas homilies of Saint John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople in late Roman times. This homily was originally given in Greek in the late fourth or early fifth century AD. The translation was done by Maria Anne Dahlin in 2012 and made available here along with several other Chrysostom sermons on Archive.org.

These excerpts beautifully capture St. John's exuberance regarding the Nativity, a feast held in the greatest reverence because: "the event which occurred upon it, was of all events the most stupendous....That being God, [Jesus] should have condescended to become man, and should have endured to humble himself to a degree surpassing human understanding, is of all miracles the most awful and astonishing." [Walter, On Saint Philogonius, p. 198]

This particular homily is entitled: In Natalem Christi Diem -- On the Day of Christ's Birth. In it, you can get some sense of why St. John was given the epithet "the Golden-Tongued" by his contemporaries. Enjoy!

"I see a new and amazing mystery. My ears resound to the shepherds—not playing a plain song, but singing a heavenly hymn. The angels sing, the archangels harmonize, the cherubim sing hymns, the seraphim give praise, all are celebrating God seen on earth, and man in heaven. He who is above is now below because of stewardship and the one below is above because of the love for man. Today Bethlehem is a type of heaven, receiving the hymning of angels in place of the stars. In place of the sun, making room for the true sun of righteousness. And do not ask how, for where God wills, the order of nature yields. For He willed, He was able, He came down, He saved. All things meet together in God. Today he who is, is born, and he who is, becomes what he was not. For, being God, he became man without setting aside his divinity. For he did not become man by putting off divinity, nor again did he become God by advancing from man, but being the word, through impassibility, he became flesh, while remaining unchangeable by nature.... 

"Because everyone is dancing around, I also want to skip, I want to dance, I want to celebrate. But I dance, not striking the lyre, not waving a bough, not having a flute, not kindling a fire, but, in place of the musical instruments I carry the swaddling-clothes of Christ. For this is my hope, this is my life, this is my salvation, this is my flute, this is my lyre. This is why I go bearing these, because when I speak of the strength in them, I am taking strength with the message I say. Glory to God in the highest. With the shepherds, also, peace on earth, goodwill to men. Today the one who was inexplicably begotten of the Father was born of a virgin. I can not explain it, but he, as begetter, knows. According to nature he was begotten before eternity by the Father. But today, again, he was born according to nature, in this way the grace of the Holy Spirit is established.... 

"Come then, let us feast, come let us celebrate. For the guest is the way of the feast, the paradox also is the word of the begetting. For today the bond is loosed at last, the devil is disfigured, demons flee, death is loosed, the garden is opened, the curse is done away with, sin is put out of the way, the wanderer has gone astray, the truth has returned, the word of piety is spread and runs everywhere. The citizenship above is planted in the earth, angels have fellowship with men, and men speak with angels without fear. Why? Because God came to earth and man into heaven..."

Again, many thanks to Maria Anne Dahlin for making the words of St. John Chrysostom come alive again for a modern audience after 1,600 years! Click here to read the rest of this sermon and others.

"Eight Days Before the Kalends of January" ~ The Earliest Sources for the December 25 dating of Christmas

A seated marble statue said to depict St. Hippolytus.

It's that festive time of year when those who profess not to care a whit about religion expend countless hours and billions of pixels to demonstrate that Jesus Christ was not born on Christmas. But before you succumb to their pathological zeal, take a few minutes to read some of the ancient sources from which we originally derived the date of December 25 as the nativity of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

The first clear source for this date is Hippolytus of Rome, a somewhat mysterious figure from antiquity who may have been an anti-pope of the third century AD. He was later regarded as a saint thanks to his copious theological writings. Sadly, only fragments of his works have survived to the present day, but among them is a work in which Hippolytus provides an analysis of the Old Testament Book of Daniel. The earliest notice of Christmas being celebrated on December 25 comes from this work, as follows:

"For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, eight days before the Kalends of January [that is, December 25], the fourth day [that is, Wednesday], while Augustus was in his forty-second year, but from Adam, five thousand and five hundred years. He suffered in the thirty-third year, eight days before the Kalends of April (that is, March 25), the day of preparation [that is, Friday] the eighteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, while Rufus and Roubellion were Consuls." [Hippolytus of Rome, Commentary on Daniel, written ca. AD 205.]

Dedication page of the Chronography of AD 354.

The above passage may be found in French in Hippolyte Commentaire Sur Daniel (1947), translated by Maurice Lefèvre and included in the series Sources Chrétiennes. A detailed provenance of the manuscript may be found at the supremely useful blog maintained by Roger Pearse here.

Another early notice may be found in the Chronography of AD 354. This work is an illuminated calendar produced by an artist named Furius Dionysius Filocalus for a wealthy Roman patrician. As part of this calendar, there is a list entitled "ITEM DEPOSITIO MARTIRVM". The first line on this list says:

VIII kal. Ian. natus Christus in Betleem Iudeae.

This appears to corroborate Hippolytus's date above. Interestingly, Hippolytus is also mentioned in this calendar in a list of the Popes with a notice saying: "In that time the exiled bishop Pontianus and the presbyter Hippolytus were deported to Sardinia on the island of Vocina, Severus and Quintianus being consuls [AD 235]."

After about AD 350, overt references to December 25 as the date of Christ's birth are more numerous, particularly in the Greek east where the date seems to have been more variable before that time. Many in the east had celebrated the Nativity on January 6 -- which would later be recognized as the feast of the Epiphany. Saint John Chrysostom, later bishop of Constantinople but at this point a presbyter in Antioch, offers a meditation on preparing for the Nativity in his homily on the feast of St. Philogonios which was celebrated on December 20. Note that John clearly separates the Nativity from the feast of the Epiphany:

A feast is approaching which is the most solemn and awe-inspiring of all feasts. If one were to call it the metropolis of all feasts, one wouldn't be wrong. What is it? The birth of Christ according to the flesh. In this feast the Epiphany, holy Pascha, the Ascension and Pentecost have their beginning and their purpose. For if Christ hadn't been born according to the flesh, he wouldn't have been baptized, which is Epiphany. He wouldn't have been crucified, which is Pascha. He wouldn't have sent the Spirit, which is Pentecost. So from this event, as from some spring, different rivers flow - these feasts of ours are born. [John Chrysostom, On St. Philogonius, delivered December 20, AD 386]

In a subsequent homily that same year while still in Antioch, St. John offers evidence for the date by citing official Roman secular records of the census of Augustus mentioned in Sacred Scripture, as follows:

“The 25th day of December has been celebrated from the beginning as the birthday of Christ, and the knowledge of it is now transmitted to us….It is manifest from Scripture that Christ was born at the enrollment or census, and the very day was certain from a written document in the Roman archives….It is lawful for anyone to search these ancient records, publicly deposited at Rome, and there to learn the time of this enrollment.” [John Chrysostom, In Diem Natalem, Migne: Patrologia Graeca, 49, 353-354. Translation taken from Hyde: "The Date of Christ's Birth" in The Living Church, December 31, 1904 p. 319.]

It should be noted that several other early Christian writers, including St. Justin Martyr and Tertullian, appealed to these same census records when defending the Christian faith. The records seem to have existed into the 5th century when they were lost after the Goths and Vandals pillaged Rome.

The dating of Christmas to December 25 seems to have been well established in Africa by about this time as well. In his treatise On the Trinity, Saint Augustine of Hippo writes:

For He is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also He suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which He was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which He was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before nor since. But He was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th. [Augustine, On the Trinity, Book IV, Chapter 5, written beginning AD 400, published AD 428]

So it is clear that the roots of the December 25 date for Christmas stretch well back into antiquity.

The other common take-down posed at this time of year is that Christmas was artificially dated to December 25 to superimpose a Christian feast on top of a variety of pagan feasts which happened at around the same time, whether it be Saturnalia, or the birthday of Mithras, or the birthday of Sol Invictis, or the birthday of Horus.

This line of attack has been effectively dealt with many times, so rather than regurgitate the same refutation here, I would point you to this summary article here or this humorous video response by our separated brethren entitled: Horus Ruins Christmas. A balanced and very detailed article on this topic, entitled Sol Invictus and Christmas, is also well worth a read.