The Holy Apostle Timothy; the Holy Venerable-Martyr Anastasius the Persian (628)
2 Peter 1:1-10; Mark 13:1-8
Abstention from meat and foods that contain meat.
Read 2 Peter 1:1-10
Christ is born! Glorify Him!
At the beginning of the Epistle of Peter, we hear the following: “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence.” Our liturgical life can sometimes work against us. We have a liturgy fit for a king. This rhetoric implies distance, a God who is far off beyond the icon screen. Yet this passage reminds us that God, in His infinite power and majesty, crosses the gap. He comes to “nudge” us and wake us from sleep to show us his glory and excellence. Yet, in waking us up, his glory and excellence are not just for us to behold. Rather, we are to “partake of his divine nature,” as the next verse indicates. Christ comes so that his glory might be near us. But this isn’t a glory meant to parade around for him to model. He makes his steps in Jerusalem that we might step into his life, partake of what he is.
I heard a professor once say, “I’ve got a Christology so high it will give you a nosebleed.” To remember and recognize Christ’s divinity is exceptionally important, for it ensures that we are worshipping the true God and not a fiction. But equally important is to not let the loftiness of divinity put Christ on a shelf out of reach. For the goal of our lives is not to gaze on him from afar, but experience him from within. We are meant to live in God, but this can only happen if we allow ourselves to be introduced into divine life, through the living of Christian community in our parishes, the regular reception of the sacraments, and the active building of the kingdom of God in the civic arena, so that our church walls become ever-expansive to show the world, the knowledge of the one who called us through his glory and excellence.