...And the darkness comprehendeth it not...
Why is the light of Christmas couched around with martyrdom?
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
The feasts of the week of Christmas can be a little surprising to the newcomer to the traditional Catholic liturgical cycle - it’s pretty dark, as they say.
We start with St. Stephen the Protomartyr on the 26th, stoned to death on the day after the Nativity, and move rapidly through St. John the Evangelist - called a “white martyr” who lived to old age but also survived an attempt to kill him by boiling oil;1 the massacre of the Holy Innocents; and Thomas Becket on the 29th. The season of Christmas, a feast so great it is liturgically considered Christmas Day every day of the following week, forms one of a kind of cycle of martyrdom.
It’s significant that these martyrs’ feasts are not included in the so-called “Sanctoral Cycle” of ordinary saint feast days throughout the year, but are integrated purposefully as a central feature of the Christmas portion of the Temporal Cycle that defines and provides a framework for our understanding of the whole economy of salvation.
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In addition to those embedded in the Christmas cycle the Roman Martyrology recalls that in the 4th century, 20,000 Christians were killed on Christmas Day when they assembled for the liturgy of the feast. The Emperor Diocletian ordered that they be locked in their church.
An idol was set up in the portico and they were told they would be set free if they would offer incense to it. The legend, better remembered in the East, is that a spokesman for the community informed the Emperor that they were all ready to die for Christ rather than sacrifice to idols. Whereupon the soldiers shut them in and set fire to the church.
The Nativity and Martyrdom
So how did we go so abruptly from the lovely scene of the “little Lord Jesus” so beloved of children to scenes of, frankly, unimaginable horror, and how is it all connected?
It’s because of the connection in theology between the Nativity and the Passion. The story of the Nativity, with all its mysterious and strange, miraculous and apparently incongruous elements, is not just a pretty children’s story about the birth of a baby, and the giving of gifts. It is the story of the Incarnation, the God-made-man, of the Logos, the hypostatic union, for the salvation of humanity from the terrible price of Original Sin.
The Birth of Christ, the entry into the world of the God who created it, is the first step to our extraordinary rescue, the hope of humanity of salvation from ourselves, from a situation we are powerless to release ourselves. And in the ages of Faith, from the earliest times, Christians understood that meaning, and what it called for from them.
In the early Church, martyrdom was seen as the ultimate act of faith, the highest expression of love for God. Martyrs were witnesses to the truth of Christianity in the times of persecution, and their deaths are part of the victory over death itself won by Christ on the cross.
Traditional Christmas hymns and carols reflect the theme of martyrdom. The hymn "O Come, All Ye Faithful" speaks of "the noble army of martyrs" who have "confessed your faith before the world." And the hymn "Silent Night" includes the line "Holy Infant, tender and mild, sleep on, sleep on,” a line interpreted as a reference to Jesus' eventual death on the cross.
The Christian faith is not about comfort and safety - the Holy Family had to flee Bethlehem quickly and spend a long time away - but about sacrifice and the redemption of suffering, the making-meaningful of it. Our call to love God and neighbour does not carry the caveat, “up to the point of inconvenience” but is to the point of death.
The darkness comprehendeth it not
We see in every generation that the World does not understand or want the whole package, the joy and the sorrow, of the story of Christmas. Especially in our own age, I think, we have tried to sanitise our way out of evil, wishing it away, with pretty Christmas cards of snowy forest scenes, and robins in Santa hats… But this tidied up version of Christmas is exactly the festival that is dying in our culture, precisely because it is so useless. It’s … nice, I guess. But how is it helpful? What problems does it solve?
Meanwhile our entire civilisation is sinking daily deeper into the post-Christian quicksand we don’t seem to be able to escape on our own.
When I was teaching catechism, I talked about the line in the Prologue, “… and the darkness did not comprehend it…” asking the kids to imagine a completely dark room, so dark you couldn’t tell whether your eyes were open or closed. Now, what happens in that room when you light a single match? Light and darkness are simply not able to co-exist.
The satanic darkness of sin and death not only flees at the light of Christ, but is obliterated by it completely. There is no room in the great light for shadows, obscurity or confusion. We are told that the second coming of Christ will be completely unmistakable: "For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man."
That kind of light, a titanic flash that lights up the whole world and lays everything bare, is the kind we mean when we talk about the Light of Christ entering the world, to be a “great light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.”
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John's Banishment to Patmos: During the reign of the Roman emperor Domitian, who was known for his persecution of Christians, John was exiled to the Greek island of Patmos. While not technically a death sentence, banishment to a remote island was considered a severe punishment and a form of martyrdom.
Miraculous Escape from Boiling Oil: Early Christian writers, such as Tertullian and Eusebius, recorded an incident in which John was thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil as a form of torture. However, he was miraculously unharmed and emerged unscathed.
Thank you, a beautiful post and a wonder summary of the Incarnation and what it means. God bless!
Brilliant! As always, nail on the head and so so so informative. Thank you. Happy New Year!