By Alex Fogleman
What does catechesis have to do with Christmas?
If there is a liturgically appropriate season for catechesis, it is Easter, not Christmas. With its Lenten preparation for a baptismal sharing in the death and resurrection of Christ (Rom. 6:1-14), Easter is, as Tertullian wrote around the year AD 200, “the day of most solemnity for baptism, for then was accomplished our Lord’s passion, and into it we are baptized” (On Baptism 19.1). Over the next few centuries, Christians began to use baptismal creeds (akin to the Apostles’ Creed still used in many churches today), as the basis of baptismal instruction and initiation. Christians continued to use these creeds around Easter baptism, even well after other creeds, like the Nicene Creed, came into use.
But what about Christmas? Christmas was a slightly later addition to the liturgical calendar—its date not settled, in fact, until the Council of Nicaea in 325—and its place and function in the church was more ambiguous.
We get a hint of the ambiguity of Christmas’s liturgical status in one of Augustine’s letters from around the year 400, about 75 years Nicaea and a good 20 after the Council of Constantinople in 38, which ratified (with modifications) the primacy of Nicaea. In Letter 55, a response to several questions from a Catholic layman named Januarius about the church’s liturgical customs, Augustine describes the difference between Easter, which he says is a sacrament, and other events, like Christmas, which are better characterized as commemorations of historical events—more akin to the feasts of martyrs.
The difference, it seems, is that with a sacrament, Christians not only remember the event but actually share in the kind of transitus that the event signifies. So in Easter, Christians share in the transitus from death to life. Pointing to Romans 4:25—“He died on account of our sins, and he rose on account of our justification”—Augustine argues that in Easter, “a certain passage (transitus) from death to life is marked off as holy in that passion and resurrection of the Lord.”
Despite this remark, which was written only a fear years after Augustine became bishop, there is good reason to think that in his actual preaching about Christmas, he took a more sacramental view. That is, in any case, the argument made by Hubertus Drobner in a delightful 2004 article called “Christmas in Hippo: Mystical Celebration and Catechesis.” Drobner argues that Augustine not only treated Christmas as a sacrament but also drew on specifically Nicene credal language in these sermons. While Augustine stuck to the older baptismal creeds for Easter (see, e.g., Sermons 212–215, 398), he deployed specifically Nicene language in his sermons to the faithful at Christmas.
A few examples (among several others that Drobner cites) include:
Filium Dei unigenitum / “Only-begotten Son of God” (s. 185.3, 186.3, 191.3). While the title “Son of God” was standard in Christian teaching and in Scripture, the addition of unigenitum (only-begotten) was less common before Nicaea. It came to signify a specifically Nicene clarification, signaling the anti-“Arian” claim that Christ’s eternal, divine sonship by nature was of an ontologically different quality from the graced nature human sonship.
Et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula / “And from the Father born before all ages” (s. 184.2, 186.3, 189.3-4, 190:2, 191.1, 194.1.4. Another clear Nicene source—the heart of Anti-Arian theology that Christ’s generation was eternal—“before all ages”—and not, as Arius had taught, that “there was a time” when the Son was not.
Lumen de lumine / “Light from Light” (s. 184.1, 185.2, 189.1, 190.3-4). Drobner notes that this is another clear quotation from the Nicene Creed, which Augustine always includes reference to Psalm 95:2, “diem de die” (“Day from Day”). In s. 190.4, Augustine adds the explicit quotation from the Nicene Creed: “Deus ex Deo, lumen ex lumine” (“God from God, light from light”).
Genitum, non factum / “Begotten not Made” (s. 188.1, 191.1, 192.1, 196.1). Yet another specifically Nicene introduction—a line that distinguishes Christ’s generation from the Father as of a different kind than all other forms of creation. Christ is not “made” (factum) as creatures are; he is born of the father.
Augustine’s Christmas sermons, then, were closely linked with reflection on the Nicene Creed, which emphasized Christ’s divine generation that rendered the Son as co-equal in divinity, glory, and power, with the Father. The connections with Christmas are obvious, for both reflect on the “generation” of Christ. Fresh off the heels of the debates about the Trinity, not least of which included the argument that Christ’s human birth did not entail a lessening of divine power, Christmas was a time to teach not only the human but the divine-human nature of Christ, revealed in mystery through the Christmas miracle.
This Nicene emphasis on the birth of Christ marks a strong note in Augustine’ Christmas preaching. Drobner connects this credal significance to the growing conviction in Augustine’s sermons—if not his Letter to Januarius—that Christmas is not only a commemoration but also a sacrament.
But if Christmas is a sacrament—as Easter is—of what is it a sacrament? What, in other words, is the mystery to which Christmas points? (Keep in mind: in Augustine’s Latin, mysterium is often equivalent to sacramentum, both terms not yet restricted to the “seven sacraments” of the Roman Catholic Church.) Drobner returns to Augustine’s definition of sacraments in Letter 55 (ep. 55.6.11–7.12), where Augustine defends the Catholic Church against the Manichaean accusation that Christians erroneously celebrate rituals in accord with the changing of the seasons or the moons, which St. Paul might say should be done away with (Col. 2:16). Augustine opposes this idea by arguing that using signs from the created world, such as the changing of the seasons or solar and lunar cycles, to signify divine mysteries accords with the New Testament teaching about the revelation of Christ.
Augustine writes:
If any symbolic figures (figurae similitudine) are taken not only from the heavens and the stars but also from the lower creation for the presentation of the mysteries, the result is a certain eloquence of a teaching conducive to salvation that is suited to turn the affections of the learners from visible things to invisible ones. - Ep. 55.7.12
Drobner provides this summary of Augustine’s understanding of a sacrament: “A sacrament is a visible, terrestrial, and temporal item in the form of a thing (res), an event (factum, res gesta) or a word (verbum), which functions to transcend this world as a sign (signum, significatio) of the divine realm, which is invisible, spiritual, and eternal (a visibilius ad invisibilia, a corporalibus ad spiritalia, a temporalibus ad aeterna).” In addition, a sacrament must also involve participants in the “transition” work that it does. The sacraments must be signs through which “God communicates … a notion of his saving work (eloquentia doctrinae salutaris).”
According to this definition, we could say that, for Augustine, the sacrament or mystery of Christmas is the “Mystery of Light.” It is a time when we find in the in-breaking of light, of day, in the darkest night of winter a sign of the invisible transition from darkness to light—both in the world and in ourselves.
In the 15 extant Christmas sermons from Augustine (Sermons 184–196, and Sermons 369–370), he refers to Christmas in several places as the “mystery of light” (190.1, 192.3, 194.2, and 196.1); or the “consecration” of Christmas day (186.1, 187.1, 188.2, 189.1, 194.1, and 195.1). In sermons 189.1 and 190.2, Augustine affirms that at Christmas “the night of this world passes (transit),” and “we pass from the visible to the invisible” (transire).
If Easter is celebrated during the Spring equinox—a time when the earth is renewed with vegetation and fecundity—the Christmas celebration at the Winter solstice celebrates the transitus from darkness to light. Drobner writes: “Christmas at the time of the winter solstice, which Augustine, with many others, regards as the historical date of Christ's birth, functions as a sign (sacramentum) to the invisible divine work of salvation as well. The longest night of the year becomes a symbol of the point, where, through the birth of the Son of God, the universal expansion of the darkness of evil and death eventually comes to a halt, and God’s light of salvation and life starts to prevail over it until its final victory on Easter.”
Here’s Augustine himself, preaching at Christmas:
Because even the day of his birth contains the mystery of his light. That, you see, is what the Apostle says: “The night is far advanced, while the day has drawn near; let us throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us walk decently as in the day” (Rom. 13:12-13). Let us recognize the day and let us be the day. We were night, you see, when we were living as unbelievers (cf. Eph. 5:8; 1 Thess. 5:5). And this unbelief, which had covered the whole world as a kind of night, was to be diminished by the growth of faith. That is why, on the day we celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, the night begins to be encroached upon, and the day to grow longer. (s. 190:1; cf. 192:3; 196:1)
In other Christmas sermons, we hear of this transitus from darkness to light in other ways:
“This night, you see, is passing, the night in which we are living now, in which the lamps of the Scriptures are lit for us.” (s. 189.1)
“So, Christians, let us celebrate on this day, not his divine, but his human birth, by which he adapted himself to us, in order that by means of the invisible one we ourselves might pass over from visible things to invisible ones.” (s. 190.2)
“Let us pass beyond our fleshly condition. . . . Let us also pass beyond the condition of our souls. . . . Let us pass beyond all bodily, time-bound, changeable things.” (s. 369.2)
There is more to Christmas than the wonderful story of Jesus born in a stable at Bethlehem, a time to remember God’s greatest gift to the world—though that is good and true. Christmas is also a time to recall the extraordinary and paradoxical mystery that lies at the heart of the faith—that it is the Son of God, the unique, eternally begotten, only-begotten, begotten-not-made, born before all ages Son who was born of the Virgin’s womb in Bethlehem. Here is St. Augustine again in full paradox mode:
For, if they [the worldly wise] possessed the true wisdom which is of God and which is God, they would understand that flesh could have been assumed by God without the possibility of His having been changed into flesh; that He took upon Himself what He was not and remained what He was; that He came to us in the form of man and yet did not depart from His Father; that He preserved His divine nature while He appeared to us in our human nature; and, finally, that power derived from no earthly source was bestowed upon an infant's body. - s. 184.1
We do still see vestiges of this Nicene emphasis in some modern Christmas traditions, though it is rather faint. The second verse of the great hymn, “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” is more or less drawn right from the Nicene Creed:
God of God, Light of Light,
Lo, he abhors not the Virgin’s womb;
Very God, begotten, not created:
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord.
Other vestiges include the series of December feast days that commemorate the great defenders of Nicaea—most famously good St. Nicholas himself (Dec. 6), but also St. Ambrose the following day (Dec.7) and, in the old Roman calendar at least, St. Eusebius of Vercelli on December 16. Perhaps the greatest reflection on the eternal status of the Word and the mystery of the Word-made-flesh is the one whom early Christians simply called “the Theologian”: St. John the Evangelist, whose feast day falls on December 27.
We might say, then, that as the Church reflected more deeply on the mystery of the Incarnation, the implications were felt in the church’s liturgical participation in that mystery. The season of Christmas was surrounded by commemorations not only of the human but also of the divine birth of Christ. As a result, the birth of Christ in the Virgin’s womb 2000 years ago in Bethlehem was not only a commemorative event but a profound mystery that must be correlated with a full-throated affirmation that the Son was eternally begotten of the Father—as it is now more clearly anathema to say, as Arius had said, “there was never a time when the Son was not.” Moreover, it was a sacramental mystery that invited the believer’s participation in the transitus from darkness to light.
Christmas time, then, is a great time for credal, catechetical reflection. It may not be the same kind of catechesis as the preparation for Easter baptism. But there is, we can see, an inner logic that connects what are now the two most major feasts in the Church’s life—Christmas and Easter, the birth and death of Christ. As the poet Scott Cairns puts it in his great poem on the Nativity icon the Bethlehem stable is “the core / where all the journeys meet, / appalling crux and hallowed cave and womb.”
In both Christmas and Easter, we encounter a powerful transition from the visible, temporal, and material to the invisible, eternal, and immaterial. We are joined in the “divine eloquence” of the Word that draws us into the very life of God.