Christ the Creator and Redeemer
O God, Creator and Redeemer of human nature, who willed that your Word should take flesh in an ever-virgin womb, look with favor on our prayers, that your Only Begotten Son, having taken to himself our humanity, may be pleased to grant us a share in his divinity.
O Wisdom of our God Most High, guiding creation with power and love: come to teach us the path of knowledge!
We have reached “Deep Advent,” the last week of Advent before Christmas. The Church takes this opportunity for an even more intense preparation for the memorialized coming of Christ in His Nativity. As the darkness around us deepens even just in the shortness of days and the length of nights, the Church readies Herself to be bathed in heavenly light and splendor on Christmas night, as the angels sing and Christ is born.
She further does this by starting to sing the ancient and famous “O Antiphons,” which are used at Vespers everyday to highlight the presence of the the Son of God throughout salvation history. Today, we see Him present in the creation of all things, and then in their re-creation through redemption. Saint Paul describes this poetically:
He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities-all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the Church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent. For in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross (Col. 1:13-20).
Notice how in Christ the initial creation of all things from nothing is so closely linked with His redemption of all things through His Blood. This can strike us as odd and gruesome as we prepare for the Christ Child, to think already of His coming death on Good Friday, and yet that is why He came: to recreate and set us free by the shedding of His Blood. More than this, He came to make us like Himself, to make us one with Him. This is the great reversal of what happened in the garden of Eden, where Adam, already like God, chose to be unlike Him.
The collect prays to this end by asking God to allow us to share in His divinity through the Son’s taking on of our humanity. This is the great theme of the “glorious exchange,” wherein Christ becomes like us that we might become like Him. It is something you will see and hear over and over in the prayers of this week, of Christmas, and of Epiphany, and it is the great desire of God’s heart for you: to make you ever more like Him through your full living of the Christian life.
What divine generosity! What unmerited gift! As we enter into this last week of Advent, take stock of the ways God has drawn you to Himself, through the Church, the faith, prayer, the sacraments, and more. Thank Him for these, and ask, with today’s collect even, for a continued and further outpouring of union with Him.
Reflection
This old admonition will suffice for today’s reflection, especially in light of us pondering gratefully God’s gifts in creation and redemption, and all the ways that we must strive to live these gifts in our life.
Remember, Christian soul, that thou hast this day, and every day of thy life:
God to glorify.
Jesus to imitate,
The Blessed Virgin and the Saints to venerate,
The Angels to invoke,
A soul to save,
A body to mortify,
Sins to repent of,
Virtues to acquire,
Hell to avoid,
Heaven to gain,
Eternity to prepare for,
Time to profit by,
Neighbors to edify,
The world to despise,
Devils to combat,
Passions to subdue,
Death, perhaps, to suffer,
Judgment to undergo.