St. Romanus
the Melodist lived in the sixth century. He was born in Emesa – now known as Homs – in Syria.
Today we know this city mainly from news reports about the civil war in Syria, but in
Romanus’ day it was one of the most important centers of Christianity in the
world. St. John the Baptist’s head was found
there and kept there for many years. Romanus was ordained a deacon in Beirut and moved to Constantinople.
One Christmas Eve, he was assigned to read the kathisma at the All-Night Vigil.
He read so poorly that someone had to step in and finish for him. Feeling
humiliated, he took a nap in the choir stalls and had a vision of the Mother of
God. She handed him a scroll and told him to eat it. When he woke up, the
patriarch gave him his blessing to chant from the ambon. Romanus opened his
mouth and out came the now-famous Kontakion of the Nativity, “Today the Virgin
giveth birth”.
But what is a “kontakion”? Every
Divine Liturgy after the entrance with the Gospel, we sing a number of hymns called
troparia and kontakia. Nowadays we think of a kontakion as a short hymn about
Christ or a saint or feast. In fact, a kontakion was originally a long hymn of
many verses, about the same length as what we would call an akathist today. A
kontakion is actually a sermon set to verse. What we now call a kontakion was
originally just the introductory verse to a much longer work. Reducing a
kontakion to just its introductory verse is like reducing the Akathist to the
Theotokos to just “Champion Leader”.
So when St.
Romanus first recited the Nativity Kontakion, it was much longer than just
“Today the Virgin”. That short hymn was actually followed by the kontakion
itself which numbered twenty-four verses of ten lines each – with meter and
rhyme! I have heard some converts complain that Orthodoxy doesn’t have many
Christmas hymns. The truth is that we do, but we’ve just forgotten them! The
entire Nativity Kontakion used to be sung at the imperial banquet every year
until the twelfth century. Someone should revive St. Romanus’ full kontakia,
and not just the ones for Nativity; he composed over a thousand, and we still
have 85 of them today.
Let’s look at the words of the small
bit that most of us do know:
Today the
Virgin giveth birth to Him Who is transcendent in essence,
And the
earth offereth a cave to Him Who is unapproachable.
Angels
with shepherds give glory.
With a
star the Magi do journey,
For our
sake a young child is born, Who is pre-eternal God.
Each of
the following twenty-four verses would end by repeating this last line, so by
the end of this “sermon in verse”, there would be no doubt as to who Christ
really is! “A young child! God before the ages!”
The phrase “Him Who is transcendent
in essence” is just one word in the Greek. In English it would be something
like “the Beyond-being”. Latin would say “super-substantial”. The idea is that
Christ is beyond everything that exists. After all, He is not a creature; He is
the Creator! He is God Himself, and this is the point that St. Romanus is
trying drive home: that in the world’s eyes this is just a little baby, but we
know that He is actually God Himself. St.
Gregory Palamas even says that God is “the God beyond God,” the “Super-God”, if
you will. That is how St. Gregory puts it in the Greek. This means that Christ
as God is beyond any limited conception of God that we puny humans might come
up with. Any time we are tempted to think that God is not able to do something
seemingly impossible – like make us into saints – we are limiting God. Or when
we ask “Why did God do this bad thing?” when, of course, He did no such thing,
we are creating an image of a puny God. That is when we have to remind
ourselves that He is the “God beyond God”. St. Paul tells the Thessalonians “we would
have come unto you once and again, but Satan hindered us” (I Thess. 2:18). When
we read this passage the other day, Matushka pointed out to me that many
Christians today would say “God stopped me” from doing this or that, but St. Paul teaches us that
Satan is the one who stands in our way, not God. When we forget this, we forget
Who God really is: the God beyond God, and Christ is this God: “A young child!
God before the ages!”
St. Romanus also describes Christ as
“unapproachable”. This does not mean inaccessible! St. Paul says, “Through Christ we have access
by one Spirit unto the Father” (Eph. 2:18). This means that Christ ushers us
into the presence of God the Father. Through Christ we have the opportunity to
be closer to God than to anyone else! So what, then, does St. Romanus mean by
unapproachable? It simply means that nothing can compare to God. It is the same
idea as the “God beyond God”. The Holy Fathers tell us that God’s essence is so
far beyond us that we cannot really say Who or what He is; the best we can do
is say what He is not. This is why we use so many negative terms to describe
Him: invisible, infinite, uncreated, etc. So no description can come close to
Who God really is. This is what “unapproachable” means. No words can approach
His essence. But this does not mean that we
cannot approach Him! We can and must.
Finally, St.
Romanus describes the newborn Christ as having existed “before the ages”. The
made-up word “pre-eternal” is not a good way to render this expression and
actually ends up being meaningless. The ancients never spoke about anything
being “before eternity”. In the Greek worldview, ages are not units of time as
we use the word today. For examples, we speak of “the Middle Ages”. But in
Plato’s day the word actually meant a world independent of other worlds. For
example, he speaks of the world of forms which lies behind the world of matter.
(Christianity rejects Plato’s theory. We only mention this to illustrate how
the word “age” was used back then.) Clearly, Plato is talking about two realms,
not two periods of time. The Greek word for age was used to translate a Hebrew
word which likewise means world or even universe. A common Hebrew expression
for God is “Master of the World”. To say “Master of the Age” would just be
wrong. So Christ is “the God before the worlds”, that is, before creation.
In the Advent season we are
surrounded by Western imagery depicting Christ as a cute, chubby baby. The
danger is that this evokes the wrong response from us. Proper iconography
always depicts Him in a serious way. Even as an infant, his proportions are
that of a grown man. This is to teach us that even as a newborn, He was God.
Our response to beholding the Christ-child should not be pity or condescension.
(For the same reason, Christ on the cross should not be depicted as weak and
defeated, as He is in the West.)
So let us remember who Christ truly
is: the God beyond God, the one to Whom nothing can compare, the young child:
God before all worlds!
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