The Byzantine liturgical calendar of the Ukrainian Church has given us today the feast of The Three Holy Children. The feast day commemorates a most fascinating event (experience) of people of faith in the face of evil.

“You did not worship the image circumscribed by hands (χειρόγραφον εἰκόνα), / O thrice-blessed ones, / but armed with the uncircumscribed Essence (ἀγράφῳ οὐσίᾳ), / you were glorified in a trial by fire. / From the midst of unbearable flames you called on God, crying: / Hasten, O compassionate One! / Speedily come to our aid, / for You are merciful and able to do as You will.” (Sunday of the Forefathers, Kontakion-Hymn)

The “thrice-blessed ones” are the Three Holy Children, Shadrach, Mesach, and Abednego, kinsmen of the Prophet Daniel in the tribe of Judah, led away together with him and other Jews into Babylonian Captivity. King Nebuchadnezzar had the three youths thrown into a fiery furnace, (in which they famously remained unharmed), after they refused to worship a golden image of Nebuchadnezzar, which he had constructed and ordered the people to worship (Dan. 3).

Why does this story receive so much “press” in our Church’s liturgical tradition, and especially in the weeks preceding Christmas? Because it signifies the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, on several levels. First, it reflects Daniel’s interpretation of King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream (Dan 2: 31-35), in which a statue made of expensive metals was destroyed by “a rock hewn from a mountain, not by human hands.” The Church understands this “Rock” to signify Jesus Christ, called in our Church’s hymnography the “Rock Hewn Not-by-Hands” (λίθος ἀχειρότμητος / камень нерукосечный), from the “Mountain“ that signifies the Holy Virgin. The power of His coming to us in the flesh destroys the “power” of false deities, “circumscribed by hands.” The faith of the Three Youths, in the True God, overcomes the “power” and fiery flames of Nebuchadnezzar’s falsehood, prefiguring the ultimate victory of Jesus Christ, our death-trampling Lord. And second, the fiery furnace, in which the Three Children remain unharmed, signifies the Virgin Birth, because the Theotokos’s virginity remained intact, and she –unharmed, even though she received, and gave birth to, the “consuming fire” Who is God Himself (Deut. 4: 24).

In Colossians 3:4 we read: “When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”

This first phrase from today’s Epistle as the Church begins it’s celebration of the birth of our Lord really tells us what Christmas is all about. This is the announcement of the feast. The Word of God, appearing in our world, is the glory of the believer. He appears in humble surroundings, but invites all to the feast! The gospel (Luke 14:16-24) tells us that those who are well off refuse the invitation, but it is “the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind,” who come, it is those in “the highways and hedges” who are “compelled to come.” Mary probably realized this when she prophesied, “He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted the lowly” (Luke 1:52). The angels appear to the shepherds in the fields, and they are invited to the house of the Lord. The glory of the Lord is his humility, and our glory is our humility. 

For all that, everyone is invited to the banquet, and the wise and the rich from Persia come with expensive gifts, though they too are outsiders, and the epistle tells us “there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all” (Colossians 3:11). Those who welcome Christ will put aside “anger, wrath, malice …” (Colossians 3:8). The first sticheron at Christmas chants, “let us proclaim the present mystery by which the partition has been broken and the flaming sword withheld. Now the Cherubim shall let us all come to the Tree of Life.” This is putting Christ back into Christmas!

Meditation by Archpriest David Petras

Read: Colossians 3:12-16; Luke 17:12-19

“And let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were also called in one body. And be thankful” (Colossians 3:15).

“And one of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying God in a loud voice; and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. He was a Samaritan. Jesus said in reply, “Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?” (Luke 17:15-18).

This Sunday comes between two great feasts: thanksgiving and Christmas. On Thanksgiving we feed ourselves with the bounties of God’s creation, and, hopefully, thank him for these blessings, because, as we pray in the common Ambon Prayer, “you are the giver of every perfect gift.” On the coming feast of Christmas, we are already thinking of what gifts we can give to each other, and parents will teach their children to give thanks to everyone who gives them a gift. The word for gift in Greek is “eucharist,” which means “to really show favor to another.” If someone shows favor to us, it is humanly natural and normal for us to show favor in return according to our means. Jesus comments the even sinners do good to those who do good to them (Luke 6:33). Of course, sometimes that doesn’t happen and we call that a betrayal. On Christmas, God is the one who shows the greatest favor, as the angels sang at his birth, ““Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests” (Luke 2:14). This gift is God’s only Son, whom the Father gave to the world “so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (John 3:16).

This is so important that we repeat this passage from Scripture in every Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. This gift is also the gift of peace, for St. Paul tells us that Christ is the peace of God, “For he is our peace, he who made both one and broke down the dividing wall of enmity, through his flesh, abolishing the law with its commandments and legal claims, that he might create in himself one new person in place of the two, thus establishing peace” (Ephesians 2:14-15). For this, like the healed leper, we must give thanks to God. But if God shows us this great favor, “what,” as the psalmist says, “can I return to the Lord for all he has given me?” (Psalm 115:3). God has no need of anything that we can give him. What we can give him is our sacrifice of praise, our words of glorification. We are like the little drummer boy in the popular Christmas sing, “I played my best for him.” Precisely in receiving God’s gift of love and peace, we are ourselves transformed into God’s love and peace, so that St. Paul tells us in today’s epistle,. “let the peace of Christ control your hearts,” so that we can “put on then, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another” (Colossians 3:12-13). To do this would be our Christmas thanksgiving.