Advent

                                                            A dvent 2021

Sunday, November 28, 2021. Today a new Advent begins. Advent comes from the Latin word meaning "coming." Jesus is coming. Advent is intended to be a season of preparation for His arrival. When we celebrate an event from the past, in the Spirit, we are made contemporary with that event. That event explodes in our contemporaneity, bursts into our present, gives meaning to the monotonous passage of time, and makes it pregnant of Salvation.

 

This icon illustrates layers of meaning. It depicts the birth of Jesus which is at the same time linked to his death and to his placement in the tomb. There is an inclusion that marks the beginning and the end of the earthly life of Jesus. In this icon, for example, the manger in which the baby Jesus is placed resembles a casket or a sarcophagus. Birth acquires full meaning when viewed from the perspective of death, and vice versa, death ceases to be absurd when it is seen as the fulfillment of the promises and purpose of birth.

 

The manger appears behind the hand of St. Joseph as if he were holding it and offering it to Jesus and Mary. St. Joseph appears as the builder and donor of the manger. Thus St. Joseph participates in a very special way in the mysteries of the birth and death of Jesus.

 

Another important element is that, both in the Gospel of Luke and in this icon, the manger is at the center of the literary and pictorial compositions respectively. The English term "manger" translates the Greek fa’tne (from pateomai, "to eat"), and derives from Old French mangeoire “crib, manger,” from mangier “to eat” (modern French manger), which comes, in turn, from Latin manducare “to chew, eat.”

 

Jesus is therefore placed in the container used to feed animals. He becomes food for men. Luke's Gospel sees here a prophecy of the death of Jesus to feed men. The birth of Jesus becomes a Eucharistic scene: the one who gives meaning to human hunger and thirst comes into the world. It is hunger and thirst for meaning, purpose, Truth, gift, God. Jesus is the only one able to feed this hunger. We have here like a table set, the food is Christ himself, and at the same time, this table reminds us of his death. In the visual composition, in fact, the cave of the nativity also becomes the tomb where Jesus will be buried. Birth and death meet, and the point of contact is given by the Eucharistic gift of Christ, and by the eating of man, the wedding banquet prepared by God.

 

Christ is food (nourishment) precisely because he is the Risen One. He could not feed if he remained enclosed within the confines of birth and death. The manger indicates both death and the gift of oneself as food on the part of Jesus, precisely because it refers to an event that goes beyond the earthly existence of Jesus. Here we witness a wonderful paradox: while the manger simultaneously evokes birth and death, and the profound meaning of both, it can do so precisely because the perspective of everything is not temporal, it is the perspective of the Resurrection.

 

The reference to the Resurrection is also given by the fact that the infant Jesus is wrapped in cloths (both in Luke and in the icon). The bandages/swaddling cloths of the newborn are the same ones that will wrap the corpse of Jesus. They indicate both protection, welcome, and care, and also a temporary state, destined to be overcome. The newborn's bandages are used to prepare him for life outside the mother's womb. Thus, the bandages of Jesus taken down from the cross introduce the motif of the Resurrection.

 

In conclusion, the pictorial visualization of the text of the birth of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke highlights a profound (and mysterious, yet to be explored) connection between the birth, death, and Resurrection of the Savior, through the symbols of the manger and of the swaddling cloths. At the heart of this connection is the theme of eating. The nativity is a Eucharistic scene. Jesus is the true nourishment.

 Mauro Meruzzi

Copyright © 2021, Mauro Meruzzi PhD, All rights reserved