Icon of the Nativity of ChristI’ve had a fun past couple of days, first our church operates on the Coptic calendar which is now synchronized with the “old” Julian calendar, so we won’t be celebrating the Feast of the Nativity “Christmas” until January 7th. That being said we did have a big fun family get together on the 25th and I did get to catch up on a lot of reading I wanted to do.

Last week, I remembered a sermon by one of the theological leaders of our church and an old family friend, Fr. Athanasius Farag, priest of St. Antonious and St. Mina Coptic Orthodox Church in East Rutherford, NJ. He was speaking on a Sunday or two before Christmas about the incarnation of the Word. Fr. Athanasius referenced “On the Incarnation,” a treatise of St. Athanasius, the Patriarch of Alexandria in the fourth century (famous for his opposition to Arianism and authoring the Nicene Creed). Fr. Athanasius was saying that we all should read “On the Incarnation” every year, now I haven’t been faithful to that but I did pick it up last weekend and read through it. In his treatise, St. Athanasius explains and defends why Christ had to take flesh to solve the divine dilemma. It is definitely eye opening and answers a lot of questions as to why Christ did what He did.

On a similar note, there are a lot of rich treasures to be found in the works of the ancient church fathers, I will try to highlight them periodically here. C.S. Lewis, in his introduction to “On the Incarnation” encourages a balanced diet between old and contemporary books, stating that in older books we find “a standard of plain, central Christianity which puts the controversies of the moment in their proper perspective.”