On the Birth of Christ

“Blow the trumpet at the new moon,” says David, “on the notable day of your feast.” The commands of God-inspired teaching are certainly law for those who hear them. Since, then, the notable day of our feast has come, let us too fulfill the law, becoming trumpeters of the holy month. The trumpet of the law, as the Apostle bids us understand it, is the word. For he says that the sound of the trumpet must not be indistinct but distinguished in its notes, so that it is clear to those who hear. Let us too, then, brothers, sound a bright and far-heard note, in no way less honorable than the horn trumpet. For the law, too, sketching the truth beforehand in the figures of the shadow, ordained the sound of trumpets at the feast of Tabernacles. And the subject of the present feast is the mystery of the true feast of Tabernacles. For in it the human tabernacle is pitched by him who put on man for our sake; in it our tabernacles, which had fallen down through death, are put together again by him who built our dwelling from the beginning. Let us too say the words of the psalm, joining the dance with David of the mighty voice: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” How does he come? Not as by a ship or a carriage, but passing over into human life through virginal incorruption. “This is our God; this is the Lord, and he has appeared to us,” to set up this feast “with thick boughs, up to the horns of the altar.” We are surely not ignorant, brothers, of the mystery in these words: that the whole creation is a single palace of the Master of creation. But since, when sin came in, the

mouths of those seized by evil were stopped, the voice of exultation was silenced, and the harmony of those keeping festival was broken, since human creation no longer kept festival with the nature above the world, for this reason the trumpets of the prophets and apostles came, which the Law calls horn trumpets because they are made from the true unicorn. These, by the power of the Spirit, sounded the word of truth with full force, so that, when the hearing of those whom sin had stopped up was opened, there might be one harmonious feast, the lower creation, through the thick boughs of the feast of Tabernacles, sounding in harmony with the Powers that stand out and project around the altar above. For the horns of the spiritual altar are the Powers of the intellectual nature that project and stand out: Principalities and Authorities, Thrones and Dominions; with these human nature is joined in the fellowship of the feast through the Tabernacles of the resurrection, being covered with boughs by the renewal of bodies. For to be covered with boughs is the same as to be adorned or clothed, as those who know these things explain. Come, then, let us rouse our souls to the spiritual dance and set David at the head of our choir as its leader, guide and chorus-master, and let us say with him that sweet saying which we have already sung. And let us take it up again: “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us exult and be glad in it.” On this day darkness begins to diminish, and the measures of the night are pushed toward their eclipse by the increase of the ray. It is not by chance, brothers, that such an arrangement of the feast came about, that the divine life appeared in human life now. Rather, through what is seen creation tells a mystery to those of sharper sight, all but uttering a voice and teaching whoever can hear what the day means that grows longer at the Master’s coming, and the night that is cut short. For I seem to hear creation saying something like this: When you see these things, man, understand what is hidden that is shown to you through what is seen. Do you see the night that has reached its greatest length, stops its forward course and turns back? Understand that the evil night of sin, which grew as far as it could and through every invention of evils reached the greatest height of wickedness, today has been cut off from spreading further, and from now on is driven toward eclipse and disappearance. Do you see the ray of light lasting longer, and the sun higher than usual? Understand the coming of the true light, which illuminates the whole world with the rays of the Gospel. And perhaps one might reasonably suppose this to be the reason why the Lord did not appear at the beginning, but granted human life the manifestation of his Godhead at the end of the ages: he who was going to mingle with human life to destroy evil necessarily waited for all

the sin rooted by the Enemy to sprout, and then, as the Gospel says, he laid the axe to the root. For the most skilled physicians, while the fever is still smoldering within the body and being kindled little by little by the causes of disease, give way to the illness until the disorder reaches its peak, giving the patient no help from food; but when the evil has come to a standstill, then they apply their art, once the whole disease has shown itself. So too he who heals those sick in soul waited for the disease of evil, by which human nature had been overpowered, to be wholly uncovered, so that nothing hidden might remain unhealed, since the physician heals only what has appeared. That is why, in the times of Noah, when all flesh had been corrupted in injustice, he did not bring healing by his own appearing, because the shoot of Sodom’s wickedness had not yet grown; nor did the Lord appear at the time of the overthrow of Sodom, because many of the remaining evils were still hidden in human nature. For where was Pharaoh, the fighter against God? Where the untamed wickedness of the Egyptians? Nor even then, I mean in the time of the Egyptians’ wickedness, was it the right moment for the Corrector of all to mingle with life. The lawlessness of the Israelites too had to come to light. The kingdom of the Assyrians and the pride of Nebuchadnezzar, still smoldering in life, had to become manifest. The bloodshed against the holy ones had to shoot up like an evil and thorny growth from the devil’s evil root; the rage of the Jews against the saints of God had to be made known, of those who killed the prophets and stoned those sent to them, and at last committed the crime against Zechariah between the temple and the altar. Add to the list of evil shoots Herod’s slaughter of children too. When, then, the whole power of evil had shown itself from the evil root and had grown up wild in many forms in the choices of those known for evil in each generation, then, as Paul says to the Athenians, God, having overlooked the times of ignorance, comes in the last days, when there was no one who understood and sought God, when all had turned aside and together become worthless, when all things had been shut up under sin, when lawlessness had increased, when the darkness of evil had grown to its utmost measure: then grace appeared, then the ray of the true light rose. Then the sun of righteousness appeared to those who sat in darkness and the shadow of death; then he crushed the many heads of the dragon, trampling them with his foot through the human flesh, and crushing them to the ground and treading on them. And let no one, looking at things in life now, think that our statement is false, according to which we said that the Lord shone on life in the last times. For an objector may say that he who waited for the time when evil would be manifest, so that he might pull it up by the roots once it had grown, ought to have destroyed it all, so that no remnant of it was left in life. But now there are murders,

thefts, adulteries, and every most wicked thing is dared. But let one who considers this resolve the doubt about these things by a familiar example. When reptiles are killed, one can see that the trailing coil behind does not die at once with the head; the head is dead, but the rest is still animated by its own rage and is not deprived of its living power. So too the slayer of the dragon, when the beast had grown great, having grown along with every successive generation of mankind, destroyed the head, that is, the power that destroys good things, which has many heads in itself, and paid no attention to the trailing coil behind, leaving the movement in the dead beast to remain as an occasion of exercise for those who come after. What, then, is the head that was crushed? The one that brought in death by its wicked counsel, the one that put the deadly venom into man by its bite. He, then, who destroyed the power of death crushed the power in the serpent’s head, as the Prophet says; but the rest of the beast’s coil, scattered through human life, as long as humanity is in the movements of evil, always roughens life with the scales of sin. In power it is already dead, since the head has been made useless. But when the time has passed and moving things come to a stop at the expected consummation of this life, then the tail and last part of the Enemy is abolished, that is, death; and so the complete disappearance of evil will take place, when all are called back to life through the resurrection, the righteous being at once moved to the realm above, and those held fast by their sins being handed over to the fire of Gehenna. But let us return to the present joy, which the angels announce to the shepherds, which the heavens tell to the Magi, which the spirit of prophecy proclaims through many and various persons, so that even the Magi become heralds of grace. For he who makes the sun rise on the righteous and the unrighteous, who sends rain on the evil and the good, brought the ray of knowledge and the dew of the Spirit even to foreign mouths, so that the truth might be confirmed to us all the more by the testimony of opponents. You hear Balaam the augur, by a higher inspiration, prophesying to the foreigners: “A star shall rise out of Jacob.” You see the Magi, who traced their descent from him, watching, according to their ancestor’s prediction, for the rising of the new star, which, unlike the nature of the other stars, alone shared both in motion and in rest, passing to each as it was needed. For of the other stars, some are fixed once for all in the sphere that does not wander and have been allotted motionless rest, while others never cease from motion; but this one both moves, going before the Magi, and stands still, pointing out the place. You hear Isaiah crying out, “A child has been born to us, and a son has been given to us.”

Learn from the Prophet himself how the child was born, how the son was given. Was it according to the law of nature? No, says the Prophet; the Master of nature is not a slave to the laws of nature. Then how was the child born? Tell us. “Behold,” he says, “the virgin will conceive in her womb and bear a son, and they will call his name Emmanuel,” which, translated, is “God with us.” O the wonder! The virgin becomes a mother and remains a virgin. You see the innovation in nature. With other women, as long as one is a virgin she is not a mother; and when she becomes a mother she no longer has her virginity. But here the two names met in the same person. For the same woman is both mother and virgin; neither did virginity prevent the birth, nor did the birth dissolve virginity. For it was fitting that he who came into human life for the incorruption of all should begin with the incorruption of her who served his birth; for human usage is accustomed to call one who has no experience of marriage “uncorrupted.” It seems to me that the great Moses foresaw this in the theophany that came to him through the light, when fire was kindled in the bush and the bush did not wither. “I will go across,” he says, “and see this great sight.” He does not mean, I think, a movement in space by “going across,” but the passing over of time: for what was then sketched beforehand in the flame and the bush was clearly revealed, when the time between had passed, in the mystery of the Virgin. For as there the bush both is kindled by the fire and is not burned, so here the Virgin both gives birth to the light and is not corrupted. If the bush prefigures the God-bearing body of the Virgin, do not be ashamed of the riddle. For all flesh, because it received sin, is sin precisely insofar as it is only flesh; and Scripture calls sin by the name of the thorn. If we are not carried too far from our subject, perhaps it is not out of place to bring in Zechariah, who was murdered between the temple and the altar, as a witness for the uncorrupted mother. This Zechariah was a priest, and not only a priest but also in the gift of prophecy; and the power of his prophecy is proclaimed in writing in the book of the Gospel. When divine grace was preparing the way for people not to think the birth from a virgin incredible, it trained the assent of the unbelieving beforehand by lesser wonders: a child is born to the barren woman past her age. This becomes the prelude to the wonder of virginity. For as Elizabeth becomes a mother not by the power of nature, having grown old childless, but the birth of the child is referred to the divine will, so too the incredibility of the virgin’s childbearing gains credibility by being referred to the Divine. Since, then, the child of the barren woman goes before the child of virginity, he who leapt in his mother’s womb, before he came into the light, at the voice of her who was carrying the Lord, as soon as the forerunner of the Word came to birth, then Zechariah’s silence is loosed by prophetic

inspiration. And all that Zechariah declares was a prophecy of what was to come. This man, then, led by the prophetic spirit to the knowledge of hidden things, understood the mystery of virginity in the uncorrupted birth, and did not exclude the unwedded mother in the temple from the place allotted to virgins by the law, teaching the Jews that the Creator of all things and King of all creation has human nature, along with everything else, under his hand, leading it by his own will to what he decides, and is not himself ruled by it; so that it is in his power to create a new kind of birth which does not take away virginity from the one who has become a mother. For this reason he did not exclude her in the temple from the chorus of virgins; and this place was the space between the temple and the altar. Since, then, they heard that the King of creation had come forth to human birth by the divine plan, for fear that they would become subject to a king, they killed the priest who bore this witness about the birth, at the very altar where he had served as priest. But we have wandered far from our subject, when we ought to run back in our speech to the Bethlehem of the Gospel. For if we are truly shepherds and keep watch over our own flocks, the voice of the angels announcing this great joy is surely addressed to us. Let us look up, then, to the heavenly army, let us see the choir of angels, let us hear their divine hymn. What is the sound of those keeping festival? “Glory to God in the highest,” they cry. Why does the voice of the angels glorify the Godhead contemplated in the highest? Because, it says, “and on earth peace.” The angels are overjoyed at what appears: “On earth peace.” The earth that was cursed before, which bore thorns and thistles, the place of war, the exile of the condemned, has received peace. O the wonder! “Truth has sprung up from the earth, and righteousness has looked down from heaven.” Such is the fruit that the earth of mankind has given. And these things happen “for the good pleasure among men.” God is mingled with human nature, so that the human may be raised with him to the height of God. Having heard this, let us go over to Bethlehem; let us see the new sight, how the virgin rejoices in her childbirth, how she who has no experience of marriage nurses the infant. But first let us hear from those who tell her story who she is and where she came from. I have heard, then, an apocryphal history which sets out such stories about her. The Virgin’s father was distinguished for a way of life exact according to the Law and known for the noblest deeds; but he was growing old childless, because his wife was not able to bear children. And there was a certain honor for mothers under the Law, in which barren women had no share. So she imitates the stories about the mother of Samuel. Entering within the Holy of Holies, she becomes a suppliant of God, that she may not fall outside the blessing of the laws, though she had transgressed in nothing

against the Law, but to become a mother and to dedicate what was born to God himself. Strengthened by a divine sign toward the grace she had asked, she received it. When the child was born, she named her Mary, so that by the name too the God-given nature of the grace might be signified. When the girl was grown, so that she no longer needed to be at the breast, she was eager to give her back to God, to fulfill the promise and bring her to the temple. The priests, for a while, raised the child in the holy places, like Samuel; but when she had grown, they took counsel what they should do with that holy body so as not to sin against God. For to yoke her under the law of nature and make her a slave through marriage to the one who took her was most improper; for it was considered outright sacrilege for a man to become master of a divine offering, since by the law the husband was appointed to be lord of his wife. But for a woman to live with the priests within the sanctuary and be seen in the holy places was neither lawful nor in keeping with decency. As they took counsel about these things, counsel came from God: to give her to a man under the name of betrothal, but such a man as would be fit to guard her virginity. Joseph was found, such as the plan required, of the same tribe and family as the Virgin, and on the advice of the priests the girl was betrothed to him. And the union went no further than betrothal. Then the Virgin is initiated into the mystery by Gabriel. The words of the initiation were a blessing: “Hail,” he says, “favored one, the Lord is with you.” The word to the Virgin is now the opposite of the first word to the woman. She was condemned to sorrows in childbirth because of sin; in this one sorrow is cast out by joy. In her case the sorrows of childbirth came first; here joy acts as midwife to the childbirth. “Do not be afraid,” he says. Since the expectation of childbirth makes every woman afraid, the promise of a sweet childbirth casts out fear. “You will conceive in your womb,” he says, “and bear a son, and you will call his name Jesus; for he will save his people from their sins.” What, then, does Mary say? Hear the voice of a pure virgin. The angel announces the birth, and she clings to her virginity, judging her incorruption more precious than the angel’s appearance; she can neither disbelieve the angel nor depart from what she has resolved. “Relations with a man are forbidden to me,” she says. “How will this be for me, since I do not know a man?” This saying of Mary is a proof of what the secret history tells. For if she had been taken by Joseph for marriage, why would she have been surprised at the one who foretold that she would give birth, since she would surely expect to become a mother herself one day according to the law of nature? But since the flesh dedicated to God had to be kept untouched like one of the holy offerings, for this reason, she says, even if you are an angel, even if you have come from heaven, even if what appears is beyond

human nature, yet for me to know a man is impossible. How shall I be a mother without a man? For I know Joseph as my betrothed, but I do not know him as a husband. What, then, does Gabriel, the bride’s escort, say? What bridal chamber does he present for the pure and undefiled marriage? “The Holy Spirit,” he says, “will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” O that blessed womb, which by its surpassing purity drew to itself the good things of the soul! For in all others a pure soul could barely receive the presence of the Holy Spirit; but here the flesh becomes the vessel of the Spirit. And “the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” What does the word signify by these hidden words? That Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, as the Apostle says. The power of the most high God, then, which is Christ, takes form in virginity through the coming of the Holy Spirit. For as the shadow of bodies is shaped by the outline of what goes before, so the character and marks of the Son’s Godhead will appear in the power of the one born, as image and seal and reflection and radiance of the original, shown through the wonder-working of his activities. But the angels’ good news urges us to run back in speech to Bethlehem and to look at the mysteries in the cave. What is this? A child wrapped in swaddling clothes and resting in a manger; and the virgin after childbirth, the uncorrupted mother, tends her offspring. Let us shepherds say the Prophet’s words: “As we have heard, so we have seen, in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God.” Did these things, then, happen by chance, as they fell out, and are they recorded of Christ with no reason in the story? What does the Master’s lodging in a cave mean, his lying in a manger, his coming into life at the time of the census for taxes? Or is it clear that, as he takes us out of the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us himself, and transfers our wounds to himself so that by his wound we may be healed, so too he comes under tax, so that he may free us from the evil bonds to which humanity was subject, taxed by death? When you see the cave in which the Master is born, understand the lightless, underground life of human beings, into which comes he who appears to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death. He is bound tight with swaddling clothes who takes upon himself the cords of our sins. The manger is the dwelling of the irrational animals, in which the Word is born, so that “the ox may know its owner and the ass its master’s manger”: the ox is the one yoked to the Law; the ass, the beast of burden, the one loaded with the sin of idolatry. But the proper food and life of irrational animals is grass: “He makes grass grow for the cattle,” says the Prophet. But the rational living being is fed with bread. For this reason, then, in the manger, which is

the hearth of the irrational animals, the bread that came down from heaven is set out, the bread of life, so that the irrational too, sharing in rational food, may become rational. So the Lord of both mediates in the manger between the ox and the ass, so that, breaking down the dividing wall of the fence, he may create the two in himself into one new man, taking the heavy yoke of the Law off the one and relieving the other of the burden of idolatry. But let us look up to the heavenly wonders. For see, not only prophets and angels announce this joy to us; the heavens too proclaim the glory of the Gospel by their own wonders. Christ has risen for us from Judah, as the Apostle says; but the Jew is not lit up by the one who has risen. The Magi are strangers to the covenants of the promise and aliens to the blessing of the Fathers; yet they outstrip the people of Israel in knowledge, recognizing the heavenly luminary and not failing to know the King in the cave. They bring gifts; these plot. They worship; these persecute. They rejoice at finding the one they sought; these are troubled at the birth of the one announced. For, it says, “when the Magi saw the star over the place where the child was, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy. But when Herod heard the word, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.” They offer frankincense as to God and honor his royal rank with gold; and by a certain prophetic grace they signify the dispensation of his passion with myrrh. The others condemn all the young children to utter destruction. This, it seems to me, convicts them not only of bitterness but also of the utmost folly. For what does the slaughter of children mean to them? And with what aim was such a crime dared by these murderers? Because, he says, a new sign among the wonders of heaven announced to the Magi the manifestation of the King. Do you, then, believe the sign that announced it as true, or suspect what is talked about to be vain? If he is such as to dispose the heavens along with himself, he is surely not within your reach. But if whether he lives or dies is in your power, you fear such a one in vain. For why is one plotted against who is so placed as to be under your authority? Why is that dreadful command sent down, the wicked sentence against the infants, that the wretched babies be killed? What wrong had they done? What cause of death and punishment had they given against themselves? They had only one charge: that they had been born and come into the light. And for this the city had to be filled with executioners, and a crowd of mothers and infants gathered, with the people present with them, and the parents, and all who shared their kin, as was natural, assembled at the calamity. Who could describe the calamities in speech? Who could set the sufferings before the eyes by narrative? That mingled lament, the wailing chorus

of children, mothers, relatives, fathers, crying out piteously against the threats of the executioners? How could anyone describe the executioner standing over the infant with naked sword, glaring fiercely and murderously and uttering such things, dragging the baby to himself with one hand and raising the sword with the other; and the mother on the other side pulling the child back to herself and offering her own neck to the edge of the sword, so as not to see with her eyes her wretched baby destroyed by the executioner’s hands? How could one tell of the fathers: the calling out, the wailing, the last embraces of their children, and many such things happening at the same time? Who could tell in tragic style the many forms and ways of the calamity: the double birth pangs of those who had just given birth, the sharp burns of nature? How the wretched baby clung to the breast and at the same moment received the fatal blow through its vitals? How the wretched mother held the nipple to the infant’s mouth and received the child’s blood in her lap? Often, perhaps, the executioner, by the force of his hand, with one thrust of the sword drove through the child together with the mother, and the stream of blood became one, mingled from the mother’s wound and from the child’s death blow. And since this too was added to Herod’s foul order, that the death sentence was issued not only against the newborn but that if any had reached their second year, he too was to be seized (for it is written “from two years old and under”), our speech sees, as is likely, another suffering in this: that often the time between made the same woman mother of two children. What, then, was the sight in such cases, two executioners busy about one mother, one dragging to himself the child running beside her, the other tearing the nursling from her bosom? What would the miserable mother likely feel at this, her nature torn between two children, each kindling the fire equally in her mother’s heart, not knowing which of the wicked executioners to follow, as they dragged the infants to the slaughter, one from this side and the other from that? Should she run to the newborn, still uttering an indistinct and unarticulated cry? But she hears the other, already speaking, calling his mother with tears in a lisping voice. What is she to do? Which way is she to turn? Whose voice is she to answer with her cry? Whose wailing is she to answer with her lament? Which death is she to mourn, scourged equally, perhaps, over each by the goads of nature? But let us lead our hearing away from the laments over the children and turn our mind to things more cheerful and more fitting to the feast, even if Rachel, according to the prophecy, cries aloud as she mourns the slaughter of her children. For “on a day of festival,” as wise Solomon says, “forgetting of evils is fitting.” And what feast could be more notable for us than this, in which the sun of righteousness, having scattered the evil darkness of the devil, shines on our nature through our very nature, in which what had fallen

has been raised up, what was at war is brought to reconciliation, what was disowned is brought back, what had fallen out of life returns to life, what was enslaved in captivity is taken back to royal rank, what was fettered by the bonds of death runs back free to the land of the living. Now, according to the prophecy, the bronze gates of death are shattered; the iron bars are broken, by which the human race was formerly shut up in the prison of death. Now, as David says, the gate of righteousness is opened. Now the sound of those keeping festival is heard with one voice throughout the whole world. Through a man came death, and through a man salvation. The first fell into sin; the second raised up the one who had fallen. The woman has made the defense for the woman: the first gave entrance to sin, while this one served the entrance of righteousness. The one drew in the serpent’s counsel; this one presented the slayer of the serpent and gave birth to the author of light. The one brought in sin through the tree; this one brought in good in return through the tree. By tree I mean the cross; and the fruit of this tree becomes evergreen and unfading life for those who taste it. And let no one suppose that such thanksgiving befits only the mystery of Pascha. For let him consider that Pascha is the end of the divine plan. But how could the end have come, if the beginning had not gone before? Which is more primary than which? Clearly the birth is more primary than the dispensation of the passion. So the good things of Pascha too are part of the praises of the birth. And if one lists the benefits recorded in the Gospels and goes through the miracles of healing, the feeding from nothing, the return of the dead from the tombs, the impromptu cultivation of wine, the flight of demons, the change of various sufferings into health, the leaping of the lame, the eyes made from clay, the divine teachings, the laws, the initiation into higher things through the parables: all these are the grace of the present day; for this day began the good things that followed. Let us exult, then, and be glad in it, not fearing the reproach of men nor overcome by their contempt, as the prophet too urges, those who mock the account of the divine plan as though it were unfitting for the Lord to enter the nature of a body and mingle himself with human life through birth; not knowing, it seems, the mystery of it, how the wisdom of God arranged our salvation. We had sold ourselves willingly by our sins and been enslaved like purchased slaves to the enemy of our life. What would you most have wished to come to you from the Master? Was it not to be rescued from the calamity? Why are you curious about the manner? Why do you lay down laws for your benefactor, not accepting his benefit? It is as if someone pushed away the physician and found fault with his kindness because he did not carry out the

treatment in this way but in another. If, out of curiosity, you seek the magnitude of the divine plan, it is enough for you to learn this much: that the Divine is not one of the good things only, but whatever can be conceived as good, that it is: powerful, just, good, wise, all the names and concepts that have a meaning befitting God. Consider, then, whether all these did not meet in what was done for us: goodness, wisdom, power, justice. As good, he loved the rebel; as wise, he devised the means of return for those enslaved; as just, he does not use force against the one who enslaved us, who had justly acquired us by purchase, but gave himself as an exchange for those held captive, so that, like a guarantor who transfers the debt to himself, he might free the captive from those who held him. As powerful, he was not held fast by Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. For it was not possible for the author of life to be held by corruption. But is it shameful to come into human birth and undergo the experience of the sufferings of the flesh? You are speaking of the surpassing greatness of his kindness. For since humanity could not otherwise be rescued from such great evils, the King of all impassibility consented to exchange his own glory for our life. And purity comes to be in our filth, but the filth does not touch the purity, as the Gospel says, that the light shone in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. For the gloom vanishes at the presence of the ray; the sun is not darkened by the gloom. The mortal is swallowed up by life, as the Apostle says; life is not consumed by death. What was corrupted is saved along with the incorruptible; corruption does not touch incorruption. For this reason there is a common chorus of all creation, all sending up one harmonious doxology to the Master of creation, every tongue of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth crying out that the Lord Jesus Christ is to the glory of God the Father, blessed to the ages of ages. Amen.