NOTES for Mar 9:10-16

Once again, on the eve of Christmas, we read that the Son of Man must suffer and be humiliated, and rise on the third day. It is hardly by “chance” that the cycle of Church readings offers us these very passages now. The Lord Himself says of His Passion, “For this hour I have come.” The meaning and purpose of the Savior's birth in Bethlehem is not to make our life a little easier and more pleasant. He comes to share our death and destroy it. This is precisely why, since ancient times, the celebration of Christmas in the Eastern Church has had a number of features that bring it close to Easter. In a certain sense, Christ's entire life, from its very beginning, was the path of the Cross and Resurrection. As we are moved by and rejoice in the infant Christ, we must not forget this.