As we journey through the Nativity Fast toward the celebration of Christ's birth, the Church places before us two passages that seem, at first glance, quite different. Yet they weave together a single message about what it means to prepare our hearts for the Incarnation and to live authentically as Orthodox Christians each day.
In his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul urges us to "walk worthy of the calling" we have received. He speaks of lowliness, gentleness, longsuffering, and bearing with one another in love. These aren't mere virtues to admire from a distance—they are the very fabric of Christian life, the way we make real the unity we claim to have in "one Lord, one faith, one baptism." As we fast and pray in these weeks before Christmas, we're not just abstaining from certain foods. We're being called to examine whether our daily walk matches our baptismal calling.
The woman in Luke's Gospel, bent over for eighteen years, shows us what happens when we're bound by the weight of our brokenness. She couldn't stand upright, couldn't lift her eyes toward heaven. How many of us live this way spiritually? Bent under resentment, pride, judgment of others, attachment to comfort? The Nativity Fast is our opportunity to let Christ straighten us, to loose us from the bonds that keep us curved inward upon ourselves.
Notice what provoked the ruler of the synagogue: Jesus healed on the Sabbath. He was indignant that mercy interrupted religious routine. How often do we fall into this trap? We maintain our prayer rules, our fasting disciplines, our church attendance, but bristle when love demands we interrupt our schedule for someone in need. We become like the ruler, more concerned with the externals of religion than with the very heart of God.
Christ calls such attitudes "hypocrisy." The Son of God didn't enter our world to preserve our comfortable religious systems. He came to set captives free, to restore our dignity as image-bearers of God. The woman who was healed began immediately to glorify God, the natural response of one who has been straightened, who can finally look up again.
St. Paul's words take on fresh meaning here. To walk worthy of our calling means to embody Christ's compassion, not religious rigidity. It means maintaining "the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace", a unity that breaks chains rather than forging them. When we bear with one another in love, with lowliness and gentleness, we become instruments of the same liberating mercy Christ showed that Sabbath day.
As we prepare for the Nativity, we're preparing to receive the God who comes not to the self-righteous but to the bound, the bent, the broken. He comes as a vulnerable infant precisely to meet us in our weakness. Our fasting, our increased prayer, and our almsgiving are all meant to straighten our spiritual spine, to help us stand upright in the freedom of God's children.
This Advent season, let us ask ourselves: What binds me? What keeps me bent over, unable to see heaven? Am I living the unity and love St. Paul describes, or am I merely performing religious duties while my heart remains curved inward? The Feast of the Nativity celebrates the God who became one of us to free us. Let us prepare by allowing Him to loose whatever binds us, that we might stand tall and glorify God with our whole being.
The Christ Child comes to straighten what is bent, to unite what is divided, to free what is bound. May we walk worthy of this calling, today and every day.
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