Be Not Afraid

'The Apparition of the Virgin to St Bernard', c.1655, by Bartolomé Murillo (1617-1682), Museo del Prado, Madrid

‘Thou, O man, hast two enemies, sin and death, that is to say, the death of the soul and the death of the body. Christ is come to conquer both, and from both will He save thee. Only be not afraid. Even already He has vanquished sin in His own Person by taking upon Himself our human nature, free from all defilement. For great violence was done to sin, and it manifestly sustained a heavy defeat, when that very nature which it boasted of having entirely corrupted and completely subdued, was found in Christ wholly reclaimed from it. After this first victory, He “will pursue after (thy) enemies and overtake them, and (He) will not turn back again till they are consumed”. Fighting against sin during His mortal existence, He will oppose it with His words and example; in His passion He will bind it, He will bind “the strong man and plunder his house”. Then, as regards death, He will in the same manner and order vanquish it first in Himself, when He rises from the tomb, “the first-fruits of them that sleep... the First-Begotten of the dead”. Afterwards He will overcome it in us also, when He will raise up again our mortal bodies: so shall our enemy, death, be at last destroyed. Therefore will He be “clothed with beauty” at His resurrection, not, as now in His nativity, wrapped in swaddling clothes. Therefore He whose Heart is now brimming over with mercy, Who now judgeth no man, will then, at His rising, gird Himself, and with the cincture of justice will seem to restrain, so to speak, the flowing robes of His mercy. For from that time He shall be prepared for the judgement, which is reserved for our resurrection. And therefore He comes now as a Little One, in order to give mercy the precedence, and that mercy, going before, may temper the severity of the final judgement which must follow’.

from the first sermon for Christmas Day by St Bernard of Clairvaux, 1090-1153

O God, by whose grace the blessed Abbot Bernard, kindled with the fire of thy love, became a burning and a shining light in thy Church: grant, at his intercession; that we may be inflamed with the same spirit of love, and ever walk before thee as children of light; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. - ​Divine Worship: The Missal.