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January 7th (december 25 In The Julian Calendar): Byzantine Christmas
Tuesday, December 27, 2016 10:46
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This post shall continue to grow as the days pass. The Julian Calendar that most Orthodox use in liturgical matters is thirteen days behind our calendar; and, therefore, Orthodox December 25th is on our January 7th. This has allowed me on occasion, to celebrate Christmas twice!
I shall publish in this post the greetings of other patriarchs as they are available. If you have suggestions for anything else suitable for publications, please make your suggestions in the comments.
The Services of Christmas in the Orthodox Church
by
Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann
The Nativity Cycle
As Orthodox Christians, we begin the celebration of the Nativity of Christ — on December 25 — with a time of preparation. Forty days before the feast of the birth of Our Lord we enter the period of the Christmas Fast: to purify both soul and body to enter properly into and partake of the great spiritual reality of Christ’s Coming. This fasting season does not constitute the intense liturgical season that is characteristic of Great Lent; rather, Christmas Lent is more of an “ascetical” rather than “liturgical” nature. Nevertheless, the Christmas fasting season is reflected in the life of the Church in a number of liturgical notes that announce the coming feast.
Within the forty days preparation the theme of the approaching Nativity is introduced in the services and liturgical commemorations, little by little. If the beginning of the fast on November 15 is not liturgically marked by any hymn, five days later, on the eve of the Feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple, we hear the first announcement from the nine hirmoi of the Christmas Canon: “Christ is born, glorify Him!”
With these words something changes in our life, in the very air we breathe, in the entire mood of the Church’s life. It is as if we perceive far, far away, the first light of the greatest possible joy — the coming of God into His world! Thus the Church announces the coming of Christ, the Incarnation of God, His entrance into the world for its salvation. Then, on the two Sundays preceding Christmas, the Church commemorates the Forefathers and the Fathers: the prophets and the saints of the Old Testament who prepared that coming, who made history itself into the expectation, the waiting for, the salvation and reconciliation of mankind with God. Finally, on December 20th, the church begins the Forefeast of the Nativity, whose liturgical structure is similar to the Holy Week preceding Pascha — for the birth of the Son of God as child is the beginning of the saving ministry which will lead Him, for the sake of our salvation, to the ultimate sacrifice of the Cross.
The Eve
The liturgical services of December 24th, the Eve of the Nativity, are:
1. The Hours
2. Vespers, and
3. The Divine Liturgy of St. Basil the Great.
Coming at the end of the Forefeast, and indeed of the entire Advent, the Hours summarize all the themes of the feast and make them into a last and solemn announcement. In the special psalms, hymns and biblical readings prescribed for each hour, the joy and power of Christ’s Coming are proclaimed. It is one last meditation on the cosmical meaning of the Nativity, on the decisive and radical change it performed in the entire creation.
Vespers, which usually follows the Hours, inaugurates the celebration of the feast itself, for, as we know, the liturgical day begins in the evening. The tone of this celebration is given by the five stichera on “Lord, I call….” What they really are is an explosion of joy for the gift of Christ’s Incarnation, which is now fulfilled! Eight biblical readings show that Christ is the fulfillment of all prophecies, that His Kingdom is the Kingdom “of all ages,” that all human history finds its meaning in it, and the entire cosmos its center.
The Liturgy of St. Basil which follows Vespers was in the past the baptismal liturgy at which catechumens were baptized, chrismated and integrated into the Church, the Body of Christ. The double joy of the feast, for the newly-baptized and other members of the Church, is reflected in the prokeimenon of the day:
The Lord said to me: Thou art My son,
this day have I begotten Thee.
Ask of Me, and I shall give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance, and the ends of the earth as Thy possession.
Then, at the end of the Liturgy, the celebrant, taking a lighted candle to the very centre of the Church, and surrounded by the entire congregation, intones the troparion and kontakion of the Feast:
Thy Nativity, O Christ our God,
Has shone to the world the light of wisdom.
For by it, those who worshipped the stars
Were taught by a star to adore Thee,
The Sun of Righteousness,
And to know Thee, the Orient from on high.
O Lord, glory to Thee!
The Vigil and the Liturgy
Since Vespers of the feast already have been celebrated, the Vigil begins with Great Compline and the joyful proclamation from Isaiah “God is with us!” The order of Matins is that of a great feast. Now, for the first time, the full Canon “Christ is born…,” one of the most beautiful canons in Orthodox worship, is sung while the faithful venerate the icon of Christ’s Nativity. The Praises follow, summarizing the joy and themes of the entire feast:
Make glad, O you righteous!
Greatly rejoice, O heavens!
Dance for joy, O mountains; for Christ is born!
The Virgin has become like the cherubic throne.
She carries at her bosom God the Word, made flesh.
Shepherds glorify the newborn child.
Wise men offer the master gifts.
Angels praise Him and sing:
O Lord, past understanding, glory to Thee!
Concluding the celebration of the Nativity of Christ is the Liturgy of the day itself with its festal antiphons proclaiming:
…The Lord will send Thee the scepter of power from Zion: “Rule in the midst of Thine enemies.” With Thee is dominion on the day of Thy birth, in the radiance of holiness.
The Post-feast
On the second day of the feast, the Synaxis of the Theotokos is celebrated. Combining the hymns of the Nativity with those celebrating the Mother of God, the Church points to Mary as the one through whom the Incarnation was made possible. His humanity — concretely and historically — is the humanity He received from Mary. His Body is, first of all, her body; His life is her life. This feast, the assembly in honour of the Theotokos, is probably the most ancient feast of Mary in the Christian tradition, the very beginning of her veneration by the Church.
Six days of post-feast bring the Christmas season to a close on December 31. At the services of all these days, the Church repeats the hymns and songs glorifying Christ’s Incarnation, reminding us that the source and the foundation of our salvation is only to be found in the One Who, as God before the ages, came into this world and for our sake was “born as a little Child.”
The Rev. Alexander Schmemann in the book The Services of Christmas: The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, David Anderson and John Erickson, Dept of Religious Education, Orthodox Church in America, Syosset, New York, 1981.
my source: University of Notre Dame
“THE DIVINE CHILD”– A SERMON BY FR. ALEXANDER SCHMEMANN
DECEMBER 15, 2014
Hope Bethany ’15
Theology Undergraduate
Fellow, Center for Liturgy
Fr. Alexander Schmemann was an orthodox priest whose liturgical vision of truly integrating liturgy and life (and history, and theology, and everything else!) is one that we remember and try to cultivate on Oblation. He passed away on December 13, 1983. This weekend, in honor of his memory, the St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary linked to a post from 2011 where they shared this sermon of his. Yesterday was Gaudete Sunday, and although Notre Dame students are in the midst of finals, we hope that this sermon serves as a reminder of the joy of Christmas. We look forward to the coming of Christmas and preparing our hearts for Christ, with this sermon on what it means that our Savior came to the world as a little child. May we trust in the mercy and love of the Christ child as we draw closer to Christmas.
And may the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
“The eternal God was born as a little child.” One of the main hymns of Christmas ends with these words, identifying the child born in a Bethlehem cave as “the eternal God.” This hymn was composed in the sixth century by the famous Byzantine hymnographer Roman the Melodist:
Today the Virgin gives birth to the Transcendent One,And the earth offers a cave to the Unapproachable One!Angels, with shepherds, glorify him!The wise men journey with the star!Since for our sake the eternal God was born as a little child!
(Kontakion of Christmas)
The Child as God, God as Child…Why does joyful excitement build over the Christmas season as people, even those of lukewarm faith and unbelievers, behold that unique, incomparable sight of the young mother holding the child in her arms, and around them the “wise men from the East,” the shepherds fresh from night-watch in their fields, the animals, the open sky, the star? Why are we so certain, and discover again and again, that on this sorrowful planet of ours there is nothing more beautiful and joyful than this sight, which the passage of centuries has proven incapable of uprooting from our memory? We return to this sight whenever we have nowhere else to go, whenever we have been tormented by life and are in search of something that might deliver us…
It is the words “child” and “God” which give us the most striking revelation about the Christmas mystery. In a certain profound way, this is a mystery directed toward the child who continues to secretly live within every adult, to the child who continues to hear what the adult no longer hears, and who responds with a joy which the adult, in his mundane, grown-up, tired and cynical world, is no longer capable of feeling. Yes, Christmas is a feast for children, not just because of the tree that we decorate and light, but in the much deeper sense that children alone are unsurprised that when God comes to us on earth, he comes as a child.
This image of God as child continues to shine on us through icons and through innumerable works of art, revealing that what is most essential and joyful in Christianity is found precisely here, in this eternal childhood of God. Adults, even the most sympathetic to “religious themes,” desire and expect religion to give explanations and analysis; they want it to be intelligent and serious. Its opponents are just as serious, and in the end, just as boring, as they confront religion with a hail of “rational” bullets. In our society, nothing better conveys our contempt than to say “it’s childish.” In other words, it’s not for adults, for the intelligent and serious. So children grow up and become equally serious and boring. Yet Christ said “become like children” (Mt 18:3). What does this mean? What are adults missing, or better, what has been choked, drowned or deafened by a thick layer of adulthood? Above all, is it not that capacity, so characteristic of children, to wonder, to rejoice and, most importantly, to be whole both in joy and sorrow? Adulthood chokes as well the ability to trust, to let go and give one’s self completely to love and to believe with all one’s being. And finally, children take seriously what adults are no longer capable of accepting: dreams, that which breaks through our everyday experience and our cynical mistrust, that deep mystery of the world and everything within it revealed to saints, children, and poets.
Thus, only when we break through to the child living hidden within us, can we inherit as our own the joyful mystery of God coming to us as a child. The child has neither authority nor power, yet the very absence of authority reveals him to be a king; his defenselessness and vulnerability are precisely the source of his profound power. The child in that distant Bethlehem cave has no desire that we fear him; He enters our hearts not by frightening us, by proving his power and authority, but by love alone. He is given to us as a child, and only as children can we in turn love him and give ourselves to him. The world is ruled by authority and power, by fear and domination. The child God liberates us from that. All He desires from us is our love, freely given and joyful; all He desires is that we give him our heart. And we give it to a defenseless, endlessly trusting child.
Through the feast of Christmas, the Church reveals to us a joyful mystery: the mystery of freely given love imposing itself on no one. A love capable of seeing, recognizing and loving God in the Divine Child, and becoming the gift of a new life.
Excerpt from Celebration of Faith, Vol. 2: The Church Year by Fr. Alexander Schmemann, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1994.
The Most High knew that Adam had wanted to become a god,
so He sent His Son who put him on in order to grant him his desire.”
(St Ephrem the Syrian, The Luminous Eye, pp 85, 102)
Patriarchal Proclamation of Christmas 2016.
Prot. No. 1297
B A R T H O L O M E W
By God’s Mercy Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch
to the Plenitude of the Church
Grace, Mercy and Peace from the Savior Christ Born in Bethlehem
“Christ’s incarnation is my own re-creation”
Beloved brothers and sisters, dear children in the Lord,
We praise and glorify the God in Trinity, who deemed us worthy once again this year to reach the great feast of the Nativity in the flesh of the Son and Word of God the Father in “little Bethlehem.”
The holy Church is celebrating with fullness of joy, for Christ “assumed flesh” through His incarnation and rendered the Church “an adornment for the world.” Indeed, the entire human race, and even “all of creation,” rejoices over this divine blessing. “All of creation is today filled with joy because Christ is born of a Virgin.”
In contrast to the “unmoved mover” of the ancient Greeks, our God is the communion of love and lovingly moves in time toward humankind and the world. “In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us.” (1 John 4.10)
The pre-eternal Word of the Father, who granted “being” to humankind, now grants us “well being” through His incarnation. “This is the reason behind the feast; this is why we celebrate today: namely, God’s descent to us so that we might ascend—or return—to God . . . in order that, by laying aside the old man, we may assume the new man; and in order that, by dying to Adam, we might therefore live in Christ; in order that we might be with Christ, be crucified with Him, be buried with Him, and arise with Him.” The way of deification through grace is henceforth open to everyone coming into the world. All of us are “capable of containing God.” “There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free man, neither male nor female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3.28)
Unfortunately, the Gospel of Christmas is once again proclaimed to a world where the racket of weapons is heard, where unprovoked violence against individuals and peoples is enacted, and where inequality and social justice prevail. It is unbearable to witness the state of countless children, victims of military conflict, irregular situations, manifold exploitations, persecutions and discriminations, as well as hunger, poverty and painful dispossession.
Last April, we had the opportunity in Lesbos to witness with our own eyes—together with His Holiness Pope Francis of Rome and His Beatitude Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens and All Greece—the tragic circumstances of refugees and immigrants, and especially the acute problems of the suffering children, innocents and defenseless victims of military violence, as well as the racial and religious discrimination and injustice, all of which are constantly increasing.
The feast of God’s Word, who became an infant—the child Jesus, whose disappearance is pursued by worldly authority, according to the Evangelist Matthew (Matt 2.13)—is a reminder and invitation for us to care for children, to protect these vulnerable victims and to respect the sacredness of childhood.
Of course, children and sensitive souls are also threatened in economically developed and politically stable countries of the world, whether by the immense crisis of marriage and family, or by diverse interventions as well as the use of physical or spiritual force. A child’s soul is altered by the influential consumption of electronic media, especially television and the internet, and by the radical transformation of communication. Unbridled economics transfigures them from a young age into consumers, while the pursuit of pleasure rapidly vanishes their innocence.
In light of these dangers, the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church addressed children and young people “with particular love and affection” (Prov. 8) by including the following in its Encyclical:
Amid the medley of mutually contradictory definitions of childhood, our most holy Church presents the words of our Lord: “Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 18.3) and “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it (Luke 18.17), as well as what our Savior says about those who “prevent” (Luke 18.16) children from approaching Him and about those who “scandalize” them (Matt 18.6).
The mystery of Christmas is crystallized in the words of the festive Kontakion: “For us, a new child was born, God before all ages.” The divine Word as child and the child as God is revealed to the world with “the pure heart” and simplicity of a child. Children comprehend truths, which “wise and prudent” people are unable to approach. As Elytis observes in his poem From one’s neighbor: “You can build Jerusalem out of children alone!”
Beloved brothers and sisters in the Lord,
We appeal to all of you to respect the identity and sacredness of childhood. In light of the global refugee crisis that especially affects the rights of children; in light of the plague of child mortality, hunger and child labor, child abuse and psychological violence, as well as the dangers of altering children’s souls through their uncontrolled exposure to the influence of contemporary electronic means of communication and their subjection to consumerism, we declare 2017 as the Year of Protection of the Sacredness of Childhood, inviting everyone to recognize and respect the rights and integrity of children.
As underlined in another significant document of the Holy and Great Council, the Church of Christ does not look to “judging and condemning the world” with its word (John 3.17; 12.47), “but rather to offer to the world the guidance of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, namely, the hope and assurance that evil, no matter its form, does not have the last word in history and must not be allowed to dictate its course.”
Therefore, we venerate our Savior with humility and compunction, for He has visited us from on high; we praise with divine song the immensity of the sacred Incarnation; we kneel down before the All-Holy Theotokos, who holds the child Jesus; and we address from the sleepless Phanar the festive greeting to all children of the Church of Constantinople, both near and afar: “Christ is born; glorify Him. Christ has come from heaven; come out to meet Him,” together with our paternal wishes and patriarchal prayer.
“Be strong in the grace of Christ Jesus.” (2 Tim. 2.1) Let us all strive together with faith and sincere love in the good struggle of new life in the Church, adhering to all that the Lord has commanded. For He is with us “all the days of our life, to the end of the ages.” (Matt 28.20)
Christmas 2016
BARTHOLOMEW of Constantinople
Fervent supplicant of all before God
Patriarch Daniel, in Christmas sermon: Birth of Christ – God’s programme for life of the world
The birth of Christ represents God’s programme for the life of the world, for salvation or its release from sin and death and its leading to the eternal life of the Kingdom of Heaven, said the Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church, His Beatitude Daniel, in his Christmas sermon.
“From an orthodox theological-spiritual perspective, when we are speaking of God’s programme for the life of the world, we are actually speaking of God’s plan to create the world, its salvation or its release from sin and death and its leading to the eternal life of the Kingdom of Heaven. God’s unbridled love for people, manifested in the plan to create the world and in the plan to incarnate the eternal Son of God, is in fact God’s programme for the life of the world. The purpose of Incarnating the Son of God from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and His Birth as a human in Bethlehem is humanity’s salvation from sin and death, meaning the gaining of eternal life,” the Patriarch said.
Through and in Jesus Christ the recapitulation and union of the entire creation is achieved, the Patriarch shows.
“Through his Birth from a Virgin, He unites the realms of Heaven and Earth. Through his salvation of the crook [e.n. — Zacchaeus], Christ accomplishes the union between Heaven and Earth. Through His Ascension to Heaven, Christ blesses human nature. Through recapitulating all the created powers and all realms, Christ unites the spiritual beings with the earthly beings. Through His seating as Human at the side of God, Christ unites creation with non-creation,” Patriarch Daniel says.
The Patriarch also called for the “raising of the country’s children with love for God and for their kin”.
“Let’s help the youths of our country discover the beauties of faith and of Christian love, so that they may be hard-working and generous. Let’s use the gift of liberty to fortify the faith and to accomplish more good deeds, to become more merciful, more generous, as we are urged by Jesus Christ the Saviour: ‘Be merciful, just as your Father in Heaven is merciful!”, said the Orthodox Hierarch.
On the occasion of the holidays of Christmas, New Year and the Epiphany, Patriarch Daniel addressed “to all wishes of health and salvation, peace and joy, happiness and much help from god in all good deeds, as well as the traditional greeting: Happy New Year!'”.
Translated by Agerpres
Romanian Patriarch Daniel: Irenical letter on the Feast of the Nativity of the Lord
Published by Andrei Pau 23.12.2016
Bucharest, Nativity of the Lord 2016
Romanian Patriarch Daniel: Irenical letter on the Feast of the Nativity of the Lord
Published by Andrei Pau 23.12.2016
Bucharest, Nativity of the Lord 2016
Irenical letter on the Feast of the Nativity of the Lord
Published by Andrei Pau 23.12.2016
Bucharest, Nativity of the Lord 2016
“ For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16)
Your Holiness / Beatitude,
The purpose of the Incarnation of the Son of God by the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary and of His birth as a man in Bethlehem is the salvation of mankind from sin and death, i.e. attaining everlasting life.
The New Testament shows that the Mystery of the Incarnation expresses a special bond between the Son of God and creation, since the Incarnation of the Son of God was the very purpose of the creation of the world (cf. Ephesians 1:4; 2 Timothy 1:9), because all were made in Him and through Him and for Him (cf. Colossians 1:16). Kenosis or humbleness of the eternal Son of God, Who was made man, aims at raising or exalting the human being to the celestial glory of the Most Holy Trinity. His love is not only compassionate, but He assumes to Himself our lives mixed with death in order to make all human beings of all times partakers of His eternal life.
In today’s world, permeated by a profound spiritual and moral crisis, individualism and insensitivity to the suffering of others undermines love within family and society, diminishes solidarity with those in need and produce more alienation between people. Now, when Christ the Lord comes mysteriously to us, through the poor and the alone ones, the sick and the afflicted, through widows and orphans, through our Christian brothers forced to leave their homeland because of armed conflicts, let us go out to meet Him by charity, through fraternal help and solidarity.
On the occasion of the Holy Feasts of the Nativity of the Lord, the New Year 2017 and the Theophany, we address to you our wishes of good health, peace and joy, along with the traditional greeting: Many years to come!
With great esteem and brotherly embrace in Christ our Lord,
† DANIEL
Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church His birth as a man in Bethlehem is the salvation of mankind from sin and death, i.e. attaining everlasting life.
The New Testament shows that the Mystery of the Incarnation expresses a special bond between the Son of God and creation, since the Incarnation of the Son of God was the very purpose of the creation of the world (cf. Ephesians 1:4; 2 Timothy 1:9), because all were made in Him and through Him and for Him (cf. Colossians 1:16). Kenosis or humbleness of the eternal Son of God, Who was made man, aims at raising or exalting the human being to the celestial glory of the Most Holy Trinity. His love is not only compassionate, but He assumes to Himself our lives mixed with death in order to make all human beings of all times partakers of His eternal life.
In today’s world, permeated by a profound spiritual and moral crisis, individualism and insensitivity to the suffering of others undermines love within family and society, diminishes solidarity with those in need and produce more alienation between people. Now, when Christ the Lord comes mysteriously to us, through the poor and the alone ones, the sick and the afflicted, through widows and orphans, through our Christian brothers forced to leave their homeland because of armed conflicts, let us go out to meet Him by charity, through fraternal help and solidarity.
On the occasion of the Holy Feasts of the Nativity of the Lord, the New Year 2017 and the Theophany, we address to you our wishes of good health, peace and joy, along with the traditional greeting: Many years to come!
With great esteem and brotherly embrace in Christ our Lord,
† DANIEL
Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church
Patriarch Theodoros of Alexandria pleads for mercy and love for fellow people in his Christmas message
Published by Aurelian Iftimiu 23.12.2016
my source: Basilica.ro
ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF THE NATIVITY OF CHRIST BY HIS BEATITUDE THE POPE AND PATRIARCH OF ALEXANDRIA AND ALL AFRICA
My dear brothers and sisters,
Our path to salvation has always been either a path of convergence to the will of our Creator or a path of deviation from it due to the predomination of our own will. Our vacillation between the divine and our own will, has sealed and will continue to seal – often tragically – our path to our natural destination, which is none other than to become partakers of God by Grace.
Being in the paradise of communion with our Creator, we have forgotten the benevolence of Creation and raised the banner of rebellion, in breach of the contract we made with God. Yet God, with paternal affection and love, has not abandoned us in the tragedy of our fall. Condescending to our weakness, He revealed His will and, through Moses, offered us indicators or a just and fraternal living.
And when the fullness of time had come, God gave us a gift greater even than the gift of Creation. He gave us the gift of Adoption. He sent His Only Begotten Son to lighten our path of return to the embrace of the Father. This time God’s contract with the people was summarized in one single commandment: love one another. Sincere love was proclaimed as an attitude and way of life. A way of life measured by our readiness to recognize in the face of others, not simply our fellow human beings, but our brothers and sisters.
Yet today we forget God’s will. We want to decide whether to accept or reject the gift of a new life. We want to regulate the end of our earthly life. We want to give new meaning to the God-given institution of family. We want to govern creation not as rational stewards, but as nothing but ruthless exploiters. We want either to suppress faith in God, or to transform it into a means of enforcing misanthropic ideologies.
And, since we have marginalised God and have removed conventional borders through technology, fear has come to erect new walls. We feel fear, because there are people around us who are determined to trample on the lives of others, in order to impose their own will misanthropically. We feel like the Alexandrian poet who desperately confesses: “Without reflection, without mercy, without shame, they built strong walls and high, and compassed me about”.
The world that was deeply wounded by the absurdity of the two world wars, now face a threat which is not at all conventional, but rather excessively disproportionate. The image of God in us has become so tarnished, as we have succumbed to our own will, making the prospect of likeness to God to seem hopelessly distant.
Yet, Christ, who is born tonight, said to us: “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age”. Christ who loves mankind pledged to remain beside us. What do we owe Christ in return? What we owe Him is our conscience’s peaceful revolution with the banner of love’s commandment, the mandate we signed with God. This peaceful revolution is required to reverse the pendulum of history from our own will to the will of God.
Do we have the extenuating circumstance of ignorance or of misunderstanding the divine will? No! Because the truth was expressed in the Gospels and it was summarized in one single word: mercy. Our Lord told us to feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, clothe the naked, host those in need, soothe the pain of the sick, visit those in prison. In other words, share, love, partake of the pain of others. Show concern for the rights of others, and do not tolerate the hypocrisy of the many.
My dear brothers and sisters,
The Elder Joseph the Hesychast, said: “God does not want to save us on His own will… He always helps, He is always beside us, but He also wants us to work, to do what we can”. God respects our freedom, but always looks forward us to stretching out our hand. He looks for us to cooperate, to do whatever we can, so that we can achieve what our Lord, who is born today, promised us: the return to full communion with God.
Many years!
THEODOROS II
†Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa
Metropolitan Tikhon
Orthodox Church of America
Nativity
To the Honorable Clergy, Venerable Monastics, and Pious Faithful of the Orthodox Church in America,
My Beloved Brethren and Blessed Children in the Lord,
Christ is born! Glorify Him! In recent years, we have been increasingly invited to immerse ourselves in a multitude of “universes” as an alternative to our everyday lives. Most recently, yet another installment of the “Star Wars” universe was released, and surely there will be more to come, along with an endless array of similar cinematic worlds and virtual realities in the realms of sports, entertainment, the internet and in the media. While promising an escape from the mundane, such things often leave us still trapped in our own world of earthly passions and desires.
Today, as we celebrate the Great Feast of the Nativity in the Flesh of Our Lord, God and Savior, Jesus Christ, we are invited to immerse ourselves, not into the world of escape, but into that “strange and glorious mystery” by which we are transfigured and transformed, embracing the Kingdom of heaven while allowing the Lord to embrace us. We are offered the possibility of encountering, not dazzling “heroes” of the three-dimensional, high definition sort, but rather the simple beauty of the birth of the child Jesus.
In appearance, aside from its extreme austerity, there is nothing externally noteworthy to behold: a woman gives birth in a cave and lays her child in a manger. But it is precisely through these simple realities that a great mystery—the pre-eternal God embracing our human nature in its fullness—is revealed to the universe. “He Who adorned the heavens with stars has been well-pleased to be born as a babe, and He Who holds all the ends of the earth in the hollow of His hands is laid in a manger of dumb beasts.”
This mystery becomes meaningful to us through the liturgical and sacramental life of the Church and through our small efforts to live with Christian kindness. This is far more than being virtuous. As Father Alexander Schmemann wrote, “A kind person is kind because he or she accepts people as they are, covers them with kindness. Kindness is beautiful, the most beautiful thing on this earth. Virtuous people are activists, obsessed with the desire to impose their principles and goodness and easily condemning, destroying, hating…. In this world there is a lot of virtue, and so little kindness.”
Virtue is not the goal, but rather a life of humility and a struggle to discern the Lord’s very image in everyone whom we encounter. He “Whom in essence none can touch” is wrapped as a mortal in swaddling clothes that we might become “partakers of His divine nature.” If there is any element of escape here, it is rooted in the turning away from sin and the all-too-deceptive seductiveness of this world.
The grace of the Holy Spirit is not given to us for virtue or heroic asceticism; rather, it is rooted in the humility that transforms us as surely as the Incarnation transforms the universe. “Let the creation now cast off all things old, beholding Thee, the Creator, made a child, for through Thy birth Thou dost shape all things afresh, making them new once more and leading them back again to their first beauty.”
May the joy of this great feast transfigure us now, in the New Year to come, and every day of our lives as we await the fullness of the Kingdom of heaven, yet to be fully revealed, but already fully present in the life of the Body of Christ, the Church.
With love in the New-Born Christ,
+ Tikhon
Archbishop of Washington
Metropolitan of All America and Canada
Source: http://fatherdavidbirdosb.blogspot.com/2016/12/january-7th-december-25-in-julian.html
