Beloved in the Lord Reverend Fathers, brothers and sisters!

I sincerely greet you with the great holy day of the Nativity of Christ and a New Year of God’s grace.

St. Nikolai of Ochrid, a bishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church, endeavoring in some manner, to explain the magnificent and incomprehensible to human understanding miracle of God’s Incarnation, used the following comparison. «It is said in one old folk legend, as related in his Missionary Letters, that in olden times swallows were not able to migrate to warmer places for the cold season. And, when snow fell and frost hit, they suffered terribly and perished. Seeing this, one merciful man took pity on them and began to do whatever he could and knew to teach the swallows to migrate south. He gave them signs – the swallows did not understand them, he enticed them with food to go in a southernly direction – it do not help, he scared and and chased them – to no avail. Nothing worked. Then he began to pray to God, so that God would turn him into a swallow. God fulfilled his wish and turned him into a swallow, which could think and feel like a man. Then the man-swallow easily taught the swallows how to migrate south.

This is of course only poetic imagery but may it help us, in some small way, to understand that the Eternal Wisedom, born from Eternal Love, was incarnated and became Man among people so that man, shivering from earthly bitterness, could take the new path to a warmer place, to the Kingdom of God, where there is «neither sickness, nor sorrow, nor sighing!».

In prayers I wish you, together with the flock entrusted to you, that you may glorify Christ the Savior born in Bethlehem and in the quietude of your heart, bring to God Incarnate gold of good will, incense of sincere prayer and myrrh of righteous actions.

From the bottom of my heart I wish you a bright and merry Christmas, as well as strength, spiritual and physical, from our Lord Jesus Christ.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!

With prayerful wishes for God’s help in the New Year
and with love in the Christ-Child

+Job, Bishop of Kashira,
Administrator of the Patriarchal Parishes
of the Russian Orthodox Church in Canada

Related posts:

• The Sunday of forgiveness before the Great Lent.
• The Meeting of the Lord
• The Circumcision of the Lord.
• The Sunday of Orthodoxy.
• Fifth Sunday of Great Lent. Venerable Mary of Egypt.