Save as PDFХристос раждается! Cлавим Его! CHRIST IS BORN! – LET US GLORIFY HIM! Beloved in the Lord Reverend Fathers, brothers and sisters!
From the bottom of my heart, I greet you on the Nativity of the Son of God with the words of salutation with which the angels greeted the shepherds at Bethlehem, “Glory to God in the highest and on Earth peace and good will toward men!”
The Nativity of Christ – is the wonder of wonders! It is beyond our understanding! “Today the Virgin gives birth to the Eternal One!” and “the One, Who is above all” appears. The Creator is united with His own creation. The King and Creator of the world comes in the “form of a servant” without force, without authority, without extraordinary measures, so that, having lowered Himself to human essence, He can approach man. The Holy Fathers refer to this salvation of man from eternal death as “Kenozis” the “self-destruction of divinity”.
The inanimate earth offers “the Unapproachable One”, as St. Roman the Melodist poetically says, a humble stable – a cave. On Christmas Morn the “Angels with the shepherds glorify Him!” The angels who glorify God in the heavens join with simple shepherds. A new spiritual choir for the glorification of God is formed on Earth. “The Wise Men follow the star”. It is an uncommon “God-driven” star which drives, according to God’s command, the Wise Men to Bethlehem. Today the divinely-created universe shows us the way to our Creator. In accordance with God’s will we bring Christ the fragrance of prayer and the gold of good works.
Everything that occurred during the night of Christmas has a deep meaning in our salvation: the gifts of the Wise Men, the swaddling clothes in which the Immaculate Mother of God swaddled the Christ Child and the manger into which He was placed…As St. John Chrysostom says, the swaddling clothes are a bandage on our sinful wounds. The Child is laid in a manger so that we, “having changed our human animal behaviour, would not be nourished with the hay of sinful sweetness but with divine bread“.
“For our sake the Christ Child, the Eternal God, is born! For us, God Eternal, before all ages”, beyond all time, is born as a “little child”!
At Christmas, the Nativity of Christ, we especially feel that “Almighty God, the Ruler of the world” is with us. (Isaiah 9:6). And if the Lord is with us and we are with the Lord, then we are not to be frightened by any trials, because “the power of God in weakness prevails” (Corinthians II 12, 9).
In the coming New 2010th Year may the mercy of Our All-Gracious God and Saviour Jesus Christ abundantly shower our life and give us the strength to overcome our temporary troubles and always carry forth, to the world around us, the joyful news of the Saviour’s Nativity.
With prayerful wishes for God’s help in the New Year and with love in the Christ-Child,
+Iov (Job), Bishop of Kashira, Administrator of the Patriarchal Parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church in Canada and temporarily in the USA
The Nativity of Christ * December 25, 2009 / January 7, 2010 * Edmonton