"Glory to God in the highest, and on
earth peace, good will toward men."
(Luke
2: 14)
That is how the Holy Church sings together
with the angels the glorious event of the nativity of Christ. Now, as well as more than 2000 years ago, we
hear the blessing praise of the inexpressible love of God and His Divine Wisdom
and Providence and His care about the salvation of men, who come to their
Heavenly Father through the Son of God.
(Hebrews 7: 25). Our small Earth
has become a miracle for the Universe:
"And we have
seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the
world." (1 John 4: 14).
All the centuries-old
history of the humankind before the Advent of the Saviour to the world had been
accompanied by the painful search of truth and reason for being. Men had been looking for the right course of
life on earth, for the ideal and the spiritual beauty. Right in the moment when
the men approached the limits of their spiritual search by their own resources,
in the poor cave of the Bethlehem was born the One Who revealed to the world
the highest spiritual knowledge. The
most significant event in the spiritual history of humanity took place: "God was manifest in the flesh" (1 Timothy 3: 16). The Incarnation
of God was a starting point and the basis of the renewal of the closest union
of man with God, and in Him - the revival of integrity of the man's nature, its
deification.
The Only-begotten Son of
God redeemed the sin of Adam, and brought to heaven the man devoid of slavery
to sin, and gave His peace to all men. The heaven and the earth united! "Mercy and truth are met together;
righteousness and peace have kissed each other." (Psalms 85: 10). So how we can but thank the Creator,
who of his mercy to the humanity "gave his only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3: 16)?! How can we but rejoice with the angels' joy, when
the heaven and the earth, Angels and people celebrate together, since "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government
shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor,
The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace." (Isaiah 9: 6), "and unto him shall the gathering of
the people be" (Genesis
49: 10)!
When the Bethlehem
shepherds heard the words of the Angel:
"behold, I bring
you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people" (Лк. 2:10), - they perceived it with all their
hearts, as mutual joy, since everyone is invited to the joy of the Holy Feast
of the Nativity of Christ. By the
manger of Christ we feel and know "that we receive the adoption of sons"
(Galathians 4: 4-5), become the participants of the real eternal life with
God.
In our secular time, the
time of spiritual impoverishment, when the comfort and pleasure take the prior
place in the life of men, our society, unfortunately, loses the feeling of
spiritual joy. The feast of the
Nativity of Christ, great by its theological and soteriological meaning, is
perceived by the majority of our compatriots like a good family tradition. Losing the understanding of
the sense and meaning of the God Incarnation, which marked the beginning of the
salvation of the humankind on the whole as well as of every separate person, we
are losing ourselves, we break away from our centuries-long roots of the Orthodox piety of our
people. It is awful even to imagine;
God manifested in flesh personally! And
today, as never, it is important to understand that the gist of the present
feast is not to recollect a certain historical event, but to get closer to it
spiritually, for all of us could "obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus
with eternal glory" (2 Timothy 2: 10).
The previous year was an
anniversary of the Orthodox Church. It
is the fifteenth anniversary of the historical Kharkiv Council of Bishops and
of our keeping the Cathedra of Kyiv Metropolitans, the initial Cathedra of the Kievan
Rus. The Council of 1992 became a special landmark in the modern history
of our Holy Church. In the realia of
the complicated political conditions it helped the Orthodox people of Ukraine
to choose the right way. Full of care
for the peace and consent of their flock, the hierarchs of the Orthodox Church
decided in counciliar way to stay in canonical unity with the Ecumenical
Orthodoxy. At the same time we sincerely ache for our fold who seceded from the
real and effective church communion and stay nowadays in schism, devoid of the
grace of the Church Sacraments, and consequently of the salvation itself. The Holy Church, as the loving
father of the Gospel, is waiting for its children who stay away with tears and
hope, and is ready to receive in its open arms everyone who, being fed up with
cast-offs of the graceless out-of church life, return to its fold in order to
unite the real joy and love of communication on the Eucharist meal.
In the expired year we
commemorated the victims of the Holodomor (the Ukrainian famine) of 1932-1933. This awful tragedy that happened
75 years ago, aches with pain in the hearts of every our compatriot. The
Ukrainian Orthodox Church which is flesh of the flesh and blood of the blood of
the Ukrainian people has always prayed, is praying now and will pray forever
for our brothers and sisters, innocently tortured by the atheist power could
rest in peace. We have to remember the awful lessons of the past in order that
the generations to come should never know the burden of such an ordeal.
In the new year of 2008 we
will celebrate a remarkable event: 1020 anniversary of the Baptism of Rus by
the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir. Accepting the Orthodox faith
became the beginning of the new era of being of our people. Christianity was a uniting, state-creating
and cultural factor for the Slavic tribes; it asserted significant influence
over the formation of their mentality. The light of the Christ's Truth, which
lit once on our blessed lands has been illuminating our hearts up to the
present and sets us to the way of piety.
Dear Reverend Archpastors, pastors, honorable
monkhood, brothers and sisters beloved in Christ! I heartily congratulate you with the great and joyful feast of
the Nativity of Christ! Let's praise
Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ born in the Bethlehem manger, from whom we
received "grace for grace" (John 1: 16). Christ put
on ourselves and we also put on Christ: "For as many of you as have been baptized into
Christ have put on Christ" (Galatians 3:
27). So let the God-Baby give us the joy and the hope of salvation. Let the One
who renewed the lives and times of people, renew our spiritual and bodily
forces, and give us "the grace of God that bringeth salvation... appeared to all
men" (Titus 2: 11).
"Christ
is born - glorify Him!
Christ from
Heaven - meet Him!"
†Volodymyr,
Metropolitan
of Kyiv and All Ukraine,
Primate of the
Ukrainian Orthodox Church
Nativity 2007/2008 | |
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