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Most Reverend Archbishops and Metropolitans,
Christ is born! Glorify Him!
Dearly Beloved in Christ!
With these words of the Christmas Canon, I want to greet you all on the bright holiday of Christmas. Today the Church of Christ calls us not just to celebrate this holiday, but invites us to praise and meet God, who came to us in the human body, and fasten the presence of the heavenly child. "Christ is born! Glorify Him!” This invitation takes on special significance when we unite with the direct participants and witnesses to the events of this wonderful birth. Those who praise the newborn Son of God are above all the angels of heaven. They are the ones who told the shepherds who guarded over their flocks the wonderful news about the birth of the Son of God, singing the great song: "Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to people who enjoy his favor” (Luke 2:14). Is it not the first time angelic forces come close to people and with them form a single nation, a heavenly and earthly choir. This universal glorification, which is heard by the one polyphony of the heaven and the earth, shows in the sacrament of the Incarnation of the Son of God that the heavenly and divine reality will unite with human, with his history, past, present and future. In this sacramental unification of God and human in the person of the newborn Jesus Christ, gifts are exchanged between them: the Creator offers his eternal life to man, and life of man completely opens up to God, becomes a space of his presence and actions. Therefore glorifying the newborn Savior means first of all to have His presence in our lives. Today, God really is with us, in today's moment of history of our people, the united people of God, who learn from angels how to stand with dignity before God and praise Him. Glorifying the newborn Savior with Christmas carols, we are together with the angels proclaiming the coming of the heavenly joy that eliminates earthly sorrow and despair, giving human the gift of eternal life with God. "Christ descends from the heavens, welcome Him!” Meeting the Son of God, who in the human body came to earth, we recognize that God Himself wanted to enter the life of each one of us to take on himself all our sins, sicknesses, pains and problems, and give us His eternal bliss and happiness. The moment when the Savior touches each of us, and with the power and actions of the Holy Spirit brings his eternal life to our human life, we call the Holy Sacrament. There are seven such sacraments in the Christian Church: Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Penance, Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders, and Matrimony. These sacraments are the fruits and consequences of the birth of God in human flesh. Whenever we accept and take part in a Holy Sacrament, we are given a great gift of the meeting with the Lord Christ, and this meeting transfigures our lives, filling it with the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the power of the Holy Spirit. Thus God's presence through the Holy Sacraments makes us participants in God's life, in accordance with the words of St. Athanasius: "God became man so that man might become God." It is especially important for us to discover and evaluate the grace of Christ's Nativity in the new year of 2012, which our Church, in its preparations for the celebration of the 1025th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus’-Ukraine, devotes to the Holy Sacrament. To meet the newborn Christ today can be primarily in the Holy Sacraments, especially in the Eucharist, which is the center and culmination of the life of the Church. By our lively participation in the sacraments, especially Penance and the Eucharist, we can best prepare for and celebrate this year’s nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ. And during this New Year let us strive to understand more deeply and discover the priceless treasure of the Holy Sacraments in the Church of Christ and use them for our sanctification and salvation. "Christ is now on earth, O be jubilant!” On this sacramental Christmas night, the heavenly angel tells us, like once was told to the shepherds: "Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people!” (Luke 2:10.) Today, unfortunately, we must affirm that in our Ukrainian society various fears of the past are returning. Even after twenty years of building the Ukrainian state, we are still uncertain whether we will be able to keep its independence, freedom and our Ukrainian identity. We fear the world economic crisis and new forms of social and national oppression. Therefore, this angelic message of "Fear not!” has a special force to speak today to our hearts. "Christ is now on earth, O be jubilant!” the Church of Christ sings today. Let us all rejoice because the presence on earth of the incarnate Christ – our Savior – is for us a source of unspeakable power and hope in our earthly life with its competitions and challenges. Only in His birth, in the Nativity of the unchanging and eternal God, is a new and better future born, which gives substance and certainty to our present. Who today discovered their hope in a small child, the newborn Savior, has already found support and strength for his complicated, changing and uncertain present. Dearly beloved in Christ! On this bright and cheerful day let us praise the newborn Jesus with our ancestral koliada. Let it remove from our hearts all our fears and sadness. We meet today the Everlasting God with an open heart and a fill it with His heavenly grace, joy and peace. Let this Christmas joy and cheer give us strength in our daily work and prayer, give us unity and harmony in our communities. May the Christmas star, which once led the Wise Men to the manger, where slept the King of the Ages, show us the way to our future in Christ Jesus.
Christ is Born! Glorify Him!
+ SVIATOSLAV
At the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ in Kyiv, | |
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