: Let us fight for the preservation of our unity
"Especially in the difficult days we are going through, to insecurity, the pain, the sadness, fear and death, let us not cease to stand next to each other with love, hope, understanding and patience, supporting, taking care and preserving “themselves and each other”, but mainly, placing our hope in the Born Lord ", urges, including, in his Christmas message the Archbishop of Athens and All Greece Ieronymos.
And he adds: "Let us fight for the preservation of our unity, staying away from all kinds of extremism and bigotry and, first of all, let us remain united with the Eternal God, the Old of Days, who is nursing for us, He remains with us and is offered to us through our participation in His Holy Body, the Holy Church.
Only then will we celebrate a true Christmas, approaching it “new” and great mystery and renovating our lives ".
The message of His Beatitude in detail:
My dear brothers and children,
«Δι’ ημάς γαρ εγεννήθη παιδίον νέον, the God of ages ”.
Today all creation celebrates the Birth of our Christ and we are all called to conceive a new reality in relation to the understanding of man and his history: "Christ incarnated, fiber we are deified ", proclaims Athanasios the Great. God becomes man, to make us all gods by grace. He is born among us, like any human being, in the form of a newborn baby.
Saint Romanos the Melodist describes this event in the hymn of the Christmas Kontakion: «Neon child, the God of ages ”. These words, "Neon child" and "God", are the most revealing about the mystery of Christmas. The child born into our world is none other than the "God of centuries ago", that is, the Creator of the universe. The poetic sensitivity of the hymnist is not enough to simply say that God was born as a human being.. He proposes the most powerful image of that child, of the infant (which does not utter an epic), who can not speak. God enters human life without relying on the power of prestige and power because the incarnation of God is a product of divine love.
Unfortunately, Nevertheless, Human, even when he is in extreme situations in which he has often led himself, such as those of modern times, constantly seeks to have external strength and power. He wants to rely on the prestige of any position and seeks any form of power, using need and fear with the sole purpose of dominating his fellow man. His tragedy, Nevertheless, is exactly that: to live in the delusion that his submission to the power of fear and need, and their simultaneous use against other people, can make him omnipotent. And he does not hesitate to sell anything, even sacred, about’ this self-deception, even this very life of his and his fellow human beings.
The "child God", Nevertheless, comes to free us from all deception and delusion. He does not strive to defend His prestige and power: "No rapture I led it is equal to God", but offered and offered: "He emptied himself in the form of a slave handle". It does not calculate costs and for’ this does not remain closed and isolated in the exclusivity of the greatness of His Divinity, but agrees. "The Savior agrees, of the human race ", takes on human nature, he renews it with His divinity, regenerates it and gives it "most of life". Divine humility acted as a powerful antidote to human arrogance, which is the root of sin. The speech of Saint Gregory the Theologian is shocking, when he describes this concession as emptying – emptiness of God in the person of Christ: "He who is full empties * because he empties of his glory for a while, so that I can taste its fullness ". Without this emptiness of God, the inconceivable to the finite human mind, could not be filled – deification of man.
My brothers and my children,
The divine emptiness from the humble cave of Bethlehem must n’ is our safe role model in our relationships with others. It takes constant struggle to offer love, sacrifice, acceptance of the other and his needs, ecstasy from ourselves for the sake of others.
Especially in the difficult days we are going through, to insecurity, the pain, the sadness, fear and death, let us not cease to stand next to each other with love, hope, understanding and patience, supporting, taking care of and protecting "ourselves and each other", but mainly, placing our hope in the Born Lord.
Let us fight for the preservation of our unity, staying away from all kinds of extremism and bigotry and, first of all, let us remain united with the Eternal God, the Old of Days, who is nursing for us, He remains with us and is offered to us through our participation in His Holy Body, the Holy Church.
Only then will we celebrate a true Christmas, approaching the "new" and great mystery and renovating our lives.
I wish you happy birthday, sanctified and glorified, full of the Grace of our Incarnate Christ.
With a lot of paternal love