Oh, if only we had a manger like yours….
Our title is left only of “Christian” society. Rarely is there a heart that is willing to listen to the glad tidings of heaven, lips grateful to proclaim “He is truly come”… The God-man is becoming more and more an unwelcome visitor among us.. and instead of widening he is shrinking, instead of being preached he is expelled, instead of being glorified within us he is expelled, instead of being glorified he is blasphemed… How do we want to live Christmas? How do we hope their joy will sweeten our souls? We lose the One who is born, we also lose our bearings… We run to charity “events” and topical events begging for intense, momentary emotional rises. We squeeze the meaning of the days into melodic songs, decorated houses and shops, the marketplace and lavish revivals. We suffocate every corner of our souls and for the discreet infant of Bethlehem there is no place in the inn…
And yet Christ is born! And those who give Him room in their hearts live a real Christmas. He is born and He has the power to change hearts, villages, cities, towns, societies, countries! They sing of His birth where He was not known and familiar. They proclaim the glad tidings in the places where for the first time the inhabitants meet Him. They celebrate Christmas with the revelation of His attributes and His presence in the prehistory and history of mankind. Warm manger hearts become warm manger hearts in those places where God’s children, unaware of their Father’s existence, behold His love through the works of His own people. They watch the erection of His places of worship and are moved to praise Him. On the contrary, in Orthodox Greece, although the true God is intimate, accessible and taught extensively and in full, a large part of its inhabitants choose alienation from Him and His beneficent presence. Freely created man… has the ability to accept or reject. But every soul, without exception, finds rest near its Creator. When it meets Him, it lives Christmas within! It celebrates Christmas and each time it renews this unique encounter. Everyone shares in this unspeakable joy! However, close to the newborn Christ cannot stand the one who has confined Him to certain boundaries and persons, the one who ignores the universality of His being, but the one who gives the present where His own work is performed (only in an Orthodox way is His work performed), the one who strives to prepare Christmas for every heart and to live it with it.
The one who has put Christ in second place, who has discredited Him and driven Him out of his life, does not experience Christmas… just as the innkeepers and their guests who closed the doors at the sight of Him did not experience Christmas on that holy night. Only the heart prepared for this purpose will partake of the mystical feast… as they had the happiness of experiencing the Divine Revelation – the ineffable one who fits into a child’s body – the pure and obedient Virgin Mary, the servant of God Joseph the tomb, the simple and humble shepherds and the Magi from the East who looked forward to Him… Christmas lives the imitator of Christ and the aforementioned martyrs of His Birth. The humble, the poor, the persecuted, the suffering. The one who does not place his family and financial situation above the salvation of his soul. He who does not allow the obligations and cares that overwhelm the daily routine of life to obstruct his personal encounter with the Divine Infant. Almighty God chose to incarnate – not in a palace, hotel or home – but in a humble manger. Let us make such a manger of our soul, let us purify it by confession, warm it by liturgical life, and try as much as we can to keep it humble… If we move in this way, we will be able to realize that God became man in order to make man God, we will be able to understand the supreme missionary and at the same time divine act of incarnation, which St. John Chrysostom calls “freakish”, since its purpose is “to make us sons of God. He was born in the flesh so that we might be born in the Spirit, to unite the divine with the human nature”… This revealed truth is also preached by the exalted Paul in his apostolic reading for the feast of Christmas: “And when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem them under the law, that we might receive the adoption. And that ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, saying, Abba, Father. So that no man is a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ” (Galatians 4:4-7).
Our Brotherhood wishes from the bottom of its heart that Christ be reborn in every soul of our country and the whole world, that the saving “cry” of the Divine Infant be heard in every corner of the earth. And although he struggles to live Christmas in Africa, he hopes that we will not have to visit Africa to live Christmas there.
