Serbian
True Orthodox Church
Nativity
Encyclical 2015
Hierarchical
Council of the STOC
Under
the Presidency of His Grace Akakije
Bishop
of Uteshiteljevo
To
All the Faithful Children of St. Sava’s Church
We
greet you on the great and joyous feast of the birth of Christ:
Christ
is Born! Glorify Him!
“Great is the mystery of
godliness:
God was manifested in the flesh…”
1
Tim 3:16
On
the day of Christ’s birth, Heaven and Earth, God and Man united into one. Heaven came down to Earth, and Earth became
Heaven, because on it appeared God made flesh.
In the Divine Child of Bethlehem, human nature and the divine united,
for He truly received our flesh and blood, uniting Himself in the most intimate
way with human nature, and accordingly, uniting the human race with the
Divinity. St. Gregory the Theologian
says of Man, “He is the only being that stands apart from all creation; the
only one which can become a god.” That possibility was granted us with this
very “mystery of godliness” (1 Tim. 3:16), that is, the incarnation of the Son
of God. In the service books of the
Church, the Most Holy Mother of God is very often called the wellspring of our
divinization: “Through her we have been deified.”
Great is this mystery, and as its memory and
celebration is so important, our caring mother the holy Church has ordained a
long preparation for it in the form of a forty-day fast. Why is a fast necessary in order to prepare
to meet Christmas? It is necessary
because the act of birth, that is, the incarnation of the Son of God is the
greatest mystery for the salvation of the world. This mystery cannot be understood by the
fleshly mind, which can hardly grasp earthly things, much less heavenly. Impure hearts defiled by passions, bound by
everything earthly, incapable of comprehending anything heavenly, cannot
receive such a mystery. In order to
receive this divine, most holy mystery which transcends the mind, we must especially
prepare and cleanse the mind and heart with a forty-day fast. Thus, with the help of a bodily and spiritual
fast, we free the mind of the vain thoughts of everyday life. We cleanse the feelings, weaken and humble the
crudeness of our body. In this way,
reborn and prepared spiritually, we can look with the eyes of our mind upon
“the great mystery of godliness,” how the Word, the Son of God Jesus Christ,
became flesh, how the Theotokos bore Him, yet remained a virgin, how a manger
became a cradle in which lay the uncontainable Christ God.
This
feastday is also so great because with it God fulfilled His greatest promise to
man about the coming Savior of the world, for Whom, according to the testimony
of the Bible, we waited over five thousand years. Mankind prepared for the Savior’s birth from
the time of Adam. Having received a punishment because of his transgression,
Man, embodied in Adam, also received a promise of the great event which would
happen, “when the fullness of time had come” (Gal. 4:4), when the seed of a
woman, that is the descendant of a woman, “would bruise the head of the serpent”
(1 Gen. 3:15), the devil-tempter, and Man would recover Paradise which he had
lost.
It is an understatement to say that the event
of the birth of the Child of Bethlehem is great or even most great. For the
human race, it is something which supersedes our limited comprehension, all our
imaginings of earthly or even heavenly dimensions. Do we who celebrate the Birth of Christ truly
realize the immeasurable magnitude of this event?
On
that night, only a few came to worship at the manger in which lay “the little
Child, the Eternal God” (Kontakion of
the Nativity). They were simple, humble shepherds who had been called by
angelic singing, and the oriental wise men who had been led from afar by the
marvelous guiding star. All the rest of
mankind slept a deep sleep, not knowing and not suspecting what had happened
that night. How many today will hearken
to the angelic song of the church bells which announce this great Christmas
feast? How many will come to the church
to God’s service and adore the Divine Bethlehem Child? How many will have offered Him the forty-day
fast of cleansing and preparationas a gift, and through the communion of the
Holy Mysteries, most intimately participate in “the great mystery of
godliness,” the manifestation of God in the flesh, Who gives Himself to us in
the form of life-giving, mystical food and drink? “For the bread of God is He who comes down
from heaven and gives life to the world” (John 6:33). “Most assuredly, I say unto you, unless you
eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you”(John
6:53). With the birth of Christ, we have
been deemed worthy of something of which even the angels were not deemed
worthy: deification through the
communion of the Heavenly Bread and the Chalice of Life. The Holy Eucharist contains all the fullness
of the celebration of Christ’s birth, for Holy Communion is the most intimate
act of union with Him “Who for our sakes and for our salvation descended from
the heavens and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became
man” (Nicene Creed).
Unfortunately,
many superficial Christians, and even more zealous believers, do not know this very
well, or because of so many worldly concerns often forget the grandeur and
meaning of this most mystical feast. Often Christmas is awaited and celebrated
like some kind of warm, joyous, family holiday with all the richness of
national traditions. It is this, and
should remain so, but we cannot reduce this mystical holiday to merely nice,
touching traditions which include going to church decorated for the festive
Liturgy with the Badnjak (oak, the Serbian Christmas tree) and straw. We must strive with all our hearts to perceive
Christ’s Nativity as a holiday overflowing with spiritual riches and lofty
mysteries of the faith which are revealed in it. In the first place is the mystery of the
union of human nature with the divine, the mystery of our deification.
Many
think that the meaning of Christian life is attaining spiritual perfection, the
goal of which is to become good, doers of good works, and virtuous Christians. According to the Gospel, however, the
Traditions of the Church and the Holy Fathers, this is not the goal of our
life, but only the means of attaining it.
This means should not become the goal in and of itself, and through this
mistaken approach we lose or neglect the true goal for which our Creator made
man. Thus, let us not neglect the
fulfillment of a single Christian good deed, but let us be careful to keep our
main goal in sight. This final goal is,
as we have said, deification, the uniting of man with God. Having been given
the image of God, man is called by God Himself to gain His likeness, to attain this
deification. The Creator, God by nature,
calls man to become god by grace. God
granted man gifts according to His image, so that man could be lifted to
endless heights, so that with the help of those gifts he could become like his
God and Maker.
Thus,
the goal of our life is to become gods by grace. Not by nature, because only God is such by
nature, but by grace. Even the Old
Testament righteous men were not deemed worthy of this goal, nor were the
angels. This is the most marvelous and
mysterious privilege for us who came into the world after the birth of Christ,
and for this very reason we must not neglect this awesome and supremely binding
privilege for any temporal reason. Flee
from sin, draw near to God and become divine through the fulfilling of
Christian virtues. “Looking upon the immortal gift of Christ, do always the
immortal works in Christ: pure faith and frequent prayer, having love for and
hope in Him, with a pure conscience before God and man, fasting and vigil,
sleeping on the ground, truth in everything, bodily purity and spiritual
restraint, preserving the mind of holy baptism, enlightened by God, with which
we renounced Satan and all of his works. You must always love repentance and
the confession of your sins, with weeping over them. Compunction, humility, righteousness,
preaching, correction of life, hatred of sin, not drunkenness, not fornication,
but on the contrary, a pure life such as is pleasing in God’s eyes” (Žiča
sermon of St. Sava). As the pinnacle of
life in God, commune of the holy and life-giving Body and Blood of Christ, to
the remission of sins and union with Christ. Through Holy Communion we do not
only unite with Him, but also with each other.
“For we, though many, are one bread and one body, for we all partake of
that one bread” (1 Cor 10:17). Thus
united in this single Chalice of salvation, giving ourselves, each other, and
our entire lives to God, we celebrate the day of Christ’s birth, in that, after
a forty day preparation, we consciously, with the help of faith, truly receive
within ourselves through Holy Communion the Child of Bethlehem, “the Lamb of
God that takes away the sins of the world”
(John 1:29). In this way, with
the eyes of faith, we will see and truly experience “the great mystery of
godliness.” We can worship in spirit Him Who lies in the Bethlehem manger, that
is, on the altar of the church, “the little Child – God Who has appeared in the
flesh” in the form of bread and wine laid on the Holy Altar of which we
commune. Receiving Him within ourselves,
we experience the greatest spiritual joy, “the great mystery of godliness” and
sing with the angels, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good
will among men!” (Luke 2:14)
In
this divine joy, we wish all the faithful children of St. Sava’s Serbian Church
happiness in the coming year of 2016, with faith and hope that it will be
blessed, and that it will bring a spiritual rebirth in every human soul and in
our much suffering people as a whole, that “Serbs become godly, are at peace
with each other, and multiply” (St. Nicholas
Velimirovich). This spiritual rebirth is
possible only through true repentance and our communion in the mystery of the Body
of Christ, in which acts the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth and Love. This saving, grace-filled action is only
possible in the True Church of Christ.
May the Lord born of the Virgin thus bless our holy battle for the
rebirth and progress of the true Church of our fatherland, which like the
Divine Child of Bethlehem is now in the humble manger of catacomb service to
God and the Serbian nation.
With
such prayerful wishes, calling for the blessing of God on all of you, we once
more greet you with St. Sava’s Nativity Greeting:
The
peace of God be with you! Christ is born!
Uteshiteljevo,
Holy Nativity 2015
Your
prayerful intercessors before the Divine Child of Bethlehem
+Akakije,
Bishop of Uteshiteljevo
+Nektarije,
Bishop of Shumadia
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