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.”