Metropolitan Onuphry addresses the UOC faithful with a Christmas message
The Christmas Epistle of His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kyiv and All Ukraine has been published.
On the eve of the Feast of the Nativity of Christ, the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kyiv and All Ukraine, addressed the flock with a Christmas message, which is posted on the website of the Information and Education Department of the UOC.
Below is the full text of the Primate's Nativity Epistle to Archpastors, Pastors, Monastics and all the Faithful Children of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church:
Thy Christmas, Christ our God, has shone upon the world with the light of reason ...
(Troparion to the Nativity of Christ)
I sincerely congratulate all of you, God-loving archpastors and pastors, pious monks and nuns, dear brothers and sisters, on the great world-saving holiday of Nativity of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ in the flesh.
On these sacred days, the Holy Orthodox Church remembers with love and prayerfully glorifies the great “mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh" (1 Tim. 3:16), through which the sad event of the loss of Paradise by man was transformed into the joyous event of the return of Paradise to man.
Divine Love, with its wondrous and mysterious power, created man out of the dust of the earth. The Lord singled out Adam from all creation, bestowing His Divine image upon him. Adam became the bearer of the glorious image of the Eternal God. What a great honor for man! The Lord gave Adam Paradise, in which Adam stayed and enjoyed its beauty. But, according to sacred history, man sinned and lost his dignity. However, it says little about what happened next: Adam turned away from God and was no longer able to live in Paradise. Divine Love, without limiting Adam's will, allowed him to live in a world devastated by sin, where Adam ate his food through painful toil all the days of his life, and the ground produced thorns and thistles for him (Genesis 3:18).
Adam turned away from God, but God did not turn away from Adam. The Lord sent His prophets and righteous men into the world, who reminded the descendants of Adam about the lost Paradise. And then the Lord Himself comes into the world in due time. Divine Love takes on the image of fallen man, restores it, sanctifies and returns to Heaven.
The coming of the Son of God to earth occurs in wondrous and mysterious simplicity. The Blessed Virgin Mary, from whom God wanted to take human flesh and blood for Himself, arrives in the city of Bethlehem. The Holy Family came to Bethlehem at the behest of the Roman emperor Augustus, who ordered a census of the population unaware that through this he became an instrument in the hands of God, with which the Lord fulfilled the ancient prophecy, according to which the Messiah Christ should be born in the city of Bethlehem (Mic. 5:2).
When the Son of God was born in the Bethlehem cave, the wondrous glory of God filled the world. The sky rejoiced, the angels sang, and all nature rejoiced. The first of all earthly people to receive the news of the Nativity of the Son of God were simple Bethlehem shepherds who were tending their flocks not far from the blessed cave. An Angel of God appeared to them and said, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests." (Luke 2:10-14). The shepherds hurried to the Bethlehem cave to find the Infant Christ and worshipped Him with love, telling about what the Angel had announced to them.
After the joyful shepherds, on the very day of Christmas, three Magi came from the east to worship the newborn Infant Christ, whom the Lord brought from different countries to Bethlehem by way of a wonderfully bright star. The Magi brought with them gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh, with which they testified that “Lord of lords and the King of kings had come into the world” (Rev. 17:14) and the “High Priest of the good things” (Hebrews 9:11), Who will return Paradise lost to humanity through His free suffering and death.
And we, dear brothers and sisters, today, like pious shepherds, bow down to our Savior and Lord and humbly thank that He, our Creator and Maker, the Eternal Son of the Eternal Father, became the Son of Man in order to make us sons of God. Together with the wise Magi, we bring our gifts to the newborn God-child: the gold of our humble prayers, the frankincense of our humility and the myrrh of our repentance. The world in which we live today has a special need for prayer, humility and repentance. These holy virtues cultivate in a person love for God and for his neighbor and make a person similar to his Creator, who is Love by His nature.
We live in apocalyptic times, characterized by fear and confusion; we also need prayers, humility and repentance because with their help we protect ourselves from fear and confusion and lay out our way to Heaven, to eternal blissful life.
The first words of the Angel to the shepherdesses of Bethlehem were: do not be afraid. And today the Christmas Angel says to each of us: do not be afraid, because the Son of God was born into the world and conquered sin with its fears, confusion and diseases.
Today, when dangerous viruses are spreading worldwide, many people are in a hurry to take the vaccine in order to prolong their earthly life. But we, believers in Christ as the Son of God, as the Savior of the world, know that there is another, more terrible and dangerous virus in the world – our sins. Sins rob us of eternal life. How much we need, who bears the high name of a Christian, to hasten to receive the spiritual vaccine – repentance in order to defeat the virus of sin and preserve ourselves for eternal life!
Once again, I congratulate you, dear brothers and sisters, on the Nativity of Christ! I wish you all health, salvation and God's blessings. May Divine Love, which brought Heaven beneath to earth, touch every human heart, comfort us and give us the strength to courageously overcome all the difficulties and tribulations of our earthly existence. Let the light of reason shine in each of us, which was brought to us by the Son of God, who became the Son of Man; the light that reveals untruths, which may be insidiously hiding under the guise of virtue; the light that shows us the way leading to Paradise. Amen.
Merry Christmas!
Humble
† Onuphry
Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine
Nativity of Christ,
2021/2022,
Kyiv City
The UOJ wrote that the UOC will organize festivities for 750 orphans and refugees in Kiev during the Christmas holiday.
