Arabic original here.
Christmas
The Sunday of the Forefathers, that is the Sunday whose Gospel reading gives Jesus' ancestry back to Abraham and the children of Abraham, does so in order to say that the holiness appearing in the people of God only prepared for the perfect appearance of our Lord in the body of man, in the body of the Son of Man.The spiritual societies revealed by the Old Testament were just flashes that only came together in the person of Jesus and scattered from Him to those we call saints and to believers, because every drop of righteousness in the world and in the history of the world only came from the one who alone is righteous, the Lord Jesus.
He was the light before His Father said "let there be light"and He alone remained the gathering-point of light. We receive His light in the Old Testament starting with Abraham and we bring together in our minds and our meditations all the lights of the spiritual life in Him, whether this is in the people of the Old Testament or in all the peoples of the world, whose lights appeared before Him or appeared after Him because He is their source.
We know that Jesus is everything and that what has appeared here and there has come with Him alone. Therefore, if we seek illumination with this or that saint, we do not add another light to the Lord Jesus.
If we celebrate the feast of His Nativity today, we only do so to confess that it is the first appearance of the light in the world. Thus you have a feast if you feel that though your faith in Him you return to the light that you lost through sin. If you celebrate the feast truly and not merely as a tradition, then you have spread God's truth among people and the Lord has appeared from His feast to all people in love.
Therefore this feast is a little Pascha. That is, a feast of repentance, the day of our being stripped of darkness and of our walking toward the Savior's face. There is only Pascha for us to live it truly. That is, a sincere transformation from sin to the righteousness that has shone forth in the Lord. It appeared in Abraham and the children of Abraham until it became manifest here on earth in the body of the Lord Jesus.
Let us strive to an aspect of it in the feast, to increase in light through repenting every day, so that a new nativity comes every day. Let the Christians be lights that encounter each other and come together, showing the light of the one Lord. We will find this in prayer, in every prayer on every day, especially in the Divine Liturgy. The Divine Liturgy drives darkness from our souls and our minds. It is a continuous mobilization for the sake of Christ. Even those who have died, do they not only see before them a light poured upon them from every side that leads them to the light of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit?
Christmas
The Sunday of the Forefathers, that is the Sunday whose Gospel reading gives Jesus' ancestry back to Abraham and the children of Abraham, does so in order to say that the holiness appearing in the people of God only prepared for the perfect appearance of our Lord in the body of man, in the body of the Son of Man.The spiritual societies revealed by the Old Testament were just flashes that only came together in the person of Jesus and scattered from Him to those we call saints and to believers, because every drop of righteousness in the world and in the history of the world only came from the one who alone is righteous, the Lord Jesus.
He was the light before His Father said "let there be light"and He alone remained the gathering-point of light. We receive His light in the Old Testament starting with Abraham and we bring together in our minds and our meditations all the lights of the spiritual life in Him, whether this is in the people of the Old Testament or in all the peoples of the world, whose lights appeared before Him or appeared after Him because He is their source.
We know that Jesus is everything and that what has appeared here and there has come with Him alone. Therefore, if we seek illumination with this or that saint, we do not add another light to the Lord Jesus.
If we celebrate the feast of His Nativity today, we only do so to confess that it is the first appearance of the light in the world. Thus you have a feast if you feel that though your faith in Him you return to the light that you lost through sin. If you celebrate the feast truly and not merely as a tradition, then you have spread God's truth among people and the Lord has appeared from His feast to all people in love.
Therefore this feast is a little Pascha. That is, a feast of repentance, the day of our being stripped of darkness and of our walking toward the Savior's face. There is only Pascha for us to live it truly. That is, a sincere transformation from sin to the righteousness that has shone forth in the Lord. It appeared in Abraham and the children of Abraham until it became manifest here on earth in the body of the Lord Jesus.
Let us strive to an aspect of it in the feast, to increase in light through repenting every day, so that a new nativity comes every day. Let the Christians be lights that encounter each other and come together, showing the light of the one Lord. We will find this in prayer, in every prayer on every day, especially in the Divine Liturgy. The Divine Liturgy drives darkness from our souls and our minds. It is a continuous mobilization for the sake of Christ. Even those who have died, do they not only see before them a light poured upon them from every side that leads them to the light of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit?
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