Ukraine continues to celebrate the Christmas holidays with such forms of entertainment as concerts and plays. Meanwhile, for the heads of the Christian churches in Ukraine, Christmas is not only a great and sublime holiday but also an obligatory occasion to address a message to their flocks, and express their hopes, wishes, and criticism of the current state of society. Below are slightly abridged versions of the Christmas messages from the heads of the largest Christian churches of the Eastern rite to the people of Ukraine.
PATRIARCH FILARET OF KYIV AND ALL RUS’-UKRAINE, head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate:
“Today the entire Christian world is different from what it was before. Jesus the Savior said unto his disciples, in other words, Christians: Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. Are Christians not losing their strength? These days Christians are divided into those who practice and those who do not. Practicing Christians are those who not only believe but also pray to the Lord, attend church services, and live by His Commandments. Non-practicing ones are Christians who were properly baptized, but who live without God and abide by the laws of this sinful world. They constitute the majority in European civilization, including Ukraine. Thus, moral standards in European countries are dropping, the population is shrinking dramatically, and Christian marriages are almost destroyed, and all this poses a threat to European civilization. Morals are inadmissibly low even in the religious milieu. Both parishioners and clergy are forgetting about their lofty Christian calling.
The religious conflict among the Orthodox churches is not conducive either to spiritual revival or the consolidation of Ukrainian society. Lately, hopes have appeared for the creation of a single Local Ukrainian Orthodox Church, yet both the external and internal opponents of this sacred cause are consciously or subconsciously building obstacles in its way. Ukraine shall have a single Orthodox Church, all hardships notwithstanding. Without a Ukrainian Church there will be no Ukrainian State; without a Ukrainian State there can be no Ukrainian Church.
METROPOLITAN VOLODYMYR OF KYIV AND ALL UKRAINE, head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church:
In our secularized time, a time of spiritual impoverishment, when comfort and entertainment are priorities in the life of man, our society, unfortunately, is losing the sense of spiritual joy. The feast of Christ’s birth, a sublime holiday in terms of its theological content and significance, is regarded by most of our fellow countrymen as a fine family tradition. In losing awareness of the essence and meaning of the Divine Embodiment, which marked the beginning of salvation both for all mankind and each individual person, we are losing our very selves; we are separating from the age-old roots of the Orthodox piety of our people. It is terrible even to imagine God appearing in the flesh! Today, like never before, it is important to understand that the essence of this holiday is not to remember a certain historic event, but to join with it spiritually, so that all of us can obtain salvation in Jesus Christ with eternal glory.
MAJOR ARCHBISHOP LIUBOMYR OF KYIV AND HALYCH:
During Holy Christmas we remember not only that somewhere in a faraway land a child was born. For the child that was born in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago was no ordinary child but the Son of God Incarnate, who assumed human nature and became fully human. What does this mean to us? It means that our Lord comes to us, that He wants to be one of us, and as the holy fathers say, to elevate us, to give our life its ultimate objective, to show us the goal of our existence.
The Divine Embodiment reminds us that we were created and called upon to be forever united with our Lord, our Creator, our Father in Heaven. Herein lies the most amazing mystery of Christmas, the most exciting Glad Tidings brought by this great holiday. This is precisely what we should constantly be reflecting on, and especially during Christmas.
When we think like this, then everything that preoccupied us before Christmas — where we would celebrate, whom to invite, what dishes to serve — will be of secondary importance, nonessential, and transient, leaving practically no trace in our life. In light of what Christmas actually means to us, all our earthly, daily worries, even though they have a right to exist, will take their proper place in our way of thinking and conduct.
They will be something to which we pay attention but only fleetingly, without making them the essence of all those days and moments during which we experience the embodiment of the Son of God, for is this not the time when we meet with our Creator, when our Lord, who stepped into human history, is once again present for you, me, for all of us?
