Robert Arakaki
Rating: 1,8|Votes: 5
The Sunday before Christmas is known to the Orthodox as the Sunday of the Holy Genealogy. On this day the Church commemorates the ancestors of Christ from Adam to Joseph the Betrothed. Christ’s full humanity meant not just that he possessed a human nature but that he had blood relatives, and that he came from a long family line. One of the shortcomings of modern culture is the tendency to leave the past behind and focus on the now. This has resulted in people feeling rootless and incomplete.
St. Gregory Palamas, Fr. Ted Bobosh
Rating: 3,6|Votes: 8
Impossible to recount is Christ’s descent according to His divinity, but His ancestry according to His human nature can be traced, since He who deigned to become Son of man in order to save mankind was the offspring of men. And it is this genealogy of His that two of the evangelists, Matthew and Luke, recorded. But although Matthew, in the passage from his Gospel read today, begins with those born first, he makes no mention of anyone before Abraham.
Dmitry Lapa
Rating: 5,5|Votes: 2
The holy man called Flannan who lived in the seventh century is equally venerated in Ireland and Scotland.
Rating: 10|Votes: 1
In thee, oh, Father, the one created in the image of God was saved, for taking up the Cross, thou didst follow Christ and, by thy deeds didst teach us to overlook the flesh, for it is perishable, but to be attentive to the soul since it is immortal. Therefore, oh, pious Father Daniil, your spirit rejoices with the angels.
Fr. Philip LeMasters
"Christmas will be here soon, and how we respond to the Lord as His birth will make clear the state of our souls. Will we be ready to welcome Christ into our lives at His birth? Will we be ready to accept the invitation to the feast? I certainly hope so, for the good news of Christmas is that in our Lord the fulfillment of all God’s promises is extended to people like us, those poor, blind, and lame with sin, who suffer from the pain, weakness, and corruption of life in the world as we know it, and who are nowhere near perfect."