Vincent Gabriel
One of the many wonderful aspects of the Orthodox-Catholic celebration of the birth of Christ is the traditional season of "Christmastide" or the "12 Days of Christmas." This is one of those rare periods in the life of the Church where all fasting is suspended and where the fulness of Christ's Incarnation is on display in the following days. Thankfully, people have come to understand more and more that the feast of Christmas was not established as a replacement of a "pagan holiday" (as is proposed in popular discussion), but is rather an intentional celebration of the unique birth of our Lord according to the flesh.
Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
Rating: 6,4|Votes: 36
I am a novelist, and I suppose I have made up this story. I write “I suppose,” though I know for a fact that I have made it up, but yet I keep fancying that it must have happened on Christmas Eve in some great town in a time of terrible frost. I have a vision of a boy, a little boy, six years old or even younger. This boy woke up that morning in a cold damp cellar. He was dressed in a sort of little dressing-gown and was shivering with cold.
Rating: 2|Votes: 1
We greet you with the Nativity of Christ!
His Holiness Patriarch Kirill
The Creator, in loving his creation, ‘was manifest in the flesh’, ‘became man’ and ‘like as we are, yet without sin’ (see: 1 Tim 3:16; Heb 4:15). The Infant lay in a manger in Bethlehem. He did this in order to save the world from spiritual and moral decay, to liberate the human person from fear of death. The Maker lays before us the greatest gift of all: his divine love and the fullness of life. In Christ we can find hope that conquers fear, we can attain holiness and immortality.
St. Gregory of Neo-Caesarea
Brethren, we behold now a great and wondrous mystery. Shepherds with cries of joy come forth as messengers to the sons of mankind, not on their hilly pastures with their flocks conversing and not in the field with their sheep frolicking, but rather in the city of David Bethlehem spiritual songs exclaiming. In the highest sing Angels, proclaiming hymns Archangelic; the heavenly Cherubim and Seraphim sing out praises to the glory of God: "Holy, Holy, Holy..." Together all do celebrate this joyous feast, beholding God upon the earth, and mankind of earth amidst the heavens. By Divine providence the far distant are uplifted to the highest, and the highest, through the love of God for mankind, have bent down to the far distant, wherefore the MostHigh, through His humility, "is exalted through humility."
