News and Events - January 2010
NATIVITY MESSAGE FROM HIS GRACE BISHOP MAXIM
Peace from God! Christ is Born!
Revealed in this Nativity and “God‐manifesting” greeting is a message and a miracle of the love of the timeless and unchangeable God Who accepted to be born in this temporal world and became a Man, one of us, Emmanuel – “God with us.” From that moment on He remains inseparably connected with this world and history, and offers, without force, “abundant life,” proclaiming the incarnate love throughout the whole universe.
The event of God’s birth from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, different from every biological birth, “shown forth as the light of knowledge” to a world that exists in the darkness of ignorance and the shadow of death, and became the all‐pervading light of the knowledge above reason, the knowledge that enlightens every mystery of existence. We, too, should view every moment of our life, every action – as well as every relationship with others, and our relationship with God’s creation – through this light, ourselves from serving our selfish desires. It calls us to move toward “the one thing that is needed,” which is serving the Sun of righteousness and the Source from on high, the Born Son, the Eternal Father, and the All‐holy Spirit. God the Father gives us His Son, and the Son gives Himself to us so that we may be firmly planted in the Communion of the Holy Spirit, for which we are called into existence.
From Christmas onward, “for the Logos and the logic of life there is no need to go into the world beyond this one, for the Logos and the Logic of life is here, He is among us; we have the Logos of life, that is why we know the logic of life, we know our life’s goal, we know the meaning of life,” according to the God inspired words of Abba Justin Popovic.
This Son of Man, who “came down from Heaven” (John 3:13) to earthly regions, makes deathless all that which in Him “is set forth” (Ephesians 1:10), thus making eternal all that is born “of water and the Spirit” (John 3:5); He has built Himself into the Church as His own Body.
Let us be witness of His coming into the heart of creation, and of the salvific consequences that belong to everyone!
PEACE FROM GOD – CHRIST IS BORN!
May the Crown of God’s Goodness in the Year of our Lord 2010 Be Blessed!
Your intercessor before God‐Child Christ,
+MAXIM
Bishop of Western America