+ B A R T
H O L O M E W
BY GOD’S MERCY ARCHBISHOP OF
CONSTANTINOPLE-NEW ROME
AND ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH
TO ALL THE PLENITUDE OF THE
CHURCH
GRACE, MERCY AND PEACE
FROM THE SAVIOR CHRIST BORN IN BETHLEHEM
Most honorable brother hierarchs and blessed children in the Lord,
With the grace from above, we have once again this year arrived
at the festal day of the Nativity in the flesh of God the Word, who came into
the world and dwelt among us “out of his ineffable loving for humankind.” We
honor with psalms and hymns as well as with inexpressible joy the great mystery
of the Incarnation, which is “newer than everything new, the only new thing
under the sun,”[1] through
which the way is opened for us to deification by grace and the entire creation
is renewed. Christmas is not the experience of emotions that “come rapidly and
depart even more rapidly.” It is the existential participation in the whole
event of Divine Economy. As testified by the Evangelist Matthew (ch. 1.
18–2.1-23), the leaders of the world sought to obliterate the divine infant
from the outset. For us faithful, along with the cry that “Christ is born” in
the feast of the incarnation of the Son and Word of God the Father, as well as
the mournful bells of His passion, we also hear the cry that “Christ is risen,”
the good news of the victory over death and expectation of the common
resurrection.
The words “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace”
are heard once more in a world filled with violence, social injustice and
dissolution of human dignity. The stunning progress of science and technology
does not reach the depth of the human soul, because human beings are always
more than what science can comprehend or to which the advancement of technology
aspires. The gap between heaven and earth in our human existence cannot be
scientifically bridged.
Today there is much talk about “the metahuman” and praise
of artificial intelligence. The dream of “the superhuman” is of course hardly
new. The concept of “the metahuman” is based on technological progress and his
equipment with means previously unimaginable to human experience and history,
through which humankind will be able to transcend currently valid human
measures. The Church is not technophobic. It approaches scientific knowledge as
“a divinely granted gift to human beings,” without however overlooking or
suppressing the dangers of scientism. The Encyclical of the Holy and Great
Council of the Orthodox Church (Crete, 2016) also emphasizes the contribution
of Christianity “to the healthy development of secular civilization,” since God
“established human beings as stewards of sacred creation and His coworkers in
the world.” Moreover, it also highlights: “The Orthodox Church sets against the
‘man-god’ of the contemporary world the ‘God-man’ as the ultimate measure of
all things. “We do not speak of a man who has been deified, but of God who has
become man (John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith
iii, 2 PG 94.988).”[2]
The answer to the crucial question—namely, how can we
preserve the “culture of personhood,” the respect for its sacredness and
emphasis on its beauty, until the final “eighth day” in the face of the
titanism and prometheanism of the technological culture, its evolution and
transmutation, in the midst of anthropotheistic changes and exaggerations of
humankind—has been given once for all in the mystery of Divine Humanity. God
the Word became flesh, the “truth has come” and “the shadow has passed.” For
human beings, speaking the truth will forevermore be associated with their
relationship to God as the response to God’s descent toward them and as the
expectation and encounter of the coming Lord of glory. This living faith
supports the human struggle to respond to the contradictions and challenges of
earthly life, to life “by bread” (Mt 4.4), to survival as well as social and
cultural development. Nevertheless, nothing in our life can thrive without
reference to God, without the horizon of “the fullness of life, the fullness of
joy and the fullness of knowledge” of His Kingdom.[3]
Christmas is an opportunity for us to become conscious of
the mystery of divine freedom and the great miracle of human freedom. Christ
knocks on the door of the human heart, yet only human beings honored with such
freedom are able to open that door. “Clearly, without Him, without Christ,” as
the late Fr. Georges Florovsky writes, “man cannot do anything. But there is
something that only man can do—namely, respond to God’s call and welcome
Christ.”[4]
By saying “Yes” to this calling from above, Christ is revealed as “the true light” (Jn 1.9), “the way, the truth and the life” (Jn 14.6), the answer to the ultimate questions and pursuits of the intellect, to the desires of the heart and the hopes of humankind, but also to the “whence” and “whereto” of creation. We belong to Christ, in Whom all things are united. Christ is “the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Rev. 22.13). In His voluntary incarnation “for us men and for our salvation,” the Word of God “did not dwell in a single human being, but embraced human nature in its entirety with His hypostasis,”[5] thereby establishing the common eternal destiny and unity of humanity. He does not liberate one people, but the entire race of humankind; He does not savingly divide only history, but renews the whole creation. Just as for history, so too for the universe, “before Christ” and “after Christ” holds definitively and determinately valid. Throughout its journey in the world, in history and through it to the Eschata, to the day without setting in the heavenly Kingdom of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Church that is “not in the world” witnesses to the truth and performs its sanctifying and spiritual work “for the life of the world.”
Brethren and children in the Lord,
With a spirit of devotion, we kneel before the Mother of
God who holds the infant and humbly worship “the Word from the beginning” who
assumed our form, and we wish to all of you a blessed and holy Twelvetide and a
favorable, healthy, peaceful and fruitful in good deeds new year of the Lord’s
favor, filled with spiritual joy and divine gifts, in which the entire
Christian world concelebrates and honors the 1700th anniversary of
the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea.
Christmas 2024
+Bartholomew of Constantinople
Fervent supplicant of you all before God
[1]
John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, PG 94.984.
[2] Encyclical,
§ 10.
[3]
Alexander Schmemann, I believe (Athens: Akritas Editions, 1991), 129
[from the Greek].
[4]
Georges Florovsky, Creation and Redemption (Thessaloniki: Pournaras
Editions, 1983) [from the Greek].
[5]
Nicholas Cabasilas, Nine Unpublished Homilies (Thessaloniki, 1976), 108.
