Happy New Year!

Rating: 6.1|Votes: 16

When and How Should We Celebrate the New Year?

Fr. Alexander Shargunov

A Christian lives in two dimensions—time and eternity. May God grant us in this new year to be worthy citizens of our Fatherland, both earthly and heavenly. No matter what trials await us on earth, if we are faithful to the Lord, He will once again prepare heavenly consolations for each of us on the feast of the Nativity of Christ.

Rating: 9.8|Votes: 16

Homily on the New Year

St. Barsanuphius of Optina

I greet all of you gathered here with the New Year. I congratulate you with the joys that I hope the Lord might send you in the coming year. I congratulate you also with the sorrows that will inevitably visit you this year: perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, or in the near future. Incidentally, do not be confused by sorrows or fear them.

Rating: 5|Votes: 9

How Russians celebrated New Year before revolution

Christmas was a family holiday, mostly for children. On Christmas Eve, every self-respecting newspaper carried Christmas stories and verses in which the hero is miraculously saved from danger on Christmas Day.

Rating: 7.5|Votes: 4

The Test of the New Year

Lydia Konstantinovna Pavlova

How can we greet these festive days with dignity, as an Orthodox Christian should? Our inner state should be love and gratefulness. We should be thankful to the Lord that we have lived through yet another year; thank God with hope that the next year would bring us joy, hope, and love.

Rating: 5.8|Votes: 4

The Acceptable Year of the Lord

Fr. Georges Massouh

Christianity, then, is not like some people mistakenly think, a mere "spiritual" message that does not concern the affairs of people and the world. It is a call to make our present world into a better world, a world governed by divine values, first among them love, mercy, peace and justice.

Prayer for the First Day of the New Year

May we spend this year, and many years to follow it, in peace and harmony with our neighbours.

The Concept of Time in Science and the Bible

Part I. The Concept of Time in Science

Valentin Velchev

So far, none of the pillars of the modern physics—neither General Theory of Relativity, nor quantum mechanics, not even the string theory—have been able to explain the existence of space and time.

Thou shalt bless the crown of Thy year with goodness

A sermon delivered at the night Liturgy for the New Year and Martyr Boniface, in the Pskov Caves Monastery, January 1, 2021

Metropolitan Tikhon (Shevkunov) of Pskov and Porkhov

This year we have met up against unfaithfulness, and betrayal, and human weaknesses. If there is anything an Orthodox Christian should ask of the Lord it is strength to fulfill the Commandments of Christ for the sake of the great blessedness that is under the heavens—the unification of our souls with God.

Looking Back on 2020 with OrthoChristian.com

From the Editors

Standing on the threshold of 2021, once again OrthoChristian.com takes a look back at some of the major events of the past year, covered on its digital pages. 2020 was quite a year to say the least, and so many of its startling events related directly to us as Orthodox Christians.

Looking back on 2019

The editors of OrthoChristian look back on the past year

It’s a time for sadness and regret over the bad, and gratitude to God for the good. But just as it has since the Lord built it, the Ark of Salvation continues its blessed and glorious journey across the stormy sea of life, ready to take into its invincible enclosure all those who truly seek salvation in Christ our God.

Rating: 9.3|Votes: 25

Homily on New Year’s Eve

Holy Hierach Innocent (Borisov)

Let us come to know, brothers and sisters, God’s mercy toward us and our own advantage; let us abandon attempts to see into the future and torment ourselves with guessing—we shall make use of what has been given to us, using the present time as we should.

Rating: 9.1|Votes: 22

Some New Year’s Resolutions

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Mark (1:1-8)

Fr. James Guirguis

In today’s reading, given to us on this the eve of the New Year, we hear these words “Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight.” If that is not a worthwhile New Year’s resolution, I am not sure what would be. Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight. But what does that actually mean for us? What is this path that we need to make straight? What is the way of the Lord, and how do we prepare it?

Rating: 10|Votes: 3

Simple Thoughts for the New Year

Metropolitan Sotirios of Canada

Listen to me. In the New Year that begins, the first thing you need is faith in Christ. Why?

The New Year

Metropolitan Vladimir (Sabodan)

We should think of God, time, and ourselves. Within this triangle lies our life with its essence and purpose.

Rating: 3|Votes: 7

The New Year: The Mystery of Time

Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann

On New Year’s Eve we feel the mystery of time more powerfully than at any other time.

Rating: 7.5|Votes: 22

On the Julian Calendar, Church Tradition, and Standing for the Faith

Pavel Kuzenkov

Christmas and New Year is a time when many Orthodox Christians who follow the Julian (old) calendar wonder why they do so; or rather, those who follow the Gregorian (new) calendar wonder why the old calendar Churches don’t want to change. Here is another thorough look at this question, from a number of angles.

Rating: 10|Votes: 3

Living with a Calendar

Fr. Stephen Freeman

The human relationship with time is a strange thing. The upright stones of neo-lithic human communities stand as silent reminders of our long interest in seasons and the movement of the heavens. Today our light-polluted skies shield many of us from the brilliant display of the night sky and rob us of the stars.

Rating: 10|Votes: 3

Homily on the New Year

St. Theophan the Recluse

“Happy New Year,” we greet each other now. But has anyone given any thought as to how new this coming year is? And where would we get anything new from it? In what way does the present day differ from yesterday, or from the first day of the past year? And in the future, will there not be same interchange of days and nights, the same turn of months and seasons as there was before?