While many of us are packing away ornaments and throwing out holiday leftovers, another Christmas and another new year are about to descend. On Thursday and Friday, Orthodox Christians who follow the Julian calendar will celebrate Christmas. A week later, they will mark the new year.
With profoundly-heartfelt spiritual joy I greet all the faithful children of the Russian Church Abroad, spread all over the world like kernels of God’s wheat, with the great and salutary Feast of Christ’s Nativity! May the Lord send all of us this joy which saves the world. This gladness is the fruit of the struggle of faith, and stems from the triumph of the Incarnation, from God becoming man, from hearing the celestial doxology from the heavens above the city of Bethlehem.
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Among the chosen youths Daniel had three friends: Ananias, Azarias and Misail. All four steadfastly preserved their faith in the one true God and together refused to eat the king's food for fear breaking one of Moses' laws. They asked their overseer to give them only bread and vegetables, but the overseer was afraid that they would become thin and he would be made to suffer the king's wrath. Daniel persuaded him to make a test and allow them to observe this regimen for ten days.
New Hieromartyr Hilarion (Troitsky), Archbishop of Verey
These hymns are given full voice beneath the monastic church domes and fill all present with their content. Hearing them, the Faithfull’s consciousness breaks away from the earth; not for one day or for a few hours, as in the parish churches—no, it breaks away from the earth long before the feast and remains in the heights of spiritual upliftment, spiritual rapture, for nearly an entire week.
As we draw near to celebrate the Nativity of Christ, we also remember our patron, St. Herman of Alaska on December 25/26. As our neighbors celebrate the coming of Christ on December 25, we in Alaska remember the one who brought us the light of the Gospel, both by his words and deeds.
