My beloved spiritual children in Christ Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS BORN! GLORIFY HIM!
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PEACE FROM GOD CHRIST IS BORN! (Part II)
By the saintly Patriarch Pavle of Serbia (+ 2009) of blessed memory
That life is hard is not the exception but the rule. Only the twentieth century has brought the simpleminded dream that life should be easy and leisurely, which it never has been throughout history. "In the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread," the Lord tells Adam (Genesis 3:19), and that is the law of human life. But afflictions and difficulties and limitations are easier to bear when we have warmth in us and among us. For in the day of His Second Coming, the Lord will not ask what kind of times we lived in, but how we related to our neighbor. Was he our "hell" or our "heaven?" We ourselves build either heaven or hell in our own hearts out of the momentary heart is able to transform any situation, even to make a cave in Bethlehem the most beautiful palace and birthplace of the King of kings.
It is hard to be a human being. To be a human being who spreads human warmth is even harder, but it is a task to which we are suited and which the Lord Himself has entrusted to us--to be human, even during inhuman times. Let us look around us. See how many families are governed by coldness, where there is no more love and which are disintegrating. There are most and more such families. See how many ties of kinship, neighborliness, friendship, and godparenthood have been broken and enveloped in coldness. We will be completely immobilized by the ice of discord and intolerance, of disunity and envy, if we do not bring Christ into our hearts and especially into the hearts of our children. He is the Only One able to bring together the disunited and reconcile the alienated, to warm our hearts and give peace to our lives...
"...We are responsible for our future no less than for our past. It is revealed to us as a possibility which we must responsibly and consciously create. And overshadowing the future is the same question we have already asked--For or against Christ?
If the Lord has not revealed the near future to us, leaving it up to us to create it, He has revealed to us the final and ultimate truth--that no matter what, He will triumph. He revealed that good is far stronger than evil and that every triumph of evil is temporary and illusory. The weeds and the wheat grow together, but only until the harvest. For or against Christ--this is the question that will determine both our future and the future of all nations. As we gather here today around the Divine Infant Christ celebrating His Birth, we hope and we pray that He will be reborn in our hearts, in our neighbors, in our people and our country, and in the hearts of all people and all nations.
Peace from God--Christ is Born!
Your intercessors before the cradle of the Divine Infant: Archbishop of Pec, Metropolitan of Belgrade-Karlovci and Serbian Patriarch PAVLE
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"Glory Be To GOD For All Things!" -- Saint John Chrysostomos
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With sincere agape in His Holy Nativity,
+Father George