The Holy Bible is recognized by the Church as the written part of Christian Tradition. It contains the word of God. It is the source of religious truth and the unmistakable guide to Christian life. Holy Tradition as it is formed in the experience of the Church of Christ, in the Liturgical sources of interpreting the Bible, in the Church laws, in the objects of Religious art, the lives of the Saints, the writings of the Holy Fathers, is also a venerable guide to Christian faith and life, equal in value and authority with written Tradition, the Bible itself.

We chant: "He Who is equal in Honor with the Father and Spirit, out of compassion, has clothed Himself in our substance...and He Who before the morning star was begotten without mother of the Father, is today without father made flesh upon earth of thee" (Vespers Sticheron of Forefeast, Mode Four). Saint Paul confirms His manhood, saying, "But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order that might redeem those under the law, that we might receive what is our due, the adoption as sons" (Galatians 4:4).

"O Creator, Thou makest new those born on earth by Thyself becoming clay. A manger and swaddling clothes and a cave are the mark of Thy lowliness. The betrothed of Thy Mother, Joseph, is thought by men to be Thy father according to the flesh" (Canon of Forefeast of Nativity, Ode Five. Mode Plagal Two).

Again, if a king confers on one of his subjects the right to imprison and release again at will, that man is the envy and admiration of all. But although the priest has received from God an authority as much greater than that, as heaven is more precious than earth and souls than bodies, some people think he has received so slight an honor that they can imagine someone entrusted with it actually despising the gift. God save us from such madness!

Our Lord and God, wishing to prepare a Living Temple and Sacred Abode for Himself, sent an Angel to the righteous Joachim and Anna with word that the barren and childless Anna would conceive the Maiden. He had fore-chosen to be His Mother according to the flesh. Soon after marital union Anna indeed found herself to be with child, and in time bore the Holy Virgin Mary, according to the Divine promise. Only Our Lord and God Jesus Christ was conceived ineffably and without seed, by the Theotokos and through the operation of the Holy Spirit. At His Incarnation, the Lord received the fullness of His human nature (that same nature which He Himself created in the beginning) from the Maiden who knew not wedlock. Saint Anna became pregnant after she and her husband came together, and she carried the Queen of Heaven within for a full nine months.

Saint Gregory Nazianzen illustrates the difficulty of a priest's work by comparing it with that of a doctor. The priest's is the harder task because he deals with souls that resist their own healing instead of bodies that co-operate; because spiritual disease is hidden, whereas physical ailments are apparent; and because he aims, not simply to preserve or restore health, but to "deify those who belong to the heavenly host". Nothing less than this was the purpose of the Incarnation. Where doctors work merely to extend a possibly sinful life, we (says St. Gregory) work for the salvation of the soul.