In his first Christmas encyclical in 1986, Romania’s former Patriarch Teoctist Arapasu noted that the Nativity shows how much God loves us and how much the price of human life is before God.
1. What can give wings to the mind towards the deep and mysterious meaning of life; what can inflame the heart towards the value and defence of life, the respect due to this divine gift, rather than the image of the Infant, of this new and pure fragile creature, meant to shine the noble calls of the human being?
2. The Nativity of the Lord causes the secret boundaries of life to be broken, the light of the knowledge of God to enlighten the soul, and the distance between God and man, as a result of sin, to be abolished by showing the love of God in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
3. This ever-shining treasure of the Nativity of the Lord does not lack our old and ancient Christmas carols, the immortal offering of the souls of our ancestors from all Romanian lands, the telling testimonies of their pure faith, unity of speech and feeling and their steadfastness, without interruption, on their parental hearth from the depths of time.
4. The coming into the world of our Lord Jesus Christ in the flesh and our likeness, when the set time had fully come (Gal. 4: 4), has shown us not only how much the heavenly Father loves us but also how great the price of human life is before God.
5. On the feast of the Nativity, the voice of the believers unites with that of the angels, and in this glorious and godly fellowship, we entrust ourselves entirely to Jesus the Saviour and ask Him to bring peace to the earth, to pour out the waves of goodwill among men.
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