On 25 December, every year, the Orthodox Church celebrates the Nativity of the Lord. On this glorified feast, the Divine Liturgy was celebrated at the Patriarchal Cathedral by His Beatitude Daniel, Archbishop of Bucharest, Metropolitan of Muntenia and Dobrudgea, Locum Tenens of the Throne of Caesarea of Cappadochia, and Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church, assisted by a group of priests and deacons, in the presence of hundreds of faithful who came to be present at this great feast.
After reading the Holy Gospel, the Primate of the Romanian Orthodox Church delivered a sermon for those present in which he spoke about the importance of this great feast of the Nativity of the Lord.
“Right reverend and reverend fathers, beloved faithful, men and women, the Gospel we have just listened to was scheduled to be read in the Church on the day of the Feast of the Nativity of the our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, our Saviour, was born, as the righteous saints of the Old Testament predicted, in Bethlehem, Judaea. Thus, this birth was predicted by prophet Miheia hundreds of years before when he said “And you, Bethlehem, you will be no lower that the cities of Jude because the Teacher will be born in you“. And His beginning is in the days of eternity. So, in Bethlehem somebody is born as Man whose days are begun in the days of eternity, namely the Eternal God is born, the eternal Son of the Father is born as man in Bethlehem. The word Bethlehem means the House of bread because the One Who will be born in Bethlehem will become the Bread of life, the Bread of the Holy Eucharist which will bring us the foretaste of the eternal life. The Saviour was born near the city, in a cave and was laid in a manger. Through His birth from Virgin Mary, through the work of the Holy Spirit of God, He deified the humankind from inside her because the Mother of God accepted freely to be the Mother of God-the-Son as Man. So, God cooperates with man for man’s salvation. She felt the humanity inside her because the Mother of God represented what was most pure and best prepared to receive the Son of God to be conceived inside her and be born to save the world”, His Beatitude said.
The deification of man is done only through the man’s relation with the One Holy God
Then, the Patriarch of Romanian has also shown that “Christ, the Lord, is born in the cave underground and so He consecrates the earth from inside it. He is laid in the manger of the animals and consecrated the straw or hay, the vegetal and animal kingdom. So, He came to consecrate the entire creation, but the deification of the entire world begins with the deification of man. And the deification of man is done only through the man’s relation with the One Holy God. Only God is fully and absolutely Holy, while the humans and things are consecrated by the Grace of God to the extent of the intensity of man’s relation with God. This is why man is said that he consecrates the place, but from a Christian point of view man consecrates the place when he is in relationship of faith and prayer and good deeds with the One Holy God. The magi who came from the East knew something of the Jews prophecies, but they were also people who examined the motion of the stars. This is why the troparion of the Nativity of the Lord says that from the star they learned to worship Christ, the Sun of Justice, the Sunrise in the highest. Saint John Chrysostom says that this star is not a usual star, namely the star of Bethlehem, but an intelligent star. An angelic being took the image of the star. That is because a star does not stop as the magi travel and does not hide and shows up unless it follows a plan established before”.
To end with his speech, His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel addressed best wishes of good health to all those who celebrated their name day.
After the Divine Liturgy, the Patriarch of Romania was carolled at the Patriarchal Residence by Nicolae Lungu Chorus of the Cathedral.
