“God the Creator, God Almighty, did not remain in His majesty, did not look down indifferently on His creation, nor did He wait for the creature to humble itself and return, but He came Himself,…
In his Christmas pastoral letter, His Grace Mihail, the Romanian Orthodox Bishop of Australia and New Zealand, urges the faithful to greet the New Year with persistent prayer. “We can say that through Christ’s coming…
“Christmas is the time for self-knowledge, for understanding the difference between “God becoming man” and “man acting as god.” It is the time for awareness of the Christian teaching that “we do not speak of…
“Without Christ, we can do nothing for our profit or the peace of the world,” Metropolitan Teofan of Moldavia and Bukovina stressed in this year’s Christmas pastoral letter. The Metropolitan lamented the oppressive atmosphere created…
“Christ’s Nativity unites heaven and earth” is the title of this year’s Christmas encyclical of His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel of Romania. In his pastoral letter addressed to the plenitude of the Romanian Orthodox Church, Patriarch…
“The Church defends the unborn life because it looks with love to every woman who must give birth to children,” Metropolitan Petru of Bessarabia notes in his Christmas encyclical. “God’s sign is the child,” His…
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…
In his first pastoral encyclical on the Nativity of the Lord in 1977, Romania’s fourth Patriarch Iustin Moisescu stressed the joyful way Christians need to welcome the Baby Jesus in their lives. 1. Listening to…
In his first Christmas encyclical in 1948, Romania’s third Patriarch Justinian Marina emphasized that the news of the Nativity did not resonate in marble palaces, but in the pure hearts of the poor, of those…
In his first pastoral letter on the Nativity of the Lord in 1939, at the beginning of the Second World War, Romania’s second Patriarch Nicodim Munteanu urged the faithful to remember the cave in Bethlehem…