Dearly Beloved,

Beautifully adorned Christmas trees and lighted windows, glowing with resplendent lights symbolically reflecting the glory of the Lord, and with silent joy emanating from the message proclaimed by the angel of the Lord, are telling us once again about God’s wondrous miracle of His coming to abide with us.  And what a great need there is for our modern world to experience such a miracle - that is, for God to come and abide with us! We already have quite a collection of everything else in our midst; powerful nations that fear one another; plutocrats, atheists and nihilists, terrorists and pacifists. The world has had more than enough of their predictions, their threats, their promises, their protests, their demonstrations and their false heroism and ideologies, which have created millions of refugees and victims of violence.

And what has been the result of all of this? The skies have been deluged with loud, clamoring voices reverberating like thunder and lightning “about impending evils and calamities to take place in our universe” Luke 21:26.  Streams, lakes and oceans have been polluted by poisonous substances and filled with tears from a suffering humanity. The skies have been covered with a haze of charged particles erupting from daily clashes of political ideas and ideologies. And we human beings are facing the danger of losing our very sense of direction by estranging ourselves from the will of God, even to the degree of verifying what was written in Holy Scriptures a long time ago: “There is no one to show kindness, no, not one.” Romans 3:12.

Powerful nations are continuing to arm themselves with weapons of destruction; so are the small nations. Nothing surpasses the economic value placed on exports by powerful nations than exporting fear and greed. And nothing surpasses the value placed on imported products by small nations than the weapons and armaments which they purchase from the super-powers. Everyone speaks about the just distribution of wealth, but no one is doing anything about it. Everyone is concerned about the hungry children of the world, the dispossessed people of the world, and yet civil strife and warfare is the answer of the powerful ones.

Human history has not witnessed such fear and insecurity as today; so little respect for the truth; such a low expression of loyalty, love and compassion; for wisdom and prudence; so much impertinence; so many contradictions and inconsistencies, so many instances of insane actions, violence, injustice and total disregard for human life.

How can one be hopeful and optimistic about the future? The great philosopher of ancient times, Socrates, was perhaps right on target and very contemporary when he confronted the lawlessness of his era by telling his fellow citizens that they would remain in a sleepy trance of corruption and depravity unless God sends someone to take care of them and save them from grief and sorrow. Today, more than ever before, we need Christ, the Messiah, the One Who was sent by God.

This encyclical was prefaced by a quotation from the Gospel of Luke: “And behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them.”, because in the reevaluation of our lives and the cleansing and renewing of ourselves, there will appear an angel, a messenger from the God of love, and the glory of the Lord will blaze like lightning in the darkness of our lives. What is needed from us, however, is a complete turnabout from the direction we are heading. We need to be resolute when we say, “Let us lift our hearts.” We need to fulfill what our Lord advised His disciples when He said: “When you depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet.” Matthew 10:14.  We need to extract ourselves from situations or conditions into which we ourselves have fallen because of our sinfulness and our shortcomings, and we need to sever all ties with what is evil and detrimental in this world. Let us also shake the dust from our feet, and let us relegate sinfulness, which hampers our spiritual growth with its strangular grip on our soul, to its proper place - in the past, discarded, abandoned and forgotten.

This turning around is true repentance, if we agree on its importance and need, and is an action to be taken by each and every one of us. Having experienced that beautiful new life, let us then pass it along first to our families, friends, fellow parishioners and all in our community and society at large. We have had more than enough of the pessimistic inward views of life and the super-abundance of negative, critical outlooks on life that are so typical in our day and age. They lead us nowhere, and certainly not to more promising horizons or brighter tomorrows.

In our Orthodox Faith, there is in contrast to all these, a truly positive outlook on life. In our Faith there is a resounding call and invitation to a spiritual renewal, a meaningful, moral reevaluation and regeneration of our entire being, and a total rejection of the false and prejudiced notion that others are always at fault or responsible for our own faults and offences.

If we firmly believe this and proceed with determination in a fully Christian lifestyle and setting, then it will not be long before we encounter both: the angel of the Lord standing next to us and the glory of the Lord shining around about us and throughout the whole world. I hope and pray that we may all be blessed this year with such a joyous and holy celebration of Christmas.

With Love in the Incarnate Logos,
+ G E R A S I M O S
Metropolitan of San Francisco