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Merry Orthodox Christmas
By Patriarch Theophilos III
141st Patriarch of Jerusalem
While Christians in the West celebrate Christmas on December 25, Orthodox Christians keep the Feast of Christ's Nativity on January 7. Here the Patriarch of Jerusalem, the spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians in the Holy Land, the 141st bishop of Jerusalem in a succession that stretches back unbroken, by tradition, to James, the Brother of Jesus, reflects on the meaning of Christmas in the land where Jesus was born.
Every year Christians from the Holy Land as well as pilgrims from the world over gather in Bethlehem for the Feast of the Nativity of Jesus Christ. Here, in one of the oldest church buildings in the world in continuous use, the faithful come to celebrate their belief that God entered human history in the person of Jesus. For Christians, hope has a face: the face of the infant Jesus. Because, Christians say, in the face of this person we see the very face of God.
For Orthodox Christians, the life of faith is not built simply on principles for living a good life, though such principles are certainly important. For us, the life of faith is grounded first and foremost in this historical event, in which God took on our human life in all its fullness so that we, in our turn, might be drawn into the fullness of God's own divine life.
The first church to be built on the traditional site of the birth of Christ in Bethlehem was begun by the Empress Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine the Great, in the year 327. Beneath the church is the grotto of the Nativity. Here for 1700 years the faithful have venerated the place of Jesus' birth. In the year 565, the Emperor Justinian I, who also built the great church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, rebuilt the Church of the Nativity, and over the centuries there have been many alterations and repairs to the building. When the Persians invaded the Holy Land in the early 7th century, the Church of the Nativity was one of the few Christian holy sites not to be destroyed. It remains a unique architectural masterpiece of the early Christian era.
Here, in this ancient and holy place, Orthodox Christians will gather to welcome the birth of their Savior today. One of the most famous features of the church is the low door at its entrance, through which everyone, from princes and presidents to shopkeepers and students, must enter bent over in adoration and humility.
The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem has been a constant witness to this truth of faith and of history for 2000 years. We endeavor to ensure that the holy sites of this Holy Land remain places of pilgrimage and religious observance for all people of good will, for we understand the power of place and of history to make God real for us. We understand that God transcends all material things and all human constructs; but we also understand that the presence and knowledge of God are mediated to us by holy places. We all know of those "thin" places where heaven and earth seem to touch, and time and eternity meet. The grotto of the Nativity is just such a place.
There has been a Christian presence in the Holy Land since the time of Jesus and the apostles, and in this region we have come to know something of the power of place and history both for good and for ill. But for us Orthodox in the Holy Land, whatever the political or economic circumstances in which we find ourselves, Christmas is a yearly reminder that hope has a face, the face of a newborn child who is greeted by shepherds and worshipped by Wise Men.
At Christmas we Orthodox sing, "Today the Virgin gives birth to the Transcendent One...for our sake the eternal God was born as a little Child!" These words describe a wonderful paradox. For not only does a Virgin give birth - itself a sign to us of an inexpressible example of divine-human co-operation - but "the eternal God is born as a little Child." While a Western mind may stop to ask how such a thing might be possible, the Orthodox mind allows itself to be embraced by mystery. For what better hope could there be than God himself breaking into human history.
Our sacred history lies at the heart of our identity as Christians in the Holy Land. We live in the places where that sacred history unfolded, and here Jews and Muslims, as well as Christians, are living witnesses to it in all its complexity. But at the heart of that complexity remains the person of Jesus, who is the face of hope.
Hope is not optimism. Hope does not turn its eyes away from the truth of life in all its beauty and in all its danger. In the face of the life of the world as it is, hope insists that there is a different way for the human family to live altogether, a way that was originally intended for us, and a way in which we could walk again if we were but willing to do so. The birth of this Child has made that hope a genuine possibility for the human family, and it is the responsibility of faithful people to be co-creators with God of a new future for creation that ensures the well-being of all the unique creatures of God.
For Christians in the Holy Land, the life of faith is not a decoration to an existence of other accomplishments. The life of faith is a journey into union with the One who is our Life and our Hope, our Light and our true Wisdom. January 7 in Bethlehem we shall gather once again to proclaim this Hope to all the world: "Make ready, O Bethlehem, for paradise is opened!"
Read more about Holidays and Holy Days at patheos.com.
Patriarch Theophilos III became the 141st Patriarch of Jerusalem in 2005, and the territory of the Patriarchate extends over Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States with the exception of Kuwait.
By Patriarch Theophilos III |
January 6, 2010; 10:53 AM ET
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Posted by: Martial | January 7, 2010 6:19 PM
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The mythical "resurrection" of one simple, preacher man aka Jesus as currently taught in many Catholic graduate theology classes:
"Heaven (if it exists) is a Spirit state or spiritual reality of union with God in love, without earthly -- earth bound distractions.
Jesus' aka the simple, preacher man's and Mary's bodies are therefore not in Heaven. For one thing, Paul in 1 Cor 15 speaks of the body of the dead as transformed into a "spiritual body." No one knows exactly what he meant by this term.
Most believe that it to mean that the personal spiritual self that survives death is in continuity with the self we were while living on earth as an embodied person.
The physical resurrection (meaning a resuscitated corpse returning to life, Ascension (of Jesus' crucified corpse), and Assumption (Mary's corpse) into heaven therefore did not take place.
The Ascension symbolizes the end of Jesus' earthly ministry and the beginning of the Church.
Only Luke's Gospel records it. The Assumption ties Jesus' mission to Pentecost and missionary activity of Jesus' followers. The Assumption has
multiple layers of symbolism, some are related to Mary's special role as "Christ bearer" (theotokos).
It does not seem fitting that Mary, the body of Jesus' Virgin-Mother (another biblically based symbol found in Luke 1) would be derived by worms upon her death. Mary's assumption also shows God's positive regard, not only for Christ's male body, but also for female
bodies."
It is amazing (or is it) how this agrees with Professor Crossan and the Jesus Seminarian's conclusions based on attestations and stratums.
See http://wiki.faithfutures.org/index.php/017_Resurrection_of_Jesus for added details.
Posted by: ccnl1 | January 7, 2010 3:47 PM
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It's always nourish our intellects to hear both side of the story.
Posted by: ThishowIseeit | January 7, 2010 12:53 PM
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Happy Christmas to you, Your Eminence! Christian claims have always attracted the kind of rebuttal made by CCNL1 above. Whereas she/he presents her/his arguments as if they are established fact, with the implication of astonishment that such Christian impudence continue to be tolerated amongst thinking people, his comments are neither established nor facts. We learn much more about CCNL1's philosophical presuppositions here than about what actually happened. He correctly observes that both Western and Eastern Christmases are feast days created by the church. Given that we know nothing about anybody's actual birthdate from the period in question, it's not surprising that Christians chose, for reasons that made sense to them at the time, to celebrate the incarnation on this day and in this way. Even if the precise date cannot ever be known, such does not imply that the event did not happen, or did not happen in the way it has been recorded. As an historian, there is nothing implausible about the record as it stands. What makes it implausible to some is more a factor of prior philosophical commitments rather than its actual historicity. Moreover, thinking Christians have never leaned on the nativity narratives as the make or break of their faith. For them, the issue has always been the resurrection. If the resurrection never happened, then Christians are liars and sadly deluded. If the resurrection did happen, then an incarnation becomes at once more likely, as does the actual historicity of what the first Christians remembered and recorded. CCNL1 gets full marks for being consistent with his philosophical commitments. His history, however, misses the mark.
William Black
http://onesimusonline.blogspot.com/
Posted by: WilliamBlack | January 7, 2010 1:24 AM
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For the Patriarch's perusal and rebuttal thereto:
Christmas, the embellished story of the birth of a simple, preacher man named Jesus.
As per most contemporary NT exegetes, his parents were Mary and Joseph although some say Jesus was a mamzer, the result of a pre-marital relationship between Mary and a Roman soldier.
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/theories.html
Jesus was not born in Bethlehem at least the one we are familiar with and there were no pretty wingie thingies singing from on high, no slaughter of the innocents by the Herod, no visiting wise men and no escape to Egypt.
"John P. Meier - Professor at Notre Dame
Meier [Marginal Jew I,216-219] notes that the "affirmation of Jesus' descent from David might easily be placed alongside his birth at Bethlehem as a theologoumenon (a theological insight narrated as a historical event) if it were not for the fact that numerous and diverse streams of NT tradition also affirm Jesus' Davidic lineage."
"Meier suggests that the belief that Jesus was "son of David" may have been held by Jesus' followers prior to his death, with his resurrection then being understood as a form of enthronement. However, he notes that such messianic views, whatever their provenance, cannot prove Jesus was "literally, biologically of Davidic stock."
http://wiki.faithfutures.org/index.php?title=007_Of_Davids_Lineage
Conclusion: the holyday of Christmas is historically a non-event no matter the day of celebration.
Posted by: ccnl1 | January 6, 2010 4:31 PM
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test
Posted by: ccnl1 | January 6, 2010 4:26 PM
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What a wonderful message from Patriarch Theophilos III.
The older one gets, the more one wants to hear not about the broad areas of agreement among religions, but the small, but beautifully meaninful differences. It would be fair to say that few who had not read this message know about the Church of the Nativity's construction.