You may say, "But what shall I do if I live among a wicked nation? No, do not be afraid: these words of God apply not only to entire nations, but also to individuals. And in the years of terrible calamities that God sends upon the wicked nations, all those who live according to the commandments of God will be under the roof of the Most High. The Lord will preserve them with His all-powerful help, for if they have loved God, then they themselves will be loved by God.

In the past year of 1948, the Lord endured an innumerable multitude of our iniquities and sins, and in His great long-suffering He preserved us. And the new year, 1949, shone before us. How should we meet it? Of course, not like the people of this world. We must meet it with repentance before God for all our sins and iniquities committed last year, and with a broken heart ask Him for grace-filled help, so that in the new year we may be worthy of His mercy and good protection, in order to fulfill His law, and so that this fulfillment of the law will be a protection from all the calamities that the devil threatens us with. We don't know what this year will be like, but we must be prepared for anything.

Open your hearts before God and begin the new year of life, with a broken heart, thanking God for all His blessings and asking that His grace not fail on us, sinners, this year as well. Amen.

January 1, 1949

The Great Chosen Ones of God

Homily on the Sunday of the Holy Fathers

The Sunday before the Nativity of Christ is dedicated by the Holy Church to the memory of the Holy Fathers, and on the previous Sunday it honored the memory of the Holy Forefathers. Who are they, forefathers and fathers, and why is their memory so solemnly celebrated before the feast of the Nativity? These are the great righteous men of the Old Testament, and above all the holy prophets. Why is it so important for us to honor their memory?

Every great deed, even a personal one, when people are faced with great tasks, requires long, many years, deep preparation. All great events in the life of the human race have been prepared by history for many years, sometimes even hundreds of years. If such is the order of human affairs, both personal and historical, then all the more great preparation was required by the most important event in the history of mankind - the appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ to the world. The human race had to mature for the reception of Christ's greatest teaching.

The worship of the True God, the knowledge of Him in ancient times was the property of only one, God-chosen people of Israel. The religions of other peoples were naturalistic. The pagans deified the material principles of the world, worshipped the heavenly bodies, all the elemental forces of nature, deified animals and birds, and worshipped idols carved by themselves.

In ancient times, the Indian people had a philosophically wise religion - Buddhism, but even they, for all their depth, were infinitely far from the knowledge of God. He knew only the vanity of human life and rejected life, becoming a religion of deep pessimism. In essence, he did not know God, he was a religion without God.

The ancient Greeks, a great people, knew God only partially, only in harmony and beauty. They were very far from knowing God as the only Being, as the center and focus, the source of all life.

The people of Israel came to know God as the only eternally existing One in Himself and worshipped Him as the True God (the word "Jehovah" means "He Who Is" in Hebrew). But even this is far from what true religion should be, for the people of Israel understood God rather as a terrible Autocrat, the Creator of the world and a terrible Judge, and, just like the pagans, they did not understand that God is first of all Love (John 4:8).

The essence of Christ's teaching is precisely the preaching and teaching about love. The people of Israel and all mankind had to be prepared to understand this great truth. And the Lord has been preparing for thousands of years.

In the most ancient times, promises were given to the human race about the Savior of the world. Even to Adam, the first man, before his expulsion from paradise, the Lord said: "The seed of the woman shall blot out the head of the serpent" (cf. Gen. 3:15). The seed of the woman is our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Woman is the Most Holy Virgin Mother of God, the Mother of God.