By the mercy of God, today we are entering a new church year. Every year, going from feast to feast, the Holy Church, together with all of nature, passes from beginning to end the annual cycle of divine services.

For people living in the world, the coming of the new year is usually associated with a painful feeling of regret about what he could have done and what was left undone. Looking back at the time lived, a person inevitably thinks about what was irretrievably lost in the past, what can no longer be returned or changed in the future.

People who live a spiritual life are alien to this sense of the irreversibility of the past, because they live in a world where there are no time limits, where the boundaries of the past, present and future are overcome.

Not long ago we buried the Mother of God and did not "remember" Her burial, but actually buried Her, and in a few days we will celebrate Her Nativity again. This becomes possible due to the fact that, in performing divine services, we enter a world in which the boundaries of time are destroyed, because in divine services we live in eternity. Through this communion with eternity, we can really be present with the events from which we, the people of the twentieth century, are historically separated by a number of centuries that have passed.

Overcoming the boundaries of time in divine services and entering the world of eternity, we enter it not alone, but together with all of nature. In the liturgical hymns, it is constantly spoken of the participation of all creation in the joy that man experiences when he joins eternity, of its participation in the glorification of the Creator: "Let the heavens rejoice worthily, and let the earth rejoice, let the world celebrate, both visible and invisible," says the Paschal canon. And not only heaven and earth, but each of God's creations separately participates in this universal hymn to the Creator.

In the "praise" psalms (Psalms 148-150), which are read daily at Matins, we call upon the sun and the moon, the stars and the light, the mountains and the hills, the trees, the beasts and the birds, together with the heavenly angelic world, to take part in the glorification of the Lord.

But nowhere does it seem that this unity of man with all creation in the glorification of God is expressed with such depth and power as in the "Song of the Three Youths," which is part of the last paremia read on Holy Saturday, each verse of which is accompanied by the refrain "Sing to the Lord and exalt Him forever." Here creation unites and merges into one and eternal /"... exalt Him for ever."

Thus, every year, together with the whole world above and below, with the Heavenly Church and with all nature, we can be witnesses and participants in the events that took place "for our sake and for our salvation."

These events, which relate to the economy of our salvation, although they occurred once in time, have not gone irretrievably into the past. They took place when, in the words of the Apostle, "the fullness of time had come" (Galatians IV, 4). In them the mystery of God's love for man was fully revealed, the mystery of the redemptive feat of "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev. 13:8). Therefore, in the temporal world, they have become unshakable points of eternity, through which all creation passes and to which we have the opportunity to partake through divine services. In worship, everything is in the present, because everything in it is in eternity, so we have nothing to grieve about the lost past.

Each such point in eternity in our temporal world is not only experienced by us at a certain moment in time, but also casts rays of its light, which are sometimes perceived long before the feast itself and which continue to shine to us even after we have already passed through this luminous point.

In two weeks we will celebrate the Exaltation of the Cross of the Lord. The feast has not yet come, but in the divine service we already feel the approach of this luminous point.

Starting from August 1, we hear the Exaltation of the Cross – "Having inscribed the cross, Moses". The same thing happens in even greater fullness when the feast of the Nativity of Christ approaches. A whole month before its onset, the divine service begins to prepare us for the passage of this luminous point of eternity. Beginning with the feast of the Entry of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple, we already feel that together with the whole world we touch Her, because on this day we sing the Nativity irmoi "Christ is Born." And two weeks later, on the feast day of St. Nicholas, we sing the first stichera of the Forefeast: "Adorn Thy Cave," "O Zion, Triumph," and "Virgin Brideless," which conclude the stichera for the Lord, the Invocation at the Litiya and at the verses of Great Vespers.

Especially remarkable, in the sense of preparing our souls for the reception of the coming feast, are the last two stichera. In the first of them, we turn to the "city of Christ God," which is preparing to lift up the Creator "in the cave and manger of Him who rectables" and ask to open to us the gates, entering through which we can see with our spiritual eyes "with the hand of the Sustaining Creation," "as the Infant wrapped in swaddling clothes," and in the second, as if having already entered these gates and seeing the "Author of our salvation," the Virgin Without Bride, the Mother of God, we turn directly to Her, asking Her to reveal to us the great mystery of our salvation. The closer we come to the luminous point of the holiday, the brighter the light emanating from it illuminates us. During the five days of the feast, culminating in the Eve of the Nativity of Christ, the divine services reveal to us with ever greater depth and completeness this great mystery, into which the Holy Spirit leads us. Church and, finally, the very feast of the Nativity of Christ comes, the point of eternity that we are passing. Here the boundaries of time are erased and the mystery of eternity is revealed, because, as Metropolitan Philaret says: "Christ still descends from heaven and is so close to us that we, like pastors or magi, can meet His divine appearance."

This point of eternity does not immediately leave us. During the seven days of the feast, we continue to live by its reflected light. Moreover, if the light of eternity manifested in our soul is really reflected in it, then it becomes for us a step in our ascent to eternal life, to which the Lord Jesus Christ calls us.