The collection now published contains sixty-two sermons, including twenty-two previously published ones. Almost all of the sermons published today were delivered by Father Hilarion in the Church of the Holy Great Martyr Catherine in the Fields, where he carries out his pastoral ministry.

Hegumen Hilarion (Alfeyev) was born in 1966. He received a musical education. At the age of twenty, he became a monk in the Vilnius Holy Spirit Monastery, was ordained to the rank of hierodeacon and then hieromonk. In 1990-91 he was rector of the Kaunas Cathedral of the Annunciation. In 1991, he graduated from the Moscow Theological Academy with a PhD in Theology. From 1991 to 1993 he taught homiletics, dogmatic theology at Moscow theological schools, New Testament at St. Tikhon's Orthodox Theological Institute, and patrology at the Russian Orthodox University named after St. John the Theologian. From 1993 to 1995 he studied at Oxford University, graduating with a Ph.D. degree. Upon his return to Russia in 1999, by decree of His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia, he was appointed a cleric of the Church of the Holy Great Martyr Catherine in the Fields. Since 1997, he has been secretary for inter-Christian relations of the Moscow Patriarchate's Department for External Church Relations and a member of the Synodal Theological Commission of the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1999, he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Theology by the St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris.

Hegumen Hilarion is the author of more than ten books, including monographs on the Church Fathers, translations of patristic texts from Greek and Syriac. Fr Hilarion's books enjoy well-deserved recognition from readers. They are highly appreciated by the Supreme Authority of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The publishers express the hope that this collection will serve the spiritual benefit of readers, strengthen their love for the Holy Orthodox Church, to the service of which Father Hilarion devotes all his strength.

About the meeting with Christ. Christmas

"Christ is born – glorify! Christ from heaven – welcome! Christ on earth — ascend! With these words St. Gregory the Theologian began his Nativity sermon, and since then, for sixteen centuries, they have been heard in our church services, posing the same questions to us: what is the meaning of the Nativity of Christ for each of us; how can we meet Christ coming from heaven; how can we ascend from earth to heaven; How can we glorify Christ with our lives?

Many religions professing one God promise man that he will be able to touch God in one way or another, to experience a sense of His presence and closeness. But no religion, except Christianity, allows a person to know God as a brother, as a friend. Through the incarnation of the Son of God, according to the words of St. Symeon the New Theologian, we become sons of God the Father and brothers of Christ. God incarnates in order to be able to communicate with us on an equal footing, so that, having shared our fate and lived our lives, he would have the right to tell us about Himself and about us the ultimate truth that could not be revealed to us in any other way. The truth that there is no abyss separating God and man; there are no insurmountable obstacles to the encounter between man and God – one-on-one, face to face.

This meeting takes place in our hearts. For the sake of this meeting, the Lord came to earth, became a man and lived a human life: He was born in the cave of Bethlehem, fled to Egypt, returned to Nazareth, was brought up in a carpenter's house, was baptized, went out to preach, walked through Galilee, Samaria and Judea, preaching the Kingdom of Heaven and healing human diseases, endured suffering and death on the cross, rose from the dead and ascended to heaven. All this is for the sake of a mysterious encounter, so that the barrier between man and God, erected by human sin, may be destroyed. "The center of the city is destroyed, the flaming weapon gives lashes, and the cherubim depart from the tree of life, and I partake of the food of paradise," the church hymn says. The barrier is destroyed, and the sword of the cherubim, which blocks the entrance to paradise, retreats; the gates of paradise open, and man returns to the tree of life, from which he feeds on the Heavenly Bread.

The story of the Fall of Adam is the history of all mankind and each person. Adam's sin is repeated in each of us when we turn away from God and sin. But Christ is also incarnate for each of us, and therefore Christ's salvation of Adam is our salvation. "The bound Adam is loosed, and freedom is granted to all the faithful," says the canon, which is read at Compline of the Forefeast of the Nativity of Christ. In Christ, all people are restored to that God-like freedom that Adam and his descendants lost through sin and falling away from God.

St. Gregory the Theologian calls the Incarnation of God the "second creation," when God, as it were, creates man anew, taking upon Himself human flesh, the "second communion" between man and God: "That which exists begins to exist; Uncreated is created; The incomprehensible is embraced; The rich become poor through the perception of the flesh, so that I may be enriched by His Divinity... What is this new sacrament? I received the image of God and lost it, but He takes on my flesh in order to save the image and immortalize me. He enters into a second communion with us, which is much better and higher than the first."

In the incarnation of the Word, there is, in the words of St. Ephraim the Syrian, an "exchange" between God and man: God receives human nature from us, and gives us His Divinity.

Through the incarnation of the Word, the deification of man takes place. "The Word was incarnate so that we might be deified," said St. Athanasius the Great. "The Son of God became the Son of Man in order to make the sons of men the sons of God," said St. Irenaeus of Lyons. The deification to which man was predestined by the very act of creation and which he lost through the Fall, was restored to man by the incarnate Word.

And therefore it is precisely in the Nativity of Christ that the complete renewal of human nature takes place. Not only in the one Christmas that took place two thousand years ago in Bethlehem, but also in the birth of Christ, which takes place again and again in our souls. For the soul of man is a "manger" which God makes the receptacle of His Divinity and His temple. In the Fall, man "became like senseless beasts," but God comes to fallen man and makes his soul the place where the mysterious encounter between Him and us takes place.