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.

The greatest miracle of the Incarnation of God is that, having been accomplished once in history, it is renewed in every person who comes to Christ. In the deep silence of the night, the Word of God was incarnated on earth: thus it is incarnated in the silent depths of our souls, where the mind is silent, where words are exhausted, where the mind of man stands before God. Christ was born unknown and unrecognized on earth, and only the magi and shepherds, together with the angels, came out to meet Him: so quietly and imperceptibly for others Christ is born in the human soul, and it comes out to meet Him, because a star is kindled in it, leading to the Light.

We mysteriously meet Christ in prayer when we suddenly discover that our prayer has been accepted and heard, that God "came and dwelt in us" and filled us with His life-giving presence. We meet Christ in the Eucharist when, having communed of the Body and Blood of Christ, we suddenly feel that our own body is permeated with His Divine energy and the Blood of God flows in our veins. We meet Christ in the other sacraments of the Church, when, through contact with Him, we are renewed and quickened to eternal life. We meet Christ in our neighbors when a person suddenly opens up to us and we see into his innermost depths, where the image of God shines. We meet Christ in our daily life when we suddenly hear His calling voice in the midst of the noise of it, or when we see His clear and sudden intervention in the course of history.

This is how, suddenly and unexpectedly, God intervened in the life of mankind twenty centuries ago, when He turned the whole course of history with His Birth. This is how He is born again and again in the souls of thousands of people and changes, transforms and transforms their entire lives, making them believers from unbelievers, saints from sinners, salvation from those who are perishing.

May the feast of the Nativity of Christ become the feast of the birth of Christ in our souls and our rebirth in Christ. Let us be silent for the sake of peace, so that the Word of God may be born in our souls and fill us with Divinity, Light and holiness...

1997

Christ is persecuted. The Second Day of the Nativity of Christ