To the reverent clergy and the pious faithful of the Genuine Orthodox Church of Greece

My dear God-befriending brethren and children of the newly born Jesus Christ, “Christ is born, give ye glory! Christ is come from heaven, receive ye Him!” (1st Ode, Nativity katavasies).

As our Church chants the above Ode (which is taken verbatim from the writings of Saint Gregory the Theologian) during the salvific night of Christ’s Nativity, we are called upon to glorify the new-born Lord. 

The entire festive hymnology for the Nativity extols the “kenosis/self-emptying” of Divinity; how, in the extreme humility of the God-man Christ, the divine Nature is joined with human nature “without confusion, without change, inseparably, indivisibly” and without each nature losing its properties. 

Christ is One “with two natures”, that is: both natures remain intact within Himself. But why was it necessary for Christ to become enhumaned?

As a consequence of the disobedience and the fall of the First-created humans, the image of God - with which man was created - was tarnished, resulting in the cancelation of man's ability to achieve the likeness of God. Fallen man lost the ability of becoming deified, so, even though he was created to be: free, immortal and eternal; he became perishable and finite, enslaved to sin and through it, resulting in death, since he alienated himself from God.

However, God, in His infinite compassion, did not forsake His alienated creation, but instead accepted to take upon Himself the burden of our sins and so, through the incarnation of His Son and Logos/Word- the second Person of the Holy Trinity, entered human history.

With the birth of Christ, “God”, as Saint Maximus the Confessor magnificently observes: “as a friend-of-man, truly becomes a human from the human substance”. ("Various chapters on Theology and Economy regarding virtue and evil," First Century, ch. xii, Minge PG vol. 90, col.1184).

In an inconceivable manner beyond explanation but only experienced through the mystical and sacramental life of the Church: the Son and Word of God fully takes on a human body from the Virgin Mary. Through the great Mystery of our Lord’s Nativity, the majestic and incomprehensible God becomes a visible and tangible human in the Theandric/God-man person of Christ. Christ who comes from the heavens has descended and is born on earth.

With regards to the incarnation of Christ, Saint Athanasius the Great, notes that: “He became man, in order that we might be made god” (On the Incarnation, ch.54,3 Minge PG vol.25, col.192b.)

Therefore through Christ’s incarnation, the ability of all people to become god-like/deified by grace, was again reactivated, meaning that they could become the children of God by grace: “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the children of God...” (John 1:12). Thus man, once again, becomes the steward of Creation and enters into a mystical communion with God that entails the renewal of the world, which had fallen through disobedience and “groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.” (Romans 8:22)

The sacred hymnographer writes using the present tense, “Christ is born” because Christ is born now in the Church’s present liturgical time of worship, to which all the salvific universal events of the Divine Economy are re-enacted and effectuated. So, in the Holy Eucharist, history and time intersect with eternity; and man becomes deified without ceasing to be human. By means of Her mysteries/sacraments, our Church grants the world a taste of the eschatological reality, and enters the world through the eucharistic gathering, thus making our theosis possible in time and space. Jesus Christ is present in the Divine Eucharist, and we partake of His Sacred Body and Blood in every divine Liturgy. He is not the inaccessible, terrible god of the old and primitive religions, nor the imaginary philosophical god of the disoriented followers; but rather, the concrete personal God, Who -according to His promise- will be with us unto the end of the ages.

We have the unshaken certainty, that the future belongs to Christ, Who is “the same yesterday, and today, and unto the ages” (Hebr. 13:8). 

The genuine faith and the authentic Church of Christ is and will remain a place of: sanctification and a god-pleasing life, the renewal of humanity and the universe, the foretaste of the Kingdom of glory. Christ has come, and is constantly coming while unceasingly remaining amongst us as the incarnation of love. How will the world recognize that we are truly Christians? To which the Lord replies: “If ye have love to one another” (John 13:35).

Beloved and blessed Children in the Lord, Christ has been born! 

May the Grace, mercy and peace of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ, who is born in Bethlehem, be upon you. Furthermore, we wish you all, a blessed and healthy Holy Twelve-day festal period, and that the good Lord's new year bring you abundance of divine gifts and plentitude in good deeds. Amen.

Your Fervent supplicant before Christ,

The Archbishop of Athens and all Greece

STEFANOS