Message given the Christmas celebrations sent by Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens and All Greece.

The Archbishop of Athens and All Greece, Archbishop Hieronymos, addressing the clergy and his flock, sent a message a few days before the Christmas holidays.

Referring to the wars that are going on and the death of hundreds of our fellow human beings, he expressed his sorrow as evil extends into our daily lives affecting everyone. “We are watching with anguish the bloodshed in various parts of the world, the unbearable calamity. We also taste evil in its everyday dimension. Loneliness, indifference to our fellow man, sadness, lack of meaning. The question sometimes becomes a cry. Why evil in the world?”, he said.

He then urged Christians to take action to reverse the ‘irrationality’ that has infiltrated our lives. In the name of peace, we should all move by demonstrating kindness and solidarity, giving back to society as a whole. As His Beatitude underlined, “We are urgently called upon to overturn the absurdity at every level of life. We must act. Pioneers in every effort for peace, in social actions, in every noble human disposition, in every charity. In the person of Christ man becomes the recipient of an infinite gift.”

The Archbishop’s message

My dear brothers and children in the Lord,

“The inseparable all things… were separated in the stomach…and not a remnant of nature partook of the daily bread.”

The mystery of Bethlehem was then and is always a source of infinite bounty to mankind. We were given to exist as God exists. And God is love and love comes from God. We wonder every year how we will experience a true Christmas. Perhaps this year, with the tragic, as it turned out, condition of the pandemic, we can better reflect on what it means that God became man. That the Almighty has encompassed weakness, ultimate poverty, and suffering? That he lived through the scandal of abandonment and death?

Let us consider that those of us who want to be His disciples are called in these difficult times to join the angels in glorifying His birth, to taste something of His omnipotence, and at the same time to participate in His extreme humiliation. To experience the certainty of His divinity with an excess of love for the brother, with profound humility; that which the Lord indicated in the wilderness, condemning every tendency to sensationalism and logical appropriation of the supernatural: “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.”

We need accountability and hope. Now that every wise person sees all too well that the pandemic is a real problem, we must feel responsible for the health of all. Let’s care for the vulnerable. Personal experience of illness and hospitalization sets the right order of things and emotions. We owe a lot of care.

Moreover, let us not scandalize the brethren with uncritical attitudes. Let us respect those who fear perhaps too much. After all, who is without fear?

But a Christian is also a man of hope. Hope and faith in the divine Infant who allows the trial. Let us not be paralyzed by fear.
Our life belongs to the Lord. He came forth victorious and to overcome. He will provide the way out. He is the life. It is a fact that communion with God and worship scandalize the forces of evil. Some take the opportunity to become wicked and offensive. Do not be afraid. Our response to them will always be love. Love in truth. We will always seek to be free in our worship. With respect for the common effort and sanitary safety rules, which we have observed from the beginning, and with commitment to the freedom of the Faith.

My brothers and beloved children in the Lord,

In this unexpected world war, some have been hurt the most. They lost their own people. Let our prayer for them be our gift this year at the feet of the Divine Infant.

I invite you, moreover, with a personal charge to pray individually for the heroes, the ascetics of this story. They are the doctors,
the nurses, and all those working in the ministry of the suffering. In all corners of the earth, they work the work of true charity. They forget that they exist for us to exist. We are grateful to them.

My brothers,

The birth of Christ is charity indeed. Let us become this year, in a more sacrificial way than ever before, bearers of the love that springs from the Cave of Bethlehem. This love claims the whole world. I wish everyone a true and blessed Christmas!

Christ is born glorified!

The Archbishop of Athens and All Greece