This year, on Christmas Eve, Patriarch Kirill wrote the shortest text in the fourteen years of his patriarchate: the appeal for a Christmas truce. This document might well have become a masterpiece of the anti-war, peacemaking stance of the Russian Orthodox Church. However, it turned out quite differently. The appeal for a ceasefire is yet…
Continue readingThe Christmas Glow of “God with Us”
All this took place to fulfill what had been said by the Lord through the prophet: “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him “Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.”—Matt. 1:22-23 May the Lord bless you with peace, and good will, and joy. From Matthew’s Gospel: “Now, the…
Continue readingShaking the Tree of Anthropocentricity
by Thomas Arentzen | български | ქართული | ελληνικά | Română | Русский | Српски “Rejoice, tree of leafy branches,under which believers are sheltered …Rejoice, O wood most blessed!”Akathist to the Cross, Oikos 7 Rocking around the Christmas tree in my little Norwegian hometown, I got to thinking how the Christian world is filled with…
Continue readingNewness under the Son
by Carrie Frederick Frost Is there nothing new under the sun? Is it the case that all of life is an ordered and predictable cycle? That what has been is what will be and what is done is what will be done (Eccl. 1:9)? This sense of the unending monotonous repetition of human experience is…
Continue readingThe Star of Bethlehem or the Star of Jacob? A Forgotten Prophecy
by Rev. Dr. Eugen J. Pentiuc This essay was first published on the website of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. Nearly every year during the Nativity season printed journals and articles posted online flood us with the same resounding question: “What Was the Star of Bethlehem?” Among the four canonical gospels, Matthew is the…
Continue readingChristmas’s Great Conjunction
by John Fotopoulos | български | ქართული | Ελληνικά | Русский | Српски There has been a lot of excitement this December regarding an astronomical phenomenon known as a great conjunction. This great conjunction, also known as a planetary conjunction, is an alignment of Jupiter and Saturn with Earth that is visible in our night sky. A great conjunction of Jupiter…
Continue readingDebating Christmas Day: Copts, Calendars, and the Immigrants’ Church
by Michael Akladios and Candace Lukasik This essay is co-published with the Coptic Canadian History Project. A longer version is available on the CCHP website. On December 11, 2019, Metropolitan Serapion and the clergy of the Diocese of Los Angeles, Southern California, and Hawaii wrote a statement pronouncing that Christmas celebrations will be held in…
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