Prot. No. 1330

Patriarchal Declaration
For Christmas, 2007

+BARTHOLOMEW

By the Mercy of God
Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome
And Ecumenical Patriarch

To the Plenitude of the Church

Grace, mercy and peace
From the savior Christ born in Bethlehem

Christ is born, glorify Him;
Christ comes from heaven, meet Him.

Beloved brothers and children in the Lord,

It is with great joy that our Church calls us to glorify God for His loving and personal presence on earth in the divine-human hypostasis of Christ Jesus, one of the three persons of the Holy Trinity.

We must, therefore, examine very carefully the true and life-giving significance of the incarnation of the Son and Word of God.  First, it reveals to humanity that God is personal and is made manifest to us as a person, just as He has also created us as persons. Second, it reveals to us that God embraces us with His love. These two realities, the personhood and love of God, express fundamental truths of our faith, which we have doubtless heard many times. However, their impact on our lives is not as great as it might be, because many of us neither experience our brotherhood with Christ in a personal way, nor His boundless love for us. Neither do we return our love to Christ so that by sharing in His love, we may also share, by grace, in other characteristics of His Person.

If others, who do not know Christ and, as a result of their ignorance, drown in their search for an impersonal being that they perceive as divine, are to some extent justified, then we Orthodox Christians are not justified at all if we follow such fruitless pursuits. Instead of seeking God as a person and approaching Him in the One Who approaches us, namely Jesus Christ, people who are misled desperately strive to become divine through their own powers, like Adam thought, when he listened to spirit of evil. But the true and personal God, Who is known only through Jesus Christ, the One born in a manger out of love for us, promised us adoption and a return to the bosom of the Father, as well as deification by grace through Christ.  It is only through Christ that one may fulfill the universal human desire to transcend the corruption and isolation of an existence without love, and to achieve communion with Divine and human persons in love. This is what leads to eternity and to immortality!

Let us, therefore, turn the gaze of our hearts toward the newborn Jesus Christ in the manger, so that, by considering how much He loves us, we might love Him with all our heart, mind and being.  It is only through the love of Jesus Christ that we may become partakers by grace in His divine nature, just as through His love He shared in our human nature. Human-centered attempts and concepts, drug-induced states and ecstasies, together with similar non-Christian experiences do not lead to an encounter with the truly personal God of love. Rather, they lead to a deep cold darkness, to gloom of eternal destruction, as well as to a feeling of complete and abysmal emptiness.

For this reason, beloved children in the Lord, love Jesus Christ, Who out of love for us and for our salvation became human. Come to know the communion of His love, with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Indeed, there is nothing sweeter than the love of the personal God.

The supreme herald of divine love, the one who identified God as love, is St. John the Evangelist and Theologian, who first pronounced to us, “God is love.” After him, the greatest herald is St. Paul the Apostle, who loved God to the end and who asked the fervent question: “What can separate us from the love of Christ?” Neither sorrow nor sword, neither death nor any other love can be more powerful than our love for Christ. In remembrance of the words and loving works of St. Paul, and in celebration of two millennia since his birth, we declare the coming year 2008 as the year of the Apostle Paul.

We pray paternally and fervently that Jesus Christ, Who was born in a manger out of love and for our salvation, may render our hearts to become like His manger: through the intercessions of His ever-Virgin Mother, as well as of our predecessor St. John Chrysostom, to whose memory we dedicated this past year, together with the intercessions of another Patriarchal predecessor, St. Niphon, restorer and second founder of the Holy Patriarchal and Stavropegic Monastery of St. Dionysius on Mount Athos, which next year celebrates the 500th  anniversary since his repose, as well as of Saints John and Paul the Apostles, par excellence heralds of God’s love, and of all the saints, so that He may reveal to everyone the person of His love.

We invoke upon all of you His grace and rich mercy. Merry Christmas; may the twelve days of Christmas be blessed; and may the New Year be both spiritually and materially fruitful.

Phanar, Christmas 2007

+BARTHOLOMEW
Fervent supplicant for all to God
  

To be read in churches during the Divine Liturgy on the Feast of the Nativity, after the Holy Gospel.

Like many of the farmers who have received emergency supplies of animal feed from International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC), Vasili is choosing to remain in one of Greece’s rural areas in order to keep his family business, and an entire way of life, alive. IOCC’s latest distribution, over 400 metric tons of animal feed benefitting 130,000 heads of livestock, is made possible through a grant from the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. 

Niko, his brother and sister are also determined to keep their family farm in the village of Leondari. They lived their childhood years in an era of old-world traditions as their parents and multiple generations before them wove fabric, sowed and tilled the land by hand. Niko and his siblings decided to create the “Ecological Footpath”, a model of a working farm based on traditional farming techniques. The wildfires devastated their organic stables, their open range pastures, and the structure of their natural amphitheatre. IOCC is helping to keep their livestock alive in the short term and has also given them forage seed so they can replant their grasslands for a long term solution to the problem.

Yianni and his son Kosta of the village of Chelidonia in Ileia Prefecture are working long days to maintain their livelihood. Kosta is picking olives on a farm in a neighboring village although ten of his friends left for Athens after the wildfires to find work. “They had no choice,” says Kosta, “they will probably not return.” Yianni saved some of his animals during the wildfires but could not salvage the two tons of animal feed he had warehoused. IOCC’s donation of feed and Kosta’s hard work on the neighboring farm will keep the family going until father and son can rebuild their stable and warehouse.

“The key to IOCC’s success in the Peloponnese since early September has been the cooperation we have with local municipalities and Orthodox priests,” says Dimitri Djukic of IOCC Greece. He is based in the town of Pyrgos to oversee IOCC distribution to local farmers.

IOCC’s total relief and recovery program for Greece has exceeded $500,000 and has included two distributions of feed totaling 610 metric tons and 20 metric tons of forage seed to allow Greek farmers to permanently restore their grasslands. “People are grateful for what they have received thus far,” says IOCC Development Director Daniel Christopulos. “But winter is coming and the need to keep livestock alive is the number one issue for Peloponnese farmers.”

IOCC, founded in 1992 as the official humanitarian aid agency of the Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas (SCOBA), has implemented over $250 million in relief and development programs in 33 countries around the world.
           
To help in providing emergency relief, call IOCC's donation hotline toll-free at 1-877-803-4622, make a gift on-line at www.iocc.org, or mail a check or money order payable to “IOCC” and write "Greece Wildfires" in the memo line to: IOCC, P.O. Box 630225, Baltimore, MD. 21263-0225.

Media: Contact Amal Morcos at 410-243-9820 or (cell) 443-823-3489.

INTERNATIONAL ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN CHARITIES (IOCC)
110 West Road, Suite 360, Baltimore, Md. 21204
Tel: (410) 243-9820 — Fax: (410) 243-9824 
Web: www.iocc.org — E-mail: news@iocc.org