“We are all witnessing lately a peculiar attack, which is based on the violence of power, the violence of emotion and symbols, the instrumentalization of the sacrament of Holy Eucharist, bulling and fake news,” Metropolitan Cleopas of Sweden and All Scandinavia stressed in his Christmas Encyclical.
“From this Christmas onwards, let us resist those who consider that charity, dialogue, embracing the crumpled and marginalized of this world, sociability and mobility are an innovation and a sin.” stated the Metropolitan of Sweden in another point of his encyclical.
He also noted that we should pray for: “All those who sacrificed themselves for the restoration of the health of our fellow humans, who were infected with the deadly virus. Let us thank them prayerfully for their invaluable contribution”.
Read below the message of Metropolitan Cleopas of Sweden and All Scandinavia
Dear Brothers in Christ,
The Nativity of Christ signifies the evangelization of the new. Christ is “the beginning of another movement, a stationary movement and a restless stasis”, as Saint Maximus the Confessor stated.
When Saint Cyril of Alexandria was asked why the Lord was incarnated in the latter days, he replied: “Because He was to interfere in human life, in order to eliminate evil, He necessarily waited for all the evil that had taken root with the actions of the enemy to sprout and then struck the pickaxe at the root, as the gospel says.”
Such a treatment can be offered by embracing the culture of the incarnation.
We are all witnessing lately a peculiar attack, which is based on the violence of power, the violence of emotion and symbols, the instrumentalization of the sacrament of Holy Eucharist, bulling and fake news.
Anti-creative and therefore anti-humanitarian realities, which reveal the “face of the monster”, but also “the fear of getting used to it”. “From the moment Frankenstein becomes the decoration of a youth room”, writes the composer Manos Hadjidakis, “the world proceeds mathematically to its annihilation. It is not because he stopped being afraid, but because he got used of being afraid.”
“Let us resist the ugliness of the times”, Manos Hadjidakis urged us. Now is the time to act!
From this Christmas onwards, let us resist those who consider that charity, dialogue, embracing the crumpled and marginalized of this world, sociability and mobility are an innovation and a sin. Let us experience the mystery that, by emptying the self, leaves room for the recruitment of the other.
Let us not forget that there is a world out there waiting. A world that wants to see the Orthodox Church give meaning to life and be the loving joint of the disintegrating societies, in a world tired of sufficient and strong, a world wounded by the infidelity and lack of communion of persons and Churches.
I will ask you to pray for all those who, throughout the pandemic, have sacrificed themselves to restore the health of our fellow humans, who were infected with the deadly virus and let us thank them prayerfully for their invaluable contribution.
Let us also pray for the victims of the coronavirus and their relatives and let us remember the always up-to-date verses of the poem “Voices” by Constantine Cavafy: “Ideal voices we have greatly loved, of those that death has taken, or of those that are, for us, lost, even as are the dead. At times we hear them talking in our dreams; at times in thought the mind hears them. And for a moment with their sound, sounds return from the early poetry of our life – like music, in the night, far off, that is fading…”.
With heartfelt paternal wishes for a blessed Christmas,
+ Metropolitan Cleopas of Sweden and All Scandinavia