The traditional Christmas reception organized by the Serbian National Council on Christmas Day, January 6, this year was held in the atrium of the Kantakuzina Katarina Brankovic Serbian Orthodox Secondary School at the Holy Spirit in Zagreb.
At the reception, speakers were: Andrej Plenkovic, Prime Minister of the Republic of Croatia; Goran Jandroković, President of the Croatian Parliament; Tomislav Tomasevic, Mayor of Zagreb; Veran Matic, Special Envoy of the President of the Republic of Serbia; as well as Milorad Pupovac, president of the Serbian National Council and the host of the Christmas reception.
Patriarch Porfirije addressed the present: “We are between two Christmases, the one that is celebrated according to the Gregorian calendar, and the Christmas one that is celebrated according to the Julian calendar. We are framed in this area, but also on the wider European continent, with the meaning of the message and the content of Christmas, and that is the Nativity of Christ.”
The Patriarch emphasized the importance of peace as the basic message of Christmas and said that “peace among people means giving space and space to another, different, to be next to me, to be in my soul and in my heart. By giving a different place, and at the same time the same, because we are more one than we are different.”
Source: Serbian Orthodox Church
