CHRISTMAS EPISTLE 2024

KSENOFONT

By the grace of God

Orthodox Bishop of the

Diocese of Ras and Prizren

in EXILE

To all clergy, monks and all Orthodox
sons and daughters of the Serbian Orthodox Church, an
all-joyful Christian greeting

THE PEACE OF GOD BE WITH YOU! CHRIST IS BORN!

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will among men!

(Luke 2:14)

Hearken, dearly beloved spiritual children, unto this magnificent anthem of all Christendom that was first bestowed upon mankind during the miraculous event of Our Lord’s Nativity 2024 years ago. Beginning with the appearance of the radiant Angels of the Lord to the poor shepherds in the fields of Bethlehem, up until today and beyond the end of the world and all ages, this wonderful hymn has always signified the definitive path and signpost marking out the true purpose of Christian life here on earth.

Therefore, wishing for Christians to remember this divine anthem without ceasing, the Holy Orthodox Church has inscribed it into its liturgical cycle for daily reading and also on Feast Days to be solemnly sung in praise and glorification of God, Who by sending His Only Begotten Son to Earth to appear as one of us, finally brought true peace on Earth and called us to mutual benevolence and compassion.

Prior to the Nativity of Our Lord, man wandered bewildered, impoverished and forlorn upon the Earth. Having recklessly lost the Paradise created especially for him by his Maker, he went into exile, suffering torments and weeping, thorns, weeds, and thistles, together with the sweat and pains of childbirth, culminating finally with the crown of death. However, following the miraculous event of the Birth of the God-Child Christ in Bethlehem, the divine course of mankind’s salvation finally begins.

Indeed, the Old Testament Prophets repeatedly listened and looked to God who appeared to them in various ways, giving them hope that He had not completely forgotten and abandoned His people, even though His people had had forsaken Him, in the midst of their lamentations under the curse of exile.

Nevertheless, it is no coincidence that this angelic song was heard for the first time on Earth only during this supernatural event of Our Lord’s Nativity, as proclaimed in the hymn of St John of Damascus:

„Let heaven and earth rejoice today as prophesied, and let angels and people give spiritual praise, for God being born of the Virgin, appeared in the flesh to those sitting in darkness and in shadow,… “ (Stichera at the Great Vespers of the Nativity of Christ).

We know that Moses partially glimpsed the miraculous radiance of the divine twilight on Sinai, and Elijah soothed his soul in the gentle breeze in which the Lord would appear; and we know how Isaiah saw God on a high throne surrounded by the Seraphim who were praising Him, and had received the revelation to prophesize that “ a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel “ (Is. 7:14). However,it was only at this divine and earthly all-redeeming event in Bethlehem, where the fullness of man’s salvation through his reconciliation with God and with fellow man was fully realized for the first time. As Patriarch German wonderfully explains to us in his Christmas stichera at Great Vespers: „Come, let us rejoice in the Lord, explaining the Mystery that is taking place before us, for the foundation of the stone wall of Eden is being destroyed, the flaming sword is now withdrawn, and The Cherub moves away from the Tree of Life, that I may taste the fruit of Paradise, from which I was banished for disobedience …“

When considering the beauty, depth, solemnity and redemptive nature of the wonderful Feast of Christ’s Nativity as well as the luminous warmth of this Sun of Righteousness Who – as we sing in today’s Troparion – enlightens the entire universe with His radiance, it comes as no surprise that innocent children in their simplicity and purity of heart, are the ones who rejoice most in this day and in the Divine-Infant Christ. For as the Lord says in the Beatitudes on the Mount, it is these little children who see God most clearly and rejoice in Him, because the Humble One became one of them first, a tiny child, impoverished for our sake and modestly wrapped in swaddling clothes, to be laid in a lowly manger within the cold cave of Bethlehem.

Moreover, in the simplicity of their wisdom inspired by God, the Serbian people have given Christmas the name of ‘Bozic’, a name which means ‘Little God’. And this Feast of ‘the Little God’ is only named as such in the Serbian language, thereby expressing the people’s particular closeness to and love for the God who became incarnate and humbled Himself before us like a child. For in this nation of saints and heroes, where true heroism and Christian holiness are inseparable, its people knew and felt in their hearts how to give a sweet title to this most Holy Day, whose precious Visitor came and is continuously coming to Earth and to every Serbian home.

Hence the multitude of mostly Serbian customs related to this Feast, customs which oftentimes are not strictly ecclesial, but are nevertherless overflowing with warmth and joy in honour of the Christ Child. Who can forget the smell of straw and the Christmas flatbread ‘chesnitsa’, or the decorated oak branches and the crackling of a warm stove while the priest blesses the host and his household, whose children chirrup joyfully as they roll about on the straw-covered floors, the same straw in which their divine ancestor the Christ-Child was once laid. It is therefore no wonder when the great Serbian National Poet Njegoš sings the following through the mouth of Abbot Stefan, saying:

„There is no daylight without eyesight

Nor true celebration without Christmas!

I celebrated Christmas in Bethlehem.

I celebrated it on Mount Athos,

I celebrated it in Holy Kiev,

but here its fame is distinguished

for its simplicity and its joy.“

Indeed, simplicity and joy have been the authentic characteristics of every genuine celebration of Christmas, ever since we entered the sacred community of Orthodox Christian peoples through Holy Baptism. For this is how Christmas is and should be, and this how we as a nation and as individuals have celebrated Christmas to this day. That is why Christmas provides us with the opportunity to look back and collectively examine where we currently stand, and where we as a people should be going. Because by looking closely at the bright star of Bethlehem that has been shining for us continuously now for over two thousand years, we will not lose our way in the dark night, but will be empowered instead to „give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death and to guide our feet in the way of peace” (Luke 1:79). Especially during these dark and stormy times, as we remember the eternal Lord’s lament to the stiff-necked Pharisees, the treacherous High Priests and the misguided Leaders, when He told them: “this is your hour and the power of darkness!” (Luke 22:53).

Both the Star of Bethlehem and the Baby Jesus of Bethlehem, are our long, sharp and double-edged sword that shatters injustice and cuts through the dark shadow of sin and death currently encircling us with a ‘New-Normal’ of the abnormal, imposed upon us by this so-called ‘New Age’ in which we find ourselves. This ‘New-Normality’ brazenly opposes the True Sun of Righteousness, projecting its Luciferian darkness as a new light, replacing righteousness with injustice, and proclaiming its own evil as being the primordial good.Such is the tried and tested formula of the Evil One who, after falling like lightning from the sky, has been unable to create anything new ever since, but rather, reproduces his own wickedness, deceptively disguising it under sugar-coated layers of propaganda, promoting the ‘equality’ and homogeneity of differing individuals, races, genders, peoples and countries. And all this, while in reality desiring nothing more than the creation of a bestial uniformity in which differences are eliminated,everybody becomes the same, and where only the conquering elite are more equal than the rest.

In the midst of this omnipresent satanic simulacrum of apparitions, phantoms and spectres confronting us – all of which are augmented and increasingly imposed by the all-intrusive technologies of ‘Virtual Reality’ and ‘Artificial Intelligence’ – one might be tempted to believe that the Church of God has also lost itself, or that all the true prophets have been killed, and that all the altars have been uprooted and destroyed. Sometimes it seems that even those who should stand in the place of Christ are in fact, more like some holograms of virtual reality, relativizing and therefore betraying the Truth of the authentic Gospel and unadulterated Tradition of the Orthodox Church. Sometimes, we even hear common-sense questions arising from not so pious Serbian people who ask themselves: Wherefrom is such a loud silence of the ‘official’ church hierarchy, in the face of this impending globalist-ecumenist disaster, especially for the Serbian Nation, which should be the first to cry out as did Njegoš, saying: “Though he may be innumerable as leaves are on a mountain, I fear not the devil’s sword, as much as I fear the evil that comes from home!”

Furthermore, what can we say about the treacherous betrayal and surrender of Kosovo and Metohija, if we do not raise our voices to ask the question: „Who am I“, when it comes to betrayal of our Faith? Can we even begin to do anything about the sale of Serbian land and sources of drinking water to foreigners, when we have abandoned our villages and ruined the land? And when the seeds of Christ’s words in our souls have been choked by weeds and thistles, because we have forsaken the Source of Living Water Christ Himself, preferring to drink instead from the fetid pond of European Relativism and Ecumenism? Which regime should we support? How should we protest and what should we demand, when we have made Serbia a devil’s nest in which every depravity, debauchery and immorality is being relentlessly promoted so as to become a part of Serbian everyday life, where the number of divorces threatens to exceed the number of marriages, where fewer and fewer women decide to become mothers, and where grim statistics reveal that the annual number of infanticides committed far exceeds the number of children being born?

We call upon our beloved Serbian people, especially the suffering Serbian people in Kosovo and Metohija, to consider that they also bear the curse of persecution inflicted upon the ‘bishop of the south’, our Father and Shepherd Elder Artemije of blessed memory, a zealous Hierarch and by his life a holy man, whose brothers threw under their feet and intended to expel from the Father’s House like a filthy worn-out rag, though he bore no guilt or sin for which he could be held accountable, but was nevertheless subjected to a rigged and inhuman process of false judgment and trial, while the church and people mostly looked on in silence, and with this silence, consented to the persecution of the righteous. Verily, the sin of this guilt must be washed away by the tears of nationwide repentance!

We write and speak these things, not to judge and to condemn, but so like the Apostle Paul we may cry out: „Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved“ (Rom. 10:1). And so that like St. Sava in the ‘Heavenly Liturgy’ written by St. Nikolaj Velimirovic, we may also weep saying: „Dear God, spare the remnant!“

Let us, therefore, dear spiritual children, cleanse ourselves of the passions and sins that separate us from God, let us guard the Orthodox Faith from ecumenical corruption and innovation, keeping the boundaries and limits set by the Fathers, as we were taught by our holy predecessors, through the unbroken thread of Holy Tradition, bequeathed to us since Pentecost through Saint Sava and other saints from our people, all the way to the most recent holy teachers who shone forth in the Serbian race: the Holy Bishop Nikolaj, Venerable Justin of Celije, and the New Confessor of the Orthodox Faith, Bishop Artemije of blessed memory, by whose prayers and heavenly intercession we may also be strengthened to stand under Saint Sava’s banner in defense of the Holy Church and Holy Serbia.

We are especially pained and distressed to the most delicate depths of our being, by the terrible betrayal and surrender of Kosovo and Metohija that is so obviously and silently happening before our eyes and because of our sins, with the most recent surrender of even the north of Kosovo and Metohija under the cruel boot of Albanian separatists. We invoke the blessing of God upon our suffering people, that the Lord may strengthen them to remain and endure, remembering the folk wisdom that ‘Man proposes but God disposes’, and that all power is but for a short time, whereas God is forever! Therefore, we hold onto God and to the righteousness of the Kingdom of Heaven, hoping that everything else will be added to us, according to the Lord’s promise! May such blessings, thoughts and desires be with all our Orthodox Serbian people, throughout all Serbian lands, wherever they may be, and we pray for them to keep the Kosovo Covenant and Holy Serbia in their hearts!

We also convey our fatherly blessings to all the faithful and suffering Orthodox people in Russia and Ukraine, praying to God that the terrible conflict and bloodshed of brothers of the same faith and blood will soon cease, as we glorify God on high, praying for peace on earth, and declaring with the Angels, the message of goodwill amongst men.

We also greet all the other spiritual children of our God-preserved Diocese of Raska-Prizren in Exile, from whatever nation and tongue, and we invoke God’s blessing upon them, so that they may preserve their confession of faith until the day when the Lord deigns to grant His Church the long-awaited peace, unanimity, and unity of faith!

We greet and bless all of you, our beloved spiritual children, on this wonderful, joyful and radiant day, calling upon the blessings of the Infant Jesus of Bethlehem to visit you and all of your loved ones. With these wonderful festive greetings and blessings, we congratulate you on the incoming year 2025, and we wish that it will be a year of happiness and peace for both our enslaved people and their captive Church of St. Sava, as we salute you with the all-joyful and victorious greeting:

THE PEACE OF GOD BE WITH YOU! CHRIST IS BORN!

On the Nativity of Christ, 2024,

Your prayers before the Infant Jesus of Bethlehem:

+Bishop Ksenofont, head of the ERP in Exile

+Chorbishop Nikolaj, of Stara Raška and Loznica

+Chorbishop Maksim, of Novobrdo and Pannonia

+Chorbishop Naum, of Hvostan and Barajevo