Sermon on Sunday Before of the Lord’s Birth [2011]
Beloved brothers and sisters into the Lord,
By today’s Gospel [Matthew 1, 1-25], our Church tells us, in pressed mode, that Christ, after His humanity, is locatable from point of view historical.
Son of God makes Himself Son of the Virgin…and the Angel of the Lord, the Saint Archangel Gabriel, explains to the Saint and the Righteous Joseph that here is the supernatural birth, divine.
The genealogy of the Lord is one of the arguments of the reality of the Incarnation and, in the same time, the card of His love for us.
Ancestors of Christ are real as is real His incarnation from the Virgin.
And He uniting divinity with humanity, eternity with the time, the Angels with people, tells us all, that He is the source of all joy and unity of all creation.
And all of this we learn that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, that in He fulfilled all the prophecies and that He is with us always.
For that the One who created us and cares for us. Because you can not throw what you love…
And we are His creation of love. Love that we show through the gifts that we do, through the carols that we sing, through the tree that we adorn…and that is an expression of continue joy, uninterrupted in the Kingdom of God.
And so we must see holidays by now: as joys that God arise from the love for us.
Because God wants not only to prove His love but to fill us with it.
He wants us full, beautiful, encouraged by His beauty and care. Because only then, full of the Trinity’s grace, we can feel whole and fulfilled.
In Romania they exist various traditions around the Lord’s Birth, as the Star or Bolindeții (children receive apples, crackers, pretzels, nuts), Sorcova or Plugușorul, the Goat or the Bear.
Children and young people are those who walk with the carol.
They sing…and receive from the host pretzels, apples or money. The gifts are their joy…
And these traditions are not creations of the Church but are irradiations of it. For that these popular traditions have borrowed from of confidence of the Church in good, in joy, in humanity.
On December 20 we cut the pork…and we adorn the Christmas tree…and we put gifts in it or near it.
But not everyone enjoys of such joy…because poverty is one of the impediments. For children from poor families are only the consolations of carols and of snow.
And if we have of all, then to think and to those who have only failures. Amen!