Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne Metropolitan Kirill celebrates Divine Liturgy on the Nativity of Christ at the Christ the Saviour Cathedral

Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad celebrated Divine Liturgy on the Nativity of Christ at the Christ the Saviour Cathedral on January 7 at night. Concelebrating were archbishop Arseny of Istra, bishops Alexander of Dmitrov, Mark of Yegorievsk and Nikodim of Shatura.

Federal TV channels broadcast the service from Christ the Saviour Cathedral where several thousand believers gathered for prayer.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his wife attended the festive divine service.

Metropolitan Kirill addressed his archpastoral word to those gathered before Divine Liturgy. He warmly greeted them with the great, radiant and joyful feast of the Nativity of Christ, and continued to say, ‘Today we recall the great Divine mystery which we shall never comprehend. God has willed to become man, one of us, and to share our ordinary human life with all its joys and sorrows, love and betrayal, friendship and craftiness, successes and failures. God has entered human history to join humanity through His holiness and to save us through his sacrifice for human sins thus granting Divine peace and the joy of salvation to us.’

‘The Lord has accomplished it out of love. God loves us as the best parents love their children. This means that all people, be they saints or sinners, have hope to receive the gift of God and His forgiveness. God will give support to our aspirations, and each man who turns to God with faith, feels God’s presence in the world and knows that the prayer to Him will never be disgraced. God gives His love to us, and we respond to God and His love by our faith and hope. We believe that God has saved humanity and will not abandon us if we do not abandon Him.’

‘The Church calls the Nativity of Christ a feast of hope. It is with this hope that we calmly and humbly but confidently look at the future. Some people say that the new year will be a hard one with its looming economic crisis. We know that those responsible for national economy are exerting tremendous efforts to alleviate the blow of the crisis. We should be strong to worthily encounter this problem as well as any difficulty including that in private, family and public life. We should combine the efforts of the country with our inner spiritual strength.’

Metropolitan Kirill reminded the worshippers that the Greek word crisis means a crucial point, a judgment. Any crisis in life is the judgment of God that separates truth from lie and bares falsehood. As the world today is experiencing economic crisis, it means that this judgment discloses certain global human falsehood. Though this crisis did not start in our country, we feel its cold touch and we should know that it is God’s judgment over human falsehood, greed, excessive wish to have as much as possible, loss of control over consumption, and a wish to become richer by all means while forgetting true values and ideas.’

Metropolitan Kirill thinks that if prosperity is a result of human labour rather than of financial engineering, if economics is based on a simple principle that intellectual, physical and even spiritual labour produce real values, then we shall have no such crises.

‘I believe that God will help Russia. We shall pray to the Lord to help us to overcome this temptation that is a result of human sinfulness, but also to come out from the crisis purified and illumined and with correct understanding of how to live without sins against God, including those in economics.’

Addressing the head of the Russian state, Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad said, ‘I would like to wholeheartedly wish you, highly respected Dmitry Anatolievich, God’s help at this difficult time. You know that the people support you, and I think that this support will inspire you to courageous resistance to all calamities that may befall us.’

‘I would like to greet all of you, dear brothers and sisters, with the Nativity of Christ and wish you God’s help,’ Metropolitan Kirill continued and also greeted the inhabitants of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenia, Kirghyzia, Tajikistan and all countries within the canonical jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate, the faithful of the Russian Orthodox Church living in the North and South America, Western and Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia, Japan, Australia, ‘in all places where Orthodox people live, build churches, learn to live and try to live as Christians.’

‘May the Lord, in spite of all possible trials and crises, bless us all,’ Patriarchal Locum Tenens said in conclusion. ‘There is a Russian saying, “Dreams may be bad, but God is merciful.” We believe in God’ mercy and ask Him to be merciful to us, while we shall with faith and hope call upon His holy name, the name of our Saviour who was born in Bethlehem for us and for our salvation.’

After the reading from the Gospel, the sacristan of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour archpriest Mikhail Ryazantsev read out the Christmas message of His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia.

The Christmas message of the Locum Tenens of the Patriarch Throne Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad was read out after the communion verse.

The Divine service being over, Troparion and Kontakion to the feast were sung.

• Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne Metropolitan Kirill celebrates Divine Liturgy on the Nativity of Christ at the Christ the Saviour Cathedral
• Christmas Message of the Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne