Such is our wonderful greeting at this forty day period of celebrating the birth of our Saviour!

We celebrate an inexplicable event: God became human and dwelt among us! God entered into our humanity so that we might understand the extent of divine love and the purpose of Creation. Divine love calls us into a life with the Holy Trinity because Creation’s very purpose is to be with God!

In the fourth century, St. Athanasius wrote that God became human so that we could become divine. In

the sixth century, St. Maximus the Confessor wrote of the divinization of all creation through the Incarnation. The struggle in defense of icons rested upon a faith in the goodness of creation through which God’s presence is made manifest.

This is the immense gift of the incarnation of Christ, the Son of God. We are reminded of our purpose: to be with God, to be agents of God’s love and compassion. This is why we so gladly proclaim on the Eve of Christmas and the Eve of Theophany: “God is with us, rejoice all you peoples and be humbled, for God is with us!”

Fr. Myroslaw