CHRISTMAS EPISTLE 2025

KSENOFONT

By the grace of God

Orthodox Bishop

of the Diocese of Ras-Prizren

in EXILE

To all the Clergy, Monastics and all the Orthodox Faithful
Sons and Daughters of the Serbian Orthodox Church,
we salute you with the all-joyful Christian greeting:

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

Thou wast born secretly in the cave, but heaven spoke through a star

and proclaimed Thee to all, O Saviour. And it brought to Thee Magi,

who worshipped Thee with faith: wherefore have mercy upon them and upon us.

(Troparion after the first reading at Vespers of the Nativity of Christ)

On this night, beloved brothers, sisters and spiritual children, the little town of Bethlehem becomes the centre of one of the most important events on earth, and in all visible and invisible worlds. Because in the dark night, in the cold cave and in the lowly manger, the Creator of the Universe is born as a child wrapped in humble swaddling clothes. On this night, the words of Tertullian are made clear and manifest – “Credo quia absurdum est!” I believe because it is illogical! It is illogical because the Virgin gives birth – without labour pains; the King is born – in a cave and in a manger; God becomes man – so that man may become God; Angels and Shepherds celebrate as in one single choir; the Wise Men of the East humbly bow their knees and lower their heads before the Divine-Child clad in infant’s garments! All creation rejoices and sings with one voice: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will among men! For as Saint Chrysostom declares in one of his sermons, “Christ is born today, and Bethlehem becomes like Paradise.”

By citing the Old Testament Prophet Micah, the Evangelist Matthew testifies that “you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the princes of Judah; for out of you will come a Leader who will shepherd my people Israel.” In this way, Matthew’s Gospel plainly echoes Micah’s prophecy proclaiming that from Bethlehem will come the One “who will be ruler in Israel, and whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.” (Micah 5:2)

This One who will be ruler in Israel, and whom the Prophet Daniel saw as “the Ancient of Days…with a garment white as snow and hair white as wool,” (Dan. 7:9) was also seen by Saint John the Theologian and Evangelist appearing at the end of time, bearing that final word of Love, Truth and Justice belonging exclusively to God alone, whom Saint John likewise described to us in his Book of Revelation as One whose “head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like a flame of fire.” (Rev. 1:14)

Thus does He, the Ancient of Days, become the Newly Born. He Who Is and Was before every beginning, the Pre-Eternal, the Only-Begotten of the Father before all ages, is now born in a cold cave, wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid humbly in a manger. He takes our human body, in order to give us His freedom from sin, death and the devil, granting us divinization by grace and eternal life, as His final word bestowed upon a suffering mankind, afflicted with mortality.

Therefore, all Orthodox peoples everywhere, and especially our own Serbian people, feel a special closeness with God in today’s Feast, so much so, that in the Serbian language, we affectionately call Christmas Božić, or the Feast of the Little God. For this reason, the great abundance of folk carols, pious customs and heart-warming joy are dedicated precisely to the Feast of Christmas, not just by us Serbs, but by all other Orthodox Christians also.

Meanwhile, the boisterous excitement of the West’s pre-Christmas consumerism, with its lavishly illuminated shop windows and excessively decorated exteriors, is gradually subsiding and passing away. In such a society which no longer remembers what and whom to celebrate on this Feast, one hears people increasingly greeting each other not with the traditional “Merry Christmas!”, but with the politically correct and neutral greeting of “Happy Holidays!?” instead, so that the admonition of the Prophet Isaiah crying “My soul hates your feasts!” (Is. 1:14) is left resounding in our ears.

The Orthodox Church however, is still preparing with fasting and prayer, to welcome its most beloved Guest according to the Julian Calendar, a calendar which has been sanctified throughout long centuries of liturgical use. Unfortunately, together with various other innovations, many local Churches have also adopted the innovation of the Gregorian (falsely called New Julian) Calendar, which – for strictly mundane and secular reasons – was deceitfully and forcibly introduced into the individual local Orthodox Churches; and this, without any ecclesiological or pastoral necessity whatsoever, but rather, in slavish conformity to the spirit of this fallen world. Let us therefore intensify our prayers, for the Divine-Infant of Bethlehem to bless all Orthodox Christians and their local Churches, so that alongside other novelties and deviations alien to the Orthodox Tradition, they also reject the innovation of the New Calendar, that we may, not just with one mouth and one heart, but also on the same day, celebrate all Feasts of the Church Year together.

For the cold cave of Bethlehem is illumined not only by the light of the star, but by the light of the Divine-Child born therein, the Sun of Righteousness. And it is this Sun of Righteousness who beckons us to leave behind every earthly care in this life, so that Christmas will not be a Feast Day of external adornments, sparkling lights, excessive consumerism and superficial revelries, while the soul itself remains but a frozen and empty cave.

Indeed, being symbolic of the human heart, the Cave of Bethlehem, remains for us both an example and a mirror in which every human soul is reflected, and which challenges us to see whether we have any room left within ourselves for the advent of Christ. Beyond all the luxurious peripheral glitter of dazzlingly decorated streets, shop windows and homes, we may well ask ourselves: is there a place within us where the quiet and joyful light of the holy and imperishable glory of Our Heavenly Father can enter? And apart from the jovial clamour of festivities, can our heart perceive the sound of a gentle breeze in which the Lord dwells? Therefore, dear brothers, sisters and spiritual children, let us go beyond the superficial celebration of our holidays, especially the great Feast of the Nativity of Christ; and having received into our hearts these wonderful tidings about God’s love magnificently manifesting itself in Bethlehem, let us allow the Divine-Child of Bethlehem to fill and to transform our hearts and our entire lives. In so doing, we can accomplish what the Apostle Paul calls “the power of God made perfect in weakness.” Because only through the power of humility and self-sacrificial love for God and neighbour, can this love become the most beautiful hallmark of our lives.

Furthermore, when we celebrate Christmas spiritually, we become fully aware that it is not just a commemoration of a miraculous event occurring over two thousand years ago, but a solemn celebration of Emmanuel, the God Who is with us and Who is ours and Who is inseparably united with us. Only such celebrations and such Feasts – which are the confirmation and seal of our faith in the immortality of man when united with God – will be capable of offering a sweet and fragrant sacrifice to this Emmanuel, this God who is with us.

Alas dear brethren, we know that, according to Saint John, the Evangelist and Theologian “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19). For the number of false teachers and charlatans is steadily increasing, as they attempt to convince us that we do not need clear knowledge of and communion with Our God-Emmanuel, while bombarding us with overwhelming amounts of conflicting information, deliberately selected and imposed upon us on a daily basis. Today, through the omnipresent deployment of so-called AI-generated ‘reality’, the dark princes of this world feed the vanity, negligence and pride of fallen man through illusion, deception and lies, within a virtual world without a God, a world where man will be able to do everything, but in appearance alone; a world where man will have an answer to everything, but without true living power, offering precise responses compiled from lifeless words, spoken with neither heart nor soul, thereby preparing the way for what the Apostle John saw and described in his Book of Revelation concerning “Mystery Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth”; for it is she who makes the whole world drink of her fornication, and who is herself “drunk with the blood of the saints and martyrs of Jesus.” (Rev. 17:6)

Thus does the celebration of these wonderful and glorious Feast Days gradually move ever closer into the domain of a virtually generated reality, foreshadowed by the live broadcasts of Divine Liturgies transmitted via small electronic screens, when direct Eucharistic participation in these Services was substituted with the audio-visual spectacle of television broadcasts instead. The Feast Days, celebrating our personal relationship with each other and with God, cannot and must not be reduced to an external virtual experience and communication; a communication which, unfortunately, is becoming increasingly and everywhere present, thereby destroying real interpersonal contact and communion between human beings the world over.

At the same time, it is truly lamentable to observe those who should be Shepherds of the Church of Christ – and who should be commemorating that Emmanuel is God with us, and bearing witness to the Faith of the Lamb while preaching and testifying to the true Communion of Saints in the Church – are instead, actively partaking in the treacherous grisly feast, previously depicted in Saint John’s Book of Revelation. Thus do they summon us to the false communion of Truth with falsehood, of light with darkness, of the True Church of Christ with the simulated congregation of the Antichrist, all of which we have been witnessing for numerous decades now, through the progressively brazen and aggressive Ecumenical Movement, one of whose contemporary luminaries has called it “a one-way road of no return.” We are, therefore, not taken aback by the spectacle of this year’s Ecumenical performance in Iznik, the once glorious city of Nicaea, over whose ruins the priests of the New World Order mocked the True and saving Faith of the Nicene Fathers, placing themselves and all those who follow them under the Anathemas pronounced by the Fathers of the Church of God.

Thankfully, however, the God-Child Christ is born in Bethlehem, uniting His Divinity and Humanity in His miraculous person, to establish us in Himself, to transform and regenerate us for the Kingdom of Heaven, which, according to His promise, is found within us. Thus do we recall the following declaration of Venerable Justin of Ćelije that demands the attention of Serbs today, more so than ever before: “If in a nation God is not placed above all and man before all, neither wise statesmen, nor skilful politicians, nor military power, nor the wealth of all citizens will be able to help that nation.”

In similar vein, the golden-mouthed Pan-Serbian Saint Nikolai Velimirović proclaims in his own Žiča Constitution: “Neither culture, nor progress, nor industry, nor science, nor the state, but man above all, and God above man!” Only with these pure, Pan-National and Pan-Serbian ideas can we today emerge from all the labyrinths and defilements, dead-ends and abysses, to which every secular humanism inevitably leads us. Instead, we must place high above ourselves, the guiding star of Bethlehem and the humble wisdom of the Wise Men of the East, who submitted their knowledge before the feet of the Christ-Child, who is the One and Only Sun of Righteousness.

Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, we admonish and call upon all of us to a nationwide repentance on bended knee for a return to the Church of Christ as preserved for us by Saint Sava; for this Church alone has always united us around the warmly illuminating flame of the Christmas hearth, our Holy Altars and our True Orthodox Faith, no matter what national distress and danger we may find ourselves in. This imperative of repentance and return applies especially so today, at a time when unpopular and degenerate politicians, regimes and tycoons, driven by anti-Serbian and anti-Orthodox villainy, are dragging the longsuffering Serbian people from one end of the world to the other, seducing them by smoke and mirrors and with sweetly-worded false promises, craftily calculated to sedate and desensitize the Serbian conscience, so that very soon, we will have nothing left other than to cry out with Saint Sava: “Enough, God, spare the remnant!”

Nevertheless, inspired by this joy-making sorrow, and being in every way, according to the words of the Apostle Paul “troubled, but not crushed, perplexed, but not in despair” (2 Cor. 4:8), we warmly greet you all, our wonderful spiritual children, gathered this morning in our sanctuaries and catacombs, both in Serbia and scattered throughout the world. We especially greet the brave prisoners of Christ’s love in crucified Kosovo and Metohija, who endure and persevere in conditions unworthy of man – especially the man of proud Europe, who like some distant stepmother, has been callously ignoring the suffering of the Serbian people in Kosovo and Metohija for over twenty-five years now. We greet all of you, throughout all Serbian lands, from Knin to Gevgelija, with a prayerful desire that the light of the Sun of Righteousness, the Divine-Infant Our Lord Jesus Christ, may illumine your hearts, while also granting you the necessary strength to proudly guard His distinctive presence in your ancestral homelands, with no retreat and no surrender.

We also extend a fatherly greeting to all of you from various nations, all the way from America, through the lands of Russia and Ukraine – whose peoples are currently suffering at each others’ hands, despite sharing the same blood and same faith – to distant Australia, and to all of you who have placed yourselves under the highly-raised confessional banner of the Diocese of Ras-Prizren in Exile, a banner which was so firmly embraced and held aloft by the Holy Confessor of Orthodoxy, our blessed Father of heavenly repose, Bishop Artemije.

Saluting you once again on this Great Feast of peace and joy, we wish you all a Happy New Year 2026 from the depths of our being, with our Arch-Pastoral blessing and in the sure hope that the heavenly peace and joy of Bethlehem’s Child will fill your hearts!

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

On the Nativity of Christ 2024

Your Supplicants before the Divine Child of Bethlehem:

+Bishop Ksenofont Head of the Diocese of Ras-Prizren in Exile

+Chorbishop Nikolaj of Stari Ras and Loznica

+Chorbishop Maksim of Novo Brdo and Pannonia

+Chorbishop Naum of Hvosno and Barajevo