Christmas Eve

6 January 1990

...I shall now say the same things which I have said to our people in Russia, to all those of you who are here present, and to the many, the many who will be listening to our broadcast.

We have, just a week ago, met face to face the New Year; we met it with hope, and with joy, and yet, with a hope full of fear for the future.

Hope and joy indeed, because one State after the other, one nation after the other has shaken off the fetters of slavery and come to freedom; but freedom is frail; a long experience of life, of our knowledge how to make choices, and how to make responsible decisions is necessary; we must pray for all those who are now shaking the destiny of Europe and of all people that God give them wisdom, clarity of mind, and strengths.

But also Russia is now facing new problems; the freedom which was given has endangered also itself, and the wholeness, the peace of the country, and in particular, in the Ukraine and the Western parts of the Soviet Union a strife has risen between the Uniates and the Orthodox(s); one church after the other is taken away by violence by the Uniates; the houses of priests who refuse to renounce Orthodoxy are been burnt down, and their families in number of places have been murdered; priests who refuse to return or to join the Uniate Church are in danger of their lives; but those who d o so, are re-ordained, people are rebaptised, re-married; Orthodoxy seems to be totally rejected by our brothers in the Christian faith. One of our Bishops, Archbishop Makary of Ivano-Frankovsk is blocked in the sanctuary of his Cathedral and has undertaken a hunger-strike. But even this does not solve the problem...

We must pray with all our hearts, with all our energy for peace; not for the shaky peace of human compromise, but for a peace born of mutual understanding. What does the keeping the 20th anniversary of the Vatican decree of Ecumenism mean, if the Vatican remains silent, and the churches are been occupied, houses are been burnt, and people are been murdered?

But the wrongs are never on one side; we must pray that the peace of God m a y descend upon the hearts of all men; we must call e v e r y o n e to this prayer! E v e r y o n e must be called to do something either on one level or another to solve this problem.

We have entered a New Year at the same time with joy and with hope; but also with a grave sense of the frailty of human relationships, of the frailty of Christian love. And how frightening that is in the face of the incarnation of God Who has so b e l i e v e d in man, so l o v e d man that He gave His life for us!

We can enter this year with the words which were pronounced on Christmas night in 39 by King George: “I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: Give me a light that I may trade safely into the unknown!.. And he replied, ‘Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the hand of God: that shall be to you better than light, and safer that a known way...’

Let us enter this year with Christ, as he entered it: ready to give our lives for the sake of God and of our neighbour! To give all we possess, all we a r e for the triumph of God; because the triumph of God is the victory of Man.

Let us believe in man as passionately, generously, as God Himself believes in us! And then Christmas, the incarnation of God will become for us and in us a true power of newness! Amen.