NEW YORK: 9 January 2026
Nativity message of Metropolitan Mark of Berlin and Germany

Christ is born, glorify Him!

Beloved in the Lord Venerable Priests and Deacons,
God-loving Monks and Nuns, Dear Brothers and Sisters:

This year, the Christian world celebrates the 1700th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council. This council condemned the Arian heresy, defined the nature of Christ as consubstantial with the Father, the true God, as the Son of God and God-Man—revealing the meaning and significance of the incarnation of God. In the Nicene Creed it is said:

"He came for the sake of humans and for our salvation, descending and becoming incarnate, taking on human nature, suffering and rising on the third day, ascending to heaven and coming to judge the living and the dead."

The Lord came to earth to give us eternal life in goodness. According to His word, “No one is good except God alone” (Matthew 19:17). In His incarnation is hidden—and for those who desire, who believe in Him—it is also revealed, His mystery, the mystery of His love.

Before Him and after Him, all sorts of sages, thinkers and philosophers, kings and leaders, reformers and revolutionaries came, promising various blessing. But what the Son of God, Christ, gave us – no one could and no one ever will be able to give. By becoming a man, the Lover of Mankind lifted us to His divine height, granted us divine life – made us gods by grace.
We can live as Christians only when we ourselves feel that He, only He and no one else, grants us goodness, immortality, eternal life.

This is how the apostles, martyrs, and ascetics lived – Christians of all times. The distinction of a Christian from all other people is the sense of eternity in Christ. In Christ, we are eternal, immortal, and limited by nothing and no one. The Holy Fathers revealed this experience to us, clearly laid out in the Creed, showing that every person can live according to their calling only if they consciously fill themselves with Christ and His eternity. Each prayer fills a person with this eternity, with divine power. Even more so, the Holy Sacraments of the Church of Christ fill us with it.

The Creed, which was adopted 1700 years ago and later supplemented and confirmed at another Ecumenical Council, shows us the path to life. Those who do not believe and do not get baptized remain in the embrace of death: whoever does not believe will be condemned; but whoever believes in Christ will be saved (Mark 16:16; John 5:17-47), for faith in Him is life. Life in Him and through Him. By being baptized, we are filled with Him, with all His powers. This is the main idea of the Fathers of the First Council: Christ is the God-Man. Whoever abides in Christ always receives His divine powers.

Our task is to guard the gift received at Baptism, to nurture it, to imitate the Holy Fathers, striving, until we come to the unity of faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the full stature of Christ (Ephesians 4:13).

Spiritual wealth cannot be measured. Therefore, those who strive do not consider themselves as having already fully attained the Kingdom, but—by increasingly recognizing its greatness—rather see themselves as unreliable, inexperienced, and unworthy, sometimes even unhappy and abandoned by God. Yet in practice they are perfected, for “Whoever believes in Me will do the works I do; and he will do even greater works than these” (John 14:12).

Through virtues, faith instills in a person the entire God-Man Christ, all divine powers. We share one life with Him, one immortality, and the Source of this life is surpassing love, the all-encompassing, unified Holy Trinity. And so, our Life is born in Bethlehem, Eternal Life! We glorify It. We thank the good God for His great, immeasurable blessings, for being born among us and revealing to us the path to true birth!

+MARK
Metropolitan of Berlin and Germany Berlin
Nativity of Christ 2025/2026