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This year for the Great Feast of the Nativity of Christ we prayed in the Samoan Christian Centre, which we hope to purchase soon as our parish centre and new church.

On the eve, Matins was served for families with young children.  The Vigil began at 10 pm and ended with a Midnight Liturgy (there were 80 communicants), the first-ever Midnight service held for Nativity in New Zealand.  Later that morning, a second Liturgy was celebrated (95 communicants, mostly children) with the Сhildren’s Yolka and gifts following.Continue Reading

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Archpastors and brethren, most honorable fathers, & all Orthodox children of the Russian Diaspora, beloved in the Lord!

I congratulate you with all my heart on the all-glorious and divinely salvific feast of the Nativity of Christ and the impending New Year!

Each year the feast of the Nativity of Christ enters into our hearts with ineffable spiritual joy—the joy that came to earth when the angel of the Lord announced the birth of Christ the Savior to the simple shepherds of Bethlehem. The feast of the Nativity also fills us with radiant joy through the profound content of its divine services, which illumine our souls: the deeply edifying and divinely inspired hymnody of the Nativity and the readings taken from the prophecies.

Hieromartyr Hilarion (Troitsky) wrote thus of the miracle of the birth of the divine Infant: “The heavens proclaimed the birth of God on earth, yet this proclamation was magnificent and silent, because the stars were the heavens’ mouth. This event, which the whole Christian world now celebrates, at the time passed almost completely unnoticed.” and this was probably because everything that is great takes place in stillness and mystery.Continue Reading