Tag: Christianity

In broadcast media and shopping centers, Christmas carols appear early, but vanish before the last of your leftover Christmas cookies.

In the Church, however, there is one song that continues its run through much of the year.

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people of good will.” The Church calls it the “Gloria,” and it is a fixture of the Mass on Sundays and feast days.

In many ways it was the first Christmas carol. St. Luke presents its debut in his account of Jesus’ birth. “An angel” speaks the words, backed up by “a multitude of the heavenly host” (Luke 2:13–14). And the original audience was not shoppers, but “shepherds in that region living in the fields and keeping the night watch over their flock” (2:8).

The Gospel doesn’t say the angels sang the words, but Christians have always interpreted the passage that way. We still sing: “Angels we have heard on high / sweetly singing o’er the plain.”

In the earliest days of the Church, some unknown poet took the angels’ lines and used them as the opening of an exuberant song — resulting in the prayer we still sing at a typical Sunday Mass.

In ancient times, for music in worship, the Church usually favored lyrics from the Bible, either the Psalms of King David or canticles such as Mary’s Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55) or the songs of Simeon (Luke 2:29–32) and Zechariah (Luke 1:68–79).

But Christians sometimes produced new songs, composed in the style of the biblical psalms. They were called “personal psalms” or “private psalms” (in Latin, “psalmi idiotici”). They were very common, but only three have survived from antiquity, and only one of them was made a permanent part of the Mass. Catholics in the west know it today as the “Gloria.”

It begins with the words of the Gospel, but goes on to praise the Lord in what seems to be a mashup of outbursts:

We praise you,

we bless you,

we adore you,

we glorify you,

we give you thanks for your great glory.

The personal psalms were often improvised on the spot, and the “Gloria” captures the qualities of spontaneous praise and love for God.

Mention of it first appears in the records of the ancient Roman Church, which were preserved in “The Book of the Popes.” There we find that the song was introduced into the Mass by Pope Telesphorus, who reigned from A.D. 128 to 139. But he didn’t write the “Gloria.” It was a Greek text already in use in the Eastern churches. Greek was for the first three centuries the language of the Roman liturgy, too, so it was a perfect fit.

In the eastern lands, the “Gloria” had been (and remained) a daily devotion. It was offered at dawn as the first prayer of the day. As the Christmas song first announced the Savior’s birth, so morning prayer — with the “Gloria” — served as a kind of “Christmas” for each day.

But the Roman Church, at least in the beginning, employed the “Gloria” only once a year. It was a Christmas song, and so it belonged in the midnight Mass for Christmas Eve — thus replicating for the congregation the experience of Bethlehem’s shepherds, who watched their flocks by night.

Such was the case for centuries. By the end of the fourth century, the Romans had abandoned liturgical Greek and were celebrating Mass in the Latin vernacular. Around the year A.D. 360, St. Hilary of Poitiers (who had spent a busy exile in the East) produced a Latin translation of the “Gloria.”

Even then, however, the “Gloria” was still the exclusive property of the bishops, and they could use it only at Christmas.

It would be another 100 years and more before Pope Symmachus I (A.D. 498-514) relaxed the restrictions on the “Gloria.” He extended its use to Sundays and feast days. He even allowed simple priests to intone the “Gloria” — but only at Easter.

It was not till the second millennium that the “Gloria” invaded and pervaded the liturgical year of the Western Church. It became a distinguishing mark of Sundays and feast days. It was, and is still, suppressed during the seasons of Advent and Lent. In Advent, it would be inappropriate because the Church is awaiting Christmas, and the “Gloria” is a song proper to Christmas. And in the solemn season of Lent its exuberance would seem out of place.

The “Gloria” is a “doxology,” which literally means a word of praise. In the Church it is known as “The Great Doxology,” because of its length, its status, and its antiquity. It has been the subject of profound commentaries down the ages.

Dynamic, ecstatic, the “Gloria” serves as an outpost of Christmas even in times most distant — even in the heat of the summer.

The 20th-century liturgical theologian Maurice Zundel waxed poetic when he spoke of the “Gloria”: “What a conquest it would be, what a dream, or rather what an inexpressible reality, what an advance in depth, and what a peaceful victory, if you would but genuinely believe the words you utter, and would but put your entire soul into the praise to which the Church invites you, in her Gloria, that it may be Christmas in the world, through your heart, today.”

Corfu, Greece, December 13, 2023

Photo: imcorfu.gr     

The 4th-century Holy Hierarch and Wonderworker is greatly beloved in the Orthodox world, making the Greek island of Corfu, the home of his relics since 1453, a popular place of pilgrimage for all Orthodox Christians.

He is festively celebrated several times throughout the year, including with a three-day pilgrimage around his main feast day of December 12, which began with a pre-festival Sunday Divine Liturgy this year at the Church of St. Spyridon on the island, celebrated by His Eminence Metropolitan Nektarios of Corfu, the local Metropolis reports.

Photo: imcorfu.gr The church was packed with Orthodox faithful from throughout Greece and abroad. “Our saints, like St. Spyridon, became partakers of the knowledge of God,” Met. Nektarios preached, “and transcended all the pettiness and weaknesses that continue to bind man. So let’s reconsider in our lives the great benefits that Jesus has given to our lives, and let’s live the essence of faith, and let’s not stay in the form and letter of the Law, which kills.”

The three-day feast proper began on Monday morning with a paraklesis to the great Wonderworker. After the reading of the Holy Gospel, the reliquary of the saint was brought out and placed standing upright. The veneration of the relics continued day and night, as the church remained open around the clock.

At the Vespers for the feast itself, Met. Nektarios was concelebrated by Metropolitan Dorotheos of Syros, Tinos, Andros, Kea, and Milos.

In his homily, Met. Nektarios preached about how St. Spyridon “spoke the Christ-centered word in his episcopal ministry. He spoke with a heartfelt word, a word of Divine knowledge, aimed at building up and saving people.”

He continued:

His word was sanctifying, transforming the hearts of those who accepted it. As he was a co-celebrant with the angels, he calmed people, even those who thought evil against him, precisely because he exuded holiness. But his word was also miraculous. He spoke to the river and made it turn its current backward to pass and save people endangered by slander. He told the snake to become gold, to have mercy on his poor fellow man. He spoke to his daughter Irene in the grave and showed the resurrection, but also the love for the woman to whom he had entrusted the precious jewel. St. Spyridon showed people and continues to show all of us what it means to speak the words and the Word of God.

Photo: imcorfu.gr     

In our days, “corrupt, slanderous, and barren words often come out of our mouths,” which wound people. Thus, we should take the example of St. Spyridon and begin speaking the word of truth.

The three-day pilgrimage culminated with the Divine Liturgy for the feast of St. Spyridon yesterday, presided over by Met. Dorotheos together with Met. Nektarios. The visiting hierarch offered the homily, emphasizing everyone’s joy in honoring the memory of a Holy Hierarch who was a shepherd both of irrational animals, as a herdsman, and of rational beings—the people whom God entrusted to him.

Met. Dorotheos spoke of how St. Spyridon shamed the heresiarch Arius and converted a pagan philosopher at the First Ecumenical Council, had a family but was not overcome by worldly matters, and “fought life’s challenges and temptations and emerged victorious” and thus “received the eternal gift of the incorruption of his body.”

Photo: imcorfu.gr     

The Metropolitan preached:

The incorruption of the saint’s body gives us the opportunity, by venerating him, to experience the presence of the grace of the Holy Spirit. The saint continues the life of Christ in our own lives and shows it to all of us. St. Spyridon believed in Christ, and with his presence, he gives strength, hope, courage, and encourages us to stand upright. Things around us are crumbling and being destroyed, new things that seem strong come, but we need the presence of God to judge, endure, and stand upright on life’s difficult paths. God accompanies us, provided we have inner purity and our personal cooperation, so that we may ask him not to forsake us.

Following the service, the church again remained open around the clock as the faithful continued to flock to the church to venerate their beloved St. Spyridon.

The festival continued with Vespers that evening and later the All-Night Vigil and concluded with the Divine Liturgy celebrated this morning.

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St. Lucy was born to a wealthy noble family in Sicily in 283. After her father died, Lucy was raised by her mother, Eutychia. At a young age, Lucy consecrated her virginity to God, and hoped to give her wealth to the poor.

When Lucy was older, Eutychia arranged a marriage for her. For three years, Lucy managed to put off the wedding, praying at the tomb of St. Agatha that her mother would be moved to change her mind. Eutychia eventually recognized Lucy’s desire to consecrate herself to God, after she was cured of a lengthy illness.

The rejected groom denounced Lucy as a Christian to the pagan government. The governor tried to force Lucy into prostitution as penalty for her faith, but the guards who came to get her could not move her, even when she was hitched to a team of oxen. The governor gave up, and ordered her to be put to death instead.

Lucy was tortured, and the guards tore out her eyes, but when they surrounded her with burning wood, the fires quickly died out. She was then stabbed to death with a dagger.

According to legend, St. Lucy’s eyesight was restored before she died. She is the patron saint of the blind and those with eye troubles.

Morogoro, Morogoro Region, Tanzania, December 11, 2023

Photo: Facebook     

The holy Church of Sts. Arsenios the Cappadocian and Paisios the Athonite in Morogoro in eastern Tanzania was the scene of a mass Baptism over the weekend.

Altogether, 182 people, including dozens of former Muslims, received Holy Baptism at the hands of Metropolitan Dimitrios of Irinoupolis (Patriarchate of Alexandria) and concelebrating priests after undergoing catechism by Archimandrite Eleftherios (Balakos), reports Orthodox Mission of Tanzania.

Photo: Facebook     

Such mass Baptisms have been held every year before Christmas for 19 years now. Met. Dimitrios has baptized more than 60,000 people in Tanzania since 2004.

The Divine Liturgy was also celebrated, at which the newly glorified received the precious Body and Blood of Christ for the first time.

“The joy of the newly baptized (among them dozens of Muslims) was truly touching, with faces that shone with grace and devoutness, they celebrated their integration into the Orthodox family of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church!!!” the report concludes.

Mass Baptisms are a common occurrence in Tanzania and throughout Africa. OrthoChristian has reported on four in Tanzania just in the past year (see Dozens of former Muslims baptized in TanzaniaMore than 100 people, including dozens of former Muslims, were joyfully united to Christ in holy Baptism in Tanzania on Sunday.

“>here, Dozens upon dozens baptized into Christ in TanzaniaA joyous event was held in Tanzania over the weekend, as dozens of adults and children were baptized into Christ at the St. Dionysios of Olympos Missionary Center in Iringa.”>here, Catechumens, children, and infants baptized in TanzaniaAnother mass Baptism was celebrated in Tanzania recently. Group Baptisms have been a common occurrence throughout Africa for years now.”>here, and Tanzania: Mass Baptism on the feast of the TransfigurationNearly two dozen people in one city in Tanzania were able to celebrate the feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord this year as newly illumined Orthodox Christians.”>here).

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In 1531, St. Juan Diego, a poor man from Tepeyac, was walking to Mass, when the Virgin Mary came to him on a hill near Mexico City. She appeared as an Indian maiden, and spoke to Juan Diego in his own language. Mary told him that she was the Mother of the True God.

She sent Juan Diego to tell the bishop that a church should be built on the site where she appeared. When he met with Juan Diego, the bishop asked for a sign from the lady. Mary healed Juan Diego’s uncle, who was seriously ill, and told him that she would provide a sign.

When Juan Diego went back to the bishop, he carried fresh roses in his tilma (cloak) as a sign from Our Lady. He opened his cloak, and imprinted on it was an image of Mary as she had appeared on the hill. The bishop fell to his knees and believed.

To this day, the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, as she is now known, remains untouched by age or decay. The eyes of Mary on the tilma are said to reflect what she saw in 1531. Her message for the universal Church is one of love and compassion, and she promised to help and protect all mankind.

Many many cures and miracles are attributed to Our Lady of Guadalupe. Every year, more than 10 million people visit her Basilica, which is the most popular Marian shrine in the world. In Los Angeles, thousands of faithful venerate her in an annual procession and Mass.

Our Lady of Guadalupe is the patron saint of Mexico and the Americas.

The council of the Synod of Bishops will ask Pope Francis to authorize studies on the need to update canon law, revise the rules for priestly formation, deepen a theological reflection on the diaconate — including the possibility of ordaining women deacons — and consider revising a document that provides norms for the relationship of a bishop with members of religious orders in his diocese.

“These are matters of great importance, some of which need to be considered at the level of the whole church and in collaboration with the dicasteries of the Roman Curia,” said a statement from the Ordinary Council of the General Secretariat of the Synod.

The council met at the Vatican Dec. 5 to discuss preparations for the second assembly of the synod on synodality, which Pope Francis has said will meet in October 2024. Exact dates have not been set.

In the statement, published Dec. 12, the council said the list of study topics it  will ask the pope to approve was requested by members of the synod assembly in October. As part of the synthesis report of the assembly, each of the requests was approved by more than 80% of the synod members.

Studying the topics, particularly their theological implications, was seen by synod members as an important part of responding to questions and concerns raised by Catholics in listening sessions prior to the assembly as they sought to discern ways to ensure the gifts and talents of all baptized Catholics were recognized and welcomed.

“Groups of experts from all continents together with the relevant dicasteries of the Roman Curia and coordinated by the General Secretariat of the Synod will be asked to work in a synodal way on the topics indicated by the Holy Father,” the statement said. “A report on the progress of this work will be presented at the second session in October 2024.”

With the synthesis report as “the reference point for the journey of the people of God in the time between the two sessions,” it said, dioceses and bishops’ conferences around the world are asked to engage in further consultation, specifically looking at ways they could or should institute some of the synod assembly’s recommendations for bringing more people together in the evangelizing mission of the church.

“We are called and sent by the Risen One to proclaim the Gospel to the world today,” the council members said. “Growing as a synodal church is a concrete way to respond to this call and this mission.”

While dioceses and national or regional bishops’ conferences are not being asked to repeat the listening sessions they carried out from October 2021 to the spring of 2023, they are being asked to gather people to reflect on the synthesis report.

In particular, the synod council asked them to discuss, “How can we be a synodal church in mission?”

“The objective of these new reflections is to identify the paths we can follow and the tools we might adopt in our different contexts and circumstances in order to enhance the unique contribution of each baptized person and of each church in the one mission of proclaiming the Risen Lord and his Gospel to the world today,” it said.

The council said it was not looking simply for “technical or procedural improvements to make the church’s structures more efficient, but rather an invitation for reflection on the concrete forms of the missionary commitment to which we are called that express the dynamism between unity and diversity proper to a synodal church.”

“What ways of relating, structures, processes of discernment and decision-making with regard to mission make it possible to recognize, shape and promote co-responsibility?” the council asked. “What ministries and participatory bodies can be renewed or introduced to better express this co-responsibility?”

Acknowledging the limits of time and resources, the council said the consultation they hope for will differ in each diocese.

“In this stage, in addition to the participatory bodies at diocesan level and the synodal team already established, it will be important to involve people and groups that express a variety of experiences, skills, charisms, ministries within the people of God and whose point of view is of particular help in focusing on the ‘how,’” it said. The council suggested particularly parish priests, catechist, leaders of small Christian communities, religious men and women, leaders of Catholics schools, universities and hospitals and theologians and canon lawyers.

Dioceses are asked to send their reflections to their national bishops’ conferences or Eastern Catholic synod of bishops, which are asked to submit a report of no more than eight pages to the synod office in Rome by May 15.

The Vatican Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has upheld a rule mandating that the ashes of the deceased be preserved in a consecrated place, but it also said family members could request “a minimal part of the ashes” be kept in a sacred place “of significance for the history of the deceased person.”

The dicastery also said a parish or diocese could establish “a defined and permanent sacred place” where the cremains of multiple people would be commingled and preserved together.

The permission came in a “note” from the dicastery in response to a letter from Italian Cardinal Matteo Zuppi of Bologna requesting clarification about the preservation of the ashes of the deceased after cremation. The Vatican published the note signed by Cardinal Víctor Fernández, dicastery prefect, Dec. 12; it said it was approved by Pope Francis Dec. 9.

Cardinal Zuppi said in his letter, dated Oct. 30, that his archdiocese had been seeking “to give a Christian response to problems arising from the increasing number of people desiring to cremate the bodies of the deceased and scatter their ashes in nature.”

An archdiocesan commission he set up to study the matter wanted to ensure people were not compelled to scatter ashes due to the economic costs of burial, and it wanted to give guidance regarding what to do with ashes once the term for their preservation in a cemetery loculus or niche had expired. In most Italian cemeteries, if a family does not renew the lease on a burial spot, the bones or ashes are transferred to a communal ossuary or cinerary.

The cardinal asked that, given “the canonical prohibition against scattering the ashes of the deceased, is it possible to prepare a defined and permanent sacred place for the commingled accumulation and preservation of the ashes of the baptized, indicating the basic details of each person so as not to lose the memory of their names, similar to what occurs in ossuaries.”

He also asked if a family may be allowed “to keep a portion of their family member’s ashes in a place that is significant for the history of the deceased.”

Referring to its 2016 instruction, “Ad resurgendum cum Christo” (“To Rise with Christ”), regarding the burial of the deceased and the conservation of the ashes in the case of cremation, the dicastery’s new note upheld its recommendation to preserve ashes in a special urn and to keep ashes “in a sacred place, such as a cemetery, or in an area dedicated to this purpose, provided that it has been so designated by the ecclesiastical authority.”

“An attitude of sacred respect” must be had toward the ashes of the deceased person, which are to be kept in “a sacred place suitable for prayer,” it added.

The faith teaches that “the body of the resurrected person will not necessarily consist of the same elements that it had before it died. Since it is not a simple revivification of the corpse, the resurrection can occur even if the body has been totally destroyed or dispersed,” it said. This is why “in many cinerary urns, the ashes of the deceased are conserved together and are not stored separately.”

Therefore, the dicastery said, “a defined and permanent sacred place can be set aside for the commingled accumulation and preservation of the ashes of deceased baptized persons, indicating the identity of each person so as not to lose the memory of their names.”

In addition, it said, “the ecclesiastical authority, in compliance with current civil norms, may consider and evaluate a request by a family to preserve in an appropriate way a minimal part of the ashes of their relative in a place of significance for the history of the deceased person.”

However, the authorization can be given only if “every type of pantheistic, naturalistic or nihilistic misunderstanding is ruled out and also provided that the ashes of the deceased are kept in a sacred place,” the dicastery said.

The dicastery had issued an instruction in 1963 permitting cremation as long as it was not done as a sign of denial of the basic Christian belief in the resurrection of the dead. The permission was incorporated into the Code of Canon Law in 1983 and the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches in 1990.

However, since church law had not specified exactly what should be done with “cremains,” the dicastery provided further guidance with the 2016 instruction, “Ad resurgendum cum Christo” (“To Rise with Christ”).

That instruction emphasized the Catholic Church’s recommendation to follow “the most ancient Christian tradition” of the pious practice of burying the dead in cemeteries or other sacred places, as it is considered one of the corporal works of mercy and, mirroring the burial of Christ, more clearly expresses hope in the resurrection when the person’s body and soul will be reunited.

Anonymous burial or scattering of ashes is not compatible with the Christian faith, according to the instruction. Preserving the ashes of the departed in a sacred place “ensures that they are not excluded from the prayers and remembrance of their family or the Christian community” and “it prevents any unfitting or superstitious practices.”

“The conservation of ashes of the departed in a domestic residence is not permitted,” the 2016 instruction said. “Only in grave and exceptional cases dependent on cultural conditions of a localized nature, may the Ordinary, in agreement with the Episcopal Conference or the Synod of Bishops of the Oriental Churches, concede permission for the conservation of the ashes of the departed in a domestic residence.”

“The ashes may not be divided among various family members and due respect must be maintained regarding the circumstances of such a conservation,” it said.

Sitka, Alaska, December 11, 2023

Photo: odosa.org A Gospel published in the late-18th century and used by St. Innocent of Alaska and Moscow was returned to its rightful home at St. Michael’s Cathedral in Sitka, Alaska, last month.

The large, silver Gospel, printed in Russia under Emperor Paul I (1796-1801), was removed from the cathedral at some point in the last 60 years and eventually wound up in a Church museum in Pennsylvania. His Grace Bishop Alexei of Sitka traveled there in September with the express purpose of recovering the Gospel, which was facilitated by Archpriest John Perich of St. Herman’s Orthodox Church in Glenn Mills, reports the Diocese of Alaska.

And on November 19, during the annual banquet celebrating the patronal feast of St. Michael the Archangel in Sitka, His Grace unveiled the Holy Gospel and returned it to the cathedral community. His Grace read from the Gospel’s front page that it was printed in 1796, or 7,305 years from the creation of the world.

Photo: odosa.org The initial inscription reads: “To the Glory of the Holy Consubstantial, Life-Creating, and Undivided Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—at the command of our Great Lord Paul I Petrovich, Autocrat and Emperor of All Russia…”

The faithful then came forward to venerate the Gospel while singing “O Lord, save Thy people.”

The Gospel was once again used in the Liturgy, as it was in the time of St. Innocent, who served in Alaska in the early-mid-1800s. Fr. Deacon Thomas Rivas relates that “although he has had back pain even handling much lighter Gospels, this Gospel of Saint Innokenty suddenly felt light in his hands when used for the little Entrance, causing him no pain whatsoever. Truly, through the prayers of Saint Innokenty, ‘His yoke is easy and his burden is light.’”

The Gospel now resides again at its former home of St. Michael’s Cathedral in Sitka.

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The Vatican Museums has launched an initiative to give visitors — online and in person — a “backstage” peek into the secrets, curiosities and insights discovered by their art restorers.

When cleaning, repairing and analyzing major works of art up close or with X-rays or infrared radiation, experts often find unexpected and hidden details.

The new yearlong initiative lets visitors learn more about some of the discoveries and view details concealed or hard to see in some 36 masterpieces.

The new digital initiative, “Beyond the surface. Through the eyes of the restorer,” was inaugurated at the Vatican Museums Dec. 11.

Wherever museum visitors see a self-standing placard with a QR code in front of a masterpiece, they can scan it with a smartphone to access about a dozen or more other images and explanations about the artwork that would otherwise be impossible to see. The exhibit is also accessible online as one of its “featured galleries” at catalogo.museivaticani.va.

For example, with Leonardo da Vinci’s St. Jerome in the Wilderness, there are closeups of the painting’s light blue sky, revealing the Florentine artist’s fingerprints from when he blended and spread the fresh pigments on the surface with his hand to blur the line between earth and sky, as it appears when seeing a distant landscape.

With Raffaello Sanzio’s The Coronation of the Virgin, images show the dull grayish color of Mary’s mantle caused by oxidation of the paints used during a restoration in the 1950s. More images show the stunning bright blue Raffaello had used from lapis lazuli after restorers removed the oxidized paints in 2019.

The initiative celebrates the 100th year anniversary of the establishment of the museums’ first restoration laboratory, which is dedicated to the conservation of all paintings, frescoes and art works made with wood materials belonging to the Holy See. That’s about 5,300 paintings and hundreds of thousands of square feet of wall paintings and frescoes, said Francesca Persegati, chief restorer of the Vatican Museums.

With an inhouse staff of 26 restorers and an additional 10 external collaborators, the laboratory is responsible for wood and painted pieces from every era: from ancient wooden Egyptian sarcophagi and Imperial Roman necropoli to a modern-day Matisse.

Among its most notable achievements, the lab was responsible for: the massive “restoration of the century” with the Sistine Chapel, which started in 1980 and was unveiled by St. John Paul II in 1994; the Raphael Rooms and the Borgia Apartment in the Apostolic Palace; the Holy Stairs near St. John Lateran; and the Marian icon of “Salus Populi Romani” (health of the Roman people), much venerated by Pope Francis.

Persegati said the museums’ restorers wanted to celebrate their lab’s anniversary by sharing their most cherished discoveries and methods of restoration with visitors who are so often overwhelmed by so much to see around them.

She said the restorers wanted to highlight their craft, defined by the first director of the museums’ laboratory, Biagio Biagetti, as “custodians of the most sublime pictorial poetry in the world.”

Chișinău, Moldova, December 11, 2023

Photo: moldova.travel     

“Carols, molded in the ancestral hearth of our people, represent an invaluable cultural and spiritual heritage for our souls,” writes His Eminence Metropolitan Vladimir of Chișinău and All Moldova (Moscow Patriarchate) in a new address to the faithful.

On December 9, the Moldovan Church site published his appeal for the faithful to preserve the tradition of holiday caroling in holy places, homes, and state institutions, which has undergone a revival over the past three decades.

“During this blessed period of the holidays dedicated to the Nativity of the Lord, the New Year, and Theophany, young people and children joyfully carol in homes, bringing the salvific news of the Savior’s birth and coming to earth,” Met. Vladimir writes.

Urging the faithful to continue this blessed tradition, the Metropolitan offers some guidelines:

• Carol singing may be arranged in churches, without instruments: “The raising of songs to God should be done through our voice, a gift of the Creator that must be developed and cherished.”

• The carols “must be deeply Christian and avoid any connection with pagan customs,” and carolers should wear traditional folk clothing.

• Carolers should not sing from the ambo in front of the iconostasis, “which is reserved exclusively for liturgical service sand the preaching of the Gospel message.”

Met. Vladimir concludes:

Carols, as old as our nation, represent “points of connection” between generations, a treasure that connects us to the past and enriches our present. By cherishing this heritage, we keep our history and identity alive, teaching and passing on to future generations the cultural and spiritual wealth of our nation.

In 2018, carolers from the Church of St. John the Baptist in Ștefan Vodă sang for Met. Vladimir:

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