Do you feel that too? The pre-holiday mood is already lurking around: decorated Christmas trees, huge shop windows are reminiscent of fabulous scenes, postcards, advertisements, songs – all on Christmas motifs. The prudent housewives begin to buy everything they need to prepare delicious meals. Christmas is prepared in advance, trying to clean as much as possible at home, to decorate it originally, in order to surprise guests.
In the end, in fact, not so much time remains to celebrate on the high, with all traditions, but also to have time to see the whole family, friends. The most paradoxical thing is that in that turmoil, we forget about the most important, the one whom we have to meet on Christmas holidays.
Ordinary of the Kyiv-Zhytomyr diocese Vitaliy Kryvytsky told how to prepare properly for Christmas in the program “Radio Maria”. He particularly emphasized the problem of substitution of concepts. Now we pay more attention to material things, and the spiritual content of the holiday is lost.
As the guest of the program emphasized, the holiday becomes the center of egocentrism, “showing” and the establishment of business relations. We have a cult of the table. But this is not the essence of Christmas. There must be a spiritual content, because then there will not be a place for Jesus, or it will be very small. Even verteps, Christmas concerts stop to be the glorification of Christ. Often, these performances are only for the sake of applause.
– At Christmas time, we are experiencing a great mystery of the incarnation of God. I always ask myself what was more suffering for Jesus: to die on the cross, as a man, or as an infinite, omnipotent God to enter man? God limited himself power and became like a man in everything, except sin. This is a great sacrifice. We forgot about the glorification of God, and turned to ourselves, said Father Vitaliy Kryvytsky.
Usually, preparation for the holiday takes more effort and time than the holiday itself. So when it comes, many people do not have even the strength to come to the Liturgy. So, who is in the center of this holiday, if we use all the forces for cooking, and then on the holidays, we fall “dead”. Then it will not have true content, and it will become a holiday for yourself, but not for God.
– I do not reject cooking, but we should not pay attention to it all the time. The church offers spiritual preparation. If we told someone that within five days Jesus would come to you, the reaction would be different. Someone would be looking for a way to reconcile with everybody, someone would search for the nearest church for confession and much more. Our whole life is not to learn to cook different dishes, become super designers, decorate Christmas trees the best but to live in harmony with Lord. After all, the main initiator of the coming of Jesus to save us is God. But the director of our further path of salvation, besides God, is each of us. We have to wonder if we stand on the road to Him, or we serve mummies, added the priest. – At these moments, it is worth inviting God, because He invites each of us. The Lord can heal not only the Christian but also the people who lived disorderly. Therefore, it is necessary to clean more in the heart so that Jesus will come and see that you have prepared for.
Prepared by Natalia Pavlyshyn
