By Archimandrite Makarios Tsimeris
The Spiritual Preparation of the Believer According to the Fathers of the Church in the Modern Era
For the Orthodox Church, Christmas is not a simple celebration of an emotional nature, but the mystery of the Incarnation of God the Word, the manifestation of God “in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3:16). It is the event that restores man’s relationship with the Creator and renews the entire creation. Saint John of Damascus writes:
“The Uncontainable is contained, the Beginningless begins, the Beginningless begins through a Mother” (Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 3, 1).
The Incarnation, therefore, is the great miracle of God’s love, and our preparation for Christmas cannot be external, but heartfelt.
Fasting as a Stage of Purification
The Church calls us to a forty-day fast before the Great Feast. Fasting is not simply abstinence from certain foods, but an exercise of freedom and preparation of the body and soul for the mystical birth of Christ within us.
Saint Basil the Great teaches:
“True fasting is the renunciation of evil, the restraint of the tongue, the avoidance of anger, the separation from desires, from gossip, from lying, from false witness” (Homily on Fasting).
Today, where society is dominated by overconsumption, waste, and the confusion of values, fasting becomes an act of resistance. The believer learns to say “no” to the unnecessary, in order to say “yes” to the essential - that is, to Christ.
Prayer and the Stillness of the Heart
The Christmas season is not a time of external noise, but of anticipation and silence.
Christ is not born in the noise of cities, but in the silence of Bethlehem and in the stillness of the soul that is being purified.
Saint Gregory the Theologian exhorts:
“Honor the birth with silence, for nothing is as theological as silence” (Discourse on Theophany, Discourse 38).
Modern life, full of information and constant movement, deprives man of this silent birth of God within him. The Christian is called to seek “a solitary cell within himself,” to cease for a while living in the turmoil of the world and to breathe heaven with prayer.
Almsgiving as a Communion of Love
God became man so that man might become god by grace. This gesture of God’s condescension towards man calls us to do the same towards our brother.
Saint John Chrysostom notes:
“Nothing resembles God so much as almsgiving” (On Almsgiving).
In today’s society of isolation and indifference, almsgiving is not superficial charity, but participation in the drama of the other. It is the practical birth of Christ within us, when we see His face in the face of the hungry, the stranger, the sick.
Church Life as Participation in the Mystery
The genuine preparation for Christmas culminates in the Divine Liturgy. There, where “Christ is born and sacrificed and given to be eaten.”
The believer prepares himself with repentance and confession, so that he may approach the Holy Chalice “with the fear of God, faith and love.”
As Saint Symeon the New Theologian writes:
“If Christ is not born within us, he was born in Bethlehem in vain.”
Therefore, true Christmas is not only a memory of a historical event, but an experience that is repeated secretly every time the soul accepts Christ within it.
The Message for the Modern World
In the midst of modern consumerism, the Church calls for a return to the essence, namely to experience Christmas not in shopping malls, but in our hearts; not with gifts that wear out, but with the gift of God that does not age; not with superficial joy, but with the joyful-sorrow of salvation.
The world today needs not decorations, but inner light, the presence of the One who “illumines every man coming into the world” (John 1:9).
Let us therefore prepare to celebrate Christmas as an event of salvation and transformation, personal and social.
The Incarnation of Christ is the center of history and life. Every year we are given the opportunity to receive Him anew within us, “in humility and purity of heart.”
Let us open the manger of our soul, so that there may be a place for Christ there too, “for there was no room for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7).
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
