In his New Year’s message, Patriarch Neophytes calls for philanthropy, mercy, mutual respect and trust in the Orthodox faith. The leader of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church emphasizes that freedom is man’s greatest gift. His word was spread by the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, as the patriarch continues to be treated in the hospital.
Here is the full text of the message:
“BELOVED IN THE LORD’S CHILDREN OF OUR HOLY CHURCH,
Year after year the human race walks its historical path, moving towards the fullness of time, to his transformation into God-manhood and to the new creation, about which God Himself testifies before the seer of God and the seer of secrets: “behold, I create all new things” (Rev. 21:5). This path of man from his creation to his final renewal is uneven and tortuous, filled with greatness and fall, with aspiration to the heavenly and divine and enslavement by the earthly and vain, with celebrations of sinfulness and peaks of holiness.
All this time, regardless of everything, man invariably remains God’s most beloved creation. The man-loving God does not deprive man of His selfless and all-forgiving love, of His mercy and of His ever-providing paternal care. As a truly loving heavenly Father, He can forgive and accept to Himself even the most disobedient of His children, even the greatest sinner, as the divine Scripture repeatedly testifies to this, as our personal experience also tells us, as long as we feel this with the senses of the heart.
Our world and our existence are precious fruits of the impulse of God’s wonderful love, of the desire of the All-Perfect to share His perfections. Therefore, the most perfect gift with which man is endowed is his freedom. Without his freedom, man could never reach his divine destiny: from God’s image, in which he was created, to reach the ultimate goal of life – the likeness of God. And though man has often abused, and continues to abuse, his freedom, it remains the surest mark of his godlikeness.
Before us is another New Year of our Christian era, the era of God’s New Covenant with humanity. Let us enter and live in it with a clear awareness of all these eternal truths of our saving faith. To imitate, according to our strength, our God and Creator, trying most of all to follow the new commandment which He gave us together with His New Testament and which is the very core and essence of this New Testament: “New commandment I give you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (John 13:34).
This eternal and irrevocable commandment of Christ to all who profess His name is also the commandment which the world needs most today, as well as that mercy and humanity, which Christ himself first testified. God’s image is in each person, in each of us and in each of us. Let us value, respect and love this image, because when we recognize and love the image of God in every person – only then do we truly know and love God, through Whom and by Whose holy will we all “… live, and move, and exist ” (Acts 17:28).
God’s peace, His all-forgiving love and great mercy be with us all!
Happy New Year!”.
2024-01-01 14:31:30
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