THE CHRISTMAS MESSAGE OF ARCHBISHOP KHAJAG BARSAMIAN

“These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your heart. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” Deuteronomy 6:6-7

As we celebrate the glorious birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, we would do well to remember God’s wish for us all at this and every time of the year: that these sacred realities be carried in our hearts and talked about and cherished as a family.

Indeed, the Holy Family around the manger is the ultimate model for our own. How timely and especially significant is the Christmas event in this, the Diocesan Year of Church and Home: Mary and earthly father Joseph huddled over the miraculous Holy Child, bathed by the light of the brilliant star, and kept company by reverent shepherds and magi. This is the Home for all homes to emulate. For even in the most modest of circumstances, even in that rustic Bethlehem cave where animals were sheltered for the winter, God should be the center of our attention, our love, our hopes.

The founder of our Diocese, the extraordinary Catholicos who so endeared himself to his people that he became known as Khrimian Hayrig (and remembered this year in the 100th anniversary of his passing), was prescient about the role of the Armenian family. He observed that “If a people progresses, it takes its first step from the family home and if we want to inherit heaven after earth by keeping our faith and church, then the altar that maintains these holy traditions incorruptible and whole is the family.”

In the coming months, our Diocese will continue to promote the home blessings that bring priest and family together in a ritual that reaffirms the home’s sanctity, and our Diocesan departments will issue online and print resources for practicing the sacred traditions of the Armenian faith at home. These are all designed to reinforce God’s command to grow faithful through the vivifying routines of family life. And by that let us understand that every household is capable of acting as a family whether it consists of parents and children, or grown older siblings living together, or a single person united to others through church and community.

Our Vehapar, His Holiness Karekin II, emphasized this goal wherever he went during his recent historic visit to our Diocese. With every family he welcomed to the chalice, every baby he stopped to bless, every eager crowd of young and old whose hearts he touched with faith-filled zeal, he would always reflect: “The Armenian family is holy because it was through the very paradigm of family that God created life. With this gift, He knew that in family life, through the virtues of faith, hope and love, people could grow best, and be further ennobled as they move towards what is Good and what is Perfect. We need to strengthen and support the Armenian family - which is in every way a microcosm of church and homeland - as the primary nurturer of spiritual values.”

But let us return to the humble setting of Bethlehem of more than 2000 years ago to consider again that it is in family that our true humanity and innate holiness are achieved. Let us close our eyes and open our hearts as we imagine the radiant face of the Child, the loving proximity of His mother and earthly father, and the angelic presence that is in every home founded upon love and dedicated to the Lord. Let our souls echo with the exultant words of greeting:

“Krisdos dzunav yev haydnetzav. Christ is born and revealed!”

“Orhnyal eh haydnootiunun Krisdosee. Blessed is the revelation of Christ!”

With prayers,

Archbishop Khajag Barsamian
Primate