CHRISTMAS MESSAGE OF ARCHBISHOP KHAJAG BARSAMIAN
Primate of the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America

A SEASON OF HOPE, AFTER ALL

This Christmas may prove a time of deeper-than-usual reflection for many of us. To be sure, the miraculous nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ - Son of God, humanity’s savior - is a time of joy, which brings hope and optimism to our hearts every year.

But also this year, the joy of Christmas is mixed with something else. The headlines we read are unsettling; we imagine the future with a certain anxiety, and perhaps not with the optimism of past years. Institutions that seemed solid and unassailable mere months ago have proven fragile and weak. People feel concern over their livelihoods, over their ability to preserve the good things they have built over their lives.

And so, with this cloud of uncertainty hovering over us, we will greet Christmas once more. Many of us will scale back our festivities, scale down our gift-giving. But should the joy we feel at Christmas be affected by this? Put differently: Is the miracle of Christmas somehow diminished by the anxieties of the world around us?

It is worth recalling that the gospel stories of Jesus’ birth depict a world of deep and terrible anxiety. The image of the Nativity is so calm and restful; but the first Christmas, as it was lived, was something else entirely. It was more like the tranquil eye at the center of a raging storm. The late entry into an overcrowded city, the night spent exposed to the elements - these were only the beginning of troubles for the Holy Family.

Harder times would follow: Years spent as refugees in Egypt, exiled from their homeland. And before that, a narrow escape from the assassins of Herod, who nearly succeeded in wiping out an entire generation. The gospels quote the prophet Jeremiah to evoke the sense of fear, of turmoil, of inconsolable sorrow, surrounding those days: “There was a voice heard: lamentation and weeping, and great mourning; Rachel weeping for her children, who would not be comforted . . .” (Matthew 2:17).

Those words—old even in the time of Christ’s birth—still echo powerfully to us as Armenians. They describe the shattered world of our grandparents, in the early years of the last century. They convey the sadness our countrymen - and we ourselves - felt, twenty years ago, when the earthquake rocked our homeland.

And yet, even in those desperate times - which, by God’s grace, lie very far from our present concerns - the miracle of Christ’s birth had the power to lift hearts, lighten burdens, and bring hope to the souls of people in genuine pain and confusion.

That the story of our Lord’s birth has such power is something of a mystery. Indeed, that is the very word used to describe the Nativity in our Christmas liturgy: Khorhoort medz yev skancheli, “A mystery great and wonderful.”

We might say that the strength of the Christmas story - indeed, of the entire Christian story - is precisely that it takes place in a real-world setting, filled with all the recognizable concerns troubles, and uncertainties. In such a context, the sense of beauty and peace surrounding the Nativity is not the imagery of a fairy tale - made up to comfort and pacify us - but an assurance of the real alternative that Christ presents for the troubles that afflict us.

The qualities of generosity, love, and hope embodied in Christ’s birth cannot be dispelled by the fleeting troubles of the moment. These are the qualities we all respond to, on the deepest level, each year at Christmas. And they are the qualities that have allowed us - as individuals, as families, as a people - to endure our troubled times, until the coming of the better day, and the better world, Christ has promised to his children.

May the joyous announcement of Christ’s birth resound in our hearts throughout the coming year:

 Krisdos dzunav yev haydnetzav! Orhnyal eh haydnootiunun Krisdosee!

Christ is born and revealed! Blessed is the revelation of Christ!

With prayers,

Archbishop Khajag Barsamian
Primate