site.btaUPDATED Patriarch Daniil Leads Festive Evening Service for Christmas Eve

Bulgarian Patriarch and Sofia Metropolitan Daniil led the festive evening service for Christmas Eve held at the St Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in the capital on Wednesday. The festive liturgy was concelebrated with bishops, deacons, archimandrites and clergy of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.

"Today a wondrous and most glorious mystery is accomplished: nature is renewed and God becomes man. The invisible God takes on human form; the boundless One is wrapped in swaddling clothes. He whose throne is in heaven is laid in a manger. The Sinless One clothes Himself in human nature, corrupted by sin, in order to sanctify it and restore it to its paradisiacal purity," the Patriarch said. 

“Christmas Eve is one of the brightest Christian feasts, celebrated as a family occasion by all Christians. Families gather in anticipation of the birth of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. The feast of Christmas Eve is dedicated to the home and the hearth, but also to departed ancestors – relatives who are likewise regarded as part of the family,” the Bulgarian Orthodox Church said.

The event of the Nativity of Christ the Saviour truly marks a turning point in human history, says the Patriarchal and Synodal Christmas Message, the Bulgarian Patriarchate announced. The Christmas message was issued by Bulgarian Patriarch Daniil together with the metropolitans of the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. “We wholeheartedly extend our greetings on the feast of the Nativity of Christ to all children of our Orthodox Church – in the homeland and abroad – with wishes for spiritual joy and every good blessing from the Lord,” the message says.