👉🏾👉🏾👉🏾The Birth of Our #Lord and Savior #Jesus #Christ
Dear followers of the Orthodox teachings on John's Repentance website .we greet you with the peace of the Lord.Today , based on the topic mentioned above, we present to you the following important lesson.We encourage everyone to read it carefully and learn from it.
1. The Mystery of the Incarnation
✍🏾The Almighty God, our Creator, is compassionate and merciful toward His creation. Because of His great love for humanity, He willed to save us. For this reason, He was born of the Holy Virgin Mary and became a perfect man, without ceasing to be perfect God.
✍🏾After the fulfillment of the Sabbath count, after the prophecies were spoken, and after the holy prophets foretold that He would come and be born of a Virgin, the Archangel Gabriel announced to Saint Mary that God the Word would be born from her.
✍🏾When the appointed time came, 5,500 years after the creation of Adam, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was born of the Holy Virgin Mary in Bethlehem.
👉🏾Through His birth:
✍🏾The curse was destroyed
Redemption was granted
Sorrow and sin were defeated Unity, harmony, compassion, peace, and love were restored.
Therefore, when we celebrate His Nativity, we celebrate the great victory of salvation.
2. The Meaning of Birth
Birth means coming forth from the womb into the light, becoming visible, present, and revealed.
In the Christian faith(be Anqetse Haymanot), “He became fully human”.
First, He dwelt hidden in the womb Later, He was revealed through His birth While He was in the womb of the Virgin, only a few righteous people knew Him.
After His birth, He was revealed to the whole world.
He was seen and touched by people and nations. He took a true human body and was revealed as a man.His present revelation was in the flesh.His eternal origin was divine fire, unapproachable to creation.
3.The Burning Bush and the Virgin Mary
✍🏾In the Old Testament, God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, a visible flame that did not consume the bush (Exodus 3:1–15).
✍🏾 Moses removed his sandals and approached with fear and reverence, learning the eternal name of God:“The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”This was the revelation of God in the Old Testament.
✍🏾In the New Testament, God was revealed in a greater way: in the flesh, dwelling in the womb of the Holy Virgin Mary.
Therefore:
👉🏾The Virgin Mary is like the green bush
👉🏾The divine fire is the divinity of the Word
✍🏾Just as the bush was not burned by the fire, the Virgin’s flesh was not harmed by the divinity dwelling within her.She is rightly called “Mahidere Melekot"),where God descended in humility and spoke to humanity.
👉🏾This revelation in the flesh is greater than the revelation on Mount Sinai.
✍🏾Anyone who approaches the bush of the New Covenant, in which God was revealed in the flesh, removes the sandals and beholds it with reverence and holy fear. The first to be granted this opportunity were Saint Elizabeth and Saint Joseph.
✍🏾When Saint Elizabeth heard the voice of the Holy Virgin Mary, the child in her womb leaped for joy and bowed in reverence. This was a great and holy miracle. Filled with the Holy Spirit, she cried out and said:
👉🏾“How is it granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”(Luke 1:39–43)
Saint Joseph also, with fear of God and deep reverence, protected and served the Holy Virgin and the divine mystery entrusted to her.
The great revelation of God in the Torah took place on Mount Sinai.
When the living Word of the Father descended upon the mountain, He appeared in the midst of burning and terrifying fire. There were thunder and lightning, the earth shook, and thick darkness covered the mountain. All the people of Israel who stood below were filled with fear, as it is written:
“There were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud on the mountain, and the sound of the trumpet was very loud; so all the people who were in the camp trembled.”(Exodus 19:16)
Continues 👇🏾