22.12.09 - Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Dear sisters and brothers!

Some evenings as I walk through downtown St. Petersburg, I am continually surprised by the holiday lights, the number of which grows by the day. They glow, their fires shimmering, and create an absolutely special, celebratory mood. It is wonderful. And you don't have to put wonderful in quotes. Thanks to these lights the city is transformed.

But... every time I think about this, I catch myself remembering that for such a happy, celebratory atmosphere to be created there has to be darkness. It is necessary not only so that we would notice the light bulbs and the garland. It is necessary in order to cover up all that is unseemly, imperfect. It covers up the scratched up building walls (still frequently seen even in the city), the puddles and mud underfoot. In order for me to get into the city, I have to travel past a feedlot. Of course it is submersed in darkness in the evening. Illumination is reserved for courtyards, elegant churches and luxury stores, and not for the barn. Jesus was born in a barn. He was born far away from the torch-lit yards and synagogs, in that corner of the city which people covered in the shame of the darkness of night. He is in the place of poverty, stench and mud, in that place where the sparking lights of garlands and the shining glass of Christmas tree decorations never reach. He was born in the darkness which encompasses the lonely and the sick when all the rest of the world is having fun and celebrating. He was born into the darkness of guilt and sin, a darkness which no man-made illumination is able to drive away. There is nothing wrong with the celebratory lights of the city. But in the Christmas season I remembers the lines of Jochen Klepper again and again:

Let the world meet you
With the variety of lights, -
To darkness you prepared us,
To lonely night with a lonely star.
And like before the cross we stand
Before your manger in that land.

Yours, Anton Tikhomirov, president of the Seminary