Papal Letter on the Feast of the Nativity (1970)

Source: Sunday School Magazine, vol. 14, no. 1 (Jan 1960)

Arabic PDF
This was Pope Kyrillos VI’s first festal letter after becoming Pope in May 1959.

Papal Letter on the Glorious Feast of the Nativity

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, one God, Amen.

From Kyrillos the Sixth,

By the grace of God, Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of St Mark.

To our beloved brother His Eminence the Catholicos of Addis Ababa and all Ethiopia, and our brethren Their Graces the metropolitans and bishops, and to our blessed sons the hegumens, priests, deacons and rest of the clergy, and the Christ-loving peoples in all regions of the See of St Mark:

Peace, grace, blessing and love along with my most sincere greetings upon the feast of our Redeemer’s birth, our Lord, God and Saviour Jesus Christ, who was graciously disposed in the fulness of time and looked upon our humiliation, coming down to our land and lived among us as though one of us, resembling us in everything except sin alone.[1]cf. Liturgy of St Gregory, Prayer of Reconciliation

— 1 —

He is the eternal and everlasting, existing with the Father and the Holy Spirit in one essence and one divine nature, without division, schism or separation, such that there are three hypostases but one God (1 Cor 12:6). The second hypostasis is the one who came down from heaven and dwelt in the womb of the Virgin Mary, taking flesh from her. In this way the divinity of the Word was united with the humanity He had taken from Mary; He united it to [His divinity] without mingling, without confusion and without alteration, as it says in the Holy Gospel: “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory” (Jn 1:14).

Therefore, the one born of the Virgin Mary is the Son of God in truth, “light out of light, true God out of true God, begotten not created,” existing with the Father in one essence, from eternity and forever.

Christ was indeed born, even though He has no beginning; He took flesh, but did not cease to be the Existent One who was and who abides forever. Truly, “great is the mystery of godliness, God appeared in the flesh” (1 Tim 3:16). “No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven” (Jn 3:13). So there is no divide between His being born in Bethlehem as the Incarnate Word, His being God manifest in the flesh and His being the Son of God in His nature and essence.

The fatherhood of God to Christ is not, as some have supposed out of ignorance, of the same sort as God’s fatherhood to the whole of humanity. For Adam was called “son of God” (Lk 3:38), and we call God our Father who is in the heavens (Mt 6:9).

But how great a divide there is between the sonship of Christ to God and the sonship of human beings to God: one is a natural sonship, the other is a relative sonship; one is a true sonship, the other is figurative. Christ is named the Son of God to indicate that He is of God’s nature and essence. As for man however, it is preposterous that he should be a son of God by nature and essence; his sonship is rather by [God’s] good pleasure and gracious gift. As the Bible says, “as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name” (Jn 1:12).

If the Lord Christ, to whom be the glory, called Himself the Son of Man, this was through humility, for He had put on human form in His sublime incarnation, and “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Phil 2:6, 7).

He is, however, the Son of God by nature and essence, as is made clear by the Father’s call from heaven, directed to the Son as He was rising from the waters of the Jordan river: “This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased” (Mt 3:17;

— 2 —

Mk 1:11), and once again on the Mount of Transfiguration: “This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased, hear Him” (Mt 17:5; Lk 9:35), just as it is also revealed in the annunciation of the Archangel Gabriel to Our Lady, the pride of our race, “that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God” (Lk 1:35) and the saying of the Gospel of St John, “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him” (Jn 1:18), and also from the Lord Jesus’ own saying about Himself: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son” (Jn 3:16). So my beloved, let us beware of errors and not confuse the general sonship of humanity to God and Christ’s special, unique and incomparable sonship to God. The sonship of Christ means that the Christ who appeared in the world was Himself God manifest in the flesh; and so He — glory to Him — said, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9), as He also said, “I and the Father are one” (Jn 10:30).

***

And now my beloved and the crown of my rejoicing in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ, glorify and worship and sing with the angels saying, “Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth and goodwill towards men!” (Lk 2:14). Rejoice with the entire creation, for the Lord of Humankind has desired to visit humanity with His salvation, and so has come down from heaven and walked among us. If He appeared to us in His unveiled divinity, we would have been burned up and would have perished, for the Most High said “no man shall see Me, and live” (Ex 33:20). For this reason, He has spoken to us through His Son. He concealed His divinity in the body of His humanity, and taught us the ways of salvation, effecting our redemption in Himself in order to bring us to His heavenly kingdom.

If we rejoice at all this, let our joy be spiritual, and our rejoicing with the fear of God and piety, so that we may be worthy of the sacrifice which the Lord has offered up for our sake.

Keep a feast, my brethren and children, to the glory of God, bring goodwill to every heart: comfort the sorrowful, stop the tears of the orphans, strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees, give hope to those in despair, visit the sick and the afflicted, be good to the poor and needy. Remember that Christ our Saviour was born in a manger of cattle in order to shore up the brokenness of the despised and the destitute. Do good to all. Do not distinguish in the [doing of] good between people’s race or colour or creed. Make peace between a man and his companion, for your Christ is a Lord of peace and a worker of it.

We ask Christ our God to maintain peace among the nations and to stir the hearts of sinners toward repentance, return to God and prayer for the salvation of their souls.

— 3 —

The letter breaks off here and resumes on page 9.

We pray too for all the peoples of the See of St Mark and its servants in the United Arabic Republic, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Nubia, Sudan, Uganda, Libya and South Africa, the city of our God Jerusalem, the Transjordan and Palestine.

And we entreat God to grant success to the honourable President Gamal ‘Abd Al-Nasir, President of the United Arab Republic, and our beloved Orthodox brother His Majesty the Emperor Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia, Her Majesty the Empress and the Princes, along with all the kings, presidents and governors throughout all the See of St Mark and the entire world; unto His Majesty, the Most High, I pour out thanks and the highest praise.

Kyrillos VI
By the grace of God
Pope of Alexandria and the Regions of the See of St Mark

 

— 9 —

Notes:

Notes:
↑1 cf. Liturgy of St Gregory, Prayer of Reconciliation

How to cite this text (Chicago/Turabian):

Kyrillos VI. “Papal Letter for the Glorious Feast of the Nativity” [al-Risāla al-bābāwiyya fī ‘īd al-mīlād al-majīd] in Sunday School Magazine 14, no. 1 (January 1960): 1–3, 9. Translated by Samuel Kaldas in Archive of Contemporary Coptic Orthodox Theology. Sydney, NSW: St Cyril’s Coptic Orthodox Theological College. https://accot.stcyrils.edu.au/pk6-nat1960/.

(For more information, see Citation Guidelines)