“…we need the light of Christ’s Nativity in our world darkened with confusion, anxiety, and temptations. We might struggle to see this light in our suffering world, racked by a pandemic, and with societal changes coming at an alarming rate…Be encouraged! It is into our world, “groaning in travail,” that our Deliverer is born. God in His love for mankind did not leave the world in darkness but came as its Savior. Even today Christ has “shone to the world the light of wisdom” (Nativity Troparion). We can see this light by unreservedly following the gospel and trading the earthly for the heavenly.”
(Metropolitan Tikhon of the Orthodox Church in America, Nativity epistle)