In our preparation for the Savior\u2019s Nativity, the Church seems to be telling us this constant thing: \u201che who emulates the Saints reaches the feast\u201d. This is our heritage that the world, with its fakery and sham splendor..., is pushing us to deviate from. At a time when our country is seized by scarcity and darkness, I am not inviting you to abandon the trees and lights that you love, but rather to be aware of this eloquent ecclesial preparation. The greatest thing in life is to aspire to resemble our Church in everything. This period of the liturgical year is the most intense in commemorating the prophets, apostles, and many of the saints known to us. Today, for instance, we commemorate Barbara and John of Damascus, whose intercession we seek with the theology students in our Church. Tomorrow we commemorate Sabbas the Sanctified, and after him Nicholas the Wonderworker\u2026 To emulate the Saints, this is our light to the Nativity feast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In our preparation for the Savior\u2019s Nativity, the Church seems to be telling us this constant thing: \u201che who emulates the Saints reaches the feast\u201d. This is our heritage that the world, with its fakery and sham splendor..., is pushing us to deviate from. At a time when our country is seized by scarcity and ...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88889,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[343],"tags":[2665,2663,2662,1997,2664],"class_list":["post-7680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections","tag-feast-of-nativity","tag-liturgical-year","tag-nativity-preparation","tag-orthodox-saints","tag-spiritual-emulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88889"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7680"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7956,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7680\/revisions\/7956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}