This sacred feast and holiday that we are keeping is the first to
commemorate our recall and re-creation according to grace, for on it all
things began to be made new, enduring precepts began to be brought in
instead of temporary ones, the spirit instead of the letter, the truth
instead of shadows.

Who is the new world, the mysterious paradise, the paradoxical book, the
inspired tabernacle and ark of God, the truth sprung from the earth, the
much extolled rod of Jesse? It is the maiden Who before and after
childbearing is eternally virgin, whose Birth from a barren Mother we
celebrate today.

Now He has fulfilled this promise ( to Joachim and Anna ) and has granted
them a daughter more wonderful than all the wonders down through the ages,
the Mother of the Creator of the universe, Who made the human race divine,
turned earth into heaven, made God into the Son of Man, and Men into the
sons of God.  For she conceived within herself without seed, and brought
forth in a way past tellng, the One who brought everything that exists out
of non-being, and transformed it into something good, Who will never let it
cease to exist.

St Gregory Palamas, On the Birth of the Mother of God, homily 42. The
greater part of Orthodox Christians celebrate this first great feast of the
year today.

--
Priest Seraphim Holland
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