В ответ на пост And here is the end of the Kontakion: 'For us the child is born, the eternal God. God is born for our sake. Not by himself, not because of him. Because of us and again, not for an abstract "us", for the sake of Russians. Of course, not just for the sake of Russians, for the sake of Russians of all. But for us they are all Russians. It is all concrete, not abstract. Let no one be offended, but go to Bethlehem, travel with a star and praise the Nativity of Christ. We will meet there, but only 'there', when it becomes fully 'here', when we have been transformed by the time and space of Christmas. At that moment, the words of the Gospel will resound in every language. It will be a translation from our language - if our language is truly Christian and Orthodox, if we ourselves are the people of Christ. "For our own good" cannot fit, it is too much, but in the Nativity everything is too much: the Substance is born, the Immaculate One is found in a simple manger, the higher heavenly spirits take sides with the shepherds, the Virgin gives birth and nurses the swaddled child, who is - 'a child' - the eternal God. Everything is incredible, everything is magical, everything is beyond the horizon of a sane mind. Dostoevsky has a theme in one of his letters, later taken up in The Brothers Karamazov: 'If it were mathematically proved to you that truth is beyond Christ, you would agree that it is better to be with Christ than with truth'. We have heard of these mathematical proofs and almost all of us have repeated them for almost a century. If the truth is against Christ and the miracle of His Nativity, then spit on the truth. This truth has no value, it is not, in a word, Russian truth. Russian truth is a contestable truth, the truth of what cannot be, but is. Moreover, the only thing that is. Being on the side of the Nativity of Christ at the moment of the Nativity of Christ: this is the choice the Russian people make/have made/will make. Otherwise, not only will it not be, but it does not exist and has never existed. The Russians are against the truth, if the truth is not Christlike, it is not Christlike. And even Christless Russians are not Russians, like some 'leftists', some who don't understand who they are.... Happy birth of Christ! For 'unto us a child is born, the eternal God'. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]