Day of Exile
From birth, from infancy, Christ was forced to become a refugee…. He grew up in an Exile Refugee Family in a foreign land, forced to flee violence, mass murder and death. As today, thousands of Ukrainian children are born and raised in refugee families in exile. This is our Christ – suffering with us. In these days I, along with thousands of other Ukrainians, am especially close and understand this very image of Christ. The honouring of His birth (regardless of the date of the calendar) acquires a special content, different from the usual, wrapped in the luxurious vestments of artificial pathos. It was different. Christ is born again today not in palaces or gilded sanctuaries, but in cellars, bomb shelters and entrenchment, under bombardments, on ashes and ruins, in prisons and exile…. The name of the tyrant from whom Joseph and Mary and the newborn baby had to flee was Herod, now his name is Putin. Nothing has changed.
The new Herod, as he did over 2023 years ago, is back in manic madness ordering the mass murder of children and innocents, enjoying the suffering and death. Followers of the new Herod like to interpret his surname as “the way of the other” (Russian: “put` in” – “путь иной”). This is correct. The way of Christ is the way of Love, Goodness and Life (“I am the Way, the Truth and the Life”). They, on the other hand, have deliberately chosen “the way of the other” – the way of lies, violence and death. This is the way of the antichrist. Putin is a small embodiment of a certain “antichrist”, who seeks to replace the Truth (“ἀντί” from the Greek – instead of, substitution). As he did 2023 years ago, he has an army of murderers and priests on his side, ready to bless any of his crimes. But not Truth. It is on the side of suffering Ukraine. As on the side of all those who suffer and are cast out for the truth. Therefore, Christ is with us, Suffering as millions of Ukrainians are. This is our Christmas. It is ours on the 25th of December, and on the 7th of January, and on any other day. Together with Christ, a new Ukraine is now being born. Amidst the darkness of violence, destruction and death. And this birth cannot be strangled by any Herods, neither old nor new.
Life overcomes death, Love overcomes hate, Light over darkness, Truth over lies. Ukraine will defeat the empire of evil and lies. For Christ was born and won.
Dr Serhii Shumylo
Ph.D. in History, ThDr., Director of the International Institute of the Athonite Legacy; Research Fellow in the Department of Classics, Ancient History, Religion and Theology, University of Exeter (UK); Research fellow of the Institute of History of Ukraine, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine; Honored Worker of Ukraine Culture
