The Christmas Epistle
Of the Metropolitan of Cairo and North Africa Konstantin,
Interim head of the South-African Diocese
To the clergy, monastics and faithful
Of the Patriarchal Exarchate of Africa of the Russian Orthodox Church
Dear fathers, brothers and sisters!
I wholeheartedly greet you on the great feast of the Nativity of Our Lord!
While remaining the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ was born in the flesh of the Virgin Mary and became Man, uniting in Himself divine and human nature.
He came into our world. Just like us, He experienced the heat and the cold, hunger and thirst; He rejoiced and He felt sorrow. He was in all things as we are, except for sin.
Why did God descend from heaven unto earth? So that, in a spiritual sense, we might rise from earth to heaven; thus, having been delivered from the bondage of sin, we might enter the Kingdom of Heaven as beloved children of God, united with Him in life within one Kingdom, in eternal joy and blessedness.
By receiving the Mystery of Baptism and entering the Church, which is His Body, we are given the ability to resist sin and to practise virtue. Yet we can do this only with God’s help, when our good will and our modest efforts are united with the all-powerful grace of God, which transfigures us and the fruits of our deeds.
Christ must make a dwelling in us and live within us. This is accomplished through prayer to Him, by reading the Gospel, through the manifestation of love and mercy towards others, and especially when, having cleansed our souls through repentance and the Mystery of Confession, we partake of the Holy Mysteries of Christ.
May the God-Child, who is born, help us follow this path, He who Himself is “the Way, and the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6).
I wish for all of you to bear the light of the Nativity of Christ into your families, to your relatives and close ones, and to all the people whom the Lord sends your way!
I wish for you to have the all-powerful help of God in your life and labours.
I invoke God’s blessing upon you.
Konstantin, Metropolitan of Cairo and North Africa,
Interim head of the South-African Diocese,
Of the Patriarchal exarchate of Africa
Of the Russian Orthodox Church
The Nativity of Christ
January 7, 2026
