Archpastoral Message of His Beatitude, Metropolitan Jonah, for the Feasts of the Circumcision of Our Lord and Saint Basil the Great, and the New Year
To the Very Reverend and Reverend Clergy, Venerable Monastics, and God-fearing Faithful of the Orthodox Church in America:
The new year arrives at the great meeting point of the Old and New Covenants. Throughout December, the Church bade us remember the righteous and prophets of the Old Covenant, beginning with Nahum, Habbakuk, and Zephaniah, continuing with Haggai, Daniel, and the Three Youths, and culminating with the two Sundays before the Nativity, the memory of that long and great ancestry of our Savior according to the flesh.