My dearest Brothers and Sisters in the Lord,

The famous ancient tragic poet Euripides once said, “A bad beginning brings also a bad end.” Similarly, the great philosopher Aristotle taught that, “Well begun is half done.” Therefore, if we wish the New Year 2025, which has just arrived with the grace and charity of our Lord, to have a good end, we must surely also make a good beginning. In other words, it is necessary for us to start the New Year by setting a very important goal and striving from now to cultivate it with perseverance and intense spiritual struggle.

There is, to be sure, no better goal for the New Year than to strengthen our love for our Lord Jesus Christ because He is our benevolent Father, our compassionate Brother, the true Light and eternal Joy; that means: “Christ is everything!”

When we love Jesus Christ, when we unite ourselves with Him through sincere love, then we will not be influenced by the devil and the evil that surround us. Moreover, sorrow, despair, darkness, and death will have no power over us, because within us we will have the source of joy, the source hope, the source of light and life Himself. Abundant evidence about all this is found in the Holy Bible. Christ introduced himself by saying: “I am the light of the world” (Jn 8:12) and “I am the resurrection and the life” (Jn 11:25). Christ himself also has promised us that “no one will be able to take away your joy” (Jn 16:22). And the apostle Paul calls the Lord Jesus Christ “our hope” (1 Tim. 1:1).

The apostles, the martyrs, the monastics and generally all the saints of our Church, without exception, loved Christ with intense divine love, which is why they felt that they possessed everything, because Christ being in their hearts was everything to them.

For example, our contemporary St. Porphyrios advises us from his own experience that: “Life without Christ is not life. It is gone, it is over. If you do not see Christ in all your works and thoughts, you are without Christ.”

He also teaches us that Christ “is our Friend, he is our Brother, he is all that is good and beautiful in our life. He is everything.” Christ is our Friend who speaks to us with compassion and mercy, saying: “We are friends, I’ve got you, don’t you get it? I’m your brother. I don’t come into your life to bring Hell for you; My purpose is not to bully you; I LOVE you, and I want you to experience joy and life with me.”

The saint concludes his advice with his fatherly exhortation to all of us: “Love Christ and prefer nothing to His love. Love Christ and do not prioritize any other goal. Everything in Christ is beautiful. Christ is everything.”

 My beloved, let us all set a Christological goal in the New Year by making Christ the center of our lives. Let us love Him “with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength” (Mk. 12:30). Only then we will enjoy all of God’s blessings in our lives and we will be able to “love our neighbor as ourselves” (Mk. 12:31). Only then we will each become a “light to the world” (Mt. 5:14) and “salt to the earth” (Mt. 5:13). 

Along with our distinguished clergy and our precious collaborators in the Lord, I pray that, for all of you, the New Year 2025 may be filled with the blessings of our Lord, and that you and your loved ones may enjoy good health and longevity.

+ Metropolitan Ambrosios of Korea and Exarch of Japan