New Year's Message 2000

January 1, 2000

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

God’s great mercy has allowed us to enter a new millennium and the New Year 2000.This year proves to be a very significant one for us as Orthodox Christians, as it marks the 2000th year since the birth of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. May the birth of Christ be for us a constant reminder for the necessity of our own spiritual rebirth. May we enter a new life in Christ and renounce our sinful ways.

      Our Church teaches us the importance of humility, repentance, confession and Holy Communion necessary for salvation. We must live a life of prayer, of love for our family, friends and indeed our enemies, as well as for the poor. If we continue to hate, be dishonest and care only for materialistic wealth, then surely the doors of Heaven will be closed for us. For Jesus tells us we should be the “light of the world” (Matt 5:14) and through our good works be good examples to our brothers who live in darkness and have not heard of Jesus Christ. In this way, we may bring others close to our Lord so that they may also see the Light and follow Him.

      Our goal in this temporary life is to practice love, honesty, humility, obedience and repentance. If we fix our lives on materialistic wealth, dishonesty, cheating and egoism, then we live a life far away from Christ and His Church and are not true Christians. It is then that we must reflect upon our wrong doings with humility and with the advice  from our spiritual father attempt to change and repent. Once we bring Christ back into our lives we place all trust, faith and hope in Him and all our problems then become minimal, “for what seems impossible for man is possible for God” (Matt 19:26). I beg all of you, for the New Year to reflect upon yourselves and examine your deeds and attempt to improve upon them with Christ’s humility rather than our own evil egoism. Let us pray that we begin this new millennium in a spiritually fruitful way, with the Lord as the guide in our lives.

      The past year 1999, was very progressive for our Church in Madagascar. We have established new parishes and have built new churches and schools. Our clinic in Alasora has also been completed. We should thank the Malagasy government for officially recognizing the Orthodox Church and the Sodirex Society for their kind donation of a new ambulance from France.

      Many Malagasy people were baptised into the Orthodox Faith last year. With the help of our Lord Jesus Christ, we also continued our philanthropic programme to care for the needy people, such as orphan children, poor families, prisoners, lepers and paralytics.

      We were also fortunate to have our first state conference which was organised by all of our parishes in the state of Tulear in order to see the problems that each parish faces and how to make each parish better organised and self efficient. It will be good in the future if such conferences could be organised in the other states of Madagascar also.

      It was with great joy to see some of our seminarians finish their courses of our St.John the Theologian Seminary. Also two of our students were sent to the Orthodox Theological school in Nairobi to study. We also ordained new Malagasy priests and a deacon. In addition to this we tonsured the first Malagasy nun.

      For the New Year 2000, we look forward to such projects as the building of an orphanage in Mantasoa,more churches and schools.

      I pray that our lord grants all of you a blessed New Year with health, courage, and strength to continue our struggle in this temporary life so one day all of us will reach our eternal homeland with our Lord Jesus Christ in Heaven.

+Bishop Nectarios of Madagascar

Antananarivo, New Year 2000