The mystery of Christmas is not to be solved, but to be approached with humility and to be admired - said Zoltán Balog, the pastor president of the Synod of the Hungarian Reformed Church, in his Christmas sermon on Saturday in Budapest, at the Reformed Church on Hold Street.

Zoltán Balog talked about: the secret of Jesus' birth cannot be solved from the outside, like a puzzle, the door to this secret "opens from the inside". "If we receive it with humility, then first and foremost we will celebrate and worship it," he said, even before "we can use our brains to find a meaningful explanation" for the phrase "conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary."

The beauty, the beauty of this secret must be admired and must not be put aside like some old story, leaving only that which fits into the life of today's people. He added: in order to accept the secret - just like shepherds -, today's people also need help, an angel. And the angel in the Bible is always a sign that

"God does not want our life to continue as it has been", God wants to "break the reality of the human world".

The Reformed bishop asked: before we "incorporate the mystery of Christmas into some ritual that is kind and good" that "we organized and control", before that "the astonishment should be there, not only on our faces, but also in our lives". The astonishment that characterizes all the characters of the Christmas story in the first moment, including Mária, József and the shepherds. "First, be shocked, stop with humility and ask what this tells me," he said.

Zoltán Balog pointed out: a person who is constantly busy with himself does not enjoy the real surprise of Christmas. Such a person can only end up in the Christmas story like Herod. He also said: true astonishment does not domesticate or tame the Christmas story, but rather waits until those possibilities open up that a person is incapable of on their own. This is a Christmas present. The phrase "conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary" expresses God's unsurpassed closeness to man. This sentence does not want to communicate some scientific truth, but what the angel reveals to Joseph as a secret: Immanuel, that is, "God is with us!"

"So much with us, as he showed the greatest closeness in Mary".

And the conception of Jesus awakens the hope that it is possible to live like this, in the constant presence of God. And if God "dwells with us", then new possibilities of faith open up that man cannot do on his own. For example, he can speak where he should not, and yet everyone listens; he can let go where everyone clings convulsively to what is his; he can hope where others have given up hope; and he can see the new life, the resurrection where others only see the destruction and the final farewell - he listed.

This has been the reality for two thousand years, and it can and will happen again and again - concluded Zoltán Balog.

MTI

Featured image: Zoltán Balog, the pastor president of the Synod of the Hungarian Reformed Church, preaches the word at a festive service on the first day of Christmas in Budapest, in the Reformed Church on Hold Street on December 25, 2021. Zoltán Balog said that the secret of Christmas should not be solved, but should be approached with humility and admired. MTI/Zoltán Balogh