Eckart Otto, Christmas Wishes of the European Society for Moral Philosophy with an address of the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem for the Midnight Mass at Bethlehem Christmas 2023

2023

This is a sermon preached at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City, December 16, 2001, after a night at St. Paul's Chapel which functioned as a respite center for the 9/11 disaster recovery at 'Ground Zero' in New York City, after the terrorist attacks that caused the destruction of the World Trade Center and a mass casualty incident.

2023

The second edition of this book is intended as a contribution to the celebration, in 2023, of the eighth centenary of two important events for the Franciscan family: the confirmation of the Later Rule (Regula bullata) by Pope Honorius III, on Nov. 29, 1223, and the celebration of Christmas at Greccio, just a month later. This centenary is a moment of grace and a propitious occasion to renew our consecration to the Lord. The vital flame that has inspired Francis of Assisi and his followers for these eight hundred years needs to be continually rekindled. We too are invited to assume it today in a creative and dynamic manner, avoiding useless nostalgia. This publication aims to achieve this. Consecrated life “is not about survival, but new life.” The Lord who granted Francis “to begin doing penance” (Test 1) now gives us this opportunity to remember the past with gratitude, to strengthen joyfully our charismatic identity in the present and to open ourselves with hope to the future.

Public Orthodoxy, 2020

On December 11, 2019, Metropolitan Serapion and the clergy of the Diocese of Los Angeles, Southern California, and Hawaii wrote a statement pronouncing that Christmas celebrations will be held in the diocese on both December 25 and January 7 (29 Kiakh) to better serve the pastoral needs of local congregants. Yet the pronouncement caused a stir among Copts globally. Such debates are not new. Immigrant parishes in North America at one point in their early history routinely celebrated Christmas on December 25 to retain congregants and serve the needs of early Copts scattered across Central Canada and the North Eastern United States. At the heart of such debates, past and present, is the tremendous influence of Pope Shenouda and the many meanings of belonging to the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt. In order to chart this history and offer insights on its contemporary significance, we begin with the challenges faced by early Copts in North America and then outline the changing nature of Coptic diasporic communities as a consequence of rising immigration from Upper Egypt, following the 2011 revolution.

Insight Magazine of Council of World Mission, 2019

The Ecumenical Review, 2013

Plainsong and Medieval Music, 1999

In the course of a discussion of the Christian liturgy and religious rituals in general, Mircea Eliade maintained that every religious festival, any liturgical time, represents the reactualization of a sacred event that took place in a mythical past, since words and gestures of a ritual are thought to be charged with a power of reactualization so that the event imitated is believed rendered present for the community's welfar. My analysis of the Piacentinian Christmas texts will be based on the phenomenological theories of religion elaborated by Eliade and Odo Casel. It will examine how the medieval Mass was not only a religious ceremony in praise of God but also a cultic experience in terms of the time and space of the ceremony. The liturgical apparatus will be considered as the actual vehicle that creates the proclaimed reality of the celebration, because it is within the power of the Mass to bring us into the same temporal dimension with the saving deeds of Christ and to place...