The Sunday of the Holy Forefathers

The Sunday of the Holy Forefathers is the Sunday that falls between December 11-17, the second Sunday before the Nativity.

The ancestors of Christ according to the flesh are remembered on this Sunday of the Nativity Fast.

Two Sundays before the Manifestation of God in the flesh which is known as Nativity, the Orthodox Church connects us to the crowd of Forefathers and Prophets, from the time of Adam to Christ. They are all related to Christ, either because they awaited him, or because they were from his lineage, or also because they were seeking Him without knowing him.

The Church want to teach us that this unique event did not come as a surprise strange to humankind, but that it was the desire of the nations. They had been waiting for centuries, and the world had been filled with prophecies. Many righteous longed to see it and reposed with that hope.

Saint Justin the Philosopher wrote in the 2nd century:
“We have been taught that Christ is the first-born of God, and we have declared above that He is the Word in whom every race of men were partakers; and those who lived reasonably are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists; as, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and men like them”.

The saint talks in his Apologetics about Christ as “spermatikos Logos”, a seed in all nations which know the truth in part. The Logos is the Word of God, found in the minds of good people. These have grown the seeds and discovered the realities of God in part. In fact, faith completes the mind, and is not against logic.

Two Sundays Before Nativity:
The Sunday of the Forefathers of Christ

The church focuses on the universal and widespread character of Nativity. Christ is not the deity of a particular people nor is He a particular choice to anyone, but rather he is the Creator of the entire universe and, consequently, he is the God of the whole world.

After the fall of humankind and God's promise of salvation, God revealed to the Fathers and Prophets in the Old Testament the fulfillment of the promise and His economy (dispensation) of the Incarnation and Redemption. There are more than three hundred prophecies in the Old Testament about the coming of the Savior; all peoples have waited for the true God.

This is confirmed by visit of the Magi from Persia. The same goes for philosophers thirsting for wisdom, happiness and joy. They spoke about Him and desired Him without naming Him.

We see how Paul the Apostle does not hesitate in Arius Pagus, while talking to its poets and philosophers, to quote poet Epimenides who advised the erection of a statue of an unknown god, and to apply the quote on Christ: “for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring’.” (Acts 17:28)
For example, in Athenodoros, a philosopher in the first century BC we find beautiful phrases as he said:
"A Holy Spirit rises deep within us. He is an observer and guardian of our good and evil thoughts."

Elsewhere, he says: "I know that if you do not dare to ask anything from God in the presence of all people, then you are not free from your passions yet. Live with people as if God sees you and speak to God as if people hear you."
This is our God, the God of the living and the dead and the God of all peoples and generations and the Savior of our souls, so let us go to meet Him.

Hence, the goal of the 40 days fast that began on the 15th of November is to make us meet this incarnate God face to face, and to make our hearts a manger that receives the One Who came down from heavens and accepted to be born as a Child, to raise us to His kingdom.

But this requires humility, emptying of oneself (kenosis), obedience to God's will, and, of course, sincere repentance for us to be born again.

Abraham was a pagan in the eye of religious sciences, but he became a great teacher of obedience and faith.
All beliefs and religions, from the Far East to the Far West, called for a God who saves and redeems.

They looked for peace, security, happiness and quietude, when "the wolf finds pasture with lambs." People craved this joy beyond terrestrial identity that unite us by giving a heavenly identity. Hence the Apostle Paul's words: “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3: 27-29).
The blessing of Melchizedek, “King of Shalim” - meaning the King of Peace - to Abraham upon his return from the Battle of Chedorlaomer (Genesis 18: 14-20), and the fact that he gave him bread and wine is an affirmation of the existence of divine seed in the whole world.

Melchizedek is the king of Jerusalem, Shalim, or Jerusalem, mentioned in the Old and New Testaments. This is a Canaanite name meaning "King of Peace".

His character remains mysterious, "without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, remains a priest continually." He was not a Jew, but he was mentioned as the priest of the Most-High God. (Hebrews 7)

In the Sunday of the Forefathers, the Church remembers all who were before the Law and after the Law. This is what Luke the Evangelist says in the lineage of the Lord Jesus Christ, as he goes from Joseph back to Adam and includes the whole world.