Feast of the Annunciation ብስራተ ገብርኤል

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church celebration of the Annunciation is known by the name ‘Bisrate Gebriel’ . It is celebrated on Dec 31 (Tahisas 22) of the Ethiopian Calendar.

Annunciation is the feast of happiness and hope for the whole world, because the coming of Our Lord and Savior Eyesus Kristos is not just for a group of believers, but for the entire humanity.

The Feast commemorates the announcement by the Saint Archangel Gabriel to the Holy Virgin Mariyam that Our Lord and Savior Eyesus Kristos, the Son of God, would become incarnate and enter into this world through her womb. Even though the actual date of the feast is 9 months and 5 days before Jan 7 (መጋቢት 29 - April 7 ), the father of the church Archbishop Diocese(ደቅስዮስ) have moved the feast to one week before Lidit because it would otherwise fall within the great fast before Easter (Lent).

Luke (1:26-39)

26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called[a] the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. 37 For no word from God will ever fail.”

38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.

39 At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, 40 where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. 42 In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! 43 But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. 45 Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!”

It is on the Feast of the Annunciation, that Ethiopian Orthodox Christians commemorate both the divine initiative of God, whereby He took on flesh from the Holy Virgin Mariyam for our salvation, and the human response, whereby Holy Virgin Mariyam freely accepted the vocation offered to her. He elected to become man, and He desired to do this with the willing agreement of her whom He chose as His mother. Holy Virgin Mariyam became the Mother of God, it is not just because God chose her but also because she herself chose to accepted His will and plan.

By choosing to follow the will of God she received great honor from God. We see in the Gospel of Luke that the Holy Spirit filled her cousin Elizabeth and John the baptist (while he was still in his mothers womb). By the Holy Spirit we see John leaping with joy in the womb of his mother when she heard the voice of the Holy Virgin Mariyam. Elizabeth herself being filled with the Holy Spirit praises the Holy Virgin Mariyam saying “Blessed art thou among women”.

The prayer of our Holy Mother, Her intercession and blessings be with us. Amen.

Prophet Elijah- ነብዩ ኤልያስ

According to Ethiopian Orthodox calendar The prophet Elijah was born on December 10 [Tahisas 1], in the province of Gilead, to his righteous parents, his father, Joshua, and his mother, Tonya, who had lived in the house of Levi. On the eighth day, when they had performed circumcision, they named him Elijah.

When the prophet Elijah grew up learning the Law, he left his mother, his father, his relatives, and all his money and lived in the wilderness. St. Paul in the Hebrews' message, "They went about in sackcloth, on carpets, and in goatskins; they were distressed, afflicted, afflicted, hungry, thirsty. These are the things that the world does not deserve: the forest goes for the mountain and the mountain, the cave for the caves and the crumbs for fear. " Hebrews 11:37

"Elijah" also means a lamp to the house of God, that olive oil might shine upon all that are in darkness. When the Israelites were in darkness when they broke into the law of God, worshiping idols, the prophet Elijah arrived and brought them back to God with a bright heart.

One of the great miracles the prophet had done with the power of God was to make rain and to revive again [1 Kings 17: 2]. The sacrifice of the Lord in the presence of the priest, and the disgrace of the priests [2 Kings 18: 38].

One day, as the prophet Elijah was praying, the angel the Holy Raguel was revealed and told him, "Rejoice, for the time has come for you to ascend to heaven. You will live in a land of complete happiness. A place where no sickness, death, sorrow, but full of blessing. There is one like you, Enoch, who writes the commandment of the Most High God.

"When the time came for God to bring Elijah to heaven, the prophet went from Gilgal to Jericho, and his disciple Elisha said, "By your living soul, I will not leave you." When they arrived in Jericho, there came small prophets from Jericho. Elijah's ascension was revealed to them by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, and they said to Elisha, "Do you know that today the Lord will take away your Lord from you?" He said, "I know, keep quiet." Then Elijah went with Elisha, when he said, "Sit down here, for the LORD has sent me to the Jordan . I will not leave you."

Fifty men from the company of the prophets went and stood at a distance, facing the place where Elijah and Elisha had stopped at the Jordan. 8 Elijah took his cloak, rolled it up and struck the water with it. The water divided to the right and to the left, and the two of them crossed over on dry ground.

9 When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, “Tell me, what can I do for you before I am taken from you?” “Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit,” Elisha replied.

10 “You have asked a difficult thing,” Elijah said, “yet if you see me when I am taken from you, it will be yours—otherwise, it will not.”

11 As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. 12 Elisha saw this and cried out, “My father! My father! The chariots and horsemen of Israel!” And Elisha saw him no more. Then he took hold of his garment and tore it in two. 13 Elisha then picked up Elijah’s cloak that had fallen from him and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. 14 He took the cloak that had fallen from Elijah and struck the water with it. “Where now is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” he asked. When he struck the water, it divided to the right and to the left, and he crossed over. [2 Kings 6-14]

As Elijah crossed the Jordan River into the living nations, the believers born of the water and the Holy Spirit will inherit the kingdom of God. Our Lord said in the Gospel of John that "a person who is not born again cannot see the kingdom of God."

The prophet Elijah was one of the fifteen prophets (Moses, Joshua, Samuel, Jonathan, Gad, David, Solomon, Elisha, Ezra, Isaiah, Daniel, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and John the Baptist). This is a prophet who spoke physically with our Lord on the Mount of Tabor, a priest who broke down the sacrifice of idols, a traditional priest who initiated the ordinance;

Our Lord, our Savior, Eyesus Kirstos, has called John "Elijah" when he witnessed the greatness of the Holy Spirit of baptism. Our Lord calls John “Elijah” because it implies that he is teaching ahead of the Second Coming of Eyesus Kirstos,

James 5:17, KJV: "Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months."

May the prayer of Prophet Elijah be up on us!

The First Annual Online Youth Service