Dear Fellow Armenians,
For the last two years, mankind has been facing the crucial challenge of the coronavirus pandemic. Notwithstanding the loss of invaluable lives, thank God Almighty, humanity armed itself with experience against this unprecedented threat and gradually, according to scientific and medical centers, we are getting closer to restoring our normal way of life, always following the three key prescriptions: Prayer, Patience, and Caution.
Parallel to this tragedy, the Armenian people went through one of its most atrocious existential experiences, when the Armenian homeland became a victim of the treacherous attack by its neighbors, with three decades of negligence, short-sightedness, corruption, and other ills of our own leadership serving as grounds for it. And on top of all this has come the current leadership with the adoption of new world slogans, the rush to find artificial and superficial solutions, and diplomatic inexperience.
This bitterest catastrophe after the Armenian Genocide came once again to wake us up from our wishful thinking. We have to understand, with the highest degree of awareness, the message of the immortal poet Yeghishe Charents: “Oh Armenian people, your only salvation is in your collective power.” Deciding the fate of a nation is not the privilege of an individual or a political group; it requires practicing collective wisdom and experience with a spirit of pluralism.
In our history there have been victories that were nothing short of miracles, which we achieved thanks to our collective strength. And I believe that, as in the past, we too today can witness new miracles, as in the words from the heart and mind of poet Antranig Dzaroukian, which he speaks with his pure lips in “Oath to Ararat”:
“We will reach your summit, oh holy mountain,
When the barrage of bombs subsides,
And the seas of blood are draped in rainbows.
When the butchered dove of peace
Returns from the abyss of horror
Bringing the olive branch of reconciliation,
We shall make it to your summit…”
In the new year of 2022 and on Christmas eve, let us salute each other with our millennial Christian faith and with the willpower and strength crowned with five thousand years of Haykian experience. To celebrate the birth of Christ means to always renew ourselves through history and give birth to the realization of new dreams.
“Happy New Year! Christ is born and revealed! Blessed is the revelation of Christ!”
ARCHBISHOP ANOUSHAVAN
Prelate, Eastern United States