Christmas message – Calvinists: ‘hardship helps us experience essence of holidays’

Photo: MTI/Zoltán Máthé

“A characteristic of Christian holidays is that the harder the outside circumstances, the more in tune we can be with their essence,” Zoltán Balog, the head of the Synod of the Hungarian Reformed Church, told MTI on the occasion of Christmas.

Like at the time of the first ever Christmas, circumstances today are not ideal, “but if one has everything they want and everything goes right, one can easily come to believe that they are what makes the holiday a holiday”, Balog said. But the essence of the Christian holiday is that it is created by God, “and if the external props aren’t there, it’s easier to pay attention to this essence”, he added.

The Reformed bishop said what most people would miss the most this

Christmas was loved ones they could not celebrate together with.

Balog said many families, including his own, had members who were living abroad. “But this absence of the other person shows their value. Those whom we truly miss are truly important,” he said.

As regards the effect of the pandemic on church life, Balog said the number of churchgoers had dropped due to the lockdowns. Since churches reopened people are “more conscious” of how they attend church, because it also takes courage, he said.

Read also: How well do you know Hungarian Christmas traditions? – Quiz

Balog said the leadership of the Reformed Church had learned that

closing churches was wrong, arguing that they were needed most in difficult times.

“If we observe certain restrictions, then going to church can’t be any riskier than going to the store,” Balog said. “And just like how we can’t give up buying milk, bread, fruit, we also have a daily need for bread and fruit for the soul.” He said attending worship service in a community satisfied this need far more than watching the service online at home.

Balog said one lesson to be learned from the pandemic was that

“we can’t keep living the way he have been.”

“This pandemic is not a natural disaster . which we can say isn’t our fault,” he said. “The coronavirus pandemic is connected to the global tendencies that conflate everything and don’t respect boundaries, because those are what led to the epidemic plaguing the whole world instead of remaining local. And we’ve been given a chance to learn from this.”