site.bta"May 2025 Be Year of Peace and Hope," Bulgarian Patriarch Daniil Wishes in New Year's Address

On the occasion of the New Year, Bulgarian Patriarch and Metropolitan of Sofia Daniil has issued an address to the adherents to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, the Bulgarian Patriarchate said in a press release on Wednesday.

"As always, we step into the new year with new hope for the future, for peaceful and days full of grace, light and joy. As Christians, we pray to the Lord, who is the Giver of all good things, to protect and strengthen us with His unfailing divine grace, to bless every good and useful endeavour of ours, to give us wisdom and prudence in our thoughts, decisions and actions," the Patriarch says in his address.

His Holiness notes that "the faith we profess - our salvatory Christian faith - requires from us to emulate Him in all things, 'for in Him we live, and move, and have our being' (Acts 17:28). Let us live as He Himself showed us when He was among us: with love for God and for our fellowmen, with good-heartedness and charity, with compassion and care for all those whom God's providence sends in our path, because with their help, through every one who is sick, hungry, oppressed or in need of anything, the Lover of Mankind enables us to proceed goodness and be like Him."

"Awareness of the eternal and intransient truths and values revealed to us by Christ the Savior in the Holy Gospel, making the Gospel our constant companion, counselor and corrective, striving to live in the way shown to us by the Son of God - all this is a pledge to fill not only the year ahead of us with content and meaning but also all the days and years allotted to us. Let us - as St Paul the Apostle advises - act "not as fools, but as wise," and let us treasure time "because the days are evil" (Eph. 5:16). Let us live in joy and gratitude for the gift of life, but also in repentance and striving for change. Let us grow in faith, in prayer and in the Christian virtues - so that every day of our earthly life may be filled with heavenly content," the Patriarch writes.

"May the New Year 2025 be a year of peace and hope - personally for each of us, for our Orthodox Church and our beloved earthly homeland, for all humanity and our whole world tormented by enmities and divisions, by wars and corruption. This hope is prompted by our faith in our All-Merciful God whom we know as 'the God of love and peace' (2 Cor. 13:11), as the God who is kind and merciful and Lover of Mankind, '...Who will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth' (1 Tim. 2:4). The grace of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all!," Daniil writes, extending his blessing at the end of his New Year's address.