Όλες οι κατηγορίες:

Φανή Πεταλίδου
Ιδρύτρια της Πρωινής
΄Έτος Ίδρυσης 1977
ΑρχικήΘρησκείεςSunday of all Saints

Sunday of all Saints

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By His Eminence Archbishop Seraf im Kykotis

Our Church this Sunday honours the memory of all the saints in order to show us visible examples of holiness, which we can follow so that we can also enter like them into the Kingdom of Heaven. Among the first saints are the holy Apostles.

Precisely because the teaching of our Church is based for approximately two thousand years on the teaching of the Holy Apostles, it is called the Apostolic Church. The Holy Apostles were the first disciples of Christ who, having received teaching from Him for three years by hearing Christ’s teaching, seeing Christ’s miracles and helping their distressed fellow human beings, they were made worthy on the day of Pentecost with the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit of themselves becoming carriers of the Revelation of God and Apostles of the Evangelical message of Salvation through Christ. All the Christians who follow the example of the Holy Apostles are the saints we celebrate today. Main common characteristic of all the saints is that they follow the teachings of our Apostles.

The Holy Apostles were not well-known scholars nor distinguished political men, neither were they wealthy people but they were also not sinners. The Holy Apostles were simple, honest people full of love for their distressed fellow human beings. The saints we honor today are all those who protecting the teachings of the Apostoles.

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Above all however, an outstanding well-known characteristic of theirs was deep faith in God. They were pious people. They were guileless, innocent people who could not think of malice against anyone. They were God’s people. Furthermore, most of Christ’s disciples had received their tutorship from the great prophetic entity of Saint John the Baptist who, with his ascetic life and his sermon of repentance, suitably prepared them to serve God completely and to become Disciples and Apostles of Christ. The saints we honor today follow the lives of the holy Apostles.

If the first reason for the Holy Disciples to follow Christ was their piety and their deep faith in God, the second reason was their self-denial of everything for Christ. Truly, they left behind their family, native country, wealth, relatives and friends in order to follow Christ. The decision of the Holy Apostles to become Disciples of Christ was characterized by the lack of every kind of ulterior motive and self-interest. Their motive was their deep faith and pure love for the salvation of humanity.  This is what also what our saints did in their lives.

The majority of us today, many times, behave like the wealthy young man of the Gospel, who in the face of Christ’s summons to become His Disciples like the Holy Apostles by selling and distributing his wealth to the poor and the needy, our attitude is rather to distance ourselves impatiently because we are still strongly bound to the material and temporary things of this world.

Some people want things to be on good terms for them both on this earth and in heaven. On earth they want to be stuck to their material possessions without them having any inclination to share them with those who don’t have and to generally support the important, philanthropic, catechistic and missionary work of our Church. In heaven, they think again that they are secure because they have not murdered, they have not stolen, they honour their father and mother and they attend Church at Christmas and Easter.  They deceive themselves however, because as it is evident from the report given by our Church on the life of the Holy Apostles in today’s specific Gospel extract of the Apostle Paul’s letter, it is not merely enough for someone who wants to enter the Kingdom of Heaven to avoid sinning, but what counts is the efforts he makes to contribute to the facing of the problems which torment and cause suffering to his fellow human beings. This is what our saints did in their lives.

Our Lord Jesus Christ speaks with the same anguish in today’s Gospel extract when He refers to the harvest being plentiful but the workers being few. That is, people expect with their innocence to hear the Word of God in order to be saved but even so, those who are ready and prepared with self-sacrifice and love to carry out this important Apostolic work are few indeed.

Hence, just like in Christ’s time when the workers of the Gospel were few, as were the Holy Apostles, and there was a multitude of people who relied on the salvific message of the Gospel and then the saints, similarly today, there are people everywhere who wait to hear the Word of God but even so we are unable to harvest because we are lacking in enlightened people who are ready to leave everything, to leave their comfortable way of life, to become Apostles, for humanity to be saved.

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However, if this is difficult to achieve from the multitude, just as it was in Christ’s time, let at least some people stop fighting against the contemporary Apostles of our time, who have been called by God for the Evangelism of humanity, because they do not merely fight against these honest workers of the Gospel, but against the work of God for the evangelism of the world.

            O ur Blessed Patriarch, our Metropolitans, our Bishops and our worthy clergy with the co-operation of the devout pioneering lay people, support “in many ways and in many places” ethically and materially the work of our church. We continue our historical course of two thousand years heading towards the third millennium, following the example of the Holy Apostles and all the saints of our Church, transferring the Evangelical message of salvation to all the races of the earth, by participating with our prayers and works in the social problems of our fellow human beings.

The Apostolic identification of our church is preserved when we follow daily the examples of the lives of the Holy Apostles and all our saints.

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