SUNDAY MESSAGE (audio message)
OF HIS EMINENCE THE METROPOLITAN OF KYTHERA & ANTI-KYTHERA SERAPHIM
SUNDAY OF THE HOLY FATHERS
(16-6-2024)
WRITTEN TH. KIRYGMA
Today, my Christians, our Holy Church celebrates the memory of the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council. This Council was convened in 325 A.D. at Nicea, Bithynia, when Constantine the Great was emperor, in order to counter the heresies of Arius, who said that Christ was a creature of God and therefore not God. The Orthodox teaching says that Christ has two natures, i.e. he is a perfect God and a perfect man. Great Fathers of the Church, such as St. Athanasius and St. Spyridon, theologized and emerged at this Synod. The decisions of the First Ecumenical Council, which condemned Arius and his followers, were summarized in the Symbol of Faith, our well-known ’Creed’, which was completed and took its present form with the decisions of the Second Ecumenical Council and which contains all the doctrine of our faith and when we say it we confess and admit our faith.
On the occasion of this event, our Holy Church, in the Gospel reading that we have heard, put the prayer that Jesus Christ made to God His Father during the hours of His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane before His arrest.
Our Lord, making an account of His work to God His Father who sent Him into the world to save man from the devil and sin, says that the time has come for God the Father to reveal the glory of the Son and the Son the glory of the Father, meaning His sacrifice on the Cross and the final victory over the devil through His Resurrection. Foreseeing as God that the questioning of His divinity would follow, He gives an answer to this by saying that before He came to earth He had been close to God the Father as God.
«I have glorified thee on the earth, I have finished the work which I gave thee to do: and now, Father, glorify me, and glorify thee, and the glory which I have before the world is before thee.». I glorified you on earth after I completed the work you commissioned me to do. Now therefore, Father, glorify me in thy presence with the glory which I had in thy presence before the world was made.
But the great anxiety of our Christ was for those He would leave behind, His disciples and those who would eventually believe in Him. That is why he begs God the Father first of all to give love and unity to men after their own pattern, i.e. the Holy Trinity. «in the same way as we are» (i.e. to keep them together as we are one) and secondly to keep them from the evil devil.
Unity was preserved through the Ecumenical Councils and the protection from the devil through the Sacraments, especially the Sacrament of Confession and Penance and our participation in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.
My Christians, this High Priestly Prayer, which was made in those difficult hours, has protected and sustained the world and those who trust their lives to the true God and to Him who sent Him for more than 2000 years. «And this is eternal life, to worship the only true God, and that which thou hast sent Jesus Christ.». Knowledge of Christ means imitation of His life, man's participation in the life of God, i.e. theosis, because according to St. Gregory of Nyssa: «Christianity is the imitation of the divine nature». Let's try.
Prot. p. Pan. Megalokonomos
