SUNDAY MESSAGE (audio message)
BY HIS EMINENCE THE METROPOLITAN
KYTHIRA & ANTIKYTHIRA SERAPHIM
SUNDAY AT MATTHEW
(04-08-2024)
PASTORAL CIRCULAR OF 15 AUGUST
(No 238/2024)
To
The Holy Clergy and Christonymos Laon
of our Holy Metropolis Kythira and Antikythira
«At the coming of the Holy Cross, we two believers hypnotize him, in hearts pure and in works of laboring and striving ... he provides past, holy gifts, and healing for souls and bodies, those in faith and in truth, who worship him, and cry out in unison, Lord, glory to you.»
(From the Holy Sequence of Saint Helena)
My dear brothers and fellow ministers,
My Christian brothers and sisters, my beloved children in the Lord.
Blessed, God-pleasing, peaceful and kind-hearted the sacred period of the 15th of August.
This holy fortnight is opened, together with the Lord, with the Prophecy of the Holy Cross. Our Holy Church celebrates, that is, the old sacred custom of the Holy Wood being offered on the days of the fasting period of the 15th of August, in the Holy Churches of the Kingdom of the cities of Constantinople, to combat the diseases and illnesses that occur at that time and to strengthen the Christians spiritually. And we, the Orthodox Faithful, today, according to that old tradition, we pray the Holy and Life-giving Cross of our Saviour Jesus Christ, so that we may receive grace and strength from on high in our spiritual struggle during these fasting days and in our life in general.
Saint John Chrysostom, speaking through the Holy and Life-giving Cross, he said: «The Cross It was a means of blessing and of all manner of safety to many. The Cross He became a plague to the devil, a snare to demons, a muzzle to the power of the enemies of Christ. The Cross abolished death. The Cross crushed his bronze gates ᾍSee. The Cross crushed the iron bars. The Cross destroyed the devil's citadel. The Cross cut off the nerves of sin» (S.E.C. 34, 58).
«The Cross killed sin. The Cross It became the means of cleansing the whole world. The Cross He hath destroyed the ancient enemy, he hath opened the gates of heaven, we have made friends of them that were formerly enemies. The Cross He restored man to heaven and exalted him to the right hand of God. The Cross myriads more accomplished goods. So we must not grieve and be depressed. Instead, we should rejoice and be glad for all these things.’ (E.P.C. 34, 178).
«Everywhere the Cross, writes St Chrysostom. And to the royal crowns the Cross. And at the table the Cross. And throughout the whole world the Cross. The Cross shines brighter than the sun» (S.E.C. 34, 52).
The Saints celebrated today also took up their personal cross and worked with the Divine Power. Before Christ and before the Holy Cross, the holy seven Maccabean children, manipulated by their wise and holy teacher Eleazar and their holy mother Solomon, proclaimed their devotion to the divine laws and fasting from forbidden meats.
Likewise, and the co-celebrated Saint Hoseparanth Martyr Elesa, Protector and Curator of our island, whose young daughter remained an orphan, after the premature human death of her beloved Christian mother Eugenia, and unprotected, in the spiritual sense, by her pagan father, she took up the cross of maternal pride and with Faith, patience and Christian hope, she faced her pagan father to the end, with her courageous and firm confession of the Faith and Love of Christ, for whom she was martyred, after «he abhorred the father's impiety» and had as its support «maternal piety».
And the Progress and Pilgrimage of the Holy and Life-Giving Cross, but also the feast of the Holy Seven Maccabean Children after their teacher Eleazar and their mother Solomon and the Holy Mother Solomon and the Holy Mother Martyr Hosiparto Martyr Helena, They stimulate us spiritually and strengthen us in this short and blessed period of fasting and holy prayers of the 15th of August.
My dear brothers,
«Through many continual temptations, to you I seek salvation, O Mother of the Word and Virgin, of the afflicted and afflicted save me» we sing with all our hearts to the Virgin Mary and invoke her intercessions and her intercession at this time and in the difficult times we are experiencing.
Through the Divine Power of the Holy and Life-giving Cross, the intercessions of the Virgin Mary and the prayers and intercessions of our Saints to the Lord, we hope to receive mercy and grace from our Lord and God.
We are all aware of the particularly heavy spiritual atmosphere of our days and times. Violations and breaches of the divine law are rampant, which are daily increasing, and the distancing and apostasy from the Divine Will, the official abolition of moral and spiritual provisions and values of the Holy Gospel and their replacement by laws that are unevangelical and antichronic, which overturn the laws of physiology and Christian anthropology and lead to moral perversion.
Furthermore, the political instability observed worldwide, the continuing cease-fire in Ukraine and the Middle East and the threatened outbreak and expansion of wars from hour to hour is causing anxiety and anguish in the modern world.
«They that depart from Thee, O Lord, shall perish», the Prophet David assures us. The departure from the hierocanonical order and the doctrinal teaching of our Holy Church. The confusion with heretics, heretics and schismatics. The unprecedented and comparable to the persecution of the Church of Christ in the early Christian era, the persecution of the Orthodox Christian population of Ukraine through the intervention of the political agents of that country, in addition to the prolonged war there.
Our Orthodox Christian Faith is fiercely fought against even in our days. In Paris, with the proclamation of the Olympic Games, the mockery of the sacred representation of the Last Supper, the Divine Face of our Saviour Jesus Christ and the holy figures of the deacon Apostles was targeted by the atheists, the irreverent inspirers of this outrage attempt to associate the depicted holy persons of the Last Supper with the passion of homosexuality and homosexual tendencies and attitudes. And rightly so, the Orthodox world reacted in a swift manner.
The plans being considered and promoted for the achievement of the celebration of the common Passover and in the meantime of the union and the «common cup» with the heterodox aggravate the anxious and anxious situation of the Orthodox Believers, who sincerely and from the heart believe in Christ the Saviour, trusting from the depth of their souls «themselves and one another, and lay down their lives in Christ.» and they worship Him «in truth and justice».
All these and the expected sufferings, if we do not repent and return to our Lord and God with tears and sighs in the atmosphere of Divine Worship, of the beneficial Holy Sacraments of Orthodoxy and the Divine Doctrine, it is imperative that we translate them and translate them into fervent and fervent prayer in order to obtain Divine Grace and the infinite mercy of God. If the word of the holy prophet John is true. «For three days and Nineveh is destroyed.» to save the city and the repentant Ninevehites, how much more should the Gospel Divine Word of our Divine Lord apply today: «repent and believe in the Gospel» (Mark 1:15).
Wishing, therefore, from the depth of my heart, rich in divine illumination and divine grace. «of all of us and of all pious and Orthodox Christians», as well as the divine strengthening of us in our spiritual progress and the «good of the fasting struggle» of the holy season of the fifteenth of August, I decree,
With Paternal wishes & love
The Metropolitan
†Seraphim of Kythira and Antikythira
