Sunday Sermon by His Eminence Archbishop Seraphim Kykkotis of the Orthodox Archbishopric of Zimbabwe (Sep 22, 2019)
Our Church today refers to the call of the first Holy Apostles by our Lord Jesus Christ, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 our 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.
Our Lord Jesus Christ says that 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, 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.
Our Patriarchate, our Metropolis, our Bishops and our every parish, our Blessed Patriarch as the head, 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 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.
H αναδημοσίευση του παραπάνω άρθρου ή μέρους του επιτρέπεται μόνο αν αναφέρεται ως πηγή το ORTHODOXIANEWSAGENCY.GR με ενεργό σύνδεσμο στην εν λόγω καταχώρηση.
Ακολούθησε το ORTHODOXIANEWSAGENCY.gr στο Google News και μάθε πρώτος όλες τις ειδήσεις.
