H.E. Metropolitan Cleopas of Sweden’s Homily on the Sunday of the Holy Fathers of the Fourth Ecumenical Council
H.E. Metropolitan Cleopas of Sweden’s
Homily on the Sunday of the Holy Fathers of the Fourth Ecumenical Council
St. George Cathedral of Stockholm
Sunday, July 19, 2026
Dearly Beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Today the Orthodox Church honors the 630 God-bearing Fathers of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, which met at Chalcedon in the year 451. These Fathers gathered not to create a new faith, but to preserve the truth revealed by Christ, proclaimed by the Apostles, and faithfully handed down through the Church.
Through their wisdom, and holiness, they became true lights of the world, according to the words of our Lord in today’s Gospel.
The Fathers confessed that our Lord Jesus Christ is one and the same eternal Son of God, perfect in His divinity and perfect in His humanity.
In His one divine Person, the divine and human natures are united without confusion, without change, without division, and without separation.
This teaching is not simply a theological definition. It is the foundation of our salvation. If Christ were not truly God, He could not unite us to God; and if He were not truly human, He could not heal and restore our fallen human nature.
The eternal Son of God became man, was born of the Most Holy Theotokos, experienced hunger, sorrow, suffering, and death, and rose again in glory.
Because He assumed the fullness of our humanity, He healed it from within. The One who suffered upon the Cross is the same Lord who created the heavens, and through
His death and Resurrection, He destroyed the power of sin and death and opened for us the path to eternal life.
Yet the Holy Fathers also remind us that true doctrine must be expressed through a holy life. Christ tells us, “You are the light of the world.” Our faith must therefore shine through repentance, humility, mercy, forgiveness, justice, and love.
We cannot confess that Christ truly assumed human nature while remaining indifferent to the suffering, the lonely, the poor, the sick, or the forgotten. Every human person possesses immeasurable dignity because the Son of God chose to make our humanity His own.
Through the prayers of the Holy Fathers of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, may the Lord preserve us in the true faith, and may the light of Christ shine through our lives, so that others may see our good works and glorify our Father who is in heaven. Amen!
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