Bishop of Corfu, Mr. Nektarios: “Christians live in disdain but we resist”

On the morning of Thursday, May 21, 2020, His Eminence the Bishop of Corfu, Paxos and the Diapontian Islands, Mr. Nektarios, did the Divine Liturgy at the celebrating Holy Temple of Saints Constantine and Helen in the Koulines district of Corfu.

Addressing the faithful, Mr. Nektarios read from the apostolic reading of the day and stressed that the apostle Paul initially persecuted Christians because he could not bear the truth that the Christ whom his fellow Jews crucified was the Messiah and that he was resurrected from them. . Paul lived the revelation of Christ himself and the experience of communion with Him and was converted. He became the first to be persecuted after the One. Similar was the experience of Constantine the Great, who saw the point of the cross in heaven and felt that Christ is the savior, the one who provides life. Others may view the cross as a mole and persecute Christ and Christians. Constantine the Great, however, in addition to being a king, also became an apostle and showed that faith breeds freedom and guides God’s people to good and truth.

Mr. Nektarios pointed out that today those who deify science and order fear and terror among people, those who make us see the other as miasma, abolishing the society of love and fellowship, lead the world to deification of the present. The Church walks with the priority of God and then asks for the use of the gift that God has given us, that is, of science. St. Luke, a physician and bishop of Simferopol, who was persecuted by the Bolsheviks because he wanted to believe in God, first crucified the place where he operated and then put the scalpel, showing what the prioritization of the priorities he wants in human life is. to believe in God.

We tasted this time, said Mr. Nektarios, in the name of the science of persecution. We have felt that Christ has been criminalized, that society denies the grace of God in images and holy relics, that freedom of worship of God is not respected, that divine communion can be forbidden. In Corfu we experienced the contempt from the state of St. Spyridon, the tangible living example of God’s grace, the power of faith, the way of the Resurrection. But let us not succumb and with the embassies of the Saints let us walk united in faith!