Bishop of Corfu, Mr. Nektarios: Let’s Listen to the Voice of people

His Eminence the Bishop of Corfu, Paxoi and the Diapontian Islands, Mr. Nektarios, officiated at the Holy Monastery of Pantokratoros Kamarellas on the morning of Sunday, May 3, 2020. The small fraternity of the Monastery participated in the service, since the temples and the monasteries operate behind closed doors.

Mr. Nektarios, in a brief address to the abbess of the Holy Monastery, Elder Pelagia and the fraternity, spoke on the occasion of the apostolic reading of the day, which refers to the election of the seven deacons proposed by the apostles and approved by God’s people. Mr. Nektarios stressed that our ecclesiastical tradition has always included the accompaniment of clergy and people. The Church listened to the voices of the faithful and even those who were actively involved in church life. Believers were not standard members of the Church, but they lived the way of faith. That is why the apostles suggested and the people decided. This continued to happen in the Byzantine years, when the Synods that took place were approved by the people, but also by monasticism. Monasteries and the people judged the decisions of the political and religious leadership (as the emperors presided over the Synods), resulting in meetings that were characterized as predatory because they were not orthodox in terms of faith.

This ethos of the original community is not always applied in our time. The political leadership does not follow the path of cooperation with the Church, but decides on its own behalf on behalf of the Church, while the church leaders sometimes show that they are far from the people.

Mr. Nektarios pointed out that ordinations cannot be without the opinion of the people. The bishop ordains anyone who asks for the priesthood only when he has the good testimony, the testimony not only of his spiritual father, but also of our people, and of course, since the bishop himself tries to check the credibility of the persons.

Mr. Nektarios asked the elder and the fraternity to pray more for the people of God, who are essentially in spiritual famine and persecution for their faith. Pray that the voice of the people may be heard from his shepherds. Finally, he wished the crisis to make us wiser and to become an occasion for a return to the early Christian ethos. In material matters there is charity, as communalism cannot be applied. But spiritually, co-decision and companionship are needed!

At the end of the Divine Liturgy, His Eminence ordained spiritual father of the Monastery,  Archimandrite Arsenios Peppes, abbot of the Holy Monastery of Vlacherna in Skripero, who chanted in the Divine Liturgy.