Bishop of Corfu, Mr. Nektarios: “We should not be afraid of truth”
On Saturday morning, November 30, 2019, his Eminence, the Bishop of Corfu, Paxoi and Diapontian Islands, Mr. Nektarios did the Divine Liturgy in the celebrating Church of Saint Andrew in Lakka, Paxoi.
Speaking to the audience, Mr. Nektarios used the Gospel’s part of the day, in which Saint Andrew says that “we have found the Messiah” after he is called from Christ.It was a difficult reason to say, at a time when the Jews waited for the Messiah, as the prophets had foretold, but waited for Him as a strong man, a liberator from Roman power. They felt they wanted salvation, they understood the curse, the deep spiritual darkness, the distance between the true God and the people, but the human logic of the moment reigned. They felt the tyranny of the powerful and demanded freedom. They could not, therefore, understand that Christ was the Messiah. The apostle proclaimed it and served it, as long as Christ was near them and after the ascension. He reached Barbarian Scythia and testified in Patras.
The apostles spoke the truth and the truth irritates people. People, committed to their perceptions, to their passions, to the alienation of sin, to the priorities of their own lives, feel control over the presence of Christ.
This control also happens in our time. But the Messiah is within us, the kingdom of God is in the heart of the believer. And let’s not be afraid of the truth that frees us, but let us also seek Christ in our lives and in the life of the Church. Let us be sure that we live in the age of grace, of resurrection. Christ shows in our lives that death eliminates sin and resurrects us in union with Him.
Mr. Nektarios urged the faithful to serve the kingdom of God with their lives, to love it, to be revealed in grace and truth. Do not be overcome by the lures of the world, sin, pleasure, glory. To see the true light of Christ and to transmit it in their lives.
He wished the “happy nameday” to the celebrating prelatic warden of Paxoi, Andreas Diamantis and to the locals who came in the temple, emphasizing his joy for being at the second part of the Metropolis..
