The aim of people’s lives is their unity with Christ

Bishop of Corfu, Mr. Nektarios: “The aim of people’s lives is their unity with Christ”.

On Sunday, February 18, 2018, his Eminence, the Bishop of Corfu, Paxoi and Diapontian Islands, Mr. Nektarios did the Divine Liturgy in the Church of Saint George in Karousades village.

In his preaching, the Bishop of Corfu mentioned the Exodus of the Protoplasts from Paradise, which resulted in the independence of humans, from the source of life, God and their becoming a slave to both their passions and death. This is why, Christian’s obedience to our Holy Church is very important.

Within the Ark of Salvation, humans are really free, spiritually struggling and participating in the Mystery of Mysteries, the Divine Communion. On the contrary, the greatest slavery is that of passions and temptation. God Father, however, did not abandon His creature. He sent His Only Son, the new Adam and destroyed the evil snake, through the Cross and His Resurrection from the dead.

Moreover, his Eminence stressed that our Church introduces us to the Holy and Great Lent, at the stage of virtues, according to the holy hymnographers. The faithful Christian, as a genuine athlete of the Lord, is called upon to intensify his prayers, to control him/her self and to fast. Fasting is not the purpose of the spiritual struggle, but the means. The aim of humans’ life is their union with Christ. Apart from eating various foods, fasting includes mainly abstaining from different passions, such as the criticism, self-love, vanity, lying, in short from everything that takes humans away from their Creator. As far as the virtues are concerned, these are the Christ’s virtues which sanctify humans.

Furthermore, the Bishop of Corfu, using as a basis everything that goes on in our country, underlined that the long-year crisis that tortures us is mainly a moral, spiritual crisis of identity, We experience this crisis because we have put Christ away from our lives, believing that we are able to do everything on our own.

In his closing, Mr. Nektarios invited all the loyal Christians to declare with all the power of their lives the Truth of the Triune God, standing up their Christian stature against all these attacks, while wishing a good and blessed Lent.