The Second Online meeting of the Parents’ school took place in the Holy Metropolis
On Sunday, November 28, 2021, the second online meeting of the Parents’ School of the Holy Metropolis of Corfu took place, with a speaker Fr. Symeon Venetsianos, General Director of the Foundation of Youth and Family of the Holy Archdiocese of Athens, .
The event was opened by His Eminence the Bishop of Corfu Mr. Nektarios, with the blessing of which the meetings of the Parents’ School are held, thanking Fr. Symeon who accepted this invitation to speak to parents and young couples. His Holiness spoke about the desecration of our time, referring to the person of the Blessed Archbishop Christodoulos for his work in the field of youth and family. He stressed that the desecration has appeared for many years in the lives of people in all institutions of society, the Church, education, family, nation, as a result of which we have abandoned the sanctuaries and sanctuaries handed down to us by our ancestors. us. We forgot the fathers and the heroes who knew the sanctity and who were once sacrificed for the ideals of our homeland. Even the elders forgot the sacrifices of the people of our Church who were slaughtered for the sanctity of the homeland, of the Orthodox faith, of education, of the family. The Church, said Mr. Nektarios, was the one who worked hard and kept high the fires of faith, education but also of the holy and holy. The Church then stood at the forefront of the struggle for freedom from both the eastern and western conquerors. She will always be the leader in the fight to deal with the problems of each season.
Afterwards, Fr. Symeon took the floor, thanking His Eminence for the invitation to speak at the School of Parents of our Diocese. Fr. Symeon began his speech by emphasizing the problem of desecration in Europe and as a consequence in our homeland Greece and the problems that have arisen both in the Church and in the family. Father Symeon spoke of the family as a sacred institution that is going through a great crisis and that this is the first school, the first university of man. Not only children but also parents grow up in the family, through their personal development and even from their mistakes. He spoke about the need to wean children. Because sociologists, social anthropologists and psychiatrists accept the great importance of the family. That family members influence and are affected when a member suffers, just as in the Church as a large family, so in a family as a small Church.
The speaker then stressed that we as people of the Church listen to, monitor and study current developments in issues related to marriage and the family. There are important changes in the family such as free cohabitation, civil marriage, single parent family, second marriage and same-sex couples. The consequences are the decrease of marriage, the increase of divorces, the decrease of fertility, the hunt for ephemeral happiness, the child-centeredness, etc. As a result, we have been led to the desecration of the Mystery, of relationships, of persons, of roles.
The world and the Church do not mean the same thing when they talk about marriage. We see in our time people marrying the same sex, with animals, trees, robots. Or others to pay attention to the decoration of the Temple and other things and not to the mystery. The Church, however, insists on talking about the mystery of love, about a mystery God-founded that aims at the salvation of the world and the reconnection of people with each other and with God. The purpose of marriage, Fr. Symeon stressed, is completion, completion, holiness, eternity and, subsequently, procreation. The Mystery of Marriage does not end with the “By wishes” of the sequence. A necessary condition is that the person has elementary maturity. Marriage is a symbol of responsibility. Developing a good marriage requires a lot of effort. We should tell young people, the speaker said characteristically, that they did not stop being married because they had a child. Children are in a hurry to grow up, but so is the society we live in. Children do not want indifferent parents. They want real, democratic parents. And parents need education.
Closing his speech, Fr. Symeon gave some tips to make a family functional. There will always be disagreements, he said. The question is how to manage them. There are different views. Change will happen when I start to change myself. No problem is unsolved. Dialogue helps. It needs spirituality. To see everything with love. If I do not have a good relationship with my man, I do not have a relationship with God either. The Church has tremendous potential to receive young people through actions of its parishes. When there is love, boundaries and communication we can achieve a good and healthy relationship.
The speaker then answered questions from participants and there was a fruitful dialogue. The event was closed by His Excellency, who thanked the speaker, the officials of the Parents’ School as well as the participants who attended the speech, not only from Corfu, but also from other parts of Greece and abroad.
The third online meeting of the School of Parents of the Holy Metropolis of Corfu will take place on Sunday, January 16, 2022 at 8 pm, with the speaker Lefteris Eleftheriadis, psychologist – author, on the topic: “Our family gives us reasons to live”.
