The speech of His Holiness Patriarch Porphyrios of Serbia took place on January 28, 2024 at the Holy Liturgy in the Church of St. Alexander Nevsky in Belgrade.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit! Brothers and sisters, the word of the Gospel is the word of God, and the word of God is the rule of life, the way of authenticity and right existence of each of us. That is why, when we read the Gospel, we do not treat it as an ordinary book, as a literary work describing certain biographies of certain personalities that we may be more or less sympathetic to, that we may like more or less. The word of the Gospel is recorded in the book of the Gospel as the word of God, and that is why the story we have heard today is not merely a cautionary, interesting and romantic story, but reveals to each of us what the truth, the way and the life of such is.
It goes without saying that there is no human being who does not want peace, joy, beauty and love. None of us can say we don't want it, none of us can say we don't have a need for peace, for love, for beauty, for joy. And this man who comes to Christ asks Him what he should do to have all these things, because peace, beauty, joy and love are the facts and characteristics of the Kingdom of God, which does not concern only the future, that is, which is not something that exists for us as an experience, since it comes to us only after we leave this world. The kingdom of God, eternity, even though we are beings living in history and thus limited by time and space, is something that is present in history, and not only that, but it is something that is the experience of those who long for Christ and the kingdom of God, even in the here and now. Certainly not in its entirety. We determine our mode of existence, our eternity status already here and now. We decide freely, by our free will, whether we want the Kingdom of God, whether we really want the King of the Kingdom of God, whether we want God, i.e. Christ, or whether we will not. Of course, we all know that, apart from our decision to follow Christ, our daily lives do not always conform to this conviction, so parallel to this are our falls, our deviations and departures from our commitments. However, in spite of everything, there is always like a red thread, like a pivot that keeps us alive, precisely our determination and desire to return to that determination, and what is impossible for us is possible for God. When this need and desire exists in us, God always brings us back to the line of our commitment, that is, on the path that leads us to the Kingdom of Heaven.
Therefore, there is no one who does not desire beauty, joy, love, peace, a full life. The Lord Himself reveals to him in this story how this is accomplished. First, in choosing Christ, we have a criterion. It is important to have a criterion, a measure, a mirror, because we cannot know if we are on the true, authentic, right path, the path of salvation and fullness, if we do not know the measure, if we do not have a measure. measure, an arshin, and for us the measure is Christ and His word written in the Gospel. So how do we get what we all long for? The Lord speaks loud and clear by keeping the commandments He has given us. Why? Because the commandments are not foreign to our being. The commandments are not contrary to our healthy nature, our healthy authentic existence. On the contrary, the commandments of God reveal to us what is natural to us humans, what is consistent with our normal, proper, natural life, because when we live naturally, there are consequences to that way of living. The results of that lifestyle are normal and natural, and it is normal for us to be joyful. It is normal, right and healthy for us to live in beauty, to have peace, to have love, to have faith, to have hope. These things are all natural to us humans and that's why we need this state, this reality. If it was unnatural for us, we would not protest, when there is anxiety in us and around us, we would not protest, when we feel fear, we would not protest when we do not feel beauty. So these are all indicators that what God's word reveals to us in the Gospel is not imposed upon us, but corresponds to what we impulsively and instinctively express as our need. Of course, rationally, logically, and spiritually we feel that it belongs to us. Therefore, although we have freedom, as St. Paul says, although everything is permitted to us, we must know that not everything is to our advantage, and it is not to our advantage when we act contrary to these beginnings, principles, Criteria by which Christ reveals his word and it is recorded in the Gospel.
Everything is allowed to us, but we cannot and must not allow anything to rule over us, to enslave us. As soon as we are enslaved to anything, so to speak, apart from Christ, we will feel that we are deprived of something, and the degree of deprivation will depend upon the extent to which we enslave ourselves to anything else outside of Christ. That is why the Lord, when this man came to Him and asked Him what to do to receive eternal life, said, Read the gospel, read the word of God. Do what the word of God reveals to you, that it is the only good, right and saving thing for you to do . Saving in the sense that it offers you true and real freedom, and then this man in whom the Evangelist Mark, describing the same story in his Gospel, recognizes the young man, says, What must I do to receive life, to be perfect? ? And the Lord answers: Sell everything and give to the poor. Take up your cross and follow me . And the story ends with this young man being saddened and leaving because he was rich and it was hard for him to give up his wealth.
Of course, everyone would think, or many would think, that if you are rich there is no salvation and that you should be poor in order to feel comfortable and be rich. Of course, that the gospel, that is, the word of God, he will not tell us that, but he wants to tell us exactly what the apostle Paul said: Everything is permitted, including having and being rich, but you must not let it control you . What does that mean? It means that your wealth, and your beauty, and your fame, or if you prefer, your spirituality, and your fasting, and your prayer, are more important to you. Hence, virtue is from Christ. Everything we have is from Him. It is important that you understand everything you have, whether material or spiritual, as a gift of God and that it is not an occasion for you to be arrogant, to think that you are more important and better than others, because humility - which precisely implies the realization that God is all that we have been given - is the criterion and measure of everything we think, say and do. Humility is The yardstick by which we know if we are ready for Christ to be our first place in our lives, to have everything else in its place, including wealth, beauty, glory, virtue, fasting, and learning.
So, brothers and sisters, that's why it's important that we read the Holy Gospel, that we understand it in a Christian way, and that the Lord be our first always and in every place, so that then, like the Holy Father, Sava - the first Archbishop of Serbia, whom we celebrated yesterday - he left everything, knowing that the most important thing is Christ, and when he left everything, he became truly rich in every sense of the word. All that was God's became his, and so he could, renewed, transformed and sanctified by the grace of the Holy Spirit, return to the world and once again in himself, in the deepest depths of his being, be perfectly at peace, perfectly humble and outwardly accomplishing so many acts that once and for all determined the path of our nation. May the Lord grant peace and joy through the prayers of St. Sava and all the saints of our lineage and all the saints and God-pleasers.
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