The Archbishop went to the celebrating Church of St. John in Parramatta, Sydney, on Friday afternoon and presided over the Vespers service in memory of the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist.
In his sermon, after thanking and congratulating the faithful for the patience they show throughout this period, the Archbishop placed his focus on the issue of securing the truth on theological issues.
“Truth is ensured by the Church itself and not by each of us, with our interpretations, approaches or knowledge,” underlined the Archbishop, among other things. Theological issues are not easy, nor can they be interpreted by anyone,” he said, adding with disappointment that “unfortunately it is the devil’s success to think that we all know the issues related to the Church and Theology.” “And I, who stand on this throne given to me by the Church, to teach you, to guide you and to pray for you, have no right to say my own things,” stressed the Archbishop.
The Archbishop also mentioned the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, held in 2016, to highlight with bitterness that there were some who claimed that it made heretical decisions that do not support the truth. “Who guarantees the truth?”, he wondered and added: “What the Fathers of our Church and the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils tell us is that the truth is guaranteed synodically by the Church as well. Not by individuals, because individuals can make mistakes. But the Church guarantees the truth. The Church as a whole.”
Finally, the Archbishop referred to the debate on Holy Communion, which developed on the occasion of the pandemic, noting that “those who neither attend church nor believe in God usually speak about the church issues.” “And this is our great pain,” he added, “some people, Greeks and baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity, want to give us a lecture on Holy Communion.” “We know better than anyone what Holy Communion is,” he stressed, “because we are the ones who go to the hospitals to offer the Holy Communion to the patients and we never got ill. And this does not happen because we are saints, but because we believe in the essence of Holy Communion.”
