Archbishop Makarios of Australia celebrated the Divine Liturgy on Sunday, 9 August, at the Church of the Annunciation in Sydney and spoke about the value and power of faith.
Moreover, he analysed the Gospel passage of the day, in which Jesus is walking on a rough sea. The Archbishop focused on the fact that even though Peter was at first able to walk on the water too, he suddenly began to sink. Then, as described in the passage from the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus reached out his hand to catch him. “You of little faith,” He said, “why did you doubt?”
At this point, the Archbishop turned to the faithful to highlight a valuable lesson for modern Christians, which emerges clearly from the passage. “The passage of the Gospel shows us that this is exactly how we must deal with adversity so that we do not drown, that is, not to sink into the water, as in the case of Peter,” he added.
“Peter, as long as he believed in Jesus, he was able to walk on the water. But as soon as he lost his faith, he began to sink. The exact same thing happens to us too. Once we lose our faith, we lose our purpose, our orientation. In other words, we lose the source of our power, which is Christ,” he said.
“Faith is force,” he added, “which helps us to believe that Christ is indeed the true Son and the Word of God. It is a force that makes us accept that there are some things that the human mind does not understand. There is not a logical explanation for everything. This is exactly what faith is all about.”