Those that don’t respect the Atmosphere and abuse Creation are disrespecting God, and those that kill animals have the demonic component of hatred and malice that grew within the coronary heart of Cain who killed his good and virtuous brother Abel.
By Rev. Metropolitan Seraphim Kykkotis of Zimbabwe
Abusing God's Creation leads sinful man even to homicide. Each type of environmental destruction and atmospheric air pollution is the results of our ecological sins, which solely with our ecological repentance with a brand new inexperienced mind-set and ecological life, limiting the mass manufacturing of polluting pollution. Solely on this manner can we modify issues for the higher for the safety of Humanity and the way forward for our Planet.
When we have now issues, we predict that God is absent from our lives. In truth, we have now merely moved away from him. When our love doesn’t lengthen to all our fellow human beings, and certainly to those that endure, such because the harmless needy and orphaned kids, it’s as if we’re transferring away from our Merciful God. Solely after we strategy with our love and our good temper to assist our fellow human beings, we additionally strategy God. With out God, it’s like consistently strolling in a desert with out water and with out a lot hope of life. With out indiscriminate love for all folks, our future is bleak or somewhat to place it plainly, the person who doesn’t love all his fellow males, turns away from the supply of life, that’s God and has no future, he marches in direction of obscurity , to dying.
This Sunday's Gospel passage (Luke 6:31-36) calls us to be “compassionate – iktirmons merciful- in direction of different folks, simply as God our Father is Merciful in direction of us.” The phrase “compassionate” it comes from the phrase “intestine” and refers to part of our physique, our complete being. That’s the reason we hear the mom say about her baby that it’s her intestine, that’s, one thing that got here from her physique, from her existence and lives for her intestine, for her baby, the mom is able to sacrifice herself for the her baby, anguish for her baby, aches for her baby, rejoices at his progress, offers which means to her life along with her baby's progress. The mom is irreplaceable, that's why we name a toddler who loses his mom prematurely an orphan (every mom can exchange many, however nobody can exchange her).
The mom, in the identical manner, sees her granddaughters and grandsons as the within of her baby. Subsequently the which means of visceral love is to stay for the opposite. Our Heavenly Father, our God, our Creator has this love. Our Lord Jesus Christ calls us to point out and specific this tender like to all folks. And never solely to people, however to all of God's Creation, which was given to us as a present from God. Once we love and maintain our Atmosphere, then we additionally defend our Planet and proactively eradicate the phenomenon of issues created by Local weather change and atmospheric air pollution. By defending the Atmosphere, we defend our fellow human beings in the absolute best manner, particularly those that haven’t but been born, in order that they don’t come to stay in a polluted world.
Our communion with God by means of prayer and Holy Communion and our participation typically within the sacramental and liturgical lifetime of our Church and the observance of His Divine commandments, leads us to our reconciliation with ourselves, with our fellow males and with nature, all of God's Creation.
God as our frequent Heavenly Father, sees us all as his kids, as his bowels and calls us to comprehend that we’re all bowels of the one physique of Humanity. Man's indiscriminate love for his fellow man creates actual peace on this planet. That’s the reason originally of the Divine Liturgy we pray “for the peace of the universe”.
In quite simple phrases, our Lord Jesus Christ, as our God-man and Savior, exhorts us with nice love “to deal with our fellow human beings as we want different folks to deal with us”.
Heaven, with out indiscriminate love for the folks we meet and people we will help, stays an unfulfilled dream. Heaven turns into a residing hope and actuality by means of our love for all our fellow human beings, white, black, poor, wealthy, younger, previous and even these we meet daily, reminiscent of within the household, in our office and in our on a regular basis lives social obligations. Some make the nobles to strangers and throughout the household they behave as villains to villains, with shouting and with quarrels and vices, injuring our kids, who then, maybe, can be detached to all the pieces, risking to destroy their desires of a superb course on this planet we stay in.
The trials we stay daily with the wars in Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine and Russia and elsewhere, are a cause to not cease our prayers for them to cease instantly and prioritize peaceable dialogue to be resolved with respect for worldwide legislation and with justice all these issues that result in warlike conflicts. On the similar time, allow us to present our social solidarity and love and mutual assist amongst ourselves, with calmness, peace, persistence and sensible love.
In closing, on behalf of our Patriarch Theodoros II and the Members of the Holy Synod, clergy and folks of our Patriarchate and myself personally, allow us to congratulate the President of the Federation of Greek Communities and Fraternities of Zimbabwe Mrs. Eleni Andreas Koumidou for her well-deserved award from President of Cyprus Mr. Nikos Christodoulidis for her particular contribution to our Parikia and typically to Hellenism Overseas. Her visceral love all these years each to her household and to the members of our Parish is a residing instance for the youthful technology to maintain alive our Greek Orthodox traditions, which maintain us spiritually and nationally by means of the centuries for the bodily, our nationwide and religious and non secular custom. We thank the President of Cyprus for this recognition and we promise him that we’ll proceed to do all the pieces for the justice of our Folks by implementing the UN resolutions for the return of our refugees to their ancestral properties and the liberation of our occupied territories and of fixing the good humanitarian downside of our Lacking Individuals.
