Met. Mitrofan: You cannot live hostile to your people and the Church
The Church does not need directives and orders from the authorities, believes Metropolitan Mitrofan of Gorlovka and Slaviansk.
Those who rebel against the Church and their own people put themselves on the edge of the abyss. This was said in the sermon on the Holy Martyr John the Warrior Day by Metropolitan Mitrofan of Gorlovka and Slaviansk, reports the website of the Gorlovka eparchy.
According to Met. Mitrofan, a new time for trials has come for the Church today.
"For some reason, it seems to the people in power who have openly sided with the schism and show their enmity towards the canonical Orthodox Church that Orthodox Christians are puppets who can be imposed something, give some order from the Presidential Administration, and so, as they say, will be done," said Vladyka Mitrofan. "They forgot that they are dealing with that Church, whose history is two thousand years of martyrdom and confession, which for all this time has not become anyone's servant and has not yielded to anybody. We have the honour to belong to this Church. "
According to the hierarch, people who have been far from the Church for some reason have taken the liberty and given themselves the right to decide what it should be.
"Having destroyed everything in the state that can be destroyed, today they are going to solve problems in the Church, which no one asked them for," the bishop stressed. "Those who want to use the Church for their political purposes, in their election campaign, suggest that we should call the Mother some jurisdiction. They do not need the Church, they only use it. And for believers, the Church is not a tool but the Mother through which we receive the gift of forgiveness of sins, salvation and eternal life. We cannot, by the decree of the Presidential Administration, refuse the Mother that each of us received at Baptism, in which we pray, confess and receive Communion, which gathers us all into one family."
Met. Mitrofan noted that even today there are confessors in the Church who are ready to defend their faith.
"Look how many obstacles to the cross procession there were from all sides on the day of the Baptism of Rus, and how many people did come not thanks to, but despite, to the Vladimir Hill, to the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra," the metropolitan recalled. "How many people today are ready to defend their church as a home!" They do not need anyone to come and tell them what they should be and how they should pray and serve God."
Vladyka Mitrofan stressed that those who do not notice this make a big mistake.
"Having risen against the Church, against its people, against people for whom the Church is not an empty place, as it is for them, they put themselves on the edge of the abyss. You cannot live hostile to your people and the Church. They need to understand this and not come to the Church with directives and orders, but with the prayer of the publican: "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" сoncluded Metropolitan Mitrofan.
