“Do not hesitate to question, to seek the truth. Theology and the Church need the sincere agony of the young people” stressed Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens and All Greece during the greeting he addressed to the first-year students of the Theological School of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
The welcoming ceremony of the first year students of the academic year 2020-2021 took place this morning online, while the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew also addressed a greeting.
The Archbishop congratulated the students for their success, emphasizing that “if there is one thing that we all once suspect and existentially certify, is the sense of sanctity of ourselves, ultimately the sense of our relationship with God. If anything gives meaning to human life, it is certainly this relationship and the consequent prospect of the victory over death. Theology approaches these truths in a scientific way. It is a fascinating world. Human knowledge is constantly faced with the scandal of its permeability, of its inability to finally exhaust the Truth. God sometimes seems to be visible and sometimes as if he is hiding from our eyes. However, the toil of our Theology has been given to thousands of pages of admirable for their beauty and wisdom texts, models of human speech and other fruits of the spiritual life”.
He also wished their studies to be fruitful and creative and called on them not to be afraid of research. “Do not hesitate to question, to seek the truth. Theology and the Church I must say need the sincere agony of young people. I would like to add: in parallel with science dare your personal quest. Give space to this sacred self of ours that we may all be hiding, to speak, listen to its voice. Finally, do not hesitate to “talk” with God”, the Archbishop noted.
