Patriarch Porfirije of Serbia presided over the Divine Liturgy on the Feast of the Protection of the Most Holy Theotokos in the church dedicated to this great feast in Belgrade.
“An ancient saying of the Church’s tradition and experience declares: Prayer and work. This is what characterizes the image of God; this is what characterizes the human being. It is what makes a person worthy to be called a disciple of Christ and a member of His Church.
Brothers and sisters, both are necessary. Yet there is an order, a hierarchy — there is that which is fundamental, that from which all else flows. If there is only work and labor directed toward external things, even toward our fellow human beings, it is not enough. We must ground our life in Christ, that He may be our root; we must know that everything depends on Him, that He is our beginning and our end, our Alpha and Omega. We must bind our whole being to Him through prayer — for prayer is at once our faith, our love, and our hope. Through prayer, we are united with the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, and when we are united with Him, when the foundation of our existence is sound, then everything else will also be right, everything will be as it should be. Even when we waver, when we stumble and fall, when we wander and sin — if we are bound to Christ through prayer, then sooner or later all will come to be exactly as it should,” emphasized the Patriarch as he interpreted the Gospel reading, and he concluded: “And who, brothers and sisters, was she who with her entire being embodied precisely this — wholly prayer, wholly of Christ, wholly of God? Before all and above all, more honorable than the Cherubim and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim, it was the Most Holy Theotokos — she who gave birth to the God-Man, who bore the true God and the true Man.
Through her, the Lord became one of us, yet remained God. Through her, He took upon Himself all that is human, except for sin; He descended even to Hades, tasted death itself — and yet remained our Savior. The Most Holy Theotokos is also the Mother of Humanity, for she gave birth to the true, authentic, perfect Man — the One who is the measure of every one of us and the destiny of all humankind.”
At the conclusion of the Divine Liturgy, Patriarch Porfirije said: “Let us strive, as much as possible, to imitate the Most Holy Theotokos — above all in her attitude and in her decision, which were always attitudes of faith and of trust in the word of God. For us, this also means, brothers and sisters, trust in the Church. We live in troubled times, in times when hunters of human souls do not choose their means. They often pretend to have noble faces and the best of intentions, for they fight for our hearts and our emotions. Yet this is nothing new — it has always been so. The powers of this world, the rulers of the darkness of this age, the unclean and demonic forces, have always sought after human souls. They most often ensnare people where they walk the broad and easy path, where there is no need for effort or struggle. But where there is a desire to serve God — which means to serve our own salvation and our neighbor — there the unclean forces, in various forms, both in our world and among us, use cunning and subtle means, pleasant and flattering words.
They will tell us that we are the best, the wisest, the most beautiful; that we are always right; that not even a hair, not even a speck of dust, should touch our shadow, let alone our ego. They will speak to us of freedom, of equality, of justice — even of humanism. They will present themselves as spiritual leaders, as righteous and pure, even as saints. Sometimes they will appear even more zealous than we are in many labors. But only the one who has founded his life upon Christ as upon an unshakable rock will be able to discern the spirits.”
