“The unity of the Church is preserved through the confession of the true faith, but also through prayer, through supplication offered to the Holy Spirit,” Patriarchal Auxiliary Bishop Varlaam of Ploiești underlined on Sunday.
His Grace celebrated the Divine Liturgy at the Patriarchal Cathedral on the Seventh Sunday after Pascha, dedicated to the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, where he emphasised the relationship between faith and the unity of the Church.
“There is this connection because in the Garden of Gethsemane the Saviour reveals to us that eternal life is the knowledge of the only true God and of His Son whom He sent into the world.”
“At the Council of Nicaea, the Holy Fathers established, against teachings foreign to the true faith, the true teaching about God and His Son. Then, at the following council in Constantinople in 381, this Creed was completed with the confession concerning the third Person of the Holy Trinity, namely the teaching about the Holy Spirit,” the Patriarchal Auxiliary Bishop added.
Eternal life and the knowledge of God
Bishop Varlaam explained that the prayer spoken by the Saviour in the Garden of Gethsemane reveals the truth about eternal life.
“The work which Christ confessed to the Heavenly Father before His death on the Cross was this: to grant eternal life to all those who would believe in Him.”
“And further, the Saviour gives the definition of eternal life: And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”
His Grace stressed that the entire public ministry of Christ had the purpose of revealing God.
“The public ministry of the Saviour Jesus Christ was to make God the Father known and to bear witness about Himself, that He is the One sent by God, the Anointed of God, the Messiah.”
“The Saviour reveals the Father through His very Incarnation, but also through the words which, having received them from the Father, He entrusted to the disciples, who received them and believed that Jesus came forth from the Father and that the Father sent Him into the world.”
True faith as a gift from God
In the concluding part of his homily, the Patriarchal Auxiliary Bishop stressed that faith originates in God and is not merely the result of human intellectual effort.
“It is a gift from God, and we must ask for it and strengthen it through the confession of faith and through the fulfilment of the Gospel of the Saviour Jesus Christ.”
“This is the core of our faith, the rock upon which Christ built His Church, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. And this faith, the Saviour says, was not revealed to him by flesh and blood, that is, by his human qualities, but was revealed to him by the Father who is in heaven.”
His Grace also urged the faithful to remain steadfast in the communion of the Church and to preserve the unity for which Christ prayed.
“May each of us prove ourselves faithful members of our Church, praying for her unity and praying that God may reveal the true faith to us.”
“May He strengthen us and grant us the power to confess it with all our faith, confessing at every moment of our lives the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,” Bishop Varlaam of Ploiești concluded.
Photo: Basilica.ro / Mircea Florescu
