Bijela, Montenegro, July 16, 2020
The recent legalization of gay civil unions by the Montenegrin government is a rejection of the truth of human nature and a new persecution of Christ, His Eminence Metropolitan Amfilohije of Montenegro said during the Divine Liturgy yesterday at the church in Bijela, Montenegro.
With a 42-5 vote in Parliament on July 1, Montenegro became the first European country outside Western Europe and the EU to legalize gay civil partnerships. Not to be outdone, politicians in Kosovo are also moving towards gay civil unions.
His Eminence believes that the recently-adopted law “denies both human nature and God’s calling for man,” and that “the happiness and wellbeing of any state and people cannot be built on the debasement of human nature.”
This means, says Met. Amfilohije, that “the abolition of love as the basic law of human life, of true Divine-human love, which was given to this world and mankind by the Lord Himself, is a new persecution of Christ—the God of love.”
“The Most Holy Virgin wore the garment of immortality, in which she adorns human nature and sanctifies man and human nature so that man might fulfill the commandments of God on earth, including the commandment to give birth and multiply and fill the earth,” His Eminence emphasized.
But the Montenegrin authorities, with their legalization of abortion, the new law on gay civil unions, and the law on religious freedom that grants the state the right to confiscate holy sites from the Serbian Church, have gone to war with God:
Those in power want to destroy the Church of God; they think it is easy to go to war with God. No one has defeated God in history and no one will defeat Him until the end of the world and the age! Those who are now in power here should also understand that they have declared war on God, and not on Amfilohije or the people in Montenegro. They have declared war on the living God, and that is why the one who fights with God loses his soul.
The Church has ever been on the Cross, Met. Amfilohije emphasized, and the “evil and demonic spirit of those who persecuted the Church” in the past is still with us.
However, through the Cross comes Resurrection, the Serbian hierarch noted. “However, the current situation in the Orthodox Church, the renewal of the Orthodox faith in Christian nations, especially the Slavs, is an indicator that God is indestructible, invincible.”
Met. Amfilohije earlier spoke about the Montenegrin laws on abortion and gay civil unions as the “deification of death.”
