Sofia, November 8, 2021
Photo: podvorie-sofia.bg
The Mother of God suffers seeing the schisms that afflict the Church, and the Bulgarian Church itself knows the pain of schism, and thus prays for the enlightenment of those who willfully distort the truth about the Ukrainian situation, one Bulgarian hierarch preached on the feast of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God.
His Eminence Metropolitan Seraphim of Nevrokop celebrated the feast of the Kazan Icon on Thursday at the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, the Russian representation church in the Bulgarian capital.
During his homily, he addressed the sin of schism and the ongoing Ukrainian crisis. The Mother of God “suffers when the Church suffers, torn by divisions and conflicts, when our human weaknesses and infirmities lead to this division and we can’t communicate in the joy of the faith and the grace of the Holy Spirit,” the Metropolitan said.
The Bulgarian Church is well aware of and very concerned about what’s happening in Ukraine, he continued:
Our Church in Bulgaria has survived the years of schism. It was a smaller scale compared to the schism in the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine. We worry and we pray that this division would be overcome. And we pray for the enlightenment of those who maliciously distort the truth and try to win people over to their side through the propaganda of outright lies, and that we would all be in the Church, in the service of the Truth. Because Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (Jn. 14:6).
And history clearly shows that the schismatics have fallen away from the Church, His Eminence continued:
Therefore, especially on this day of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, we send her our prayerful desire that a way will soon be found through repentance to realize historical realities. And they clearly testify to the autocephaly of the Russian Orthodox Church, which desires to preserve its unity. We are very concerned about what is happening today, when they are forcibly trying to introduce something that’s difficult for people who have cultivated Orthodox dignity within themselves to accept.
“And God grant that, through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos, all divisions will cease, and the Church will remain in its fullness and in its gracious life,” Met. Seraphim concluded.
The Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Church created a commission of bishops to study the Ukrainian issue back in October 2018, but as of January this year, it had yet to present a report to the Holy Synod, according to Synodal member His Eminence Metropolitan Gabriel of Lovech.
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