Belgrade, June 3, 2022
Photo: spc.rs
Thousands of Orthodox clergy, monastics, and faithful accompanied the Serbian Patriarch Porfirije in a procession for peace in Belgrade yesterday, on the feast of the Ascension of the Lord, celebrated as the capital’s city patronal feast.
The day began with the Patriarchal Divine Liturgy in the Church of the Ascension, after which His Holiness Pat. Porfirije served a panikhida for the victims of the Nazi bombing of Belgrade on April 6, 1941.
The procession then began under the ringing bells of the Holy Ascension Church. At the front, “the venerable cross was borne with dignity and pride,” reports the Serbian Orthodox Church.
The relics of the patrons of the city of Belgrade, St. Petka and St. Stefan Lazarević, and a copy of the wonderworking Icon of the Mother of God of Three Hands, gifted to the people of Belgrade by the Serbian Athonite Monastery of Hilandar, were also carried in the prayer march.
Photo: spc.rs
The procession ended on the square in front of St. Sava’s Cathedral, where His Holiness served a moleben for peace, together with other Serbian hierarchs.
The Patriarch preached:
We have gathered in this procession today, and every procession is a prayer to God for peace, for peace in the whole world, and primarily for peace in Ukraine. We have come together because we know that peace is always God’s peace. The Lord Himself says: Peace I leave with you. There is no peace without God!
The problem is when men attempt to find peace “on their own, by their own mind, intelligence, abilities, and skills,” the Patriarch preached. “And we are all witnesses that such peace has been difficult to achieve, because they excluded grace.”
“The most perfect weapon of peace is love. It is Christ, and it doesn’t exist without what we did tonight as we went in prayer and prayed for peace, prayed to God, the Living Christ, our Savior,” the Serbian primate exhorted.
And while some are tempted to see the Church as old-fashioned, His Holiness encouraged the faithful to remember that the Church’s teachings are, in fact, eternal: “We can rightly say that the value system that springs from the Gospel, which is summarized in the two most important commandments of Christ about love, is neither old-fashioned, nor modern, but eternal!”
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