By Fr. George Dorbarakis
The beginning of the new ecclesiastical year is September 1st, which is why the entire church service, besides of course that which refers to the other saints we celebrate today, such as Saint Symeon the Stylite and the Holy Forty Female Martyrs, is actually a prayer: may the Lord bless this year – “bless the crown of the year with Your goodness, O Lord” – which requests that He give us His grace, so that people may live in peace and harmony, following His holy commandments. It is very important that our Church considers that only in this way is there blessing in the world: not if people simply prosper financially, not if everything comes to them conveniently, as we say, but if we are “in harmony and peace,” but above all, if we keep the holy commandments of God. The priority of our coordination with the will of God, the realization, as the hymns today note, of the requests of the “Our Father,” in order to have God’s blessing, certainly does not mean the underestimation and degradation of economic magnitudes: without them, man cannot survive in this world. It means that economics do not have priority. The first thing in our life is “Thy Kingdom come”, as the Lord Himself taught the correct hierarchy of things: “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things (all material and earthly) will be added to you.”
Unfortunately, in our time, this hierarchy, to a large extent, has been overturned. God and His holy will have been marginalized, if not completely erased, and priority as an almost exclusive purpose of man has become the economic element. The foolish rich man of the well-known parable seems like an idol to many, who indeed rejoiced brilliantly every day, but death came mercilessly and without warning into his life and overthrew his plans, plunging him into unspeakable suffering. From this point of view, our era is an era of folly, which includes not only many rich people, but also a very large part of the poor. Because even the poor, if they desire money and material goods as a priority in their lives, even if they do not have them, are treated as foolish rich people by the word of God. The content of our heart is what God always has before His eyes, according to the revelation of God Himself.
Our Church today, with the New Year that it celebrates, reminding us of the beginning of the Lord’s public activities, with His sermon in the synagogue of His unique homeland of Nazareth, where among other things He reveals about Himself that He came “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord,” that is, to proclaim the beginning of a new era, acceptable and pleasing to God. Our Church therefore brings us into balance, because it proposes to us what constitutes the eternal will of God: to place Him and His word above all else. It opens our eyes again, in an era of confusion and clouding of the intellect, to realize that we are alive by the grace of God, that He prolongs the time of our life in Him, as He “sets the times and seasons in His own authority,” in order to live according to His will.
In other words, the Church reminds us that time is a gift from God, not to be wasted on nonsense and sins, but to be used in an upward path always towards Him, that is, in a path of love for our fellow man. And then, She tells us, we will see what the Lord promised: at the moment we set this will of His as the basis of our lives, at the same time His powers will be activated, to overcome any of our problems on the one hand, and to restore all of creation on the other. It is no coincidence that for several years now, our Ecumenical Patriarchate has promoted the beginning of the ecclesiastical year as a day for protecting the environment. And rightly so: the will of God, as we have said, experienced by the “king” of creation, man, has a direct reflection in all of nature and all of creation. We have said it before: the solution to the current economic crisis, which is constantly being presented to us as a “Mormolyceae” by the authorities and the media, will come once we begin to live as real people, based on the law of God. Simply put, the crisis is essentially spiritual.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
