The sermon of the blessed Metropolitan Amfilohi delivered on March 24, 2005 in the Church of St. George near Gorica after the memorial service for the victims of the 1999 NATO bombing and the crimes of Albanian terrorists
The prophet David wrote a long time ago about the first chosen people of God: We have become a mockery of the neighboring nations, and the Holy Apostle Paul says: We have become the garbage dump of the world. And those words that were valid for the ancient people of God can obviously be applied to one of the contemporary Christian peoples, which is called the Serbian people.
Something terrible and unimaginable for common sense, and even less for deeper human and Christian morality, happened at the end of the 20th century - Christian nations, or at least those that bear that name, got together and bombed a sinful Balkan nation, but a Christian nation. with a Christian image, with a Christian history. A nation which, throughout its past, was always on the side of God's justice and human justice, and which never took the wrong path in crucial historical moments, but, despite all its weaknesses and human weaknesses, always knew to choose the one the way of the Lord, the way of Calvary, the road of Kosovo. To choose, instead of the earthly, the Heavenly kingdom, knowing that the earthly is a smaller kingdom and the heavenly always and forever. That nation was bombed and this is something that happened for the first time in human history, the history of Europe. And I am deeply convinced, when these eclipses of our time, interests and laxity pass, that again and again Europe will return to that denominator and that event and what is healthy in it will question its conscience again and again because of that crime committed against an innocent people, because of the murder innocent people, because of the horror and fear sown in our hearts, in our homes, in our fields, in the souls of our children. I met so many children, and I still meet them today, who were terrified during those times that began on this day, March 24, and lasted until June.
It will take a long time to restore homes and bridges and railways and temples, and above all to restore human souls, to restore human dignity after that terrible and outrageous event with which Christian Europe ended the 2000th anniversary of Christian history.
Many names are written in the list of martyrs of our time, we only mentioned here the priest of God Milivoj, we mentioned Marica Mirić, Milica Rakić, a girl who died in her home in Belgrade. We know many other names, and many are unknown, we also know the continuation of that crime that continues to this day. We also know desecrated sanctuaries, more of them were demolished in this time when Kosovo and Metohija are under the auspices of the United Nations than were demolished during the Ottoman slavery and the five-year suffering of our people, and today, what remains of those temples, are still in danger of disappearing from the face of the earth. And those last remnants of the seeds of the people of Svetosava, today they not only do not have elementary human rights, but they also do not have the elementary right to life and movement, something that is unheard of and something that rarely happened in times like ours.
That is why we are obliged to remember, to remember our sorrow and our cross and our crucifixion, and to know that with this new crucifixion and new golgotha, in fact, the golgotha of our race that began in 1389 continues. We are not fans of dead antiquities, as some think, when we mention Kosovo and the year 1389, we only show that we are a truly, historically mature nation, that we remember and know that what happened more than 600 years ago and to this day it also happens that today, as then, the fate of the modern world is reflected in those same spaces.
Crucified Kosovo and Metohija are a mirror of the modern world, where the destinies of modern Europe, modern America, and the modern world intersect, and everything that is happening today in the world has happened in a small way and is happening in Kosovo and Metohija.
Human blindness, human inhumanity is reflected there, but at the same time original human humanity and human dignity are reflected.
Mentioning those who suffered, and who are still suffering today, we pray to the Lord to reason with the powerful of this world, and to give us reason and reason, so that we can come out of all these dead ends of history and crucifixion with common sense and a clean face. And that ways should be found so that everyone who lives in these areas and anywhere in the world can obtain and have the rights that belong to them according to God's and human laws. to the last remains of the slaughtered and crucified Serbian people in Kosovo and Metohija, and to those who suffered, from that soldier in Danilovgrad to those innocent children killed near Andrijevica and to all those in other places, may the Lord grant them a blessed memory and eternal rest.
Transcript by Vesna Dević

Metropolis of Montenegrin and Littoral