His Holiness the Serbian Patriarch Mr. Porphyry presided over the 14th Sunday after Pentecost, on September 29, 2024, in the summer of the Lord, with a liturgical gathering in the Church of St. Nicholas in Kotor and consecrated the rebuilt temple.

His Holiness was ministered to by the Most Reverend and Re-sanctified gentlemen: Metropolitans Ioannikije of Montenegro and the Littoral, Nicodemus of Dalmatia and Dimitrije of Zahum-Herzegovina and Ston-Limitor, Bishops Methodius of Budimlja-Nikšić, Hilarion of Novi Brda and Paisius of Diokli in the prayerful presence of the clergy, monks and pious people.

The Serbian patriarch raised the archpriest of Kotor-Tivat, archpriest Nemanja Krivokapić, to the rank of archpriest-stavrophorus. Thanking for the gift and the honor shown, Father Nemanja said that it is an honor to carry the cross, which is a symbol of the victory of God over the devil, a symbol of the victory of life over death: "And also a symbol of the Christian life to which we are all called, which is full of renunciation and sacrifice for others, as the Savior also called us: Whoever wants to follow me, let him take up his cross and follow me. That is how I will experience this gift of yours for even more persistent and better work on the pasture entrusted to me."

In the archpastoral letter, Patriarch Porphyrius, interpreting today's gospel beginning about the royal wedding, reminded that the Lord, when preaching to those who were hungry and thirsty for truth, justice, and the meaning of life, most often spoke in stories and that His word was not abstract wisdom, but His the stories were most often parables, metaphors, allegories, stories for which data were taken from the ordinary, everyday life of the people he addressed. Every word uttered by the Lord himself has its deep meaning both now and in the past, in the future, forever and ever.

"Our Lord, speaking about the deepest spiritual values, in the concrete case about the Kingdom of Heaven, again uses a story from everyday life, a story that everyone can understand, in order to describe the deepest secret - the secret of the Kingdom of Heaven. He talks about the wedding as a picture of the Kingdom of Heaven. The Lord says: The kingdom of heaven is like a wedding. Therefore, the image of a wedding is used by the Lord to show the secret of the Kingdom of Heaven, and here it is about the wedding of the king's son and the king invites everyone to that wedding", said the Serbian Patriarch, reminding that a wedding is nothing but beauty and blessing, grace and joy, an event in which everyone participates and everyone is shown the same honor and attention, and everyone has the same opportunity to rejoice, regardless of any external category.

The emperor invites everyone to the wedding, invites everyone to joy, he gives it as a gift. However, whether the emperor's joy will be the joy of everyone and whether everyone will position themselves in the same way in relation to his calling, depends on the guests. In today's Gospel story, many responded, and some, busy with their jobs, or better said with their personal, individual interests, individualistic interests, found an excuse.

"And is there a greater honor than to be invited to the court of the emperor and participate in the emperor's joy?" This is not about those who did not respond being punished for that. No, they themselves decided their place, which, according to this story, is a place of darkness, sadness, gnashing of teeth. That place is a hellish place, which is far from the emperor's courts. Therefore, although all are called, few are chosen, and who is chosen is not in the hands of the lord and emperor. He does not decide who is chosen, because everyone is chosen for him. "Those who were not chosen did not choose themselves and thus remained outside the context, outside the space of joy," said the Patriarch.

According to him, it is not a question of material goods and material reasons in themselves to be condemned and rejected, but it is a question of the fact that they should be placed in their place in the scale of values ​​and priorities. In other words, both material goods and values ​​are called to be spiritual, so that they will precede the spiritual, so that the priority will be spiritual. The priority will be the Kingdom of God:

"The priority will be the emperor's court and the emperor's joy to which we are called, which is the Kingdom of Heaven." Because only when it is at the foundation of earthly values, paradoxical, and in faith everything is paradoxical, and in the presence of God everything has an inverted perspective, only when the Kingdom of Heaven is at the foot of the kingdom of the earth, the earthly gets its fullness and its meaning."

In the story of the royal wedding in which the Lord invited all the people, or the king invited everyone and everything to his son's wedding, the host recognized that someone did not have a wedding dress. Of course, as the Patriarch said, that in the first place there is effort and effort to live virtuously, because our clothes are not only external clothes. The essential, deep clothing is the inner, spiritual clothing, virtue, benefactor, in which we are clothed:

"And the emperor recognizes in one who came, that he did not try hard, that his primary virtue and benefactor was not doing good in life, but again his personal, individual interest. Individual, individualistic, which means the one who separates him from the other, the one who sees in the other a competitor, an opponent, an enemy. But the tradition of our Church sees another dimension of those who are not dressed in wedding clothes. These are those who are full of themselves, proud, who do not have humility, humility not as a psychological mood, humility as self-control, but ontological, essential humility, which means self-awareness that when I do good, I am not doing anything great. It is natural to do good and for that reason I should not think that I am better than others, because I only did what was my duty, what is right, normal and healthy, which corresponds to healthy and normal human nature", the Patriarch taught the gathered Serbian Mr. Porphyry.

Therefore, His Holiness added, he who is filled with self-love, pride, who even when he does good, actually sins, thinking that it is something great, is not dressed in a wedding garment:

"Into the Kingdom of God enter the humble, the humble, who use their talents and gifts to glorify God and to serve others, to build community with others, with their neighbors. At the same time, every man is a neighbor, we are called to see him as a neighbor because everyone is created in the image and likeness of God."

His Holiness the Serbian Patriarch Mr. At the end, Porphyry said that there is room in the emperor's house even when the whole world enters, because His love is boundless, because His heart and chest are so wide that the whole world and all people can fit, and we only need to dress in wedding dress, which is nothing but our desire and longing for the house of the emperor, for the house of God.

"And the awareness that no matter what and how much we do, we can never be worthy." We can say that the only thing that does not make us worthy to participate in the wedding of the king's son is that we think we are worthy. The Kingdom of Heaven is also the Holy Liturgy, and this is where the King gives us His Son, so that by partaking of His Body and Blood we become fellow citizens, or fellow-fleshers, fellow-bloods, becoming the Son, we become full citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. And the only thing that makes us unworthy to participate in that secret is precisely the self-infatuated, proud, egoistic feelings that we are worthy. May the Lord be merciful to us all, that having humility and modesty, trying as much as we can to do virtue, to be good so that we will be better. May he have mercy on us, and may we always glorify him, the One in the Trinity, God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and always and to the ages of ages, amen!"

Metropolitan Ioannikije: The restoration of this holy temple serves to renew us spiritually

At the end of the Holy Liturgy, the Most Reverend Metropolitan of Montenegro and the Littoral, Mr. Joanikije, who thanked His Holiness for his love and fatherly concern for us, for the entire Serbian people, and especially for his arrival in Boka Kotor, to give fullness of spirit, blessings, fullness of God's love in celebrations, jubilees in Bijela and Kotor.

"Your service is the service of uniting everyone in Christ Jesus, in the Holy Spirit, in one faith, in the community, in the love of God. You bring us the blessing of Saint Sava, the Holy Apostles, where you come, serve and speak, preach the word of God, there is the fullness not only of our local Serbian Orthodox Church, but it is that fullness that is identified with the fullness of one holy collegial and apostolic Church.

Today you consecrated this restored temple, invoked God's blessing, God's mercy and light on this holy temple anew. Much has been invested in the restoration of this holy temple and what can be seen with the eyes and much more what cannot be seen. When we sanctify and restore temples, we ourselves are renewed. And the restoration of this holy temple serves for us to renew ourselves spiritually and to make an effort to do what can be seen, and much more to make an effort before God, before the face of God, prayers, effort, love, good deeds, to make so that we too would renew ourselves spiritually and that we would prepare our hearts and our souls to be a vessel and abode of the grace of God and the Holy Spirit, the living and true God. Happy this renewal!”

Thank you to the Municipality of Kotor; Order of Saint Sava to Vojin Lazarević

At the end, Bishop Joanikije thanked everyone who helped restore this holy temple and especially highlighted the Municipality of Kotor, which was presented with a certificate of appreciation from the Church Municipality for its significant contribution to the restoration of the Cathedral Church of St. Nicholas in Kotor. The Order of Saint Sava was presented to Vojin Lazarević, lawyer and president of the Serbian singing society "Jedinstvo" from Kotor, for his loyalty to the Church of God and his outstanding contribution to the restoration of the temple in Boka Kotor.

On behalf of the Municipality of Kotor, President Vladimir Jokić handed over the medieval Statute of the City of Kotor in Latin and Serbian to the Serbian Patriarch as a memory of this visit. Also as a sign of gratitude, SPCO Kotor presented the Patriarch with an icon of Saint Sava.

Vesna Devic

Photo: Željko Drašković

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