In Church, People Find What They Can’t Find Anywhere Else / OrthoCh... https://orthochristian.com/145996.

html

IN CHURCH, PEOPLE FIND WHAT THEY CAN’T FIND

ANYWHERE ELSE
Fourth Talk on the Divine Liturgy, Part 2

Metropolitan Athanasios of Limassol

Talk 4, Part 1

Thus, the church of God is holy. Therefore, we

Photo: Anatoly Goryainov/monastery.ru

treat it with reverence, we cross ourselves when

we pass by. We didn’t use to have this tradition of crossing ourselves when going by a
church in Limassol, but this good tradition is becoming more and more of a habit lately,
I’ve noticed, and especially among the youth. Sometimes I stand here at the door,
watching people pass by, and I see children, teenagers, and young people crossing
themselves, while older people are embarrassed to bless themselves with the Sign of the
Cross. Once I witnessed the following: A young man was driving by, talking on the phone.
When he saw the church, he wanted to cross himself, but he didn’t have any free hands,
since with one he was driving, and with the other he was holding his phone. What did he
do? He crossed himself, while still holding his phone. “Well done!” I thought to myself,
praising the young man.

The church reminds us of the presence of God, therefore, let us love the church of God and
take care of it and pray for it. The church should be the most sacred thing in our lives. Note
how our ancestors built churches (this is especially noticeable in rural areas). They would
choose the best and most beautiful places to build. And although they themselves could
live in a pitiful hovel with a dirt floor, like a barn or stable, nevertheless, two buildings in
their villages were beautiful—the church and the school.

Go to Lofa1 and you’ll see an amazing example of what I’m talking about. This village still
has these shacks they used to live in, which no one has built for a long time now. The locals
grazed cattle; they were very poor people. They lived in huts with earthen floors, but they
built a stone church so beautiful that few could build it now. And their school is no less
magnificent than the church. Look at this school and you’ll feel like you’re standing before
a building of Athens University. Why did our ancestors need such beautiful churches and
schools? Being wise people, they knew that it’s thanks to the church and school that their
children would become people. Otherwise, they would have built something else: a
discotheque, restaurant, fast food, or something like that.

1 of 6 7/26/2023, 9:14 AM
In Church, People Find What They Can’t Find Anywhere Else / OrthoCh... https://orthochristian.com/145996.html

Passing through villages and preaching, St. Kosmas of Aetolia2 would ask the villagers:

“Do you have children?”

“Yes, holy Father.”

“Bring them here. Can they read and write?”

“Where would they learn that from?”

“Ehh, then who are you bringing to me? Piglets? What am I doing to do with them? Let the
children learn their letters. Let them learn, let them learn to pray, let them learn about
God.”

St. Kosmas wanted Christians to understand that a child should receive an upbringing, an
education, be spiritually nourished, and fully develop as a person.

The condition of churches, their external appearance and interior decoration testify to the
culture of each people, since the church is in a certain sense a place of public use, like a
hospital, school, institute, gym, or theater.

I think that our era is in need of churches more than ever. Why? Because this age can be
characterized as a time of general fatigue. Everyone’s tired today. I’m talking not about
physical, but spiritual fatigue. Our souls are tired out by many things that we see and hear
and come into contact with every day. But most importantly, we’re tired because God is
absent from our souls.

There is grace in the church of God. This place is sanctified by many Divine Liturgies and
other Sacraments, the presence of the holy icons, and the prayer of all those who come
here. You go to church and immediately feel something different there, some other
atmosphere, some other energy. We priests must take care that our churches preserve this
atmosphere of the presence of God, of His grace.

How many people come to church every day just to sit there for a few minutes, to pray,
calm down, and find some peace. Places where people can calm down and rest their souls
are extremely necessary today. The churches of God are like quiet harbors. Just as boats
and ships are overtaken by waves out at sea and need quiet harbors to toss anchor, stock
up on all the necessities, and repair any damage, so modern people need churches. A
church is a harbor, where people can rest; it’s a hospital where they find spiritual and
bodily health. Here, in church, they find what they can’t find anywhere else.

2 of 6 7/26/2023, 9:14 AM
In Church, People Find What They Can’t Find Anywhere Else / OrthoCh... https://orthochristian.com/145996.html

Think about what a great misfortune it would be for us to live without churches, or to live
in a house where there are no icons of the Savior or Mother of God. Such a house would be
a true wasteland, wild and abandoned. Take icons of Christ and the Mother of God, hang
them in some dark cave, and immediately it will be transformed, ennobled. And the most
magnificent palace in the whole world, if God isn’t present there, turns into a wilderness.
And the people living there also become savages. Sometimes you see someone living in
such a mansion, with fifteen servants who bring everything their master wants, even
before he orders it… You see how he yells, swears, with no spiritual calmness or peace.
What’s wrong with you? Why are you fighting with your servants? What do you lack? You
have everything you can imagine… And yet, this man lacks something: the presence of God
in his heart and soul. Without God, everything else is nothing. But with God, even if a man
lives in a miserable shack or under the open sky, he’s calm, peaceful, full of love for
everyone, and glorifies God: “Glory to Thee, O God!”

Thus, we pray for the church that hospitably receives us, that gives us abundant
blessings—the presence of God within its walls, the holy Sacraments, the Body and Blood
of Christ. We were baptized in church, and they will carry us out of the church when our
earthly life ends. I often think while serving funerals: What an amazing thing the church of
God is! Through it we come into this world, and through it we leave this world. The most
significant events of our lives are directly connected with church. There people are
married, they bring their babies there on the eighth and fortieth days, they baptize them
there, they come there with their petitions, they celebrate the feasts there, and they’re
carried out from there after their funerals. How we should love our churches and treat
them with reverence! Let us thank God for giving us this blessed opportunity to be in the
house of God. As the Prophet David said: I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my
God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness (Ps. 83:11). It’s better, David says, to lie on
the floor in the corner of God’s house than to live in the palaces of sinners. A corner of a
church is better than the palaces of those who are far from God.

How should we enter a church? This is spoken about in the fourth petition of the Litany of
Peace, which we’re analyzing today: “… for them that with faith, reverence, and
fear of God enter herein, let us pray to the Lord.” We pray for those who come to
pray “with faith,” who believe in God and seek Him, who believe that God is present in
church, in the assembly of the faithful. We pray for those who enter “with reverence,”
which includes not only their outward appearance, but their internal state, the disposition
of their heart. When we have a genuine awareness that we are in the holiest of places,
where God is present, where the Divine Sacraments are celebrated, where a multitude of
Christians have prayed and continue to pray, then we feel that we can’t behave in some

3 of 6 7/26/2023, 9:14 AM
In Church, People Find What They Can’t Find Anywhere Else / OrthoCh... https://orthochristian.com/145996.html

inappropriate, irreverent way.

You may ask: Does external behavior really matter? Undoubtedly it does. Otherwise, you
pray lying on a bed, or sitting on a chair, or standing up straight, or kneeling. Man isn’t
just a soul, or just a mind, but also a body. The body participates in prayer and service to
God. For example, when you pray while kneeling, then your soul conforms to the humble
position of the body. Is it hard for you to kneel? Stand up straight. One thing’s for sure: We
benefit when our whole being is in a state of attention and reverence. Therefore, we must
be very attentive in church, and not just during the Divine Liturgy. And when there’s no
service, we still have to behave reverently and seriously in church.

We pray for those who come to church with “the fear of God.” The fear of God doesn’t
mean the usual fear that people experience, for example, when they pass by a cemetery or
enter a dark room. It’s about a sacred fear that appears when a man senses the presence of
God. When you feel that God is near, then you feel love for Him, sacred fear, deep
reverence. This is what “the fear of God” means in liturgical language.

Even if a sacred place—which a church of God is—is destroyed down to the ground, it
doesn’t lose its grace. I’ll give you a well-known example. You’ve read the life of the New
Martyrs Raphael, Nicholas, and Irina.3 None of the locals knew there was a monastery on
the island in ancient times. According to tradition, every year on Bright Tuesday, the
faithful would climb the hill, light candles, and sing Paschal hymns, although there was no
church there, no chapel—nothing. From time to time, people would see a light on the hill,
or hear hymns from invisible singers, and smell the smell of incense. And it was only more
than 400 years after their martyric end that, by the goodwill and economia of God, the
saints began to appear and talk about how there used to be a monastery on this hill, and
how their holy relics lay there, underground.

I could cite many such stories. Our Elder Joseph of Vatopedi told us that his friends,
originally from Asia Minor, once went to visit their native village where there used to be a
church of St. John the Forerunner. They wanted to find this church (similarly, many
Cypriots sometimes go to the occupied part of the island to find the church in their home
village). So, they arrived, they searched for it, but they couldn’t find anything because the
little old church had long since been destroyed. One of these people sighed and said:

“Eh, holy Forerunner… We left, and so did you.”

Hearing these words, one local Turk told him:

“You left, but he stayed.”

4 of 6 7/26/2023, 9:14 AM
In Church, People Find What They Can’t Find Anywhere Else / OrthoCh... https://orthochristian.com/145996.html

“What do you mean?”

“He stayed here. We often hear the bells ringing and chanting and we smell incense. So
your saint stayed here. He didn’t leave.”

Indeed, the grace of a place remains; it doesn’t disappear. Even if the building of a church
crumbles to the ground, the grace remains. Therefore, the Church canons forbid using a
holy church for anything else. If the church was consecrated, that’s it—it remains a church
forever, and the place remains holy.

In the West, you can see how they’re selling Catholic and Protestant churches now. Priests
come, they read a special prayer, and the church as if ceases to be a church. That is, today
they read a prayer for the consecration, and the building becomes a church, and tomorrow,
when they want to sell it, they read a different prayer, after which the church supposedly
stops being a church. Just imagine if they read a prayer over you and you became
unbaptized…

Such things are impossible in the Orthodox Church. A place is consecrated once, and that’s
it—it’s holy forever. This is about not only the place, but also the things inside. For
example, some carpet from the church can’t be used for other purposes. The broom we use
to sweep the floor in church can’t be used to sweep the floor in the kitchen or bathroom.
The rag you use to wash the floor in church can’t be used to clean your house. The church
has its own things, and everything in a church or anything that has something to do with it
is consecrated, dedicated in some way to the service of God. Even if a church is completely
destroyed, nothing else can be built on this site, inasmuch as this place is consecrated.

Metropolitan Athanasios of Limassol

Translation by Jesse Dominick
Pravoslavie.ru
5/9/2022

1 A village sixteen miles northwest of Limassol.

2 St. Kosmas of Aetolia, Equal-to-the-Apostles, preacher and missionary, hieromartyr. He is

celebrated on August 24/September 6. He was born in 1714 in Greece. He preached the Gospel
throughout Greece, on the territory of modern Albania, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, and
Turkey. He especially sought to visit those remote places where Christian piety, due to the centuries-
old enslavement of Christians by the Turks, was almost lost, as well as areas where the population was
threatened by Islamization. According to his instructions, Church schools were opened in the villages

5 of 6 7/26/2023, 9:14 AM
In Church, People Find What They Can’t Find Anywhere Else / OrthoCh... https://orthochristian.com/145996.html

(more than 200 in total), and shelters and churches were founded. The 25-year apostolic ministry of
St. Kosmas ended with a martyr’s death from the Turks in August 1779.

3 Holy martyrs who suffered at the hands of the Turks on the island of Lesbos. In 1462, the Turkish
fleet landed on Lesbos. The inhabitants of the island rebelled against the invaders, but the Turks
ruthlessly dealt with the rebels. The residents were forced to retreat to the mountains under the
protection of the walls of the Monastery of the Nativity of the Theotokos on Karies Hill, whose abbot
at that time was Archimandrite Raphael. The Turks seized and destroyed the monastery and tortured
and killed many Christians and monks. The relics of the New Martyrs, hidden underground, were
consigned to oblivion during the long centuries of Turkish rule. In 1959, during excavations on Karies
Hill, a coffin with the remains of an unknown deceased was found. The discovered saint (the Monk-
Martyr Raphael) began to appear frequently in dreams and in reality to many pious Christians and
told them in detail the circumstances of his torment and of those who suffered with him.

6 of 6 7/26/2023, 9:14 AM