In Chains for the Gospel

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. (Matthew 23:15) But just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the Gospel, so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God who tests our hearts. (1 Thessalonians 2:4) While walking through his eparchy as a bishop, a group stopped him and prevented him from passing. After they slapped him, he continued on his way to the monastery. When he arrived at the brotherhood, the monastics noticed that he was disturbed and asked him what had happened. To this, he briefly replied: "They did not slap me, but themselves." He then found himself in the same situation and passed through them, so that no one touched him: "But he passed through the midst of them and went away" (Luke 4:30). If the Messiah were to walk through the streets of Belgrade instead of Nazareth, He would be stoned. It was normal for a young man, full of beautiful memories, knowledge, thoughts, and recollections, to visit the capital, with prayers to the Most Pure and Saint Stefan Lazarević. With this fragrant method, like Bishop Pavle's backpack from the Metohija fields, full of herbs and peonies, or the backpack full of gifts of Elder Zosima of Hilandar; with the chirping of prayer on his lips, bravely and boldly stepping on Serbian soil. This is no longer the case. Why? Paul the Apostle and Paul the Bishop carried the light yoke of Christ. One was the glorious penitent and witness to the stoning of Stephen, and the other was a witness to the stoning of a crucified Kosovo. In between and after everything, it happened that in this time, impersonal masses arose with master leaders, so that something ill-advised would happen. If it does, there will be many Stephens but there will be no Saul and there will be no Paul, and no one will repent, nor pray, nor be sanctified for it. My thoughts, your prayer, the spiritual arrows of asceticism are today replaced by the public "asceticism" of "sclero-fascists." There is no striving for eternity because they implicitly convey that there is no God and that the kingdom of the "best" is of this world. "You stiff-necked (σκληροτράχηλος) and uncircumcised in heart (ἀπερίτμητοι τῇ καρδίᾳ) and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you." (Acts 7:51) The events of Nazareth were and remain our reality to this day. Two Sarajevan metropolitans, "at peace," were spat in the face and had their hair and beards pulled in the middle of the street. Another Serbian metropolitan, theologian, and spiritual father, found himself at a border crossing. Asked ironically and provocatively by the customs officer if he had any weapons with him, he replied with a prayer rope in his hands: "Only all the armor of God" (Ephesians 6:13). He suffered terrible violence. The press did not report on all this, unbelief was not built upon it, the tripartite apparatus did not speak out. The majority actually just did their job and lived their lives, "the best ever." The stiff-necked tadpoles and uneducated in heart and ears, their descendants today "pick apricots, still unripe." The spiritual sclerotics' pulses died out. Svetosavlje: Gabriel's, Vicar's, German's, Paul's - endurance and the enemy's abuse above them is borne today (again and again) by the First Hierarch of the Serbian Church, Porfirije. "You were one yesterday, and today another, tell me who you are?" "State patriarch, why are you silent!" This should not surprise us. Declaring people gods, like the pagans in Lystra, comes gratis with the right to judge others by summary judgment. He watches and endures "godly" defaming and the attempt to show the "last priest" to the Serbian world. They have not and will not succeed, just as many worse ones before this. Paul and Barnabas themselves did not consider themselves gods. Paul endures terrible scourging, blows, persecutions, about which he later writes to the Corinthians: "In fear among false brethren, in hunger and thirst, in many fastings, in cold and undress. Who is offended, and I am not inflamed? If I must boast, I will boast of my weakness." (2 Corinthians 11:26-31) The stiff-necked boast of what the wise are ashamed of. The antinomy of the meaninglessness of the unecclesiastical consciousness unfolds in two ways: 1) By presenting oneself under the guise of "theologian," "dissident," "persecuted," "martyr" (without blood, persecution, and suffering). 2) By a person who needs to reclaim his "usurped" and "unprovoked alienated rights from usurpers." These are the chains and delusions of soul-destroyers, into whose dance our naive world enters. The interpretation of the nature and depth of the phenomenon of the causality of spiritual sclerosis of these people would be unclear to most, but if necessary, it will be revealed loudly and precisely. For unwanted reactions and side effects, one should sometimes consult a doctor or pharmacist. In countless unpleasant situations in which the Apostle Paul found himself, such as a semi-conscious state, unconsciousness, and beating, he found himself there because he invoked and preached Christ, and He remained with him in chains for the Gospel and in great concern for the churches. They will tell us that we live in a different world and that these are different times. Then accordingly, one should measure with a good measure: precisely like Nikolaj, present to the "Arians" the importance of "circumcision." The uncircumcised tadpoles are everything opposite to Christ. "He who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God." (2 Thessalonians 2:4) Instead of: "The refuse of the world, everyone's garbage until today," the role of "dissidents and theologians" is a "Ukro-fascist and internationally bigoted" session. A filtration center for wastewater of the puritanical, Protestant-Belgrade purgatory for the "chosen ones." "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in." (Matthew 23:13) Then they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears, and rushed at him with one accord; and they cast him out of the city and began stoning him. And the witnesses laid down their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul. (Acts 7:57-58) In his letter to Philemon, the Apostle says: "Therefore, though I might be very bold in Christ to command you what is fitting, yet for love’s sake I rather appeal to you—being such a one as Paul, the aged, and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ—I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten while in my chains, who once was unprofitable to you, but now is profitable to you and to me. I am sending him back. You therefore receive him, that is, my own heart, whom I wished to keep with me, that on your behalf he might minister to me in my chains for the gospel (ἐν τοῖς δεσμοῖςτοῦ εὐαγγελίου)" (Philemon 1:8-13). Paul knew that according to the word of Christ, along with rumors of conflicts and wars, false Christs would come. Therefore, his evangelical chains are a God-like measure of the birth of the Church and its children; the birth of an indestructible echo of the second Jerichonian call, a voice ready to respond to infernal chaos and demonic attacks. Begone, Satan! Ὕπαγε, Σατανᾶ!