1. Now our Deified Church has a tremendous nosh-up and celebration. Now we remember the remember of the foremost Apostles, Peter and Paul. Exceptionally we Greeks esteem very a lot the Apostle Paul and we are obliged to him, seeing that with a lot traipse, even with a lot destiny, he came to our obtain and preached current the Gospel of Christ, at the dreadfully time establishing churches in unusual cities. He is the founder of our Greek Church.
The Apostle Paul, my beloved, was an "troubled aficionada" of Christ, as Chrysostom says, and, ambitious by this divine eros, he went everywhere preaching the Deified Gospel. He was a product of the clan of Benjamin (Rom. 11:1) and he has a harmony with the classification of the Patriarch Jacob, next he blessed his son Benjamin. He whispered to him prophetically: "Benjamin, you are a wild wolf, who in the originate comes to fasten and in the sundown divides his mine." This was Paul, my beloved, in a representative clue. He was a strong lion and "a lion with all boldness", according to divine Chrysostom, who all day, from the originate went out "to fasten" the spoils of the challenging and itemize them to Christ, and in the sundown he was strategy his work for the next day!
In this complicate and gruff negotiate, which I chi near with the send for and blessing of His Beatitude our Archbishop and the Deified Synod of our Church, I oblige to collapse the tremendous Apostle we remember today, as a vicar of the Gospel, who requirement become the conventional and part of the pack of all sacred preachers.
2. In the beginning, my beloved, I oblige to say that the Apostle Paul had the terms that made him a preference and successful vicar of the Gospel. He had the divine ability for this work. He was not self-chosen, but God-chosen. He was equivalence the prophets of the Old Tombstone, who, in the past embezzle on their analytical work, had a imagination of God and heard the hole of God, Who invited them to become preachers of His word to the populace. So in the same way the Apostle Paul, as he was nomadic to browbeat Christians, heard the hole of God, which told him to expel this ruin of his own work, seeing that "it is rigid for you to rear reluctant the goads" (Acts 9:5; 26:14).
Glimmer, the Apostle Paul, in the past his divine shout, acquired a tremendous stage, which is in the same way necessary for the preaching of the Gospel. He had a secret stage and even a Greek stage, which he traditional in his juvenile in Tarsus of Cilicia, somewhere he was from. "I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a tenant of no commonplace urban," (Acts 21:39) he boasted. Tarsus rivaled Alexandria which rivaled Athens as the main in stage. Yet the Apostle, as a Jew, had theological knowledge, seeing that he heavy-handed very well the Old Tombstone at the feet of the tremendous scholarly of the Law Gamaliel (Acts 22:3), grandson of the attraction Hillel.
Third, as a necessary mess for divine preaching, the Apostle passed immediate the school of hesychasm. For after his ability he did not go to the funds, Jerusalem, nor did he consort with populace, but he went to Arabia for prayer, for consideration and for study. Expound in Arabia, as the interpreters say, Paul heavy-handed the Old Tombstone Christologically, reviewing what he had academic up until then of the Jewish interpretation, which whispered the coming Messiah would be a worldly be in charge, to bring back the fallen domicile of David. And this Christological interpretation of the Old Tombstone, which Paul did by himself with the simple of the Deified Quit at hand in the strand of Arabia, we see pervasively in his sacred typography.
3. I come now, my beloved, to this preaching of the Apostle Paul. His negotiate, as we see from his journeys, had two types, depending on his end up. His main type of preaching was theoretical towards an idolatrous end up, and the other type for a Jewish end up. Also sermons static centered on Christ, on the Crucified and Risen Christ, who is the truthful Savior and Savior. This is the Gospel of Paul, my beloved. But it was disgraceful, even for that odd era, to go on about a God and Savior who hung on the coppice of a Swathe.
But Paul was not mortified of this preaching, which is why he said: "I am not mortified of the Gospel of Christ" (Rom. 1:16), the preaching, that is, of the Crucified Christ. Until now, for the idolaters such preaching was "craziness", double-talk, and for the Jews it was a "scandal" (1 Cor. 1:23). It was a alien teaching, seeing that it showed the Messiah to be elastic, having been nailed to a Swathe. Paul static, antithetical to both, whispered firmly: "I do not oblige to go on anything as well, but Jesus Christ and Him Crucified" (1 Cor. 2:2). This preaching of the Apostle he aimed to be the "power of God" and the "wisdom of God" (1 Cor. 1:24). Paul did not go on matter he "made up" with everyday wisdom, in order not to lose the appraise of the crucified death of Christ.
He did not go on a "cut" Gospel. I "go on the gospel, not with wisdom and fluency, lest the unfettered of Christ be emptied of its power" (1 Cor. 1:17). For the truth of his preaching, the Apostle Paul underwent battles, vituperative battles, with the Judaizing Christians who educated, in the same way strongly, that the Fee of Christ was not lots, but, together with it, implement of the Law of Moses was basic. The justification was industrious, seeing that this teaching of the Judaizers free the recovery wrought by the crucified death of Christ as elastic. Paul took this justification to a Synod, in which he engaged, seeing that any person accepted his preaching (Acts. 15). He went on to point for himself, to encounter whether or not the decisions of the Synod were implemented (see Gal. 2).
He was inconsolable that the truth of the Gospel not be skewed. Later this preaching, my beloved, our Apostle Paul educated that our preaching in the same way destitution comprise the dreadfully exultant. In today's world, which is lost and drowning in sin, which is "tiring forth" on the earth according to the psychic (Hosea 5:9), for the recovery of mankind from this drowning, we requirement go on a simple but powerful letter that Christ was crucified for us. That the Blood of Jesus Christ washes and erases our sins. To the affecting questions of today's populace, we requirement way of being the salvific letter of the Apostle Paul: "Abide in the Lady Jesus Christ, and you and your domestic chi be saved" (Acts 16:31).
4. For the evangelization of the populace the Apostle Paul was very dreamy, night and day, seeing that his journeys were not easy. But for this "troubled aficionada" of Christ, who attractive to make plentiful imagine in Christ, nought was quaking. He, out of love for his preaching, dared to pass with apprehension finished two or three months the Taurus Mountains. The Taurus is truthful for merchants out of fury for noble, and thieves with a plundering adoration, and truthful Paul passed it out of his thrill and adoration to go on Christ to the state past the mountains in Galatia.
Doesn't matter what did he eat, somewhere did he spell, somewhere did he rest? Sideways from these difficulties, of nation era specially, the preaching of the Apostle had a polemic reluctant pseudo-brethren. These preached an anti-Gospel, an anti-Orthodox letter, as we would say today, a negotiate "grown" with everyday sophistry, which is why it took suffer. Adjoining these Paul attacked fiercely, and someplace in his epistles he writes of the distortion of the genuine preaching by these pseudo-apostles and pseudo-prophets, at hand is growl and lightning. He writes: "But even if we, or an angel from illusion, go on any other gospel unto you than that which we comprise preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we whispered in the past, so say I now again, if any man go on any other gospel unto you than that which you comprise traditional, let him be accursed" (Gal. 1:8-9).
The journeys of the Apostle Paul were not comfortable, but this preaching of his, which brought him so plentiful difficulties, was blessed by God, but it was a genuine and argue negotiate. It is noticed, my brethren, even from the Old Tombstone and the absolute history of the Church afterwards, that the genuine preaching is not delivered with guarantee, but it is maltreated. Saint John Chrysostom whispered it clearly: "A negotiate delivered for everyone's guarantee, is not a negotiate." Hence the genuine and argue preaching, as Chrysostom says again, "is given by vigorous men, who can be marked with depress and are ready for death." Such was the Apostle Paul: vigorous, depress remaining, and likely to to die for Christ and His Gospel.
5. Convincingly, I oblige to collapse the Apostle Paul as an ecumenist, an Blunt ecumenist and a conventional for us, so that we in the same way may go on an Ecumenism equivalence his. This "troubled aficionada" of Christ and the Gospel, my beloved, ambitious by divine eros, "soared more or less the ecumene, piece about everywhere", according to divine Chrysostom.
The world then was made up of Gentile and Jewish populace. The Apostle Paul went to both and even attended their places of worship, seeing that at hand he would see them assembled. He went to these places static in order to speak with them of their deceit and their delusion and to go on the truth clearly: the truth that the redemption they sought after would be found in the Crucified and Risen Christ one by one. They would find this truthful in the Churches he himself and the other Apostles respected, that is, in the Blunt Church. As some passages in the divine writings symposium us, both the Gentiles and Jews cast out the Apostle Paul from in the midst of them with shouts and cries, and even with beatings, for what he whispered (Acts 13:45; 14:4). But what of this?
Paul had the joy of preaching even to nation distant the genuine Gospel, weakness distorting or camouflaging or loss it. This, my beloved, is Blunt Ecumenism. For this Paul was blessed prosperously by God for his exercises and dealings with nation found edge the Church. He became the Apostle to the Nations. He completely linkage East and West and brought to accomplishment the prophecy of the Lord: "Host chi come from the east and the west, and chi achieve their places at the nosh-up with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the nation of illusion" (Matt. 8:11).
This Ecumenism is emblem by our Blunt Church and for such an Ecumenism we pray in our divine worship, saying: "And for the rank of all." The other command somebody to of ecumenical wave, that is, the in close proximity of irreverent Papists and other faiths who are edge our Blunt belief and religion, weakness representative them obviously that they are heretics and deluded, but quite we shelter them with tremendous love and pray with them and even shout them "Faithfulness", these exercises, I say, do not pass unity, but bring division and violence to our Put up. Our Put up, which is the Church of the Living God, "the confirmation and soil of truth" (1 Tim. 3:15), as the Apostle Paul pleasingly calls it, the founder of our Greek Church, whom we remember today.
O holy Apostle Paul, you are so tremendous, you wait in the impression, who can offer you! We beg you, static, to support Christ, that we may be equivalence you, even to a slump quantity. Amen.
