{"id":285488,"date":"2020-07-17T10:30:39","date_gmt":"2020-07-17T07:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/basilica.ro\/?p=285488"},"modified":"2020-07-17T10:31:08","modified_gmt":"2020-07-17T07:31:08","slug":"metropolitan-serafim-of-germany-says-todays-diseases-are-consequences-of-spiritual-disease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/metropolitan-serafim-of-germany-says-todays-diseases-are-consequences-of-spiritual-disease\/","title":{"rendered":"Metropolitan Serafim of Germany says today\u2019s diseases are consequences of spiritual disease"},"content":{"rendered":"

His Eminence Serafim,\u00a0Romanian Orthodox Metropolitan of Germany, <\/strong>visited<\/span><\/strong><\/a> last weekend the Lord\u2019s Resurrection Parish in Mannheim. He listened to people\u2019s confessions, baptized three children, celebrated the Divine Liturgy, and ordained a deacon to the priesthood. He spoke to the faithful about prayer, honest confession of sins and forgiveness, and also about the \u201cevil spirits who distort judgment\u201d and make us spiritually ill.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In his Sunday homily, the hierarch emphasized our need to renew perspective in our relationship with God: we should stop asking things from Him and start letting ourselves in His hands, as He knows best what we need.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur fight is not with flesh and blood, as the Holy Apostle Paul said, but with the evil spirits who distort our judgment and lead us astray from God\u2019s path\u201d, the Metropolitan said. \u201cEach sin is rooted in an evil thought coming from the devil and if we do not refuse the thought immediately, it will take hold of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe world is laying ill under the power of the evil one. Today\u2019s diseases are consequences of spiritual disease: lack of faith, love of money, fornication, the crime of abortion and contraception, the latter being also abortive\u201d, the hierarch said.<\/p>\n

His Eminence Serafim said that refusing to give birth to children is in disobedience with God\u2019s commandment given to man in the Garden of Eden: \u201cBe fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it\u201c (Genesis 1:28). Unlike the followers of other Abrahamic religions, Christians don\u2019t obey this commandment anymore.<\/p>\n

The world belongs to those who conquer it by giving birth to children, added the Romanian hierarch, while \u201cthe Christian population is dwindling by the day and nobody can foresee a bright future for the Christian world. Only a radical return to God through temperance and repentance could save us, just as it saved the inhabitants of the ancient city of Nineveh\u201d.<\/p>\n

During the Divine Liturgy, the metropolitan ordained to priesthood Deacon Constantin Prihoanc\u0103, who will serve at the new Parish of \u201cHoly Trinity, Archangel Raphael and St Pirmin, Patron of Pfalz\u201d in Ludwigshafen am Rhein. Father Constantin Prihoanc\u0103 is a Doctor in Theology and a consultant of the Ecumenical Institute in Heidelberg.<\/p>\n

The Lord\u2019s Resurrection Parish from Mannheim, Germany, the oldest Romanian Orthodox parish in the Rhein-Neckar region, is guided by Parish Priest Cristian Poda\u0219c\u0103.<\/p>\n

Photo credit: The \u201cNativity of Our Lord\u201d Romanian Orthodox Church in M\u00fcnchen<\/p>\n

Follow us on Twitter: @BasilicaNews & @BasilicaPhotos<\/p>\n

Thank you for reading Basilica.ro!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

His Eminence Serafim,\u00a0Romanian Orthodox Metropolitan of Germany, visited last weekend the Lord\u2019s Resurrection Parish in Mannheim. He listened to people\u2019s confessions, baptized three children, celebrated the Divine Liturgy, and ordained a deacon to the priesthood. He spoke to the faithful about prayer, honest confession of sins and forgiveness, and also about the \u201cevil spirits who…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":275257,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[22844,23741,4665,10386,4794,53],"class_list":["post-285488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diaspora-en","tag-coronavirus-epidemic","tag-coronavirus-germany","tag-metropolitan-serafim","tag-orthodox-news","tag-romanian-diaspora","tag-romanian-orthodox-church"],"better_featured_image":{"id":275257,"alt_text":"","caption":"","description":"","media_type":"image","media_details":{"width":960,"height":640,"file":"2020\/03\/Mitropolitul-Serafim.jpg","sizes":{"thumbnail":{"file":"Mitropolitul-Serafim-360x360.jpg","width":360,"height":360,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","source_url":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Mitropolitul-Serafim-360x360.jpg"},"medium":{"file":"Mitropolitul-Serafim-890x593.jpg","width":890,"height":593,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","source_url":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Mitropolitul-Serafim-890x593.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"1","keywords":[]}},"post":null,"source_url":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Mitropolitul-Serafim.jpg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285488\/"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post\/"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19\/"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments\/?post=285488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285488\/revisions\/"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275257\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/?parent=285488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories\/?post=285488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags\/?post=285488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}