This
Sunday has been consecrated by the Orthodox Church to be dedicated to
the environment (proposed by the late Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios
thirty years ago in 1989).
What people have not managed to destroy for
thousands of years, the generations of the past two hundred years have
managed to. The risk of our planet being transformed into a dangerous
hot-house without a ventilator further constitutes a visible threat for
all of us, staying a little away at the point to avoid the eventuality
of the condition of death like the plants of an enclosed hot-house which
at stages wither, dry-up and die.
Only when man accept the
teaching of our Church, that the Creator of all things is God, can he
love the whole of Creation and protect it. Man as the crown of God's
creation has a special place on our planet. Man is invited by God to
continue the work of creation, and simultaneously to look after it, take
care of it and to push for its advancement to whatever protects it as
far as its survival is concerned. Hence God, in the first book of the
Old Testament, namely in the book of Genesis, invites the first man,
Adam, to give names to the animals and to all things. This symbolic
Biblical reference shows precisely our responsibilities to the whole of
God's creation. In order to respect God's creation we must naturally
become conscious of the fact that everything in the world belongs to God
who created it. Consequently, we human beings are under no
circumstance, the proprietors of God's creation but people who accept
his commandments, that is, His management. Hence, what is created in
addition in our relationship with creation and nature, is awe and
respect. We become conscious of the fact that we have a serious and
responsible role to perform for the protection of the environment, which
is associated directly with our fitting respect, which we all owe to
the Creator, that is, to God.
For this reason, the ecological
problem is connected to the problem, which is created by the "reference
about the house of God". Hence, the whole of creation, the entire
environment, our planet and whatever exists on it is in this sense,
God's wider habitation in which there exists and lives God's divine
creation. Man, as an inseparable part of this wider habitation of God,
must be protected in every way, his dignity and his human rights. The
same applies to every part of creation. In this way, we show, as has
already been stressed, special reverence to the entity of the Creator,
the Three Divine Entities of the Triad God - the Father, the Son and the
Holy Spirit. Under no circumstances must man create a form of
opposition or juxtaposition with his environment, that is the wider
space of nature in which he lives. We must not once again fall victims
to the new times of the History of Humanity, where unfortunately lots of
people from within the inhuman arrogance of their empires and the
unacceptable issues of colonization and the inconceivable lack of
control in the industrial revolution as well as the unjust exploitation
of man towards his fellow human beings, must see nature as their
dangerous adversary and enemy which they should besiege, protect,
pillage, conquer and rudely rape, changing her with the holocaust of the
two world wars into a huge cemetery, which we still darkly lament with
pain in the soul for the future.
The Orthodox teaching
approximates the relationship of humans with nature and the environment
to another perspective, where the reconciliation and coexistence of
people is preserved. Many supposedly pious Christians are swept away by
the greatness of the Orthodox tradition of our Church. They entrap
themselves in dangerous heretical bodies which present themselves as
Churches and in whose center instead of having Jesus Christ, they have
charms where people are swept away into a spiritual lethargy which
forever keeps them far away from the hope of salvation through Christ,
far away from Paradise.
Our Church does not see nature and the
environment as the adversaries of man, but as that reality in which we
have an instrumental relationship and consequently in which we ourselves
belong. Thus we become conscious of the fact that we are all part of
this nature and consequently by protecting Nature we protect ourselves.
That is, we assume the safe course of our survival.
Later this
month during the General Assembly of the UN in New York there will be a
special session on action on Climate Change crisis to save our Planet.
Let's pray all of us to God to enlighten them to respond to their high
calling so that the representatives of the conference will be conscious
of the fact that they represent the entire humanity so, and to do their
best for all of us and for the future Generations.
Let us
therefore join our prayer together with our blessed Patriarch Theodoros
II for the formal representation of the 203 nations who are members of
the United Nations, to respond to their huge responsibilities to save
our Planet, so that we can honourably give a united front to our great
peaceful battle for our survival, which begins with the degree to which
we are prepared to struggle with strength and decisiveness, for the
reign of justice in the world as the only means which will lead us to in
live God's real peace. The protection of Amazon and of our Planet, our
common and only House we have is something concerns all of us.
The
Greek Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomeos during the last International
Halki Ecological Conference proposed the introduction of specific
ecological syllabus for all the Orthodox Theological Universities and
Seminaries as well as to all the levels to the Orthodox Educational
Centers in all the countries of the World.
Metropolitan
Serafim Kykotis of the Greek Orthodox Archbishopric of Zimbabwe and
Angola is President of the synodical Commission on Environment and
Climate Change and sustainable Development goals of the UN of the Greek
Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria and all Africa.