The hierarchal vicar of Kotor-Tivat, parish priest of Kotor, archpriest-stavrophor Nemanja Krivokapić served the Holy Liturgy today, on the feast of Saints Cyril and Methodius, who spread the Christian faith and literacy among the Slavs, in the Church of St. Nicholas in the Old Town of Kotor.

"We heard two Gospels at today's liturgy, because today we celebrate two feasts. The first, which we celebrate on the seventh Sunday after the Resurrection, is the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council. The second is a feast according to the calendar, and these are the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Cyril and Methodius. In both of these Gospels, we are reminded that the Lord God came into this world to save us people, to conquer death and to grant us eternal life. In addition, He came to give us and establish the way by which we will be saved. That is why He founded the Church and left us the saving doctrine. The God-revealed word, the saving word, according to which, believing in the Lord and believing in what God has left us, we are saved in this way. It is extremely important, when we already believe, what we believe in and how we believe. God is accurate and precise left us how we believe and what we believe in. What God left us, the Holy Apostles passed on to us. That is why the Church is called apostolic, because it is established on the work of the Holy Apostles, a very important work, to pass on to us those words, the saving words, which the Lord left us, and He did not write, He only spoke, to pass on to us those words, both in the form of writing and in the form of tradition. That is what the Holy Apostles did. After the descent of the Holy Spirit, they preached the word of God that Christ left, which they heard with their own ears and saw with their own eyes, in order to pass on to us, people, and establish the Church throughout the entire universe. After the apostles, someone had to continue, to preserve that pure faith as the Lord passed on to us. That is what the Holy Fathers did. But since people are prone to error and the teaching of Christ, the truth that He gave us, Christ left, was in danger of being distorted by our human errors. This great role of preserving that truth, as Christ left it to us, was taken over by the Holy Fathers through the conciliar opinion, because the guarantor of the truth of the Church is the Holy Spirit. If any disagreement arose on the issue of faith, impurity of faith, the Holy Fathers resolved it through the councils, following the example of the apostles themselves, who at one point had a doubt whether to act in this or that way. What did they do? They gathered at the council, prayed to the Holy Spirit and made a correct decision. They gathered at the council, examined the facts and, having prayed to the Holy Spirit, made a decision such as is the real truth according to the tradition of the Church, according to the apostolic tradition, that is, as the Lord himself, if he were there, would say. And the guarantor that this is the truth is the Holy Spirit, to whom everyone always prays at the beginning of the council. And so they The Fathers, whom we celebrate today, the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council, when the first great heresy, the Aryan heresy, appeared, reacted immediately. Although what Arius taught was very similar to Orthodox teaching, it was nevertheless not the truth. Laymen, ordinary people, might not have noticed the difference, but the Holy Fathers, guided by the Holy Spirit, definitely noticed that this was not Orthodox teaching, they reacted, expressed at the Ecumenical Council how the Orthodox Church teaches and has passed it on to us to this day. They were followed by other Holy Fathers through seven Ecumenical Councils, when our Orthodox faith was established. Established as it was left to us by Christ and the Holy Apostles. That is why we can say today that we truly belong to the true Church, the only Church. There are several churches that call themselves that, but there is no longer any truth, because there is only one truth, the one left by the Lord, and those who follow that truth, you are on the right path. That is us, and our guarantor is the apostles and the Holy Fathers who, by the Holy Spirit, conveyed this truth to us as the Lord Jesus Christ left it to us. That is why we celebrate the Holy Fathers on this day.
Also on this day we celebrate the Equal-to-the-Apostles Saints Cyril and Methodius. Why are they called Equal-to-the-Apostles? Because the work they did was completely equal to the work done by the apostles. They preserved the true faith for us. Not all peoples came to know the truth at the same time. Some heard the word right away at the beginning, and some came to know the truth over the following centuries. Thus, our entire Slavic people, and we Serbs with them, came to know the truth only from the ninth century onwards, precisely during the activities of these Holy Fathers Saints Cyril and Methodius, who, at the invitation of the Moravian prince Rastislav, came to preach among the Slavs peoples. They knew the Slavic language, established the script, translated the most important books, the Holy Scriptures, the Psalter, the liturgical books into that language and preached the word of God in that language. And that is why in the troparion that we have just sung, we call them equal to the apostles and those who established us in truth and oneness of mind. A very important word, because what the Holy Fathers did, they preserved the true truth, so that we all think the same together. That is called oneness of mind. There is no democracy in the Church. The way Christ left us the teaching, that is the Orthodox teaching. That is the oneness of mind that Saints Cyril and Methodius left us. And that is why the Church sang their great work, which they did, through sticheras: “With what praiseworthy words should we praise you, Saints Cyril and Methodius, you who in the Slavic language led and enlightened with the light of the Gospel those who sat in darkness in the shadow of death, and you who are preachers of the one-minded Trinity, like a wild olive tree planted on the noble root of Orthodoxy, you led the Slavic people, so that they may bear manifold fruit.”
That is a song, but it is also the essence of our respect for these saints of God, who led other people to the knowledge of the truth and preserved them in oneness of mind. "May the Lord God, through the prayers of the Holy Fathers of the Ecumenical Councils and the Holy Enlighteners, Equal-to-the-Apostolic Cyril and Methodius, strengthen us in the faith that He has left us and strengthen us in oneness of mind, and thus we may be saved, amen," said Father Nemanja.