In the Church of St. Nicholas in Kotor, today on the feast of the Holy Prophet Ezekiel, the day before the anniversary of the pogrom of the Serbian people in the criminal operation Storm, Archpriest Mijajlo Backović gave a sermon.

“I recently read about a new method of healing that is now being practiced by many people around the world, by gazing at the Sun and each time the gazing is prolonged because at first, naturally, our eyes cannot receive so much light and so much energy. And then they look at it for a short time, then a little longer every day, until they reach a certain level where they can follow and look at the Sun for a little longer.

This healing is not so interesting as the symbolism of looking at the Sun and opening our eyes to the light and energy of the Sun, which symbolizes that eternal and imperishable light of the Sun of truth, our Christ, whom we humans, when we set out to follow Him, find it difficult to look at, so at first He is too far away and too strong for our eyes to recognize and see Him. Then we slowly, little by little, dispelling the darkness around us, but above all following that Sun of righteousness and its light, we remove and dispel that darkness within us.

At first it is not easy to accept and understand with our mind, with our eyes, that it is God, but that light becomes so strong for us and opens up the light within us, like those flower petals early in the morning when someone goes out into the field at about five o'clock and sees those petals, closed during the night, and then as the Sun begins to rise, they open up and follow the sun, like those sunflowers.

So too, man, dear brothers and sisters and dear children, follows the Sun of Justice at first with closed petals and a closed heart. But, as the sun becomes stronger and clearer before us, then our heart petals open up and we accept the Sun of Justice and we begin to follow it, turning just like all of nature follows the Sun, the one we have today in our sky.

Today we heard in The Holy Gospel also tells an incomprehensible and incredible story that five thousand men, without women and children, come to be healed and the Lord heals people all day on that side of the sea, as he says, “he had compassion on them”. He heals them all day and sometime towards evening, when they are hungry, He tells the disciples to feed them, and they say, which is logical and acceptable and normal for every person, that so many people cannot be fed with so little bread and fish, and the Lord says: “Give me”. He blesses and they are fed and carries 12 baskets of that food, as he says in today’s Gospel.

Likewise, just as it is incomprehensible to us humans, just like the Sun that we cannot look at at the beginning, just like the Lord Whom we do not understand, when we enter and follow Him, today’s Gospel is also incredible and incomprehensible to us, how it is and what the Lord "He did this with this food, and it fed so many people," said Father Mijajlo.

It is the same today, he continued, because everyone who is in this Holy Temple has come to be healed.

“We have come to be healed, to approach the Lord and ask Him for healing for our spiritual and physical illnesses, for our doubts, our doubts, for our passions and fears. It is also impossible for all the people in this world who approach Christ to receive and accept without a physical priest who is in that temple or in that city approaching each one. But each of those people who believed and came received heavenly food, received comfort and found their medicine.

The Sun of righteousness, our Lord Who always shines for us and removes darkness, is the One to whom we should practice looking. Let us practice learning to look at Him by looking first of all with the eyes of our heart. Then our darkness, inner and our fears and our depressions and everything that accompanies fears will be milder. That light will disperse and then in the twilight our heart will still see, through that darkness of ours personal passions and sins, a clearer picture of the salvation of the Face of God”, said Fr. Mijajlo.

Today we also celebrate the Holy Prophet Ezekiel, continued Fr. Mijajlo, recalling his captivity in Babylonian captivity at a time when his people were also in captivity, while today we remember that tomorrow is the anniversary of the great pogrom of the Serbian people in the criminal operation Storm.

“When you take all of this together, from the beginning of the Gospel reading until now, what I have said, into consideration, then the cross of our people and their suffering throughout the centuries will become clearer to you. If we were to just look at that sad column of over 200,000 people, 2,000 killed… If we were to see only those children crying on tractors and trucks because they are leaving and going into uncertainty, then, just viewed through that segment, that year and that suffering would be very tragic for us and it would be hopeless, incomprehensible for each of us,” said Fr. Mijajlo, adding that in the context of the entire history of the salvation of the human race, we should accept and understand that the one who follows Christ will never be in the majority and that the one who follows the Sun of righteousness, who has recognized the light and accustomed his spiritual eyes to looking at that Sun, will never be without suffering.

“But we also know that this suffering leads to salvation and eternal life, and therefore this suffering is not as terrible for us as it is for those who do not believe, who live in darkness and who have not known the Sun of Righteousness. May the Lord give light to enlighten the minds of all of us, to open the eyes of our hearts, and then to each other, especially you dear children, to look at each other with your heart, because then, looking with your heart without the calculator of this world and the deposits that this world has left in that calculator in our heads, the heads of us adults, you will see more clearly with your heart and recognize that light of God, the Sun of Righteousness, and through that light and that filter of the heart, see more clearly and accept with love every person who stands next to you, around us, who lives with us and shares this climate in which we live.

Love is what guides us, what created us. Love will ultimately be the last thing that will destroy us. wait until we come before the face of God. Everything else, dear brothers and sisters and dear children, will be unimportant and insignificant in relation to love and the eyes of our hearts.

May the Lord grant that we may look at each other with those eyes and then we will be true followers of the eternal and unsetting Sun of righteousness, our Lord Jesus Christ, amen”, said Fr. Miajlo.