On the Sunday of the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council, the Holy Liturgy in the Church of St. Nicholas in the Old Town of Kotor was presided over by the hierarchal vicar of Kotor-Tivat, the parish priest of Kotor, Archpriest-Staurophorus Nemanja Krivokapić, who said in his sermon that along with them we also celebrate all the fathers who preserved the purity of our faith, the one that the Lord Jesus Christ left us.
"We heard the Holy Gospel where Saint John transmits the high priestly prayer of the Lord Jesus Christ, the prayer that the Lord offered to the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane, before the crucifixion, before His capture by the soldiers.
He prayed to God for the whole world and for all that He was to do. However, at the center of everything is the prayer where He prays to the Father for the unity of the Church.
That they may be, as it is written here, "All one, as You are in me and I in You, that they also may be one with us.” Just as the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is one God, although they are three concrete persons, so the Church is one if we gather around one holy cup, that is, around God himself.
“That they may all be one, as You are in me and I in You,” is what Christ insists on in this prayer, what the apostles and the holy fathers insisted on later. He insists on the unity of the Church.
The unity of the Church is reflected first and foremost through the sacraments in the Church, first and foremost through the Holy Sacrament of Communion, which we receive at every Holy Liturgy.
Communion is not just one of the customs or something nice, while I'm here, but it is the essence of our life and our coming to the Church," says Fr. Nemanja.
He reminds us that in prayer, before the blessing of the gifts, when we ask the Father to send the Holy Spirit to bless the gifts and ask Him to bless all of us and the gifts, there is the unity that Christ speaks of, which is reflected primarily through the holy mysteries.
"This unity is also reflected through preserving the purity of faith, the kind that Christ himself left us. Today, in the seventh week after the Resurrection, the Sunday before Pentecost, we celebrate the Fathers of the Ecumenical Councils. Specifically here, the First Ecumenical Council, and through them all the fathers who preserved precisely the purity of our faith. The kind of faith that the Lord Jesus Christ left us," says Fr. Nemanja.
He continues by saying that the correct and true confession of faith was preserved through councils.
“Christ left us the teaching, left it to the apostles, the apostles to the holy fathers. However, it was always possible for different opinions to arise. If it did, the Church resolved it through councils. When everyone gathered in one place, they expressed their opinion and reached a common conclusion. The apostles did this for the first time in the year 50, when the first disagreement arose among them. Following their example, the holy fathers resolved new problems that arose in the Church regarding teaching, which threatened to destroy its unity, through councils. Representatives of the entire Church would gather and resolve the problem. The decisions of the council would be valid for the entire Church. That is why they are ecumenical councils. The guarantor of that faith, if that is the case, is the Holy Spirit, who invisibly participates in every council,” said Fr. Nemanja.
The problem discussed at the First Ecumenical Council, he recalled, was a serious heresy that threatened to endanger the teaching of the Holy Trinity, which is the foundation of all teachings in the Church, on which all dogmas are based.
“This basic dogma is that God is one with three persons - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Three specific persons, and one God, which is difficult for the human mind to understand. It is not easy for us people, limited by time and space, to understand that three can be one, but in God all things are possible because He is above both time and space. It was difficult to express this, and some who tried to do so made mistakes. Specifically in this case, Arius taught that the Son is less than the Father, i.e. that He is a creature, the most perfect creation of the Father, which is a humiliation of the Son, and also an erroneous teaching because the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are completely equal, of one essence, of the same essence,” said Fr. Nemanja.
At the Ecumenical Council, he continued, the holy fathers brought true teaching thanks primarily to St. Athanasius the Great, who was a deacon and gave birth to the teaching, showing that God is the Son and of the same essence with the Father and likewise the Holy Spirit together with Them.
“Following those holy fathers, those after them resolved the problems of the Church and questions of faith through seven ecumenical councils, through which the Church today has the teaching that Christ Himself left us, precisely because of all those fathers, who, with their prayers, virtuous life and knowledge, with the help of the Holy Spirit, left us the correct and pure teaching about the Holy Trinity, that is, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, one God, three persons, to whom be glory and praise forever, amen,” said Fr. Nemanja.