Greek hierarch: COVID, not Christ, has become the center of our lives
The hierarch noted that officials are concerned about children receiving communion, but do not show concern about the increase in violence and drug use in schools.
Metropolitan Amphilochios of Kisam and Selino of the Cretan Orthodox Church said that Orthodox believers made the coronavirus the center of life instead of Christ, reports Orthodoxianewsagency.gr.
Commenting on the sanctions that the leadership of the region intends to impose against teachers who took children to the temple on the feast of the Three Hierarchs (the patrons of education in Greece), Metropolitan Amphilochios wrote that "we have chosen the wrong path."
He believes that this is a tragedy, “because we have emptied the souls of our children from Christ, from faith, from hope, and, as Sartre says, we are like the ‘living dead’, because this existential void will be filled with a hell of desires and addictions.”
“This is a tragedy because we have made the coronavirus, rather than Christ, the center of our lives!” emphasized the hierarch.
He also noted that "the sensitivity of those in charge and the 'preliminary checks' are limited to whether some children came freely to the Eucharist, but not to what happens in many schools at times sadly and tragically. Where is the sensitivity to the increase in violence, drugs, accusations of drug use and trafficking, deviant behavior, and much more that is happening in schools (their yards and adjacent areas)?” the Metropolitan asks.
The hierarch emphasized that officials are not concerned about the fact that schoolchildren study in small and unventilated rooms during the pandemic, but the participation of several students in Holy Communion, they say, will cause an “outbreak of infection in the school community!”.
Earlier, the UOJ wrote that, according to a priest from Greece, churches are being closed because the Divine Liturgy deprives Satan of his powers.
