Sunday rites continued in Armenian Apostolic Churches. In accordance with the declaration of the patriarchate, while believers within walking distance of the churches participated in the Holy Offerings (Sacred Offering Rites), attention was paid to the restrictions.
The Holy Liturgy, published on the Patriarchate’s Facebook page, took place on Thursday at the Galata Surp Krikor Lusavorich Church by the hand of Father Şirvan Mürzyan. The spiritual trainees of the Patriarchate served the Lord’s Table. The members of the Patriarchal Armaş Choir sang the hymns. At the end of the ritual, “Hokehankist” prayers were recited for all those who sleep in the Lord.
After the broadcast, the Armenian Patriarch of Turkey, Sahak II, spoke Armenian and Turkish sermons in accordance with the Bible readings of the day. In his Turkish sermon, he read and interpreted the parable of the “weeds” of Jesus Christ, from the Gospel of Matthew 13, verses 24-30 and 36-43.
Some titles from the Turkish sermon of Patriarch Sahak II are as follows:
“Let’s read the word of God every day”
”Jesus also means that somehow; It is necessary not to attribute the evils in this world only to human beings. Man is good in his essence, his nature is good, he is created like God. But on this world stage, we do not only see what God has sown, we also see what his enemy, the devil, has sown, and he is sowing. Especially when people are asleep, that is careless, indifferent, distracted, ignorant, these seeds of evil are planted in the world and they give the image of suffering. God is patient with this and will endure until the harvest. The good and the bad, the goodness and the evil, will be sorted out at the harvest. It will happen at the end of the world, but before the end of the world, it will happen with the death of all of us. Harvest is our death.
Our problem, then, is the appearance of evil in this world and why God allows it. One of the reasons is told to us in this parable of weeds. God’s permission for the wicked is that the good and the wicked are alike in this world.
One of the most interesting images the Bible has to offer is that Saints and Prophets can be sinners, and sinners can be Saints. In this sense, we need to be careful, not to get ahead of God.
Man has yet to prove who he is. Who we are is only revealed at the moment of death. Because death is the moment when our whole life, all our character will be embodied in our soul. After the soul leaves the body, that soul enters eternal life with its own quality. It shows whether it is wheat or weed.
Unfortunately, today’s modern man cannot stand back from the seeds of evil. We will definitely and definitely encounter evil, it will definitely enter our eyes and ears. It’s like walking in a swamp and wanting no mud to splash on you, we don’t live in such a world. It infects the holiest of us and those who want to be the holiest. We will protect ourselves. With the right choices, we will strengthen ourselves with good seeds. Otherwise, one day we will witness all those good seeds drowning in the thorns. We will want the good, but on the contrary, we will do the bad.
So, my dear brothers, let’s be careful. Let’s put ourselves in God’s hands. Let us fill in His good seeds. Let’s read the word of God every day. Let’s pray every day. Let’s watch things about God on TV. Let the walls of our house be decorated with the events of the Bible. Let there be the Cross of the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ on our body, on our necklaces. All this seems small, but one day it will protect us. One day it will keep us away from the curse of evil. The mystery of evil and evil is not solved by us. Unknowingly, we live in a world where good and bad are intertwined, this is not the most beautiful world God has ever created, of course, but it is a school, a place of growth and maturation. In your world of consciousness, be sober and vigilant and protect yourself, knowing that evil can affect you at any time.”
