Priests became a suitable target in the information war – Metropolitan Luke (Kovalenko)

The Church lives for people and their slavation, while the priests' duty is to tell about the truth of our faith through love. It was said by Metropolitan Luke of Zaporozhye and Melitopol on 17 February in the greeting speech to the participants of the seminar, dedicated to today's challenges and search for new forms of missionary activities, reports Press-service of Zaporozhye UOC eparchy.

«The Internet-space and blogging sphere are growing to become a viable propaganda tool for various public and political structures. Manipulations and fakes undertaken by them not only create a negative picture of the Church servant, but adds to the appearance of agiophobia with some people,» stressed the Metropolitan.

«A human soul, affected by sin, is inclined to hating those who are more intelligent, talented or kinder. Consciously or subconsciously, such hate-mongers are aware of the fact that priests are higher, purer, smarter and kinder than they are, and the truth is on the side of the Church. For this reason thay feel humiliated and resort to tricks and defamations,» he believes.

Metropolitan Luke explained that such people realize perfectly a priest will never fight with the same weapons used by them, he will never downgrade himself to mutual claims and insults.

«We can see there is a consistent destruction of our spiritual values. In conditions when «spirit, rather than flesh has decayed», we have no moral right to be silent. Our duty is to tell about truth of our faith through love, to show its beauty. This is a core of our missionary outreach,» said the hierarch.

He added the clergy must «get across to everybody an obvious idea that it's good to be healthy and rich, yet it's far better to be spiritually healthy and rich. Just a few people know this is what our Church is engaged in, She lives not for herself, but for the people and their salvation. When people realize it, they will no longer be scared and make their children scared, but will attend a church otherwise than at the moments of sorrow.»

Alongside with priests, laymen also participated in the seminar whose part seems more diverse than just the knowledge of catechesis, according to the Metropolitan. «Quite frequent are the cases when an active involvement of parents in the spiritual life of their children helped introduce certain corrections in the school curriculum in order to protect fragile souls against obscurantism, hypocrisy and cruelty,» concluded His Eminence.