His Beatitude shares how to make life fruitful

His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry. Photo: Odessa Eparchy

In a sermon about the sower on October 27, His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry said that modern people are largely like the seed that falls among thorns. According to the Information and Education Department of the UOC, the Primate explained what people lack to ensure their lives bear good fruit.

His Beatitude reminded the faithful that the Lord said, "Man shall not live by bread alone." Spiritual nourishment for people is the word of God, and it is this word, taking root in the heart, that bears fruit.

“We receive the word of God, but worldly distractions and the cares of life stifle it. A person says, ‘I’ll pray later; I’ll go here and do that now,’ continually postponing it, and today he has no time. Of course, we live in this world, and each of us has obligations toward family, neighbors, and ourselves. But all these things should be accompanied by prayer,” he said.

Metropolitan Onuphry underscored that the word of God includes both prayer, with which a person reaches out to their Creator, and reading the Holy Gospel. All of this “fills a person with the content necessary to bear good fruit.”

“We need to preserve this within ourselves, not allow spiritual thieves to take it away, keep it in memory, and live by these words and sacred laws,” His Beatitude Onuphry said, adding that one should endure all temptations with patience. This will also be “a good fruit that a person should offer to God.”

As previously reported, an episcopal consecration was held in Kyiv for a bishop of the Odesa Eparchy of the UOC.

Read also

American priest speaks about unprecedented growth of interest in Orthodoxy

According to Archpriest Josiah Trenham, just a few years ago, his parish received about 20–25 catechumens per year; today, that number has increased several times over.

ROCOR nun to teach at OCU academy

A member of the ROC's Inter-Council Presence will become a lecturer at the Department of Church-Practical Disciplines at an OCU educational institution.