The head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Partarch Porfirije, at the beginning of his address, congratulated everyone on the holiday.
“For us, all flags begin with the flag that appeared to Emperor Constantine in the sky, on that flag was the sign of the most holy name of the Lord Jesus Christ. The holy emperor placed that sign of Christ on the flags of his army and won victory and brought freedom that became no less no more than the foundation of European civilization,” said Porphyry.
He pointed out that under that flag Emperor Constantine gave freedom and the opportunity to every nation on the European continent to build its own value system in accordance with its particularities, to organize its cultural and spiritual life and nurture and preserve its spiritual identity and its national unity.
“The flag is, in principle, a symbol of unity and a sign of the essential and profound identity of a people. Our flag is a visible sign of our unity and points to who we are and what we are as a nation and which way we have set out and should go,” Porfirje said. .
He stated that the meaning of our flag and all our previous flags has its root in Constantine’s chrysanthemum flag of victory and freedom.
“That is why it should be a clear sign that our cultural and spiritual identity is built and established on the same one on which Constantine’s flag was built – it is an identity called the Church of Christ and that identity has its foundations in the Orthodox faith,” the patriarch added. .
“Throughout the centuries until today, from east to west, from north to south, regardless of state, political borders, cultural spaces of different local customs, dialects and dialects, wherever our people live, there is a golden thread that connects them and makes them one, unique and unrepeatable – this is the thread called the Orthodox faith and the Serbian Orthodox Church,” Porfirije pointed out.
He says that throughout history the borders of our people’s habitat have changed, and that we are not sure that in history where everything is relative, it will not change in the future.
“However, the constant and guarantor both in the past and in the present, as well as in the future of our unshakable and permanent unity, is the living Orthodox faith that we have not changed for anything and that has preserved us unchanged,” he added.
Where there is a church, there is also our people, said the patriarch and added that where there is no church sooner or later the people will die.
“Our unity is not in numbers, nor in mathematics and geography, it is not based on blood and soil, it is not in quantity but in quality,” Porfirius said and added that our unity is and should remain a spiritual unity.
“A people without spiritual unity and health is like a nut that has a hard shell, but no kernel and fruit. Such a hollow nut breaks into pieces even under the slightest blow, and in the end there is nothing left of it,” Porfirius said.
“In the same way, a nation that does not preserve its spiritual value system and identity and its spiritual core is easily disoriented and lost, every nation is a living organism that has its own soul, if it renounces its soul, if it loses it or even neglects it, it slowly dies and becomes a corpse,” said the patriarch.
The soul of the Serbian people is the Christian Orthodox faith, Porfirje concluded.
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