SYDNEY – Archbishop Makarios of Australia officiated at the Divine Liturgy on the Sunday of the Myrrh bearers on May 3 at the St. Nicholas, Greek Orthodox Church in Sydney. The Divine Liturgy was celebrated behind closed doors, due to the restrictive measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. Present also was Bishop Emilianos of Meloa.

The Archbishop in his sermon emphasized that the love for Christ enables the faithful to overcome fear and allows them to truly experience His Resurrection.

He continue: “We are all Christians, we live as members of the Orthodox Church and for this reason, and we crave eternal life. However, we avoid bearing the cross. We are all in the Church; our lives are full of ‘myrrh and perfumes,’ which we do not use to anoint the Body of Jesus, but to take care of ourselves.”

Archbishop Makarios explained that “myrrh and perfumes are our virtues and desires, our gifts and our yearning have value only when we use them to approach Christ in order to love Him more.  Otherwise we become like the Pharisees,” he said, “who had many virtues, but never truly welcomed Christ into their lives…When we are in church, we tend to be talking about the Resurrection and we constantly say ‘Christ is risen’, but, in fact, only a few of us really believe in the Resurrection,” he said.

Also the Archbishop said that “our desire is communion with the Risen Christ” and urged the faithful to welcome Christ into their lives.  He concluded by saying, “if we do not believe in the Resurrection of Christ, this does not mean that the Resurrection is not a true fact, but that our faith is dead, just like the people who crucified Him.”