Aigio, Achaea, Greece, November 8, 2024
Photo: orthodoxianewsagency.gr
Greece is currently suffering from a prolonged drought because the country has moved away from God, the bishop of Kalavryta said during a procession with relics from the Lord’s Passion held earlier this week.
The clergy and pious people of the municipality of Aigialeia filled the streets for a procession on November 6 led by Metropolitan Ieronymos of Kalavryta and the retired Metropolitan Ambrosios, with the “Immaculate Passions” from the local Holy Archangels Monastery—a reliquary containing a piece of wood from the Lord’s Cross, part of the Crown of Thorns, part of the sponge used to give Christ sour wine while He hung on the Cross, a piece of His red cloack, as well as part of a braid of hair from the head of the Holy Forerunner St. John the Baptist, reports the Orthodoxia News Agency.
In the courtyard of the Holy Dormition Metropolitan Church, Met. Ieronymos knelt and offered supplicatory prayers on behalf of the gathered people of God for the cessation of the drought that afflicts the region and the whole of Greece.
The Immaculate Passions relics. Photo: ilioupolis.gr
After the service, the hierarch noted that
after dozens of requests from the faithful, we gathered today to process our Lord’s Immaculate Passions and to offer, with feelings of repentance and deep faith in the Lord, supplication and to beseech Him Who was crucified and gave His blood for our salvation, to show again His compassion and philanthropic mercy to save our land and our homeland from the prolonged period of drought, to open the heavens, to send us peaceful rain for the fruition of the earth…
And he explained why the land has been afflicted:
This drought is due to the fact that we have distanced ourselves from God, we have de-sanctified and de-Christianized our homeland, we have enacted laws that are against God’s will. That is why today, repentant and humble, we beseech the Lord, having before us the Immaculate Passions, not to abandon us, not to remove His life-giving grace from His people. This Divine grace is what always, in all the difficulties we have passed through as a people, saves and protects us. Because if He takes His grace from the world and us men, then we taste and experience situations that are destructive for us and the entire world.
Recall that 
Greece becomes first Orthodox country to legalize gay marriageGreek Parliament voted late last night, despite the fierce and persistent resistance from the Church and society, to legalize gay marriage and adoption by gay couples.
“>in February, Greece became the first Orthodox country to legalize gay marriage.
The Metropolitan then called on the faithful to intensify their prayer.
And he concluded, “We have put our Christ aside, but He is with us and waiting for us, and when we call Him back into our lives then He transforms them, renews them with His never-setting light.
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