Meeting “the living Word of God, so as to let it change our lives into living cells of the Body of Christ, line after line, drop after drop”. It is the hope by the ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, addressed to the participants in the International Ecumenical Meeting of Orthodox Spiritualism, opened this morning in Bose with the theme “The Word of God in spiritual life”. “The Word of God – wrote Bartholomew I – is not just something inspiring or authoritative. It is definitive and ruling for spiritual life, and will be ‘the lamp for our steps and the light on our path’. It is a living word which we are asked to listen to and to obey, which we must join and follow”. The works were also opened by a message to participants from Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia. “The problems chosen for debate this year – wrote the Russian Patriarch – generate reflection on the very foundations of being a Christian: on the substance feeding the human soul, strengthening faith and paving the way to the knowledge of God”. He writes that the lives of saints “show us how listening to and accomplishing the Word of God changed their lives, leading them to the acquisition of holiness. I hope this Meeting will help us rediscover this subject, which is so important and topical”.

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