"The mission is the very manifestation of the essence of the Church, the Church cannot exist without a mission," His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia said at a meeting of the Supreme Church Council on September 24.
He recalled that it was not just an applied task, that the Savior himself told the apostles: "Go and teach all nations." Therefore, the mission is at the very center of church life.
"The purpose of the testimony of Christ is ultimately subordinated to the activities of any church institution, and indeed of every believer," the Patriarch said. "Every Orthodox person, every member of the Church is called to a mission, to witness."
But, according to him, this is "not well understood by the laity," unlike some sectarian groups, who "sometimes grab their sleeves, offer to go somewhere, but the fact is that for many sectarian groups, the mission is a priority in the ministry of each of their members."
"This is not the case with us at all. Even some bishops, especially priests, do not consider the mission to be a priority," the Patriarch stated with regret and called for the inclusion of missionary work in the activities of every church organization - parish, deanery, diocese and the entire Church.
This work has faced different challenges in different eras, His Holiness noted.
"Nowadays we live in conditions of an overabundance of information, constant competition in the struggle for human attention," he said. - A missionary of our time should be ready to fight for human hearts, which the entertainment industry and permissiveness are trying to fill with emptiness. But more often than not, it's not just emptiness, but very harmful content for the soul."
He recalled the ancient agora, a market square where people exchanged opinions and tried to influence each other.
"Such an agora today is the Internet and especially social media, which are open to almost everyone. Even older people have become active participants in this process in recent years. Also, many priests are present on social media, and some have achieved significant success in this field.
According to the patriarch, the mission in social media should multiply and become the subject of attention at all levels of church life, because new technologies easily become a tool in the hands of all kinds of dangerous people - occultists, neo-pagans, esotericists, and simply charlatans of all stripes who seek to exploit natural spiritual demands for their own purposes. "And the threat of seduction of people in these spaces is extremely high now," the Patriarch noted.