Serbian Bishop Irinej of Backa: If we forget Kosovo, we ourselves will be forgotten

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Bishop Irinej of Backa said today in Belgrade, during a scientific gathering dubbed, "Kosovo and Metohija - History and Cultural Heritage," that if we Serbians, as a people, forget Kosovo - we will be forgotten ourselves.

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"In our case, if we forget Kosovo and Pec, Prizren, Gracanica, Decani, all our holy places, we will be forgotten and we will forget ourselves, God forbid," said Bishop Irinej, presenting on the topic, "The Current Nature of the Kosovo Covenant."

The bishop said that the Kosovo Covenant, as our people's own experience of Christ's New Covenant, is relevant not only today, but permanently.

As long as there are Serbs on this planet, and as long as they are Orthodox Christians - they will live by the Kosovo Covenant, the bishop said.

"Our nation, as a Christian nation, unmistakably felt the spiritual essence of Lazarus, his personality, and the spiritual essence of what took place in Kosovo Polje on the day of that battle in 1389 (the Battle of Kosovo), and what has been taking place here for centuries in that same Kosovo, the place of massive suffering, also now, as we speak now, and the way things are, it looks like it will be the same in the foreseeable future," said Irinej.

But he stressed, if we lose the Covenant, we will lose our identity.

"The parts of Kosovo are held together by the Covenant, the experience of a people. In our case, the Kosovo Covenant, as the fundamental experience of our people. Otherwise, if such a foundation did not exist, identity becomes irrelevant," Bishop Irinej said.

According to him, national identities can be fabricated these days, by the media and propaganda.

Bishop Irinej added that people create covenants with God, without which they are not complete and true, but incomplete and imperfect.

"In that (latter) case, they are just a being that breathes and nothing more, as the president of our country said two days ago - completely in the spirit of the Kosovo Covenant - realizing and asserting that only as a being of the Covenant, a human breathes not only in the physical sense, but lives spiritually as well," said Bishop Irinej.

(Telegraf.rs)