On 4 December 2020, when the Holy Church celebrates the Entry of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple, one of the Twelve Great Feasts, Metropolitan Vikenty of Tashkent and Uzbekistan, head of the Central Asian Metropolitan District, celebrated the Divine Liturgy at the Dormition Cathedral in Tashkent. On the eve the All-Night Vigil was celebrated there.
During the Liturgy the archpastor performed priestly and diaconal ordinations. Deacon Igor Sladkov, a cleric of the Holy Trinity St. Nicholas Convent and a graduate of the Tashkent Theological Seminary, was ordained to the priesthood, and Alexander Bogotobin, a fourth-year student of the seminary, was ordained to the diaconate.
Concelebrating with His Eminence were Hegumen Grigory (Palekhov), Protodeacon Alexander Nesin, Deacon Timofei Balukhatin, Deacon Rustik Kovalev, Deacon Pyotr Gnatik and Deacon Grigory Khimonidi.
At the end of the Liturgy Metropolitan Vikenty addressed the faithful with his archpastoral word, greeting everyone on the feast of the Entry of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple and noting that through this feast we receive many moral and spiritual lessons for our further life:
"First of all, we should turn our attention to the parents of the Most Holy Theotokos, Joachim and Anna, who lived on earth for many years without children and endured much reproach, humiliation and insult. They were accused of being sinners and of doing something wrong in life, and that this was why the Lord did not give them children. But they endured everything and humbled themselves; they hoped in God and had a deep faith that the Lord would take away this reproach. And this faith and hope bore good fruit for them, and a special fruit at that. In their old age they gave birth to a Child who served the work of our salvation: the Virgin Mary. Even before her birth she was already formed in piety and humility, passed on to her by her parents, who for many decades had endured many wrongs, humiliations and insults.
They had promised God that if a Child was born, they would dedicate it to God. And they truly kept this word. When Mary turned three, they brought her to the Temple to give her to God.
This is also a great example and a great lesson for us, because we, today's mothers and fathers, do not give our children to God. We send them to places where they can learn bad and sinful deeds. And that is already the work of the devil."
The archpastor stressed that in our Orthodox Church children and adults are dedicated to God in the Sacrament of Baptism, when the rite of union with Christ and the rite of churching are performed, and noted with regret that "after this, parents often take the child away and forget about God, and the child then lives his life in his sinful deeds and defiles all the grace that a person has received in the Sacrament of Baptism. It would of course be better if parents brought up the child from infancy in the spirit of the Orthodox faith, thus dedicating the child to God, as Saints Joachim and Anna did."
"Some modern mothers and fathers think that if a child goes to church, he will lose his mind and become a schizophrenic. Such is this sinful way of thinking. Yet the Mother of God was in the Temple from the age of three and did not fall ill with this disease. On the contrary, she became that holiness and purity which served the work of the Incarnation: she contained within herself the uncontainable God. That is what the Church gave her... In the Church everything is arranged so that everything serves to bring us up in the Spirit of God, in the grace of God."
His Eminence also said that it is precisely in the Church of Christ that the work of our redemption is accomplished: "Here we repent, here we confess, receive Communion and Holy Unction, and are married; everything is here, in the Church. Here is the fullness of our redemption. Therefore we must treat the Church with special reverence, special respect and love."
