Salvation, as ontological healing and restoration of the fallen humanity and creation, brings about transformation, transfiguration, renewed relationships with God, the source of life and existence, with one another, and with the cosmos around us. Christ has died for us, has raised our fallen humanity and has ascended it to heaven and seated it at the right hand of the Father. However, what Christ has done for us once and for all (ephapax) has to be appropriated by each of us in a personal (but by no means individualistic) way in the Church. Each of us is also called to die to the "old man" in order to rise again into a new being in Christ. God in Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit has the initiative, but each of us has to respond to God’s call and to engage synergistically in working out his or her salvation and in bringing about the Kingdom of God "on earth as it is in heaven" (Mt 6:10).

10. It was for this reason that our Orthodox Church has given healing and reconciliation a sacramental dimension. The Holy Unction (εὐχέλαιον) is a communal liturgical service, a Sacramentum that bestows the gifts of Divine Grace and renews in each person the eschatological reality of wholeness, glorification, love and immortality in Christ. As such it heals human and spiritual pain and rehabilitates the communion and communication of the faithful with God. Healing and reconciliation actually permeate all the worship services of our Church. However, the sacraments are not magic rituals. Sickness and death, the inescapable indignities that plague and limit human life, are not forms of divine retribution but rather a result of the world's alienation from, and broken relations with, God. Christ, who took on our infirmities and bore our diseases, has liberated life from its brokenness through his resurrection. By overcoming the world, Christ has given humanity peace, joy and access to imperishable life in the Kingdom of Heaven.

11. And now I will come to the practical consequences of the above very sketchy theological reflection. Your conference is an important and timely one, because of the many and difficult challenges which confront all Christians today. The world we live in today, in many cases, is no longer the same with the world our Church lived in the past and developed her mission theology and praxis. The growing effect of globalisation, (as a cultural and not as a financial phenomenon any more), the opening of the national frontiers and the increase move of populations from one place to another put our Christian witness in a totally different situation than that of the past. Traditionally and historically mono-religious societies are becoming multi-religious, and faithful Christians live together with people of other faiths, other races, traditions, languages, share the joys and the pains of the same society, engage in mixed marriages or other social or family events. We have to try hard to preserve our traditional Christian values, our spiritual identity, our faith, our individuality, despite the fact that no contemporary society could claim to be Christian per se. More and more people of other faiths live together with Christians and struggle with the same challenges of atheism, agnosticism and anti-religious secularism. In such situations, there is a need for a new articulation both of our Christian identity and of our mission, without of course compromising our faith. In such new contexts we are called to be signs of healing and reconciliation. The historical wounds between Churches, nations, smaller communities, even families, have to be treated in a spirit of humility and in an attempt of healing them and reconciling people, as we look to the future. This is even more urgent now, in the post-September 11 situation, than in earlier times.

12. The consequences which globalisation, terrorism and the war on terror bring about require that Church rediscover her prophetic voice. When peoples are more and more impoverished while the rich are becoming richer and the modern economists and politicians motivate their decisions and actions (both on war and on economy) as "historically unavoidable", the Church has to raise her voice and to be on the side of peace, the poor, the marginalised, and the powerless. It has to be a powerful witness to the values of the Gospel, to reaffirm that our Lord is the "prince of peace", and the earth and all of it belongs to God. As the Fathers of our Church so eloquently declared in their time, all the resources of the earth have to be shared by all. Peace without justice is a chimerical pursuit.