Is obedience to the Hierarchy unconditional?

Nikolaos Mannis | September 19, 2020

 

 

A few days ago, His Eminence Metropolitan Jeremiah of Gortyna [+2021] published an article entitled “We Lack the Ecclesiological Mindset.” [1] In it, unfortunately, the following positions are formulated, which are not only paradoxical, but also completely anti-patristic, and which stand far removed from the Orthodox and genuine ecclesiological mindset.

Let us examine them in order:

a) “We will do whatever the Hierarchy of our Church tells us. If the Church tells us to wear a mask in the church for our protection from the coronavirus, we will wear it. If it tells us not to wear it, we will not wear it!”

Here, on the one hand, an arbitrary identification is made between two concepts: “Hierarchy” and “Church.” According to Orthodox teaching, however, “there is a clear distinction between the Church, in itself—as the theanthropic sacramental Body of Christ—and the Administration of the Church, that is, the Hierarchy, which indeed expresses the Church, but only under specific and clear presuppositions.” [2]

On the other hand, the even more arbitrary view is implied that absolute and undiscerning obedience is owed for “whatever the Church says” — and by this he means the Hierarchy.

But if the present-day Hierarchy says that we should not venerate the Icons, so that we do not become infected with coronavirus, what will we do? Will we obey it, or will we obey the Church, “whose person is represented by the Ecumenical Council,” [3] which says, “If anyone does not venerate our Lord Jesus Christ, depicted in icons according to His humanity, let him be anathema”? [4]

If the present-day Hierarchy says that we should not receive Communion, so that we do not become infected with coronavirus, what will we do? Will we obey it, or will we obey the Head of the Church, our Lord Jesus Christ, who says, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves”? [5]

b) “I will dare to say, brethren, the following as well: even if the Church makes a mistake, we should follow the mistake and not what, in our opinion, is exactness. And what I am telling you is not my own word, but that of Saint John Chrysostom (see in Complete Works of the Holy Fathers, vol. 4, 615).”

Here, His Eminence Mr. Jeremiah unfortunately proceeds, as we shall see, to a distortion of the teaching of St. John Chrysostom. Behold what the Saint says exactly in the passage to which His Eminence refers: “Suppose the Church were to be tripped up and fall. The accurate computation of dates would not succeed in making her slip as much as this division and schism would deserve the blame.” To whom is the Saint addressing himself? And of what mistake of the Church is he speaking? And who expresses the Church in this particular case?

The above excerpt is from the discourse of the holy Chrysostom entitled “To Those Who Fast for the First Pascha,” which is addressed to the so-called Protopaschites, who, even after the First Ecumenical Council, persisted in celebrating Pascha not as the Council had decreed that it should be celebrated in agreement by all, but celebrated “the ‘first Paschas,’ that is, the ancient ones determined according to the erroneous ancient calculations, without taking into account the vernal equinox.” [6] In this important discourse, the Saint says that the crime of the Protopaschites is not simply that they celebrate Pascha before the vernal equinox — which, after all, had occurred in some Local Churches before the First Ecumenical Council determined the date of Pascha — but that they stubbornly resist and reject the decision of the whole Church on this matter. The Protopaschites used as an argument that the First Ecumenical Council had erred astronomically regarding the time for determining Pascha. The sacred Father answers them that even if — that is, hypothetically, because there was no error of the Church in the decision in question — the Church had erred on this matter, the accomplishment resulting from exact observance of the times would not be so great as the crime resulting from the division and schism which the Protopaschites were causing. For this reason he also writes that we “preferred concord to the observance of the times,” [7] and with holy indignation he reproves the Protopaschites, saying: “But you do not prefer the concord of the Church to the time; rather, so that you may seem to observe days, you insult the common Mother of us all and cut asunder the holy council.” [8]

The Saint’s position is absolutely clear, and he is speaking specifically. Therefore, it has nothing to do with the interpretation implied by His Eminence: that the Saint supposedly teaches that, even if some Hierarchy makes a mistake, the faithful are obliged to obey it. To which Church, then, are we all obliged to submit, even if, seemingly, it errs? Naturally, to the Church assembled in Ecumenical Council.

For this reason, Saint Nektarios also emphasizes that, while Local Councils, that is, the decisions of the Hierarchies of the Local Churches, “have partial authority,” Ecumenical Councils, that is, the decisions of the whole Hierarchy of all the individual Churches, “have universal ecclesiastical authority.” [9]

And proof that the Hierarchy of a Local Church, and sometimes even of many Local Churches, can not only err but fail miserably, is found in their hundreds of deluded and rejectable decisions throughout the centuries, such as, for example, the false deposition of St. John Chrysostom by the Hierarchy assembled at the Synod of the Oak (403), the heretical doctrines defended by the Hierarchy of the robber pseudo-ecumenical council at Ephesus (448), the iconoclastic decisions of the pseudo-ecumenical council of Hieria (with 348 Hierarchs, mind you!) in 754, the false-unionist nonsense of the pro-papal Hierarchs at Lyons (1274) and at Ferrara/Florence (1439), and others.

And those deluded Hierarchs were also demanding “obedience to the Church,” that is, to themselves, except that, naturally, they in no way expressed or represented the Church of Christ.

c) “I will mention one example to you: Canonically, I think, the Calendar should not have been changed. The issue of the Calendar, however, is not a dogmatic matter. Therefore, since the Church said that it should be changed, we followed the change. But now look at the wretched state of the Old Calendarists, who wanted to oppose the Church, supposedly following exactness and not the decision of the Church. Their wretched state is that they found themselves outside the Church!”

Now notice how one error brings another. We saw previously in the text of the holy Chrysostom that the Church, through the First Ecumenical Council, decided the time for the celebration of Pascha, so that concord and unity of the whole Church might be achieved.

In 1924, by what Ecumenical Council did the “Church” decide to change the calendar, and for what purpose? By none, my beloved! No Ecumenical Council was held, and there was no ecclesiastical purpose. Unfortunately, it was a hasty, arbitrary, and unilateral decision of the Hierarchy of three Local Churches, initially, which brought about very serious reactions and led to division. This decision did not bring about concord and unity, as the decision of the Church at the First Ecumenical Council did, but rather strife and schisms. And the very fact alone that there are still Local Churches, such as those of Jerusalem, Russia, Mount Athos, and others, which have not accepted this decision for calendar reform, and which insist on celebrating the fixed Feasts according to the old calendar, triumphantly refutes the argument that supposedly “the Church changed the calendar.” The Church, to the shame of the reformers, is divided today on this issue; and when some celebrate Christmas, the others celebrate Saint John the Baptist, and when the former are fasting, the latter are not fasting, and so on.

The Church, through the First Ecumenical Council in 325, decided that Pascha, as the center of all the Feasts and the feast of feasts, should be celebrated on the same day by all, so that there might be concord and unity in this area as well. But the Protopaschites considered this decision to be mistaken from the standpoint of chronological exactness in the celebration of Pascha, and they did not obey. The Latins did the same in 1582 with the adoption of the so-called Gregorian calendar and the resulting alteration of the Paschalion as well, precisely because they considered the decision of the First Ecumenical Council concerning the celebration of Pascha to be mistaken from the standpoint of chronological exactness. Behold what St. Nikodemos answers them: “For let them know that both the Ecumenical Councils which took place after the First, and the rest of the Fathers, also saw, being wise as they were, that the equinox had fallen back greatly. Nevertheless, they did not wish to transfer it from March 21, where the First Council found it, preferring rather the concord and unity of the Church to the exactness of the equinox, which does not cause any confusion in the finding of our Pascha, nor any harm to piety. Indeed, this exactness causes the Latins two great absurdities: namely, that they celebrate Pascha either with the Jews, which is contrary to the present Apostolic Canon, or before the Jews. And that God is more pleased with the order of our Paschalion, and, simply speaking, of our calendar, than with the exactness of the Paschalion and calendar of the Latins, is evident from the miracles which He has shown and continues to show until now.” [10]

The Hierarchies of the Local Churches in 1924, considering that the calendar was mistaken from the standpoint of chronological exactness, what else did they do but clearly adopt the chronolatrous reasoning of the Protopaschites and the Latins? And so they changed it arbitrarily and without the agreement of the other Local Churches, disrupting the unity and concord of the Church in this area, and in essence insulting the unifying work of the First Ecumenical Council.

The Old Calendarists, on the contrary, remained faithful to the decisions and the spirit of the First Ecumenical Council, which decided that the concord and unity of the Church—authentically expressed through the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils, and not through the unilateral orders of the Hierarchs of certain Local Churches—is above chronological exactness.

Of course, however, to tell the truth, in the course of time certain extreme Old Calendarists, evidently dazed by the murders, beatings, exiles, shavings and defrockings of their priests, the sealing and demolitions of their churches, the imprisonments, and the other examples of love which they received from the Hierarchs of the official Church, the “disciples of the meek Jesus,” [11] adopted extreme views and unfortunately renounced the whole Church. [12]

It is therefore in the hands of His Eminence Mr. Jeremiah and his colleagues to correct the errors of their predecessors, by restoring honor and respect for the decision of the First Ecumenical Council and for its unifying spirit. Otherwise, they have the right to address the phrase “we lack the ecclesiological mindset” only to themselves, and to no one else. This is the bitter truth.

 

NOTES

[1] https://www.romfea.gr/katigories/10-apopseis/39334-gortunos-ieremias-mas-leipei-to-ekklisiologiko-fronima

[2] Demetrios Tselengidis, Professor of the University, Synodality as a Holy-Spiritual Manner of Delimiting the Faith and Life of the Church, and Its Theological Presuppositions (http://www.impantokratoros.gr/B621D61D.el.aspx).

[3] Saint Nikodemos, The Rudder, 2nd ed., Athens, 1841, pp. 66–67.

[4] The Synodikon of Orthodoxy.

[5] John 6:53.

[6] Aristoteles Delimbasis, The Pascha of the Lord, Athens, 1985, p. 539.

[7] P.G. 48, 864.

[8] P.G. 48, 869.

[9] Saint Nektarios, The Ecumenical Councils, Vasilios Rigopoulos Publications, Thessaloniki, 1972, p. 66.

[10] Saint Nikodemos, The Rudder, op. cit., p. 5.

[11] A very small taste of “love” here: https://www.hsir.org/pdfs/2016/04/09/20160409eDiogmoi.pdf

[12] “In the person of the Metropolitan of Florina you have renounced the whole Church,” the new Saint Ephraim of Katounakia heard as a voice from God, when he renounced the prudent leader of the moderate Old Calendarists, the former Metropolitan of Florina Chrysostomos Kavouridis, and for a short time followed the schism of the extreme Old Calendarists, the Matthewites. See Elder Ephraim of Katounakia, published by the Holy Hesychasterion of Saint Ephraim, Katounakia, Mount Athos.

 

Greek source: https://krufo-sxoleio.blogspot.com/2020/09/blog-post_19.html

 

 

1956 Letter of the Ecclesiastical Committee of the G.O.C. to Archbishop Dorotheos (Kottaras) of Athens and All Greece

 

 

29th of March, 1956

To His Beatitude the Archbishop
of Athens and All Greece,
Kyr Kyr
Dorotheos

Your Beatitude,

Praying that the Lord may strengthen you in the exceedingly great and noble work of shepherding the Autocephalous Greek Church, we duly render to you the respect owed to you. Drawing courage from the rich and very broad learning of Your Beatitude, and also from your well-known zeal for the Church, we address ourselves to you, possessed by an intense and unceasing desire that troubled consciences may be pacified, that mutual respect may be firmly established, and that a spirit of Christian nobility and propriety may prevail among religious Greeks.

It will be known to you that, since 1924, the Greek Orthodox have been divided into two groups: the New Calendarists and the Old Calendarists. We do not enter either into the essence of the division or into its originating causes, since these are very well known to Your Beatitude, so highly learned and canonically constituted; let it only be permitted to us to emphasize the gravest and most dangerous of its consequences: the wounding of ecclesiastical prestige, the banishment of the spirit of Christian love, and the terrifying and unprecedented persecution of people worshipping according to conscience, independently of whether that conscience is correct or mistaken, because freedom of conscience is a sacred principle.

We are more than certain that such consequences will surely oppress the soul of an ecclesiastical man who views the Church not through the myopic prism of the immediate present, but through the broad and boundless perspective of the Church’s eternity. For this reason, for Your Beatitude, most richly endowed in understanding, the measures toward pacification will not be drawn from the antiquated and dust-laden arsenal of violence, but from the clear heaven of Christian prudence and love.

Being fully confident on the basis of the above, we make an appeal to you, that you may be graciously disposed and reconsider the policy hitherto applied by the Autocephalous Greek Church toward the Old Calendarists [i.e., that of persecution], and inaugurate a new such policy, inspired by the undeniable reality of the moral superiority of love toward those who think differently.

By the present letter we also request that you be pleased to receive a committee from among us, so that it may also set forth our dispositions to you orally.

With the heartfelt hope that you will prove worthy of the high interests of Orthodoxy and will grant peace and calm to thousands of consciences, in the name of Him who said, “Love one another,” we remain, with due respect,

The Ecclesiastical Committee

President
Archimandrite Akakios Pappas

Secretary
Archimandrite Pant. Tsaloupis

 

 

 

 

 

Why “Genuine”? Is “Orthodox Christians” not enough?

Nikolaos Mannis | October 19, 2014

 

To this question we answer by asking: Why “Orthodox”? Is simply “Christians” not enough?

For the answer to these questions, a brief historical review is required concerning the issue of the designation of the faithful of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The followers of the only true religion were first designated in Antioch in the first century by the name “Christians.” [1]

With the passage of the years, many groups of heretics appeared, who naturally used the same name. Thus, gradually, the designations “Orthodox” and “Catholic”—which were synonymous terms—began to be used in order to indicate differentiation from the heretics, whose glory (faith) was neither orthodox nor catholic. [2]

After the secession of the Local Church of Rome from the Catholic Church, and because of the fact that the Papists usurped the term “Catholics,” in order to avoid confusion, the true Christians henceforth made greater use of the term “Orthodox” (in contrast to the “catho-wolves,” [κατο-λύκους] as they called the Papists), and this term finally prevailed, since the term “Christian” by itself was already no longer sufficient, even though in reality the Orthodox are the true Christians.

After the appearance of Ecumenism within the sphere of Orthodoxy at the beginning of the twentieth century, and the modernistic activity of high-ranking ecumenist clergymen, such as Meletios Metaxakis, Chrysostomos Papadopoulos, Vasileios Georgiadis, Athenagoras Spyrou, and others, and chiefly on the occasion of the change of the calendar (1924), undertaken for ecumenistic purposes, the first strugglers of that era and defenders of the Patristic things additionally used the term “Genuine.” Concerning this term, they stated clearly, in a declaration that admits of no misinterpretations, which became and still become a cause of accusations, that “the term Genuine coincides with the meaning of the unadulterated, that is, of that which does not tolerate adulteration or falsification of the things handed down, and not with that of Genuine taken for the purpose of distinguishing it from the non-Genuine, in which case the non-Genuine would, in the present matter, be identified with the very meaning of the heterodox and heretical.” [3] And this was with reference to the calendar question.

Today, of course, ninety years later, when the insidious heresy of Ecumenism has spread its tentacles into all the so-called official Churches, we Orthodox Christians who do not tolerate adulteration or falsification of the things handed down must be called Genuine, [4] in order to indicate our differentiation from those who are presented as “orthodox,” but are in essence heretical ecumenists.

And our Churches throughout the world (Greece, Bulgaria, etc.) must be called genuine, since they zealously preserve the Faith handed down, namely the Dogmas and Traditions of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.

Finally, the Great Pan-Orthodox Council which we are striving for must also be a genuine and true Council, that is, one that agrees with the earlier Orthodox Councils, in contrast to the “Pan-Orthodox Council” being prepared by the Ecumenists, whose aim is to abolish Orthodoxy, according to the prophetic saying of Kosmas Flamiatos, of venerable memory, a martyr of the Orthodox Faith.

 

NOTES

1. The Apostle Luke writes: “χρηματίσαι τε πρῶτον ἐν Ἀντιοχείᾳ τοὺς μαθητὰς Χριστιανούς,” that is, “And there, in Antioch, for the first time, the disciples of Christ were called Christians” (Acts 11:26).

2. According to St. Vincent of Lérins: “Catholicum est, quod semper, quod ubique et quod ab omnibus creditum est,” that is: “Truly catholic is that which has been believed always, everywhere, and by all” (Commonitorium, ch. 2). And Theodosius the Great, in 380, issued an edict according to which those who accept the faith of Nicaea, the First Ecumenical Council, “and only these are to be called catholic Christians” (Ecclesiastical History, Philaretos Vapheides, vol. I, Constantinople 1884, p. 219).

3. Newspaper SKRIP, 20-12-1928.

4. The term “genuine” is a term that concerns the faith and not the person, and as such it must be understood, so that it does not conceal pride, as it was accused of doing. Thus the Apostle Paul writes: “To Timothy, my genuine child in faith” (1 Tim. 1:2), and holy Chrysostom interprets: “For having said child, for this reason he added in faith, so as to show that he was genuine and was from him; he had changed in nothing; he possessed the likeness according to the faith” (P.G. 62, 505). And in the Acts of the Seventh Ecumenical Council we read: “And whoever holds this confession is a genuine son and participant of the Catholic Church.”

 

Greek sources: https://krufo-sxoleio.blogspot.com/2014/10/blog-post_30.html

https://www.imoph.org/pdfs/2015/03/19/20150319aGiatiGnhsioi.pdf

 

 

 

St. Nektarios of Aegina on Self-Knowledge

 

Self-knowledge is man’s foremost duty. Man, as a rational, morally free and religious being, is a being of lofty rank and has been destined to become like God, in Whose image he was created, and a participant in Divine goodness and blessedness. But in order to become a divine likeness, good and blessed, and to commune with God, man must first of all know himself. Without self-knowledge man goes astray in his thoughts, is dominated by diverse passions, tyrannized by violent desires, troubled about many and vain things, and leads a disorderly, distracted life, erring in all things, wandering on the way, staggering at every step; and he stumbles, falls, and is crushed. He drinks every day potions of sorrow and bitterness, fills his heart with grief, and lives an unbearable life.

He who does not know himself does not know God, either. And he who does not know God does not know the truth and the nature of things in general… He who does not know himself continually sins against God and continually moves farther away from Him. He who does not know the nature of things and what they truly are in themselves is powerless to evaluate them according to their worth and to discriminate between the mean and the precious, the worthless and the valuable. Wherefore, such a person wears himself out in the pursuit of vain and trivial things, and is unconcerned about and indifferent to the things that are eternal and most precious.

There is in man by nature the power of self-knowledge, because man is a spiritual and morally free being, having free will and the power of knowing…. But in order to acquire perfect knowledge of himself, man must first will and move towards self-inquiry and make himself an object of his study. Without willing, none of the things that ought to be done can be done.

Unless one wills, one’s moral powers remain idle, no wise leading their possessor to knowledge. The will activates them and renders them manifest. In man, the faculty of the will, strengthened by the faculty of reason and that of free choice and self-control, overcomes all obstacles and succeeds in everything: ‘I will’ becomes ‘I can’ in the man that acts with knowledge and freedom.

Man ought to will to know himself, to know himself, to know God, and to understand the nature of things as they are in themselves, and thus become an image and likeness of God.

Those who know themselves are praised in adages as wise. The writer of the Proverbs, Solomon, says: “Those who know themselves are wise;” (Prov. 13:10) and he advises: “Know thyself and walk in the ways of your heart blameless.” (Eccl. 11:9)

The need of knowing ourselves has been taught by both religion and philosophy. Thales the Milesian held that the beginning of all the virtues is self-knowledge. The Oracle at Delphi called self-knowledge “the foremost and best part of true knowledge.” Clearly, then, self-knowledge is the beginning of all virtue and wisdom. Now if the precept “Know thyself” is imposed upon us by our cognitive power as a Divine law written in our mind, we ought, as rational and morally free beings, to respect it and observe it.

He who knows himself knows his duties towards himself, towards God, and towards his neighbor, and that piety, justice, truth and knowledge should be for him the touchstone on which he tests all his acts that have reference to God, to himself, and to his neighbor… He who knows himself is never puffed up, never filled with pride, but first of all he knows his shortcomings and faults, always comparing himself with the ideal prototype, in the likeness of which he ought to develop himself, inasmuch as he sees how much he falls short of it.

 

Source: St. Nectarios of Aegina, by Constantine Cavarnos, Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, Belmont, MA, 1981, pp. 162-165.

St. Luke of Crimea on those who revile

 

A man who reviles, reviles himself; and he who slanders his neighbor, slanders himself, and in this way reveals the filthiness and uncleanness of his soul. He who reviles defiles himself, and not the one whom he reviles. All those things that come out from within us make us unclean. And from within us come not only words, but also deeds and, in general, our whole conduct. Our words, our works, even our gaze, reveal the state in which our soul is found. If our words are full of malice and slanders, if our works are not clean, and our whole conduct shows malice, pride, megalomania, and the tendency to put ourselves forward, this makes us unclean...

 

Greek source: https://krufo-sxoleio.blogspot.com/2026/05/blog-post.html

On the Distinction Between Canonical Regularity and Sacramental Validity in the First Generation of GOC Bishops.

Source: Memorandum of His Grace, Bishop Christophoros (Hatzis) of Megara, to His Beatitude, Archbishop Chrysostomos I (Papadopoulos) of Athens, dated January 11, 1936. Published in Τὸ ἔγκυρον τῆς εἰς Επισκόπους χειροτονίας τῶν Θεοφ. Χριστοφ. Χατζῆ καὶ Πολυκ. Λιώση, by Titos Petropoulos, page 24.

 

 

A careful and thorough study of the Ecclesiastical Canons has led me to the following conclusions. I fully admit that my ordination, being beyond the boundaries [i.e., outside of the ordaining bishops’ canonical territory] and unattached [i.e., without a canonical election and installation in a specific diocese by an Autocephalous Church], was rightly declared devoid of canonical effect by the Supreme Ecclesiastical Court, for which reason I also never claimed that I am [the true diocesan] Bishop of Megara. However, devoid of canonical effect, in the present case, is not equivalent to invalidity and to something not having taken place.

(…)

The Bishops who ordained me were actual [i.e., canonically elected and installed] Orthodox Metropolitans, and two of them [Germanos of Demetrias and Chrysostomos of Zakynthos] belonged to the Autocephalous Church [of Greece]. [The former Metropolis of St. Chrysostomos, that of Florina, is technically subject to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, while being administered by the Church of Greece. – Trans. note] Furthermore, I note that even after their deposition, which took place after my ordination, they have not, up to the present moment, been declared by the court that judged them to be schismatics either; for the Church claims them as Monks belonging to her flock, over whom she has and exercises disciplinary jurisdiction.

The degree of the lack of canonical effect of my ordination is determined by the 6th Canon of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, which concerns those ordained in an unattached manner. According to this Canon, concerning those ordained in an unattached manner, the Holy Synod decreed that such an ordination is to be without canonical effect, and that they may function nowhere, to the insult of the one who ordained them.

Therefore, the lack of canonical effect of unattached or extraterritorial ordinations is not equivalent to the complete invalidity of the ordination, but to the suspension of the operation of the grace. The letter and the spirit of the Canon are very clear, and the pious commentator of the Rudder also understands its meaning in this way. Referring also to the footnote on the 28th Apostolic Canon, he notes the following in this latter Canon:

“Especially and particularly, because I see that the 6th Canon of the Fourth Ecumenical Council calls the ordination of one ordained in an unattached manner ineffectual, not as invalid and without subsistence, nor because the Mysteries that will be performed by him are invalid and as though not existing, but as remaining inactive and not being put into operation and practice; and for no other reason than for the dishonor and insult of the one who ordained him. And since like things must be inferred and judged from like things, therefore the ineffectual acts prescribed by the 13th Canon of the Council in Antioch must also be understood and taken in the way the Fourth Council understood and took them, and not as those mentioned above understand and take them. See also in volume II of the Acts, page 993, an entire Synod assembled in Constantinople under Emperor John Komnenos and Patriarch Michael [II Kourkouas] Oxeites in the year 1143, which accuses Leontios because he baptized a second time someone who had been baptized by a priest deposed for manifest offenses, since he thought that the baptism performed by one deposed was not complete. But Joseph Bryennios also says in his letter to Niketas that the things dared/performed by those deposed are holy and complete...”

Accordingly, my ordination is without canonical effect in the sense that, although it was imparted to me and I continue to have the capacity to perform the functions of the episcopacy, I nevertheless do not have the authority to exercise the functions of the episcopacy. My ordination as Bishop of Megara is entirely without canonical effect and I cannot claim the governance of this Diocese. Nevertheless, I continue to possess the actual grace of the episcopacy, but its operation is under suspension.

(...)

+++

Blog Administrator note: The above quote may beg the question: under the circumstances, how could the G.O.C. justify its episcopal ordinations in 1935, if they admit the apparent uncanonicity? The below excerpts from the works of St. Chrysostomos of Florina (translated previously by the Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies) explain his understanding.

“Bearing in mind the Canons and the Constitution, we were led, from the [earlier] proclamation of our depositions without due process, to the conclusion that the Ruling Synod had acknowledged the document in which we declared our severance of communion, in which case it was incumbent upon us, as the provisional ecclesiastical authority of the Old Calendarists, to provide for their religious needs, chief of them being the appointment of Bishops for the specific provinces in which there were concentrated groups of Old Calendarists. This is why we proceeded to consecrate four Bishops [in 1935], as we had the right to do [kat’ oikonomia; see following quote] on the basis of the divine and sacred Canons. We performed these Episcopal Consecrations to fill the religious needs of the eight hundred or more communities of Old Calendarists in the various provinces, and also in order to enable the Ruling Church and the Government to grasp and evaluate appropriately the sobriety of our enterprise, which aimed at the removal of scandal and the union of Christians through the restoration of the age-old Orthodox Festal Calendar bequeathed by Tradition...

“It must be affirmed that we were led to this decision not because we were pursuing personal aspirations and ambitions, as the Archbishop of Athens put about right from the outset, but because we were hoping in this way to compel him to summon the Hierarchy and to submit to its judgment the document whereby we severed communion with the State Church and, as well, the entire calendar question in general. We never imagined that the Ruling Synod would expel us from our thrones without due canonical process, as appointed by the Canons and the Constitution, and declare us, heretofore Metropolitans, as subject to trial before a Synodal tribunal.”

- Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Florina, “Tὸ Ἡμερολόγιον ἐν Σχέσει πρὸς τὴν Ὀρθόδοξον Ἀνατολικὴν Ἐκκλησίαν” [The calendar in relation to the Eastern Orthodox Church], March 31, 1938.

***

We admit that this step [the ordination of bishops] was hasty and, from a canonical standpoint, fraught with the risk of putting the cart before the horse, but we undertook it, ever hopeful that our Hierarchical Council, cleaving steadfastly to the venerable institutions and traditions of Orthodoxy, would be recognized, albeit according to ecclesiastical oikonomia, by the other Orthodox Churches until a valid resolution by a Pan-Orthodox Synod of the calendar issue, the matter under dispute.

- Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Florina, “Ὑπόμνημα Ἀπολογητικὸν ὑπὲρ Ἀναστηλώσεως τοῦ Πατρίου Ἐκκλησιαστικοῦ Ἡμερολογίου” [Memorandum in defense of the restoration of the traditional Church calendar], 1945.

 

1935 Encyclical of Metropolitan Germanos of Demetrias, First President of the Church of the G.O.C. of Greece

 

Pious priests, honorable wardens of the Churches, and remaining blessed Christians of our most holy Metropolis,

A qualification sine qua non for every pastor is to have love towards our Saviour and Lord, Jesus Christ. “Do you love me?” our Savior asked Peter, “Tend my sheep.” Love and faith towards the Saviour and towards the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church that He founded, is what we bishops confess officially before God and men when we take up the hierarchical dignity, certifying that we desire, by divine succor and confidence, to unwaveringly retain the faith of Christ and the holy traditions completely spotless. Upon reaching a thirty‐year period of shepherding the God‐saved eparchy of Demetrias, we retained, with fear of God, the holy traditions, protecting the flock of Christ from every opposing attack, becoming a faithful witness of the divine and holy canons and traditions of our Church. Unfortunately, men speaking perversely received the succession of the Holy Church of Greece, and, perverting the truth, they substituted it with falsehood and deceit, disregarded the Holy Canons and the Holy Traditions, causing obvious spiritual damage. Our objections were in vain. Our protests were to no avail. Not considering even one of all of these, they disregarded the Festal Calendar of our Church [Heortologion], which is inextricably linked to the Paschal Rule, the Sunday Cycle [Kyriakodromion], the fast of the Holy Apostles, and the worship in general, introducing instead of the Orthodox Festal Calendar (Julian), the Gregorian (Frankish) calendar. We, due to love for the Church, for twelve entire years did not cease to advise and admonish the innovators, pointing out the downhill direction the Church had taken leading to the future severing of the unity of the One Holy Church of Christ, and the arising discords, attitudes and riots, but unfortunately, we were not listened to. With great sorrow and contrition of heart we were compelled, together with other hierarchs, to overthrow and expel the Gregorian calendar, keeping it only for the daily life and political necessities of the Christians, while embracing the Festal Calendar of our Church, based on the Julian Calendar which was adopted for use by our Church at the Ecumenical Council of Nicea. Remaining faithful to the tradition of the Seven Ecumenical Councils, the ordinances of which our Church respects and unwaveringly retains, we shall collaborate with the Orthodox Churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, Mt. Sinai, Mt. Athos, Russia, Poland, Serbia and the remaining Orthodox Churches that keep the Patristic Old Festal Calendar, not acquiescing to remain under the curses and anathemas of the Holy Fathers and the Orthodox Patriarchs, who in Ecumenical and Regional Councils, appointed what is befitting.

We are convinced that you shall follow us to the fields of evangelical grace, just as the shepherd treads before the sheep and the sheep follow him, and do not follow, but rather flee, from anything alien. For about 150 years, emperors, hierarchs and mighty men upon the earth were expelling the holy icons from the churches, but the Faith of the Christians proved to be victorious, triumphantly restoring [the icons] to the churches, because “this is the victory that has conquered the world, namely, our Faith.” Whenever the people felt their faith being disgraced, they supported and retained unscathed and unfalsified throughout the centuries. Therefore, stand fast and hold the Orthodox Traditions, keep the Patristic Festal Calendar, namely, the Julian. Hold fast what you have, so that no one may deprive you of your crown, namely, Orthodoxy.

 

In Athens, May 1935.

Your fervent supplicant to Christ,

+ Metropolitan Germanos of Demetrias

 

 

The above text was published and distributed throughout the Metropolis of Demetrias after Metropolitan Germanos of Demetrias, Metropolitan Chrysostomos, formerly of Florina, and Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Zakynthos publicly returned to the old calendar.

The Chief Commandments of the Gospel

St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite

 

 

1. Every Christian must love God.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment (Matt. 22:37).

If you love Me, keep My commandments (John 14:15).

He who has received My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him also, and will mystically reveal Myself within him (John 14:21).

He who does not love Me does not keep My commandments (John 14:24).

Love Christ, although you have not known Him (1 Pet. 1:8).

He who loves the Father loves also the Son, who was begotten of the Father (1 John 5:1).

2. Every Christian must love his brother, that is, his fellow man.

The second commandment, like the first, is to love your fellow man as you love yourself (Matt. 22:39).

I give you a new commandment: that you love one another. As I have loved you, so also you should love one another (John 13:34).

By this mark all unbelievers will know that you are My disciples: if, that is, you have love among yourselves (John 13:35).

Leave no other debt to anyone, except the love which you owe one another. For he who loves his brother has fulfilled the whole law of God. And this is because “you shall not commit adultery,” “you shall not murder,” “you shall not steal,” [“you shall not bear false witness”], “you shall not covet,” and all the other commandments are summed up and included in this commandment: to love your fellow man as yourself (Rom. 13:8–9).

Love one another with a pure heart (1 Pet. 1:22).

Love your brothers (1 Pet. 2:17).

If God loved us so greatly, we also ought to love one another (1 John 4:11).

He who does not love his brother is in a state of spiritual death (1 John 3:14).

This is how we have learned what love is: Just as Christ offered His life unto death for our sake, so we also ought to offer even our lives for our brothers (1 John 3:16).

My children, let us not love only with words and with the tongue, but in deed and in truth (1 John 3:18).

He who loves God also loves his brother (1 John 4:21).

3. Christians must not have quarrels, nor feel resentment and hatred toward their brothers; but even if they have misunderstandings among themselves, they must quickly be reconciled.

Any Christian who is angry with his brother without reasonable cause is liable to the local court. And whoever says to his brother “raca,” that is, “foolish one,” is liable to the highest court. And whoever says to his brother “idiot,” he shall be condemned to the fire of Gehenna (Matt. 5:22).

If you go to church to offer some gift, and there remember that your brother is grieved with you, leave your gift there before the Church, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift (Matt. 5:23–24).

Take care to be reconciled quickly with your brother with whom you are in dispute, while you are still on the road of this present life (Matt. 5:25).

If anyone thinks that he may be contentious, let him know that neither I nor the Churches of God have such a custom, that is, to be contentious (1 Cor. 11:16).

The servant of God must not quarrel, but must be gentle toward all, able to teach, patient under evil (2 Tim. 2:24).

Let the setting of the sun never find you angry (Eph. 4:26).

He who hates his brother is in darkness, and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes (1 John 2:11).

Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has a share in eternal life (1 John 3:15).

4. Christians must not look with curiosity and desire.

I say to you that every man who looks at a woman with evil desire has already almost committed adultery with her in his heart (Matt. 5:28).

All that belongs to the world—the sinful egotistical desires, the longing to acquire whatever our eyes see, and the arrogance that comes from the possession of wealth—does not come from God the Father, but from the sinful world. Yet the world passes away and is lost. And together with it are lost all the things which men desire to possess. But he who does the will of God shall live eternally (1 John 2:16–17).

5. Christians must not swear oaths, either truthfully or falsely.

I say to you not to swear at all: neither by heaven, because it is the throne of God; nor by the earth, because it is the footstool where His feet rest; nor by Jerusalem, because it is the city of God, the great King. Nor should you swear by your head, because you cannot make even one hair of it white or black. Let your word simply be “yes” and “no.” Whatever more you say than “yes” and “no” comes from the evil devil (Matt. 5:34–37).

Above all, my brothers, do not swear either by heaven or by earth or by anything else. But let your “yes” be a real “yes,” and your “no” a real “no,” so that you may not be found accused at the final judgment, or so that you may not fall into hypocrisy and falsehood (James 5:12).

6. Christians must not be vengeful, nor repay evil for evil.

I say to you not to resist an evil man. But if someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also, so that he may strike that one too (Matt. 5:39).

If someone wishes to compel you to go one kilometer, go with him two (Matt. 5:41).

Pray for those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and entreat God for those who trouble you and persecute you (Matt. 5:44).

If someone does evil to you, do not repay him for it (Rom. 12:17).

Do not seek, brothers, to defend yourselves by acts of vengeance, but give place to the wrath of God, which will come and take vengeance at the hour of judgment (Rom. 12:19).

If your enemy is hungry, give him something to eat. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink (Rom. 12:20).

Do not allow yourself to be overcome by evil, but overcome evil by your good conduct (Rom. 12:21).

Do not respond to evil with evil, nor to insult with insult, but rather the opposite: respond to insults with blessings (1 Pet. 3:9).

Beloved, do not take evil as your model, but good. He who does good is a child of God. He who does evil has not known God (3 John 11).

7. Christians must not go to courts at all for the resolution of their disputes. But if such a need should ever arise, let them prefer to appoint as judge in their dispute a man of the Church, rather than resort to secular courts.

If someone wants to take you to court in order to take your coat, let him have your cloak also (Matt. 5:40).

And the very fact alone, brothers, that you have lawsuits among yourselves already constitutes a complete failure on your part. Prefer rather to be wronged and defrauded than to wrong and defraud others, and especially your Christian brothers. Or do you not know that unjust men will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not deceive yourselves: in the kingdom of God there is no place for fornicators, nor lovers of money, nor adulterers, nor effeminate men, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous men, nor drunkards, nor accusers, nor extortioners (1 Cor. 6:7–9).

When someone has a dispute with another Christian, how does he dare to resort to the judgment of unjust secular judges, and not to the judgment and arbitration of the members of our ecclesiastical community? (1 Cor. 6:1).

8. Christians must not condemn.

Do not condemn others, so that you too may not be condemned by God. With the judgment by which you judge, you shall be judged; and with the measure by which you measure, it shall be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the whole beam that is in your own eye? (Matt. 7:1–3).

You are guilty and without defense, O man, you who become a judge of others. For in judging another, you condemn your very own self, since you too do the same evils that he does (Rom. 2:1).

Do not make any judgment, brothers, before the time of the Second Coming of the Lord. He will then cast light upon all the works that are now hidden in darkness, and will reveal the hidden thoughts of men’s hearts (1 Cor. 4:5).

Do not speak evil of and accuse one another, brothers. He who accuses or condemns his brother accuses and condemns the law of God itself. And when you judge the law of God, you are not a keeper and one subject to the law, but its judge and superior. There is one Lawgiver and Judge, Christ, who has the power to save man or to punish him. But who are you who judge another? (James 4:11–12).

9. If Christians do not forgive the faults of their brothers, neither will God forgive their own faults.

If you forgive the faults of other men, your heavenly Father will also forgive your own faults. But if you do not forgive the faults of others, neither will your heavenly Father forgive your own faults (Matt. 6:14–15).

Heavenly Father, forgive us the debts of our sins, as we also forgive our own debtors, that is, those who have wronged us (Matt. 6:12).

“Evil servant, I forgave you all your debt, ten thousand talents, an enormous sum, because you entreated me. Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, as I had compassion on you, and forgiven him the hundred denarii, an insignificant sum, which he owed you?” And his lord was angered and delivered that servant to the tormentors, until he should repay all his debt. So also will My heavenly Father do to you, if you do not forgive from all your heart the faults of your brothers (Matt. 18:32–35).

When you stand to pray, forgive whatever complaint or grief you have against any brother of yours, so that your heavenly Father may also forgive your own faults (Mark 11:25).

If your brother does you wrong, rebuke him. And if he repents, forgive him. But even if he wrongs you seven times in the day, and comes back as many times and says to you, “I repent,” forgive him (Luke 17:3–4).

10. Christians must give alms, but also pray and fast; yet not hypocritically, that is, so that men may glorify and praise them, but only for God.

Take care not to do your almsgiving before men, so that they may see and admire you. Otherwise, do not expect a reward from your heavenly Father. Therefore, when you give alms, do it so secretly that your left hand does not know what your right hand is doing (Matt. 6:1, 3).

When you pray, Christian, do not be like the hypocrites, who like to stand and pray ostentatiously in the churches and at the crossroads, in order to show men that they are praying. I assure you that this is their whole reward. You, on the contrary, when you pray, enter into your most hidden place, that is, the heart; close the door, that is, the senses; and pray secretly to your hidden and invisible Father. And He, who sees hidden deeds, will reward you openly (Matt. 6:5–6).

When you fast, do not become gloomy, like the hypocrites, who suitably alter their appearance in order to show men that they are fasting. I assure you that they receive only their reward here, from the praise of men. You, on the contrary, when you fast, care for your hair and wash your face, so as not to show your fasting to men, but only to God your Father, who sees hidden deeds. And your Father, who sees hidden deeds, will repay you openly (Matt. 6:16–18).

11. Christians must care for the acquisition not of earthly treasures, but heavenly ones. And the rich must weep and mourn over their riches, rather than rely on them.

Do not gather riches upon the earth, where moth and rust destroy them, and where thieves break in and steal them. Gather heavenly treasures, which neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves cannot break in and steal them. For where your riches are, there your heart will also be attached (Matt. 6:19–21).

Woe to you who are rich, because you have your consolation in this world from your wealth, and for this reason there remains nothing for you to enjoy in life (Luke 6:24).

I assure you that a rich man will enter the Kingdom of Heaven with difficulty (Matt. 19:23).

Sell your possessions and give alms to the poor. Acquire purses that do not grow old, and riches in heaven that never fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys (Luke 12:33).

Each one of you who does not renounce whatever he has in this life cannot be My disciple (Luke 14:33).

Charge the rich of this present world not to be proud, nor to set their hopes on something uncertain, such as wealth, but on the living God, who richly gives us all good things to enjoy (1 Tim. 6:17).

Listen to me, you rich as well. Weep and mourn for the calamities that await you. Your wealth has rotted, and your garments have been eaten by moths. Your gold and silver have rusted away, and their rust will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. And while judgment is drawing near, you are gathering treasures (James 5:1–3).

Behold, the wages of the workers who harvested your fields cry out, and you have withheld them from them. And the cries of the wronged harvesters have reached the ears of the Almighty Lord (James 5:4).

12. Christians must not be anxious about the goods of the earth, nor love the world and worldly things, but must seek the eternal and heavenly goods.

Do not be anxious, and do not begin to say, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” because only unbelievers are anxious about all these things (Matt. 6:31–32).

Seek first of all the Kingdom of God and the prevalence of His will, and all these things will be given to you by God as a gift, without your asking for them (Matt. 6:33).

This I say to you, brothers: that the time of earthly life is short, so that even those who have wives should live as though they had none, that is, not being attached to them. And those who weep and are afflicted over things of the present world should live as though nothing sorrowful had happened. And those who experience joys should live as though they had no reason to rejoice. And those who buy material things should regard the things bought as though they were not going to enjoy them. And those who are occupied with the goods of this world should avoid every excessive enjoyment of them and be content only with what is necessary. For the present form of this world will not last long, but is continually passing and going away (1 Cor. 7:29–31).

We Christians do not aim at the things that are seen, but at the things that are not seen with bodily eyes. For the things that are seen are temporary, while the things that are not seen are eternal (2 Cor. 4:18).

We are citizens of heaven, from where we also await our Lord Jesus Christ to come and redeem us (Phil. 3:20).

We Christians do not have our permanent homeland in this world, but long for the future heavenly homeland (Heb. 13:14).

Traitors to the love of God! Do you not know that love for the sinful world is enmity against God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God (James 4:4).

Beloved, do not love the world, nor the things that are of the world. If someone loves the world, he does not have within him love for the heavenly Father (1 John 2:15).

13. Christians must not be proud, but must be humble and love humble things.

Whoever humbles himself like this little child, he is the greatest of all in the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt. 18:4).

Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled. And whoever humbles himself shall be exalted (Matt. 23:12).

Brothers, do not be conceited, but condescend to simple and humble Christians, and associate with them, sharing in their lowliness (Rom. 12:16).

With humility let each regard the other as superior to himself (Phil. 2:3).

Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you (James 4:10).

Let the younger submit to the elders. And all of you together, submitting yourselves to one another, gird yourselves with humility. For God resists the proud, but gives His grace to the humble. Therefore humble yourselves under the power of God, so that He may exalt you at the hour of judgment (1 Pet. 5:5–6).

14. Christians must face with patience all the afflictions that befall them.

He who endures trials to the end, he alone shall be saved (Matt. 24:13).

By your patience you shall save your souls (Luke 21:19).

Affliction gradually brings about patience, patience brings steadfastness in virtue, and steadfastness in virtue brings hope in God (Rom. 5:3–4).

Have patience in trials (Rom. 12:11).

If we show patience in afflictions, we shall reign together with Christ in the life to come (2 Tim. 2:12).

Pursue patience (1 Tim. 6:11).

Brothers, endure with fortitude every chastening of God, knowing that God treats you as His children (Heb. 12:7).

You need patience, so that you may steadily do the will of God and receive the reward which He promised you (Heb. 10:36).

With patience let us run the contest that lies before us (Heb. 12:1).

Blessed is the Christian who bears trials with patience, because, after he has successfully undergone the trials, he will gain the prize of eternal life, which God promised to those who love Him (James 1:12).

Let your patience be unshaken and enduring, so that you may become perfect and complete and lack nothing (James 1:4).

Do whatever you can, brothers, to add patience to self-control, and to patience add piety (2 Pet. 1:6).

Here the patience of those who belong to the people of God will be revealed (Rev. 14:12).

15. Christians must not surrender themselves to worldly cares and material pleasures, nor live with negligence and spiritual sloth, but must always be in spiritual watchfulness and readiness, awaiting the hour of death and of God’s judgment.

Keep watch, because you do not know at what hour your Lord will come. And know this: if the owner of a house knew at what hour of the night the thief would come, he would have stayed awake and would not have allowed his house to be broken into. Therefore you also must always be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect Him (Matt. 24:42–44).

I say it to all of you: Keep watch! (Mark 13:37).

Watch and pray, so that temptation may not overcome you. Your spirit is willing, but your flesh is weak (Mark 14:38).

Let your waist be well girded, that is, be ready, and let your lamps always be burning, that is, let your mind and heart always be in attentiveness and watchfulness. Be like those servants who are waiting for their lord to return from the wedding celebration, so that, as soon as he comes and knocks at the door, they may immediately open to him. Blessed are those servants whom their lord, when he comes, will find keeping watch and waiting for him (Luke 12:35–37).

Take good heed to yourselves. Take care not to surrender yourselves to dissipation and drunkenness and anxiety over daily needs, because your hearts will become heavy and drowsy from these things, and the day of judgment will thus overtake you suddenly. For it will come like a snare upon all men who dwell on the earth. Therefore be watchful and attentive, entreating God at every hour and moment to count you worthy to escape all the fearful things that are about to happen, and to stand ready before the Son of Man (Luke 21:34–36).

The hour has now come for us to rise from the sleep of negligence, brothers. For now final salvation is nearer to us than when we first believed. The night of earthly life is already passing away, and the day of the future eternal life is drawing near (Rom. 13:11–12).

Rise up, you who sleep the sleep of sin, and arise from spiritual deadness, and Christ will enlighten you (Eph. 5:14).

Let us not sleep, as the others do, but let us be watchful and attentive. Those who sleep, sleep at night. And those who get drunk, get drunk at night. But we Christians, as people of the day, let us be attentive (1 Thess. 5:6–8).

Do not extinguish through negligence the gifts of the Holy Spirit which you have (1 Thess. 5:19).

Do not be slothful in whatever requires eagerness and zeal. Have fervent spiritual enthusiasm; serve the Lord with devotion (Rom. 12:11).

You have lived upon the earth with pleasures and extravagance. You have fattened your hearts like fattened animals that are being prepared for slaughter. So also for you the day of judgment will be a day of slaughter (James 5:5).

Be attentive and watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking to devour one of you who stand firm in the faith (1 Pet. 5:8).

Keep watch!… For if you do not keep watch, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come to judge you (Rev. 3:2–3).

16. Christians must repent continually from the depths of their soul.

At that time John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, preaching and saying: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near” (Matt. 3:1–2).

From that time Jesus began to preach and to say: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near” (Matt. 4:17).

If you do not repent, you will all perish in the same way (Luke 13:3).

Repent, brothers, and return to God, so that your sins may be blotted out and you may find relief from the Lord (Acts 3:19).

Repent and do again the former good works which you used to do. Otherwise, if you do not repent, I am coming quickly against you, and I will remove your lampstand, that is, your Church, from its place (Rev. 2:5).

17. Christians, if they do not surpass the righteous of the Old Testament in good works, do not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. And if they sin, they will be punished more severely than unbelievers.

If your piety does not surpass the piety of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt. 5:20).

That servant who knows what his lord’s will is, but does not prepare or do what he wants, will be punished severely. On the contrary, he who does not know his lord’s will and does something worthy of punishment will be punished more lightly. For to whom much was given, much will be required; and to whom more was given, more will be required (Luke 12:47–48).

Those who sinned without knowing the law of God will be condemned not according to the law as the criterion, that is, more lightly. But those who sinned while knowing the law will be judged according to the law as the criterion, that is, more severely (Rom. 2:12).

It would have been better for them not to have known the path of virtue and piety than, after coming to know it, to abandon the holy commandment that was delivered to them (2 Pet. 2:21).

 

Greek source: https://imlp.gr/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Kyrioteres.pdf

 

 

A Prayer for the Lapsed

 

O Lord God, Heavenly King, in Whom we all have our beginning and our end, we come to Thee with humble heart and contrite spirit, entreating mercy, salvation and help in time of need. In Thine infinite power, look Thou with mercy and compassion on the hearts of those held in a cruel spiritual captivity, our brethren who have erred, strayed, lapsed or estranged themselves from the full participation in the life of Thy Church. Restrain their captors, the evil ones, from bringing them further harm. Cause them to relent and release them. Restore our brethren to the full and saving participation in the life of Thy Church, that with them we may all lift up our voices in prayers of thanksgiving and praise to Thee, O Heavenly Father, our merciful Benefactor. For Thou are the King of Peace and the Giver of life, to Thee we send up glory together with Thine Only-Begotten Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Source: The Shepherd: An Orthodox Christian Pastoral Magazine, Vol. XLVI, No. 8, April 2026, p. 18.

Questioning the Calendar

By Monk John

Source: The Shepherd: An Orthodox Christian Pastoral Magazine, Vol. XLVI, No. 7, March 2026, pp. 6-12, and Vol. XLVI, No. 8, April 2026, pp. 6-11.

The German Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad under Metropolitan Mark publishes a bimonthly periodical in German and Russian. For over 45 years it has provided edifying spiritual reading along with diocesan news. Almost every issue includes an instalment of the commentary on the New Testament by St. Justin (Popovich) of Chelie, translated from Serbian. The first issue for 2025 includes St. Justin’s commentary on the Gospel of John 2:12-3:21 (pp. 12-17). In the same issue (pp. 21-29) we find a report delivered by Archimandrite Justin (Rauer) to a seminar held in Munich in December, 2024, under the title ‘About the Calendar Question’. This report raises a number of questions which require clarification. The following notes are offered here to the reader with this good intention.

1. The author writes: ‘According to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke the Mystical Supper was the Passover meal. But according to the Gospel of John, Jesus was crucified on the day of the feast of Pascha’ [p. 22b & 25b].

All of the New Testament references to the Mystical Supper state that our Lord took ‘ἄρτος’, that is leavened bread – not the unleavened azymes [ἄζυμα] prescribed by the Old Testament law for the Passover (Mt. 26:26; Mk, 14:22; Lk. 22:19, 24: 30; Jn. 13:18; I Cor. 11:23).

The Synoptic Gospels tell us the Mystical Supper was held on the day of unleavened bread [ἀζύμων] when the Passover [Πάσχα] was sacrificed (Mk. 14:1; Lk. 22:1; Mt. 26:17; Mk. 14:12; Lk. 22:7). On the day before the Passover meal all leavened food was removed, since only unleavened bread [ἄζυμα] was permitted for the seven days of the Passover; so it became known as the day or feast of unleavened bread.

The Biblical day begins in the evening. Good Friday began on the evening of Great Thursday, when our Lord and His disciples gathered in the upper room for the Mystical Supper. Our Saviour was betrayed, tried and convicted by the Sanhedrin during the night; in the morning He was brought before Pontius Pilate and condemned to crucifixion.

The Lamb of God Who taketh away the sins of the world gave Himself over to be sacrificed on the Cross when the Paschal lambs were being slain in the Temple. In the evening, He was laid to rest in the tomb, as the Jews gathered in their homes for the Passover meal. This is the Great Sabbath (Jn 19:31); ‘this is the blessed Sabbath, this is the day of rest, on which the Only-Begotten Son of God rested from all His works’ (Doxology at Praises, Matins, Great Saturday).

In the Synaxarion for Matins of Great Thursday in the Greek Triodion we read:

Since the Hebrew Pascha was to be sacrificed on Friday, and the typos [the foreshadowing of the Old Testament law] was to give way to the Truth, that is for our Pascha Christ to be sacrificed, our Lord Jesus Christ, acting in advance, as the divine Fathers say, celebrated it with the Disciples on the evening of Thursday. For this evening and all of Friday are viewed as one day by the Hebrews…Note, that this was not the Passover meal of the law; for it is a supper, with reclining and leavened bread and sauce, whereas there [for the Old Testament Passover] everything was roasted on fire and with unleavened bread…The persons who brought Him, it says, did not enter the Prætorium so as not to be defiled, so that they could eat the Passover. So one might conclude that perhaps the High Priests and Pharisees acted then contrary to the Law, postponing the Passover, as the divine Chrysostom says, which they were supposed to eat that night, but which they put off in order to put Christ to death. When they were supposed to eat it is shown by Christ by the supper, which He ate at night, revealing the Mystery of what is more perfect. For, as has been stated, the typos [the foreshadowing of the Old Testament law] was to be replaced by the Truth. Now John says that all this occurred on Thursday and Thursday night before the feast of the Passover. For this reason we celebrate, commemorating these fearsome and unspeakable works and deeds with fear and trembling.

The reference to St. John Chrysostom in the Synaxarion is somewhat misleading, so we add his commentary on the relevant verse [Jn. 18:28]:

But what is this, ‘That they might eat the Passover’? For He had done this on the first day of unleavened bread. Either he calls the whole feast ‘the Passover,’ or means, that they were then keeping the Passover, while He had delivered it to His followers one day sooner, reserving His own Sacrifice for the Preparation-day [Friday], when also of old the Passover was celebrated. But they, though they had taken up arms, which was unlawful, and were shedding blood, are scrupulous about the place, and bring forth Pilate to them (Homily 83 on the Gospel of John).

2. The author writes [p.29a]: ‘The day “of the victory of the sun over darkness” [the winter solstice], according to observations at that time, came on December 25. It is interesting, how the Emperor Constantine gradually comes to Christianity by identifying Sol Invictus with Christ.’

Perhaps it should be pointed out that St. Constantine’s vision of the Cross bore the message: ‘In this sign conquer.’ The Holy Cross became the standard carried before for his army; it was under the sign of the Cross that they won their stunning victories over the champions of idolatry.

The Orthodox Church reveres St. Constantine the Great as an equal to the Apostles; he declared Christianity a ‘religio licita’, granted the Church a privileged position in the Empire, laid the foundations of the Constantinian era and in order to bring peace and unity to the Church, summoned the First Holy OEcumenical Council in Nicæa in 325.

3. While the official Acts of this Council have been lost and much concerning the Council’s consideration of this question remains unclear, the author quotes [pp. 23b-24a] one of the sources preserved by early Church historians relating the Council’s decision concerning the celebration of Holy Pascha, the ‘Letter of the Emperor Constantine from Nicæa to the Bishops who were absent from the Council’:

The question relative to the day for the celebration of Pascha was also discussed, and it was universally decided that it is good for all Christians, in whatever land they may dwell, to celebrate the feast of salvation, the most holy Pascha on one and the same day [emphasis ours]. For what can be more beautiful and triumphant than when the feast, through which we receive the hope of immortality, is celebrated by all with one accord and in the same manner? … First of all, it was found to be particularly unworthy to celebrate this, the holiest of all festivals, by following the practice of the Jews.

After discussing other related matters, the author concludes: ‘Paschal Sunday is the first Sunday after the first full moon (more precisely, after the 14th day of the lunar month), after March 21. So, the earliest date for Pascha is March 22 and the latest date is April 25’ [p.27a].

Two points must be clarified for an accurate designation of the day for the celebration of Holy Pascha according to the Paschalion.

4. First, the question of astronomical phenomena.

The author writes: ‘The dates of the full moon and the March equinox used for the dating of Pascha are ecclesiastical dates, and not astronomical…Moreover, astronomical dates change with time, but the Church fixed this occasion on March 21 in its calendar’ [p.27a].

A specific calendar date, March 21 according to the Julian Calendar – not constantly changing astronomical phenomena – sets the dates between which the Sunday of Holy Pascha can occur and divides the successive years of the Paschalion.

The Old Testament Law sets the date of the Passover at the time of the barley harvest in Palestine, when a sheaf of the first fruits were offered, while at Pentecost, the first fruits of the wheat harvest were offered (Lev. 23:10-11, 15-17). There is no reference to the vernal equinox, for which no word exists in Biblical Hebrew.

In the fourteenth century it was already observed in Constantinople that March 21 was no longer the date of the vernal equinox. The question of ‘correcting’ the calendar met the reply that the purpose of the calendar is to provide for the celebration of the feasts by Christians everywhere ‘on one and the same day’.

Now there are Orthodox churches on all the continents. The Nativity of Christ is celebrated by the Aleuts in freezing darkness, awaiting the end of the long arctic night; in Antarctica, on the windswept ice in the middle of the antarctic day; in Congo, where there is virtually no difference in the length of days and nights throughout the year, the celebration comes in the steamy heat at the height of the rainy season.

Those who remain faithful to the Church calendar continue to celebrate everywhere ‘on one and the same day’.

5. Next and more important, according to the Paschalion, Holy Pascha is celebrated a) on the first Sunday, b) after March 21 according to the traditional [Julian] calendar, c) after the Nomikon Pascha.

The author devotes 2½ columns [pp. 27b-28b] to ‘The Jewish Calendar’, even though he has already quoted St. Constantine’s declaration rejecting: ‘the practice of the Jews...’ However, he omits St. Constantine’s explanation which follows:

For we have it in our power, by rejecting their custom, to prolong for the ages to come the observance of a more valid order, which we have observed from the very time of the [Lord’s] Passion to the present.

The Nomikon Pascha is not mentioned anywhere in the article, but this is exactly the ‘more valid order, which we have observed from the very time of the [Lord’s] Passion to the present’.

The Orthodox Church’s Eternal Paschalion, with the Great Indiction, developed by the Church of Alexandria, employs an ancient, traditional method to determine the date of the Nomikon Pascha, i.e. the Old Testament Passover. This involves both the solar calendar (dates of the month) and the lunar calendar (days of the week).

In his ‘Report’ to the Commission on the Question of the Calendar Reform, in St. Petersburg, May 1899, Prof. V.V. Bolotov of the Theological Academy explains that the day of Holy Pascha was designated by the Holy Fathers just as it had been designated in the days of Jesus Christ, without the errors which characterized Jewish practice in the third and fourth centuries. We might add that the Commission decided to retain the Julian Calendar in Russia.

This explains the date of Holy Pascha for the year 2026.

The astronomical full moon of March 20/April 2 comes on Thursday before Lazarus Saturday, the date of Pesach for contemporary Judaism.

For the Gregorian calendar, the date of the vernal equinox, March 8/21, divides the years; March 20/April 2 is the date of the first full moon, and the first Sunday is March 23/April 5, the Sunday before Holy Pascha.

According to the Orthodox Paschalion, Holy Pascha is to be celebrated a) on the first Sunday, b) after March 21, c) after the Nomikon Pascha, which in 2026 comes on March 24/April 6 (Great Monday). Holy Pascha is to be celebrated on March 30/April 12, the second Sunday after the astronomical full moon.

Someone might object that because of the discrepancy accumulated over the centuries between ecclesiastical dates and the phases of the moon, the ‘outdated’ Paschalion sets the date for Holy Pascha a week too late.

Without going into technical details, a spot check with the tables of the moon published by Apostolike Diakonia of the Church of Greece in the Mega Orologion, the astronomical dates appear to coincide with the ecclesiastical dates used in the Paschalion for setting the date of the Nomikon Pascha.

The astronomical tables were prepared by the Observatory in Athens, with the note that the indicated dates may be one day off. So it seems the discrepancy with the phases of the moon accumulated over seventeen centuries amounts to less than one day.

In the following year, 2027, Holy Pascha is to be celebrated on April 19/May 2, which is a) the first Sunday, b) after March 21, c) after the Nomikon Pascha, which in 2027 comes on April 12/25 (Palm Sunday). The Jewish Pesach, with the full moon, comes on April 9/22. The Gregorian calendar places the celebration on March 15/28, the first Sunday after the preceding full moon, well ahead of everybody.

6. The problems confronted for the adoption of the universal date of Holy Pascha in Syria are presented and reference is made to the First Canon of the Synod of Antioch in 341 [p.25], which severely condemns those ‘who presume to set aside the decree of the holy and great Synod which was assembled at Nicæa in the presence of the pious Emperor Constantine, beloved of God, concerning the holy and salutary feast of Pascha.’

To his discussion of the problems that arose with the Roman Church [p.26a], it might be added that the discrepancies were resolved when St. Leo the Great adopted the Alexandrian Paschalion in 454. The author notes that when confusing situations arose later, they were usually resolved by applying the Alexandrian Paschalion. It seems the Celts, out in the fog on the very edge of the world, were among the last to accept the common Paschalion.

The author concludes this discussion by noting: ‘However, the Church endeavoured “to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3)’, and adds: ‘choosing peace by making compromises, although without a complete agreement on the question’. With these words he glosses over the all of the following 7th point.

7. The common Paschalion continued to be observed by the Church of Rome after its separation from the Orthodox Church up until the calendar reform by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. The Gregorian calendar was immediately recognized as a useless chronological device. It is to the credit of Vatican diplomats that it has not only been accepted by the Protestants but has also become the universal civil calendar.

The motives of the counter-reformation pontiff for reforming the calendar are open to question. He served a Te Deum in gratitude for the St. Bartholemew Day massacre in France and sponsored the Unia of Brest. The Uniates, incidentally, were permitted to retain the Orthodox calendar and Paschalion; submission to the Pope was more important than celebrating feasts on the same day with him.

A series of Orthodox Councils promptly condemned the Gregorian calendar. The Orthodox Churches remained faithful to ‘the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace’. In 1902-04, as innovationism began to make itself felt, all of the local Orthodox Churches replied to an inquiry from the Ecumenical Patriarchate unanimously rejecting any reform of the Church calendar.

In the aftermath of World War I worldly forces alien to the Church made their impact felt in the life of the Church: the Bolsheviks in Russia, Western politics and Attaturk in Constantinople. Protestant ideas underlying ecumenism are embraced by the Encyclical of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1920 To the Christian Churches of the Whole World, Orthodox and heterodox, which proposes the adoption of a common calendar as a first step towards a union of ‘churches’.

In 1923 Patriarch Meletios IV (Metaxakis), after his un-canonical election, presided over the openly innovationist and ecumenist Pan-Orthodox Congress, consisting of 6 bishops, one archimandrite and a layman. At the same time the council of the renovationist ‘Living Church’ in Soviet Russia deposed and defrocked the imprisoned Patriarch Saint Tikhon. Both gatherings proposed innovations in the life of the Church.

In 1924, the hierarchies of Constantinople, Cyprus, Greece and Romania arbitrarily imposed the ‘corrected’ calendar on their faithful.

All the conniving of the Bolsheviks and innovationists did not succeed in forcing the Orthodox Church of Russia to violate Patriarch Tikhon’s decree (November, 1923) which set aside changes in the Church’s calendar.

The innovationists of the Phanarion recognized the renovationist ‘Living Church’ as the official Russian Church, and urged Metropolitan Sergius and his Temporary Synod to join them. Only after World War II, when the ‘Living Church’, along with the Uniates in the Soviet Union, had been absorbed by the Moscow Patriarchate, did Constantinople, along with the other Eastern Orthodox Patriarchates, enter into communion with Patriarch Alexis I. Jerusalem, the Mother of Churches, and the Churches of Serbia and Georgia likewise have remained faithful to the traditional Orthodox Church calendar.

In 1948, Archbishop St. Seraphim (Sobolev) delivered an address to the Pan-Orthodox Conference in Moscow, boycotted by Constantinople. He presents the history of the calendar reform, its violations of traditional norms and consistent rejection by the Orthodox Church from the 16th to the 20th century. He also cites the astronomical charts and scientific data compiled by Prof. Bolotov and other Russian scholars which totally discredit the Gregorian calendar and demonstrate the validity of the traditional Church calendar and Paschalion.

We might add, that thirty years later the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. published A.N. Zelinsky’s exposition of the traditional Church calendar and Paschalion as an unsurpassed achievement of chronological science; he com-pares the Gregorian reform to an amateur smearing paint on a masterpiece of art. St. Seraphim concludes with the appeal:

We must remain firmly united with these Orthodox Churches, without any compromise, keeping the old calendar in the life of our church, following the terms of the Canons, which must remain unshaken, for they are one of the foundations for the existence of our Orthodox Church.

The purpose of the calendar, as noted above, is to provide for the celebration of the feasts by Orthodox Christians everywhere ‘on one and the same day’. The specifically stated purpose of the calendar reform uses this definition (ὅρος) of the OEcumenical Council in Nicæa to express exactly the opposite: celebrating the great feasts together with the those who have separated themselves from the Orthodox Church, and seeking reconciliation with them. This goal has been openly and consistently pursued by the ecumenists ever since.

The hierarchies of the local Churches compromised in order to preserve at least an appearance of unity. Persons with spiritual authority, who disagreed – and whose protests fell on deaf ears – by compromising keep the people in obedience to the hierarchy; this leaves the innovationists free to continue trying to reconciliate Light with darkness.

Among the faithful of the local Churches that adopted the calendar reform, however, there were those whose conscience did not permit them to make such compromises.

As in former periods of strife over heresy, those in high positions, after taking it upon themselves to introduce un-canonical innovations, also assumed the role of prosecutor, judge and executioner for those who resisted them. They offer a ‘unia’: continue observing the Church calendar but remain in communion with the new calendar hierarchy and leave them free to pursue the path they have chosen. Submission to their ‘canonical’ authority is more important than celebrating the feasts with them ‘on one and the same day’.

The ‘Old Calendarists’ were defrocked, excommunicated and declared ‘schismatics’, ‘outside the Church’. Wherever possible they were subjected to brutal suppression by the secular authorities. Their witness, officially ignored or dismissed as ignorant fanaticism, has been sealed with Martyrs’ blood.

Strengthened by the appearance of the Holy Cross on the Feast of its Exaltation in Athens, September 14/27, 1925, and many other miracles and signs, those who chose to remain faithful to the traditions of the Church endured. They were guided by the confessor Hierarchs St. Chrysostomos of Florina in Greece and St. Glykerios in Romania, the disciples of St. Seraphim (Sobolev) in Bulgaria, and many other confessor-pastors with charismatic gifts.

The extremist policies of the innovationists, however, made their mark, and those in resistance to innovationist ecumenism suffer from internal divisions. We see the same phenomenon in the past: e.g., the schism among those opposing Arianism in Antioch, dissension among those in the resistance to Iconoclasm recorded in the letters of St. Theodore the Studite and the life of St. Methodius of Constantinople.

The innovationist ecumenists, acting as representatives of the local Churches, continue to sign documents, participate in organisations, dialogues, demonstrations and “prayers” with the heterodox and other religions. Their official statements and actions give the impression that Orthodox Christianity is simply one of the many traditions in the Pantheon of world religions.

In the name of unity and peace, they made their spectacle in Kolymvari, Crete (June 2016), are preparing a ‘common Paschalion’ with the Papacy, and with increasing boldness claim the Ecumenical Patriarch is first without equal in Orthodoxy.

At the same time open breaches have opened between the hierarchies of the local Churches, and Metropolitan Onufry with his faithful in the Ukraine have been cut off and subjected to suppression. Already back in 1977, St. Justin (Popovich) of Chelie issued his appeal ‘to convoke a truly ecumenical council’, which could and should consider the ‘question of ecumenism’. He continues:

This, properly speaking, is an ecclesiological question concerning the Church as theandric unity and organism, a unity and organism that are placed in doubt by contemporary ecumenical syncretism. It is also related to the question of man, for whom the nihilism of contemporary, and especially atheistic, ideologies has dug a grave without hope of resurrection.

The New Martyr St. Cyril of Kazan replied to Metropolitan Sergius’ ‘canonical injunctions’ that the life of the Church in our days is not being guided by the Holy Canons. Situations arise in which the conscience of a faithful believer does not permit him to commune with a hierarchy he clearly sees going astray. He awaits the judgement of a competent Church council or other providential events to manifest God’s Will. There are many edifying examples in the lives of the Saints and Church history, and the Holy Canons provide for such situations.

For a thoroughly documented account of the above, see the book ‘One Hundred Years Since the Calendar Reform (1924- 2024)’ by Metropolitan Clement of the GOC of Larissa and Platamon. The English translation, however, does not include the notes for the sources quoted and the bibliography in the Greek original.

Now what are we poor, miserable sinners supposed to do? Because of our sins, the Light of Christ is not visible in our lives for others to see. Without passing judgement on anyone, striving to keep our conscience pure in harmony with the Gospels and Apostolic Tradition, with pain of heart and abundant tears, are we not called to beseech the Lord and Head of the Church to resolve the scandals which so sorely afflict Her?

8. ‘What to do?’ is the title of the concluding section of the article, in which a different solution is recommended.

We noted above the author’s affirmation that ‘the Church has always regarded the determination of the date of Pascha as a question of church discipline and not astronomical science’ [p.26b].

But now he points to the growing accumulation over past and future centuries of the discrepancy between the calendar and astronomical events and warns us:

It is easy to realize that one day we will celebrate Pascha in the summer, in the fall or even in the winter, although in the Northern hemisphere (that is Jerusalem) it must be a spring celebration.... So as not to let our calendar turn into total nonsense, at some point the calendar must be reformed. And if this is already clear, we must ask ourselves, why not do this as soon as possible?

He also points out that the ‘mixed calendar’ – that is the civil calendar with the Orthodox Paschalion – currently followed by some Orthodox communities faces the same prospect. Eventually their Pascha will come on the same day as Christmas.

Our author recommends eliminating February 29 in a series of leap years in order to keep the calendar in harmony with the seasons of the year [pp. 28-29]. By adopting the device used by the Gregorian Calendar every 400 years, the traditional Julian calendar and Paschalion would be retained without the shock of erasing a block of days.

His proposal gives rise to a number of important questions which are not easy to answer.

a. In keeping with the divine revelation given to the Prophet Moses the first Passover was celebrated in Egypt on the evening of the 14th day of the first month, when the Angel of death passed over the homes which were marked by the blood of the Paschal lamb (Ex. 12:1-2, 6 & 14). Was this the day of the full moon or the 14th day after the visible appearance of the new moon?

b. The solar year has more days than twelve lunar months. Epact, the number of days from the new moon to the first day of the first calendar month, is an essential factor used in the Paschalion for designating the date of the Nomikon Pascha. The arbitrary elimination of calendar days shortens the solar year, disrupts the consecutive flow of the cycles of solar and lunar years and changes epact. This is one of the major defects of the Gregorian calendar. This would disrupt the established formula for determining the date of the Nomikon Pascha, introducing confusion into the Paschalion, which now absorbs a variety of variables, including discrepancies that creep in over the centuries. The way in which the Holy Fathers ordained celebrating Holy Pascha has a validity that survives over the ages. Do we think we can do better?

c. In Jerusalem, at least for a few more centuries, Pascha will continue to be celebrated in the Spring, and we pray the Holy Fire will continue to appear at the Lord’s Sepulchre on Great Saturday. So, at this moment, how urgent is the need to solve problems foreseen by calculating hundreds of years in advance?

d. Moreover, in our endeavours ‘to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace’, is it really up to us to tamper with such matters?

e. Finally, a practical question: given the current situation in the Orthodox Church, where and how and by whom is any effective change in the traditional calendar to be undertaken?

This having been said, we can wait to see whether or not this proposal is inspired by God as a heavenly blessing to bring peace to a grievously troubled Church on earth.