The Destiny of Man

Protopresbyter Dionysios Tatsis | August 12, 2026

 

 

Worldly people strive in their lives to secure material goods, to satisfy their desires, and to stabilize their “happiness.” All their strength and all their capabilities are directed toward these things. The unceasing cares, which have no end, wear them down, and they remain indifferent to their spiritual advancement, the cultivation of character, and service to their fellow men. They do not have open horizons. They are shut up within themselves and within their narrow family circle. Nothing beyond that. Their social relationships may be many, but they are marked by formality and hypocritical behavior. They are always fragile, because their motive is not pure love, but they are based on some acquaintance they happened to make in the past, on some obligation or professional collaboration, and sometimes on an acquaintance made during vacations, etc. All these, of course, are events that do not create experiences useful for life. They rarely acquire stability and duration. Usually they become memories that quickly fade and are forgotten.

The conscientious Christian, however, makes different choices in his life. He strives to keep his worldly cares as few as possible and remains steadfast in his principles. He does not follow the pace of life of worldly people. His goal is not “happiness,” which is never attained, but spiritual achievements that lay the foundation for true happiness, which has substance and remains unaffected by the adverse conditions of the present life.

The satisfaction that comes from keeping God’s commandments, the consolation he receives from Christ through faith, and the hope of eternal life are the hidden nourishment that spiritually cultivates man and secures for him states that are not easily described, nor can they be compared with worldly “happiness,” whose ultimate result is misery.

Worldly people are unaware of the spiritual reality we have mentioned, despite all the disappointments in their lives. Unfortunately, they lack the relevant experience needed to appreciate the great sweetness that comes from keeping God’s commandments and acquiring the virtues, which form a character that surpasses the “gifts” of many worldly people. They live without spiritual concern, following an orientation of their own, dictated by their many desires, which are continually changing for the worse.

Saint John of Kronstadt, in a single phrase, gives an answer to all those who remain without a proper orientation in their lives and lose themselves in transient things, which destroy their interest in maintaining a steady course in life. Our Saint says: “Man’s highest destiny is to become pleasing to God, to save his soul.” And he adds: “When we yield to the demands of the flesh, we become our own worst enemies.”

The common experience of the virtuous testifies that becoming firmly established in a spiritual orientation makes life in Christ easier and enriches man with abundant feelings, most sweet experiences, and a fervent hope that the Lord will lead him to salvation.

 

Greek source: https://orthodoxostypos.gr/%e1%bd%81-%cf%80%cf%81%ce%bf%ce%bf%cf%81%ce%b9%cf%83%ce%bc%cf%8c%cf%82-%cf%84%ce%bf%e1%bf%a6-%e1%bc%80%ce%bd%ce%b8%cf%81%cf%8e%cf%80%ce%bf%cf%85/

 

 

 

Conform, or Be Removed

Orthodox clergy and monastics who object to ecumenism are counselled to remain and contend from within. Thirty-four years of records show what remaining has actually cost.

Patristic Witness | August 9, 2026

 

 

There is a building in Karyes, the administrative capital of the Holy Mountain, and within eight months it received two visitors.

On the tenth of October 2025 the head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine arrived there. He was received at the Representation of the New Esphigmenou Monastery by its abbot, Archimandrite Bartholomew, in the presence of a Metropolitan of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and of the Civil Governor of Mount Athos. In his welcoming remarks the abbot expressed support for the Ukrainian body and called the granting of its Tomos of autocephaly a "bold and prophetic step." He drew a parallel between the war in Ukraine and the situation of his own monastery, whose main buildings, he said, had been held for many years by fundamentalists, and declared a spiritual kinship between the two struggles.

On the twenty-seventh of May 2026 the Archbishop of America arrived at the same building, accompanied by an auxiliary bishop, by the same Civil Governor, and by a group of graduating seniors from the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology. According to Orthodox Times he stressed the implementation of law and of ecclesiastical order, referred to the responsibility of the State to uphold legality, noted the longstanding support of the United States for religious freedom and institutional order, and described the prolonged occupation as "a disgrace."

The fundamentalists holding the main buildings are the monks of Esphigmenou, who withheld the commemoration of the Ecumenical Patriarch after the lifting of the anathemas and have been under eviction ever since. The brotherhood in the konaki at Karyes is the one created in 2005 to replace them.

Eight months, one room, two receptions. The men who objected to ecumenism were removed from their monastery. The brotherhood installed in their place spent an afternoon hosting the primate of a body whose recognition is itself among the objections, and called that recognition prophetic. Seven months later a visiting Archbishop stood in the same room and applied the word disgrace to the resistance rather than to the thing resisted.

None of that is hypocrisy. It is coherent, and it is what replacement is for.

Esphigmenou is the most visible case in this file and the least representative one. That brotherhood did not merely withhold the commemoration. It broke communion and joined a Genuine Orthodox jurisdiction, which allows everything done to it to be explained as the ordinary consequence of departure.

What follows is therefore mostly not about Esphigmenou. It concerns a parish priest in Thessaloniki who never left and invoked a canon in his defence. It concerns roughly a hundred monastics who joined nothing and severed nothing and were told to quit their cells. It concerns a Russian brotherhood given a quarter of an hour to pack. It concerns the governing body of the Holy Mountain itself, twice, acting unanimously and in writing. And it concerns an abbot in Bulgaria disciplined six weeks ago for deviating in the opposite direction entirely.

Esphigmenou demonstrates what the machinery is capable of. The others establish whom it is available against.

The question, stated precisely

That ecumenism constitutes a departure from the faith is not a marginal opinion, and it did not originate outside the World Orthodox jurisdictions.

The fullest statement of the case was made by Saint Justin Popović of Ćelije in The Orthodox Church and Ecumenism, published at Thessaloniki in 1974. He treats the movement as the common name of the pseudo-Christianity and pseudo-churches of the West, holds that these amount collectively to a succession of heresies, and concludes that "their common evangelical name is pan-heresy." The term is not rhetorical inflation, and his reasoning for it is the part most often omitted. Earlier heresies denied or deformed some particular aspect of the God-man; this one displaces Him altogether and installs European man in His place. The claim is therefore about kind and not degree, which is why he treats ecumenism as an ecclesiological heresy rather than as one doctrinal error among others.

In his memorandum to the Serbian Holy Synod of 13 and 26 November 1974 he set out the practical consequence. He objected to organic participation in the World Council of Churches on the ground that it constitutes that Council as an ecclesial body standing above the churches, within which the Orthodox Church becomes one member among others, and he distinguished theological dialogue conducted in the truth, which he permitted, from common prayer, which he refused.

Saint Philaret of New York had pressed substantially the same case upon the primates of the Orthodox Churches in the Sorrowful Epistles of the preceding years.

Two facts about these two men bear on everything that follows. Each made his objection from within the jurisdiction he was addressing, and neither was ever answered by a council. Both were subsequently canonised by the very bodies to which the objection had been made.

A great many Orthodox Christians who hold that judgement nevertheless remain within the World Orthodox jurisdictions, and are counselled to do so. The counsel is serious, it is given by serious men, and it deserves to be examined seriously rather than caricatured. In its strongest form it runs as follows. The Church is not purified by departure. Withdrawal removes the objector and leaves the error in possession. The confessor's place is inside, where his witness is felt, and where he retains the standing to be heard. Where conscience forbids the commemoration of a bishop, the canons themselves provide a remedy short of rupture. And history vindicates this: the men the Church honours as confessors against innovation did not leave. They stayed and they contended, and in time they were proved right.

This publication takes no position here on the theological merits of that counsel, and readers should understand at the outset what is and is not being argued.

It is not argued that departure is obligatory, nor that those who remain lack sincerity, nor that any particular case has been rightly decided. It is not argued that a resister is right merely because he is punished, which would be a poor argument that proves too much and would equally vindicate every disciplined cleric of every persuasion.

What is examined here is narrower and entirely factual. The counsel to remain and resist contains an empirical premise about how institutions behave. It assumes that resistance from within is a position a man can occupy, and that occupying it keeps open a route by which his objection may eventually be heard and answered. That premise is testable. There is now a documentary record spanning thirty-four years, several jurisdictions and four court systems, and the record can be read.

What made the confessors succeed

The historical argument for remaining is the strongest card its defenders hold, and it is worth playing at full strength before it is examined.

Saint Maximus the Confessor did not depart. He contended against the imperial and patriarchal monothelitism of his day from within the body of the Church, was tried, condemned, mutilated and exiled, and died in exile. Saint Mark of Ephesus travelled to Ferrara and Florence as a member of the Greek delegation, remained within it throughout, and alone among the Greek bishops refused to sign the decree of union proclaimed on the sixth of July 1439. He did not leave the delegation. He outlasted it.

Both were vindicated. The Sixth Ecumenical Council condemned the heresy Saint Maximus had resisted. The union of Florence collapsed, was nullified by the synodal acts under Gennadios Scholarios, and was formally annulled by the Synod of Constantinople of 1484, attended by representatives of Alexandria and Jerusalem, which declared the Florentine definitions alien and its decrees void.

The defenders of remaining are entitled to say that this is precisely their case, and that a man who had departed in 1439 could not have done what Saint Mark did.

The examination begins by asking what mechanism actually produced those vindications.

In each instance the doctrinal question was eventually placed before a council, examined on its substance, and decided. Saint Maximus was not vindicated because he endured, and Saint Mark was not vindicated because he was stubborn. They were vindicated because a forum existed which took up the question they had raised and answered it. Their resistance was not the remedy. Their resistance was the input to a conciliar process which was the remedy.

That observation converts the whole dispute into a single answerable question. Resistance from within is efficacious where a forum exists to receive it. So the counsel to remain stands or falls on whether such a forum is available now.

The remainder of this article addresses that question, and only that question.

The terms of residence on the Holy Mountain

The Athonite case is the one where the mechanism can be read most exactly, because it is written down in civil law.

Under Article 105, paragraphs 4 and 5, of the Greek Constitution, read with the Legislative Decree of 10 and 16 September 1926, persons falling under the statutory terms "heterodox" and "schismatic" are forbidden not merely to visit the Holy Mountain but to settle there. Where the Holy Community finds such a person resident, it issues a decision of expulsion, and the Civil Governor executes it, with police available to him.

The provision has been uncontroversial for a century, because everyone assumes they know whom the words describe.

The legislation does not define them. According to the standard legal digest of the Athonite constitutional regime, their interpretation is treated as a matter of the internal law of the Orthodox Church, and in case of doubt the question is referred to the Ecumenical Patriarchate. In 2005 the Greek Council of State closed the door behind that arrangement, holding in decision 736 of that year that the classification of a monk under those terms is "not subject to review" and cannot be examined under the regulation.

The consequence is structural rather than rhetorical. The party whose conduct is the subject of the protest is the party empowered to classify the protester. The classification, once made, is insulated from judicial examination. The State does not weigh it; the State enforces it. The monks of Esphigmenou pursued civil remedies to the highest court in Athens and were turned away at every level.

This is not an arrangement in which a resister loses his case. It is an arrangement in which the question of whether the classification is theologically correct is never a justiciable question at all. Whatever forum received Saint Mark's objection in the fifteenth century, it has no counterpart here. What the regime offers is conformity, and what it holds in reserve against the alternative is removal.

Enforcement tracks vulnerability, not offence

The Skete of the Prophet Elias, founded in 1759 as a dependency of the Pantokrator Monastery, was Russian for most of its history. By the 1980s its brotherhood had dwindled to a handful of fathers faithful to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, and they did not commemorate the Ecumenical Patriarch. They seized nothing and attacked no one. They kept the buildings in repair, kept the services, and were legally registered, their names entered in the Monachologion of their ruling monastery.

The fullest account is the report compiled in 1992 by the Karyes representative of the Saint Panteleimon Monastery, Priest-monk Nikolay (Generalov), for the Patriarch of Moscow and the Russian Synod, published in Pravoslavnaya Rus the following year and reassessed in the scholarly literature since. According to that report the fathers had been warned informally that they would be "expelled from Athos if they persisted" in withholding the commemoration. Warned informally: not charged, not summoned, not answered.

There was no official notice of the exarchal visit. The Holy Community received a telegram indicating an arrival on the twelfth of May. On the evening of the fourth, the Protos received a telephone call from the Phanar informing him that the exarchate would arrive the following day. Accounts from those who knew the community describe a quarter of an hour to gather belongings, a boat, and Ouranopolis.

Within the year the skete was reoccupied by a Greek brotherhood under a new dikaios, and the Athonite institutional histories record 1992 as the beginning of a period of "sound administration and spiritual flourishing" at the Prophet Elias.

The decisive detail in the Generalov report is that at the moment of the expulsion a very large share of the Athonite community was also withholding the commemoration. The removal was not the enforcement of an intolerable rule, since the same conduct was being tolerated across the peninsula in the same year. It was the enforcement of a rule against those positioned to be reached by it.

This matters for the argument in a specific way. If enforcement tracked the gravity of the offence, the man who remains might reasonably calculate his risk by measuring his own conduct. It does not, and he cannot. What determines outcome is not what he does but what can be done to him.

What the machinery is capable of

The Esphigmenou record is the longest continuous demonstration available of what an institution does with resistance that will not move, and its order is its meaning.

After the lifting of the anathemas the brotherhood withheld the commemoration of the Ecumenical Patriarch and of his successors. For three decades matters rested here. In 2002 the Ecumenical Patriarchate applied the word to them, attaching the classification that cannot be reviewed, and in 2005 the Patriarch called for their removal and established the replacement brotherhood at Karyes. From that point the monastery had two brotherhoods: the one living in it and the one recognised.

On the twenty-ninth of July 2013 court bailiffs arrived at the Esphigmenou administrative offices in Karyes to execute an eviction and were met with three Molotov cocktails and an explosive device. This was a grave act, it was rightly prosecuted, and the file would look materially different without it. The following year Greek police cleared an apartment in central Thessaloniki used as a hostel by the brotherhood, following a court ruling, with riot police cordoning off the surrounding blocks.

In January 2017 the Abbot and one monk were sentenced in absentia to twenty years, with six others receiving ten years and four months as accessories. Counsel for the defence told the court that the dispute was one of religious dogma and should not "under any circumstances" be settled there. In fifty-four years that is the only occasion on which the doctrinal question was formally put before any tribunal. The tribunal declined the invitation and proceeded to sentence.

In April 2019 monks living in the monastery buildings were convicted of fraud against the Greek State and given six months, suspended for three years. The mechanism repays attention. Athonite monks are exempt from value added tax; these monks are not officially considered Athonites, by reason of the word applied to them in 2002; their claim of the exemption was therefore fraud. The classification does not merely end a man's residence. It reaches backward and reconstitutes his ordinary daily existence as a criminal offence. Days later an appeals court reduced the 2013 sentences to seventeen years and to nine years and five months.

On the seventeenth of June 2020 the Thessaloniki Court of Appeals ordered the brotherhood to surrender all occupied properties on and off the Holy Mountain to the replacement brotherhood. On the eighth of July the Supreme Court rejected the appeal and the matter became final. On the twenty-third, police forced the monks out of the dependencies at Ierissos and Nea Roda. In 2021 the sentences were reduced again, to five and a half years and to two years and nine months. In July 2024 Greek police submitted a document to the Holy Epistasia requesting authorisation for a large-scale operation, with significant forces and vehicles, against the monks remaining.

Bailiffs, riot police, a tax fraud conviction, sentences in the double digits, a Supreme Court, and a visiting Archbishop with a word about the duty of the State to enforce. In fifty-four years, no conciliar answer, no synodal examination, no refutation, and no hearing.

Whom it is available against

The obvious reply is that Esphigmenou is not a test of the counsel at all. That brotherhood did more than withhold the commemoration; it broke communion outright and joined a Genuine Orthodox jurisdiction. Whatever its case proves, it proves nothing about the man who stays.

The reply is fair, and it directs the examination to the men who stayed.

On the fifth of March 2017, the Sunday of Orthodoxy, one of the most respected anti-ecumenist theologians in Greece, a Professor Emeritus of the Theological School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, announced from the ambo of his own church that he was withdrawing the commemoration of his ruling Metropolitan on account of the Cretan Council. He rested his action explicitly on Canon 15 of the First-Second Council of 861, presided over by Saint Photios the Great, which provides that where a bishop preaches a heresy already condemned by the fathers or by a council, the priests under him may withdraw the commemoration and are to incur no canonical penalty for doing so.

He was suspended from his priestly duties the following day. He and a second Thessaloniki priest who had taken the same step were summoned before a spiritual court, facing the possibility of being defrocked.

This is the cleanest instance in the record, because everything the counsel recommends was done correctly. The canonical remedy short of rupture was invoked by name, in the proper form, by a man qualified beyond argument to invoke it, from his own ambo, on the Sunday of Orthodoxy. The canon states in terms that no penalty is to follow.

The penalty followed within a day, and it did not come from a body examining whether the canon applied. It came by administrative act.

The monastic version of the same season took the same course. In July 2016 more than sixty Athonite hieromonks and monks, led by a disciple of Saint Paisios the Athonite, submitted an open letter to the Sacred Community setting out twelve points of divergence between the Cretan texts and Orthodox Tradition and calling for the Council to be condemned, failing which they would be obliged to withhold the commemoration. That November the Sacred Community produced a document concluding that the Cretan texts required revision and faulting them for a one-sidedness arising from the neglect of the theological tradition, while holding in the same document that withholding the commemoration was "unjustified for now."

The body examined the texts, found the confession defective, and ruled the corresponding action premature. For now is not a theological category. It is a scheduling category, and it is what an institution says when it has conceded the substance and does not intend to act on it.

By early 2017 more than fifty cells and kalyves had withheld the commemoration, involving roughly one hundred monastics. These men had broken communion with no one and joined nothing. They had done exactly what the counsel prescribes, in the manner most carefully engineered to avoid giving the administration the word it needed.

They were notified that they must leave their cells. Many declined to go.

The distinction between withholding the commemoration and breaking communion is a distinction the resisters maintain with great care. It is not a distinction the administration is obliged to maintain, and the record indicates it does not. A position calibrated over years to remain inside is read by the other party in a single glance at the diptych.

The institutional test

It might still be said that all of this concerns individuals, who have always been vulnerable, and that the corporate institutions of the Holy Mountain retain a real voice and a real veto. Last October tested that proposition directly.

In September 2025 a proposed visit to Athos by the head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine came before the Sacred Community on the strength of a letter of recommendation from the Ecumenical Patriarch. The reaction within the Community was strongly negative, given the position of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under Metropolitan Onuphry at that moment. The Holy Community declined to receive him officially, as would be customary for a primate. Most monasteries did not wish to receive him at all. At one of the great houses the brotherhood stated that they would leave the monastery if he were received there.

The visit proceeded on the tenth of October, lasted four days, and included receptions at six of the twenty ruling monasteries. According to the Athonite fathers who afterwards protested it, Karyes itself was sealed off by security services during the visit, out of concern that monks would come and demonstrate.

The administrative capital of the Holy Mountain was closed to the monks of the Holy Mountain, so that they could not object to something their own governing body had declined to authorise.

A group of monks representing the cells subsequently issued an open letter calling the visit a fall, holding that those who greeted and served with him bore responsibility for bringing a "spiritual contamination" to the place, and calling for them to be cut off from concelebration until they repented. No consequence followed.

The significance is not that the Holy Community was overruled on a question of hospitality. It is that the corporate body which the counsel to remain identifies as the forum of eventual redress was, on this occasion, simply routed around.

The same body had reached the same discovery two years earlier, in a matter with no Ukrainian dimension at all. In early January 2024 the abbots and representatives of all twenty ruling monasteries wrote jointly, under their common seal, to the Ecumenical Patriarch concerning the forthcoming visit of the Archbishop of America. Their stated concern was the photographic material published after the baptism of the children of a same-sex couple at the Church of Panagia Faneromeni in Vouliagmeni in the summer of 2022, which in their judgement had created an impression regarding the Church's teaching on marriage contrary to her doctrine. The Sacred Community then resolved unanimously that the customary reception of a visiting hierarch would not be offered, leaving each monastery to act by its own judgement, and it published that decision in an announcement dated 23 January 2024.

Twenty monasteries, unanimous, in writing, addressed to their canonical bishop. It is difficult to conceive of resistance from within expressed in a more orderly, more corporate or more canonically unimpeachable form.

Nothing followed from it. The visit proceeded, four monasteries received him, and in May 2026 he returned to the Holy Mountain, was formally welcomed at the Administration by the Civil Governor, and applied the word disgrace to the brotherhood of Esphigmenou.

That comparison is the finding of this article in miniature. In January 2024 the highest corporate body of the Holy Mountain withheld an honour from a hierarch and suffered no consequence whatever. Since the early 1970s the monks of Esphigmenou have withheld a commemoration and have been answered with bailiffs, prosecutions, a Supreme Court and a standing order of eviction. Both were acts of withholding. What separates them is not the gravity of the thing withheld but the direction in which it was withheld.

A control case

One serious objection remains. Perhaps none of this describes a mechanism. Perhaps it is the Church correcting error, and it presents itself as machinery only to those in error.

That objection is testable, and it was tested six weeks ago in a case with no anti-ecumenist content whatever.

On the twenty-eighth of July, by Order No. 134, the Patriarch of Bulgaria, who is also Metropolitan of Sofia, placed Archimandrite Nikanor Mishkov, abbot of the Tsarnogorski Monastery of Saints Cosmas and Damian near Gigintsi, under argos, a complete prohibition from priestly ministry, for fifteen days from the twenty-ninth. Ecclesiastical Disciplinary Case No. 2 of 2026 was opened before the Sofia Diocesan Court. Articles 95(19) and 139(2) of the Statute were cited for the suspension, the case itself opened under Articles 81 and 95(18) and Article 12 of the rules of procedure. The grounds were conduct incompatible with the priestly office and with the monastic vow of obedience, and conduct held to "undermine the authority of the Church."

The underlying conduct was the opposite of resistance. According to the reporting, the archimandrite had concelebrated with the head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in Kyiv on the fourteenth and fifteenth of July, and had earlier, in May 2024, concelebrated with clergy of that body at his own monastery without any decision of the Bulgarian Synod, publicly announcing Eucharistic communion with it. He was disciplined for moving ahead of his Synod rather than behind it.

The two charge sheets are nearly interchangeable. Against those who withhold the commemoration: disobedience, disruption of canonical order, failure to observe the Statutes. Against the archimandrite: disobedience, breach of the vow of obedience, undermining the authority of the Church. Opposite directions, opposite doctrinal content, administrative articles cited in both instances and doctrinal articles in neither.

The instrument does not measure doctrine. It measures compliance, and it is indifferent to the direction of the deviation. What it requires of a man is not that he believe rightly but that he conform, and the sanction it holds against him if he does not is removal from his place.

This is the point at which the counsel to remain encounters its real difficulty. It presumes a doctrinal contest, to be decided in time on the merits of the faith. What the record discloses is a disciplinary proceeding about obedience, in which the merits of the faith are not a category the proceeding recognises. A man cannot prevail in an argument the other party is not conducting.

What the record does not contain

Across fifty-four years of Esphigmenou proceedings, the expulsion at the Prophet Elias in 1992, the suspension of two Thessaloniki priests in 2017, the notices served on the cells that same year, the overriding of the Sacred Community in October 2025, and the Bulgarian case of last month, this publication has been unable to locate a single synodal adjudication of the doctrinal objection raised, a single conciliar finding for or against on the substance of the question at issue, a single judicial examination of whether the classification triggering removal was correctly applied, or a single proceeding of any kind in which a resister's confession of faith was placed before a competent body and answered.

The file contains bailiffs, statutes, cadastral schedules, value added tax, appellate reductions, articles of an administrative code, security services closing a road, a foreign policy remark about religious freedom, and the word disgrace.

Three objections to that finding deserve direct answers.

The first is survivorship. Many who withhold the commemoration are never troubled at all, and the Holy Mountain has long contained fathers of a strict persuasion who are left in peace. This is true, and it is the counsel's best practical argument. It is also the finding of the 1992 case restated. Toleration is real, but toleration is not a right; it is a discretion exercised by the party being resisted, and the record shows it withdrawn without notice, without proceedings, and without correlation to the gravity of the conduct. That a man has not yet been reached is not evidence that he holds a position. It is evidence that he has not yet been reached.

The second is that the Athonite regime is peculiar, a quirk of Greek constitutional law with no application to a parish priest in another country. The Thessaloniki case answers this. That priest held no Athonite residence, was subject to no Legislative Decree of 1926, and was suspended within a day by ordinary diocesan act. The Bulgarian case answers it again, in another country under another statute. The Athonite regime supplies the clearest documentation, not the only instance.

The third is that a Synod may yet take up these questions, and that the absence of adjudication to date proves nothing about what a competent body will eventually determine. What some future body may do is not the subject of this article and nothing here forecloses it. The subject is the sixty years that have already elapsed, during which every objection recorded here was met by administrative process and none by conciliar examination. The counsel to remain is offered to living men who must decide now, and it is fairly assessed against the record now available.

The word

"Our way or the highway" has never been the slogan of those who left. It is the operating practice of the bodies they left, expressed not in encyclicals but in decisions of expulsion, orders of eviction, replacement brotherhoods, spiritual courts, police requests, and a quarter of an hour to gather belongings.

The counsel to remain and resist is not dishonourable and it is not insincere. It is, on the evidence assembled here, founded on a premise that the record does not support. It presumes that resistance from within is a position held. The documents indicate it is a permission granted, revocable at the discretion of the party resisted, terminated by a classification that party alone assigns, unreviewable in the civil courts and unexamined in the ecclesiastical ones. The permission lasts precisely as long as the objection costs nobody anything. What is offered is not a place from which to contend. It is a choice between conformity and removal, and the party setting the terms is the party being objected to.

Saint Mark of Ephesus was answered by a council in 1484. The Sixth Ecumenical Council answered the question for which Saint Maximus was mutilated. The men in this file were answered by bailiffs.

To every cleric, monastic and layman now being counselled to remain and reform from within, one question is put, and it is not a theological question but a question about the record. It is not the case of a man who remained and was left alone, which establishes only that he was tolerable and that his objection was costing nobody anything. It is the case in which resistance from within, once formally charged, produced a hearing on the doctrine and a correction of the error. One case, any jurisdiction, within living memory.

This publication has not found it, and will publish any correction that arrives with a citation.

On Sunday the ninth of August 2026, at the dependency of the Holy Monastery of Saint Panteleimon in Galata, the Ecumenical Patriarch presided from the throne at the Divine Liturgy for the feast of Saint Panteleimon according to the Julian calendar, before a largely Russian-speaking congregation. He spoke of the place of monasticism in the life of the Church. He said that the Holy Mountain stands under the spiritual jurisdiction and care of the Mother Church of Constantinople, described it as a place of prayer in which Greeks, Russians, Serbs, Bulgarians and Romanians dwell together as brothers in Christ, and called it "a jewel in the mitre of the Ecumenical Patriarch."

That was the day before this article was completed. As it goes to press a final order of the Supreme Court stands against the brotherhood of Esphigmenou, the eviction remains outstanding, the police request of July 2024 has not been withdrawn, and the fathers notified in 2017 to quit their cells have had no further hearing. The Russian brotherhood of the Prophet Elias, whose successors were among those addressed in Galata, was removed from the Holy Mountain in 1992 and has never returned.

The metaphor repays attention, because it is exact rather than decorative. A jewel in a mitre is a possession and an ornament. It does not belong to itself. Whether its coexistence is peaceful depends on what is asked of it, and whether it remains in the setting is not a question the jewel is competent to decide.

In Karyes this May the word disgrace was applied to men who withheld a commemoration, in a room granted to the brotherhood installed to replace them, in the presence of the officer of the State who would carry out their eviction. Canon 15 provides that no penalty shall follow.

Readers may judge for themselves which of the two is the disgrace.

 

Source: https://patristicwitness.com/ArticleDetail?id=6a79fe757db1342d95746b97

 

On the Occasion of His Nameday: An Address of His Beatitude, Archbishop Kallinikos of Athens

At the Inter-Orthodox Consultation of the Genuine Orthodox Christians in View of the So-Called Great Synod of the Ecumenists, Acharnai, Attica, May 13, 2016 (Old Style)

 

 

Your Eminence, Metropolitan Agafangel;

Your Eminences, Your Graces;

Holy Brothers and Fathers, dear children in the Lord;

Representatives of our Sister Orthodox Churches, as well as Their Respective Bishops, from Russia, Romania, Europe, America, Africa, Asia, and Australia,

I embrace all of you together and each individually with the salvific salutation of joy for the world: Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen!

With ineffable Evangelic joy and emotion, I welcome you, on behalf of our Holy Synod, to the land of Greece, trodden by the Apostles, and the progenitor of Saints.

I thank you for responding to our fraternal invitation to come and to participate in two truly historic events of our Genuine Orthodox Church.

Τhe first is the Inter-Orthodox Conference, for which we are gathered here today.

Τhe second is the Proclamation of the Sanctity of the ever-memorable former Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Florina, which—in God’s pleasure—will take place this coming Satur­day.

We find ourselves at a critical turning-point in history, since after almost a century of martyric struggles in confessing the Faith, the Genuine Orthodox Church has shown Herself justi­fied for its tenacious resistance to the whirlwind of anti-eccle­siastical Ecumenism and its kindred reprehensible calendar in­novation.

Worthy of honor, praise, and encomia are our holy forefathers in Greece, Romania, Russia, and elsewhere, who with inerrant foresight perceived, having been informed by our Lord, where the so-called effort to unite Christians was leading and where it would end up; an effort known as the Ecumenical Movement and which, from the very beginning, was without salubrious ecclesiastical foundations.

Τhe rotten bedrock of the so-called Ecumenical Movement was a clear and explicit proclamation by the Patriarchate in Constan­tinople, which has been, unfortunately, endorsed by all of the “official” Orthodox Churches over the years.

What was this proclamation?

That all of the heterodox Christian communities, Eastern and Western, were “venerable Christian Churches”; that they were “constituent Churches of the entire body of Christians,” “of the whole body of the Church”; and that these “Churches” were henceforth no longer to consider “one another as foreign and alien, but as kith and kin in Christ and ‘as fellow heirs and fel­low members of the body, [and partakers of] the promise of God in Christ’” (“Patriarchal Encyclical of 1920”).

Since then, all of the fallen ecumenists have had a common goal: that the supposed existence of this invisible unity among the heterodox communities should be made visible in various ways: by way of a common calendar, common worship, a com­mon ministry to the world, diverse joint activities, the recogni­tion of each other’s Baptism and Priestly orders, and many other such things, and, indeed, specifically in the framework of the wholly Protestant “World Council of Churches.”

Thus, the so-called Ecumenical Movement took root, was cul­tivated, and became entrenched, such that it has, today, eaten away at all of the would-be “official” local Orthodox Churches, which, in approximately three weeks, will convene in Crete, with the purpose of ratifying, institutionalizing, and formalizing this most novel “ecclesiastical” identity of theirs, their anti-Or­thodox ecumenical consciousness, that is, their total departure and falling-away from the sole and singular Truth of the Holy Apostles, the Holy Fathers, and the Holy Synods of Orthodoxy.

Regardless of the decisions of the so-called Great Synod of the ecumenists, it should be understood solely from the fact that firstly, no issue of heresy will be submitted for examination; sec­ondly, the Bishops who will be participating in it are knowing and active ecumenists, that is, false teachers and false bishops; thirdly, issues for discussion have been set forth from the outset “in conformity with the demands of the contemporary era”; and finally, that it has a patently ecumenist orientation, based on the cacodox Encyclical of 1920—solely from these given points, I reiterate, the Synod of the ecumenists will in any event be a pseudo-synod, not an Orthodox Synod, a synod in favor of ecu­menism and at odds with the Genuine Orthodox Church, a veri­table anti-synod.

The authentic Patristic Tradition concerning Orthodox Syn­ods, as expressed, for example, by St. Athanasios the Great of Alexandria, envisions the following pellucid criteria:

a. It is not possible for those who are impious with regard to the Faith to take part in an Orthodox Synod: “For it is not pos­sible to count in a Synod those who are of impious belief.”

b. The examination of extraneous business must not be giv­en precedence; salient issues of Faith are to be examined first, and then other issues: “Nor is it proper that the scrutiny of any matter take precedence over the examination of matters of the Faith.”

c. Any disagreement concerning the Faith must be removed from consideration first, and then the remaining matters are to be investigated: “All disagreement concerning the Faith ought first to be removed from consideration, and only then may in­quiry be made into other matters.” (Patrologia Græca, Vol. XXV, col. 736B)

The so-called Great Synod of the ecumenists is unaccept­able a priori, because—as it has emerged from the prepara­tory process—it remains incognizant that the Orthodox flock everywhere is threatened by the major heresies of Papism, of Protestantism, by the ecumenism that encompasses them, by Sergianism, and by other anti-Christian currents, ideologies, and pseudo-theologies, which are syncretistic in nature and possessed of a “wisdom that is demonic” (cf. St. James 3:15).

These things notwithstanding, we have gathered today to con­fer, not as a full and canonical Orthodox Synod, but in order to confer and prepare the ground for such a Synod, one that will condemn ecumenism.

For the present, and keeping in mind the pseudo-synod of the ecumenists, we can proclaim collectively our Orthodox Faith, which is in every way genuine, by way of two fundamental doc­uments, with which you are already familiar, and which will be the object of our consultation, in a spirit of love, mutual respect, and prayer.

I conclude these humble introductory thoughts, ideas, and clarifications with the heartfelt prayer that the Most Holy The­otokos and the Holy Fathers may protect and guide us, both today and at all times, to teach aright the word of truth and sal­vation, unto the glory of the Holy Trinity.

I thank you!

St. Nikolai Velimirović on the Global Crisis (very relevant today!)

Letter 8. To Priest K.

 

 

You ask me, man of God, about the cause and meaning of the crisis that has come upon us. Who am I that you should ask me about this great mystery? “Speak, if you have something greater than silence,” said St. Gregory the Theologian. And although I find that, at present, silence is higher than every word, yet out of love for you I shall write what I think about this question.

“Crisis” is a Greek word; translated, it means “judgment.”

In Holy Scripture the word “judgment” is used many times. Thus we read from the Psalmist: “Therefore the ungodly shall not rise in the judgment” (Ps. 1:5). Further on again: “I will sing of mercy and judgment unto Thee, O Lord” (Ps. 100:1). The wise King Solomon writes that judgment comes from the Lord to everyone (cf. Prov. 29:26). The Savior Himself said: “The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son” (John 5:22). And the Apostle Peter writes: “The time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God” (1 Pet. 4:17).

Replace the word “judgment” with the word “crisis” and read: “I will sing of mercy and crisis,” “from the Lord comes crisis to everyone,” “the Father has committed all crisis unto the Son,” “the time is come that crisis must begin at the house of God.”

Formerly, when some misfortune befell Europeans, they used the word “judgment” instead of the word “crisis.” Now the word “judgment” has been replaced by the word “crisis,” a comprehensible word by a less comprehensible one. A drought would come, and they would say: “God’s judgment!” A flood—“God’s judgment!” A war or an epidemic would begin—“God’s judgment!” Earthquakes, locusts, other calamities—always the same: “God’s judgment!” Thus, a crisis because of drought, a crisis because of flooding, because of wars and epidemics. And the people regard the present financial and economic catastrophe as a judgment of God, but call it not “judgment,” but “crisis.” So that the calamity might be increased by lack of understanding! For as long as the comprehensible word “judgment” was spoken, the cause that had brought about the calamity was also understood; the Judge Who had permitted the calamity was known, as was the purpose for which the calamity had been permitted. After the substitution of the word “judgment” with the word “crisis,” which is little understood by the majority, no one can explain either what it comes from, from whom it comes, or for what purpose. Only in this does the present crisis differ from a crisis caused by drought and flooding, war or epidemic, locusts or some other affliction.

You ask about the cause of the present crisis, or of God’s judgment?

The cause is always the same. The cause of all droughts, floods, epidemics, and other calamities is the same as that of the present crisis—apostasy from God. The sin of apostasy brought about this crisis as well, and the Lord permitted it in order to awaken people, to sober them, so that they might come to their senses and return to Him. As the sins, so the crisis. Indeed, the Lord used modern means to bring modern people to their senses: He struck the banks, the stock exchanges, the entire financial system. He overturned the tables of the money changers throughout the whole world, just as He once did in the Temple at Jerusalem. He caused an unprecedented panic among merchants and money changers.

He disturbed, overthrew, confounded, threw into confusion, and instilled fear. And all this so that the proud European and American wise men might awaken, come to their senses, and remember God. So that they, having established themselves in the harbor of material prosperity, might remember their souls, acknowledge their iniquities, and worship God Most High, the living God.

How long will the crisis last? Until the proud culprits acknowledge the victory of the Almighty. Until people think to translate the incomprehensible word “crisis” into their native language and, with a sigh of repentance, cry out: “God’s judgment!”

You too, reverend Father, call the “crisis” “God’s judgment,” and everything will be clear to you.

Greetings to you, and peace from the Lord!

 

Russian source: Миссионерские письма [Missionary Letters], published by Moscow Representation of the Holy Trinity–St. Sergius Lavra, 2005.

To Archbishop Paul of Sydney: Question from Russia About Grace

 

Your Eminence!

I accidentally found your address and decided to write, although I understand that I am taking up your precious time, Vladyka. But the problem facing me and my friends is very serious.

... I have always been interested in religion, and along the way, I even graduated from the Faculty of Atheism. This is what led me to the primary source—the Gospel; I converted and was baptized in the Orthodox Church...

After baptism, my spiritual development progressed more quickly... But by that time, we already understood everything. And thus, the Gospel verses sounded in sharp dissonance with the real life of the Soviet Orthodox Church. There is probably no need to tell you about this. However, briefly: in the Novosibirsk diocese under the omophorion of Metropolitan Gedeon, cowardice, greed, lies, and the cult of Gedeon (from whom they paint the image of God the Father, etc.) flourish. The Church has bowed before the Beast.

And we began to wonder: is the Soviet Church true? Are the sacraments performed by KGB agents in cassocks valid?

Vladimir Solovyov writes that the personal qualities of a clergyman do not matter at all if he "enters by the door into the sheepfold," meaning he is ordained through the correct hierarchical succession, and the grace of God is granted to us through him during the sacraments.

And here, Vladyka, is my question, for which I have addressed you—is the priesthood in the USSR legitimate, i.e., in accordance with the Apostolic rules? After all, all those ordained pass through the filter of the KGB, the "patriarch" was openly imposed, his election was conducted with an open roll-call vote in the presence of atheists, and so on.

My friends tried to establish contact with the Catacomb Church—without success, they found no one. Then everyone decided that the red Church was finished, the West is far away, but the Catholics are nearby. Now in Novosibirsk, there is a Catholic church, with a wonderful priest, loved by the youth, and so our group, having lost faith in the Pimen-Sergianism, is gradually converting to Catholicism... And I am almost the only one left still doubting.

Yes, undoubtedly, the Catholic Church is a Christian Church. What we see in Soviet Orthodoxy is paganism and Satan worship disguised as Christianity. But there is also the Western ROCOR! And I would like, Vladyka, to know the opinion of the Church in exile on these matters. I ask you to respond.

May the Lord keep you!

(signature) 26 September 1989

 

Response of Archbishop Paul of Sydney and Australia-New Zealand (+1995)

 

Archbishop Paul of Sydney and Australia-New Zealand                                                                 20 Celtsford Ave, Croydon N.S.W. 2132

Phone: 747 5892

 

Friday, October 21st / November 3rd, 1989                                                                                   Feast of St. Hilarion the Great.

 

Dear in the Lord,

Sergei Yuryevich!

Having returned last Tuesday from an almost two-month trip abroad, I read your letter from September 26 of this year. I will not hide that your letter not only alarmed me but also shook me. Everything you write about Sergianism, on which the existence of the Moscow Patriarchate is based, is well known to us here in the free world, and the position of the Russian Church Abroad on Sergianism is absolutely clear—we categorically reject it as a betrayal and treason against the Church. I am shaken by the consequences of Sergianism—this terrible disease that has afflicted our Church, or rather, a certain part of its organism. But one cannot expect anything else: godlessness is incompatible with the holiness of the Church, and the distortion is evident. You are also bearing witness to this.

Not long ago, at a meeting of the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, after reviewing letters and testimonies from Russia about the harmful influence of the leaders of the Moscow Patriarchate on the souls of believers, we discussed the very question that concerns and troubles you—namely, the question of grace. All the actions of certain leaders of the Moscow Patriarchate speak against them. But what, then, can be said about the millions of faithful Orthodox Russian people? Are they truly deprived of the grace of the Holy Mysteries? And all of us, bishops of the free part of the long-suffering and persecuted Russian Orthodox Church, while fully and categorically rejecting Sergianism, expressed the view that it is precisely for the sake of these little ones that, despite the unworthiness of the ministers, the Lord does not take away His grace. The Lord Jesus Christ speaks to the people and His disciples, saying, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do” (Matthew 23:1-3). From this, it is evident that the Lord, to some extent, still recognized some authority for teaching in the Old Testament Church even among those who had betrayed Him. This can be applied to today's situation. However, by these words, we do not in any way defend or justify the Moscow Patriarchate.

Who and what is the Russian Orthodox Church for all of us Orthodox Russian people? It is our Mother, who, for over a thousand years, has given birth to each of us into a new life of grace in Christ through the Sacrament of Baptism; who has nourished us with the Body and Blood of Christ, strengthened us with the grace of God, created in us the image and likeness of God, the image of the Orthodox Christian, the character of the Russian person, and the character of our entire nation, defining our historical path, our national self-awareness, and our very existence. In short, she is our loving Mother, to whom we owe everything. And who are these unworthy ministers of hers? They are diseased, infected members of her body. But should we abandon our Mother because of this, leave her, betray her? Where is our duty to her? Where is our love, where is our filial gratitude? We must help our Mother recover, cut off the infected parts of her body, but not abandon her, not betray her. Or can we reject all of our historical past, our Russian essence, what has created Russian culture? Catholicism, if it were in Russia, would have created a different culture, a different Russian person—not the one the Russian people have been, with their spiritual beauty, their holiness, and their saints, which have amazed foreigners. To convert to Catholicism is to betray Orthodoxy, our historical path, and Russian culture, that is, to cease being Russian, to abandon our people.

I implore you and your friends, despite everything, to remain Russian. Russia needs you; it needs healthy, fresh forces to overcome the evil that now reigns within her. If you betray her, what will become of Russia?! Communism is a disease that has afflicted Russia, a temporary phenomenon. It will pass! And it depends on you, our Orthodox Russian youth, our hope and future, what Russia will become. We believe in you. May the Lord help you and bless you in the righteous and holy work of serving the Truth—Christ and His Holy Church.

With sincere love for you and all your friends, the Orthodox Russian youth, and those who are wavering.

+Archbishop Paul

 

Russian source: https://kirillov-v-y.livejournal.com/41243.html

 

May One Speak of the Union of Christians Apart from Grace and Truth? (1964)

By the Blessed & Ever-Memorable Archbishop Averky of Jordanville

 

 

All ye that in Christ have been baptized, Christ have ye put on.

We have just celebrated the Great Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, or the Theophany. Wondrous is this festival! “The Christian mysteries,” says the holy hierarch Theophan [the Recluse] of Vysha, concerning this feast, “shine forth here with their Divine light, and they illumine the minds and hearts of those who keep this great celebration with faith” (Thoughts for Every Day of the Year). It is for this reason that the very feast itself is called the “illumination” in our Church Typicon.

But what does this illumination consist of? It comprises the illumining and sanctification of our minds and hearts through Grace and Truth, brought to earth for the salvation of people by the Incarnate Only-Begotten Son of God Himself, as Christ’s beloved disciple, Saint John the Theologian, bears witness at the very start of his Gospel: “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us… full of grace and truth.”

“And of His fulness have we all received, and grace for grace; for the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (John 1: 14, 16-17).

When Christ was born, only a few people knew of this. Only on the day of His Baptism did He clearly and openly appear for that great ministry of His, for which He had become incarnate, and therefore, in her hymns, the Holy Church calls the festival of the Baptism or Christ, the Theophany, the “most radiant” and the “most glorious” day, even in comparison with that most joyous feast for us the Nativity of Christ, and, exulting, she chants: “In the Jordan River’s streams, the Saviour, Who is grace and truth, hath openly appeared to all, and hath enlightened them that once slept in the shadow and the dark; for He hath come and shone forth, the Light unapproachable” (Exapostilarion, 3rd tone).

But what is exactly is the “grace” and “truth,” imparted to us on the day of Theophany?

What exactly happens that is important to us on this “most radiant” and “most glorious” festival?

On this day, the sinless Christ accepted baptism from John in the waters of the Jordan, so that in His Person He might wash away the sins of all mankind, taken upon Himself in His inexpressible love for man. On this day, the Master of heaven and of earth bows his neck and receives baptism from a servant, so that He might give an example of humility by observing the rule of baptism established by Him for all people, so that He might thus fulfil “all righteousness” (Matt. 3:15) and by His own example sanctify this great mysterion of spiritual rebirth, without which it is impossible to enter into the Heavenly Kingdom.

On this day, the Messiah Christ first manifested Himself to the world as the beloved Only-Begotten Son of God, in Whom there rests the favour of God the Father and in Whom the Holy Spirit rests. His measureless humility opened wide the heavens and clearly revealed to the people the formerly hidden mystery of the Three Persons of the Divinity: Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit.

On this day, Jesus Christ, having reached the age of majority according to the law, in that He had reached thirty years of age, enters upon His public ministry to the race of man; having remained until this time in obscurity, today He is manifest to the world and His light is signed upon us, illumining the people “that sat in darkness and in the shadow of death” with a mystical illuminations from on high.

In what does this “illumination” consist?

In what we received today in the holy Apostle [reading]: In the Jordan waters, “the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age, looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:11-13).

Thus, our Saviour, Grace and Truth, Christ appeared that He might proclaim to us liberty from sin and the beginning of a new life - a life according to Grace and Truth.

Believing with our whole heart in this Divine Truth, brought to us by the Incarnate Son of God, and accepting this saving Grace in the Mysterion of Baptism, we die unto sin and we are born again unto a new, pure, holy and God-pleasing life, we are clothed upon with Christ and we become one with Him through Grace.

How can we dare to sin, if we have died to sin, if we have been clothed with Christ and become one with Him?

In truth, sin is now something completely foreign to us Christians; it is something wholly not our own - it is a rude attack upon our nature reborn in Christ: we cannot sin at will. It is not in vain that the holy Apostle informs us: “as many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death, we are buried with him by baptism into death, knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him, likewise reckon ye yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Christ Jesus our Lord” (see Rom. 6:3-11).

Thus, the holy Apostles ends this instruction: “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof, neither yield ye up your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin; but yield ye yourselves up unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God” (Rom. 6:12-13).

“Sin shall not have dominion over you,” the Apostles concludes and he explains: “For ye are not under the law, but under grace” (Rom. 6:14).

From all of the above, it should be abundantly clear that where there is neither grace nor truth, there is no freedom from sin; where they disdain grace and truth, there they involuntarily sin and excuse sin, and there is no Christianity.

But grace and truth abide only in the true Church, namely that Church which was founded by the incarnate Only-Begotten Son of God, and which was granted the great promise, that the gates of hades should not prevail against her (Matt. 16:18), and which, it follows, always was, is and will be until the end of the age, and does not stand in need of being founded anew.

It is from this precise viewpoint that we must understand and assess all that is happening in the world now.

And it is because of this that we cannot but be horrified at that which is accurately called “a sign of the times,” and is in actuality a terrible, terrifying, ominous sign that we, who witness it and see it, behold who are living through our dreadful times.

We have in mind those “fruits” which the so-called “Ecumenical Movement” has produced, particularly now the meeting that has taken place, and the “symbolical” kiss, between the Pope of Rome, Paul VI, and the Patriarch of Constantinople, Athenagoras I.

[Now in 2012, nearly forty years on, we could add countless other examples of meetings, common prayers, “sacramental hospitality,” to this one instance that Archbishop Averky cites - translator].

It is not the meeting itself, such as it was, that horrifies us, but its inner content, which encloses within something spiritually unhealthy, at root rejecting authentic Christianity, something of a fully ecumenical bent, which was so clearly and powerfully exposed in Patriarch Athenagoras words themselves, when he spoke in a sermon before setting out for the Holy Land and for this meeting with the Pope: “I will meet the Pope and embrace him as a brother, leaving aside theological discussions.”

“What is this?” - it only remains for us to ask: “Extreme mindlessness or a conscious betrayal?”

Did we really so quarrel with the Pope that it was necessary to be reconciled, demonstrating before the whole world this “reconciliation” with brotherly embraces?

Or does Patriarch Athenagoras desire to abound more in love that the very “Apostle of love” himself, the beloved disciple of the Lord, Saint John the Theologian, who tells us in a teaching which stands for all times: “If there come any unto you and bring not this (the true, Apostolic teaching of faith and piety) doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither greet him” (2 John 10)?

Is Patriarch Athenagoras not a theologian? If he really did not study theology and is not aware of the fundamental dogmatic truths of Orthodox Christian teaching, nor how they are manifested in the spiritual and moral life of each and every Orthodox Christian, is it not a mistake that he bears such a high calling?

Can it really be that our separation from the Roman Catholics was caused by some purely personal feelings of hostility, by some personal ill-will?

Or is it that our profound divergence from them, being dogmatic as also of a spiritual and moral character, only came about through some abstract disagreement of learned theologians, divorced from real life, mindlessly quarrelling between themselves? And was it necessary only to “make peace” with the Pope, so that all these disagreements and “discussions” could be so lightly settled?

Truly, one could only marvel at such infantile naïvety on the part of the “First Hierarch of Orthodoxy” (as the Patriarch of Constantinople considers himself by tradition, it being once the [premier] see of the world empire), if only this apparent naïvety did not conceal something much more dreadful.

All this is exactly in the spirit of authentic ecumenism – ecumenism without a mask. Our Orthodox “ecumenists” have for a long time persistently assured us that they had entered the ecumenical movement with one purpose - which outwardly appears wholly good - “to witness before the heterodox about the truth of Holy Orthodoxy,” “to reveal to them the depth and beauty of Holy Orthodoxy,” and thus “to draw them to embrace Holy Orthodoxy, from which they had fallen away.”

And how has it turned out in fact?

The complete opposite thing has come about: not the return to Holy Orthodoxy of those who had fallen away, but the tacit, “symbolical” recognition of the unimportance and the insubstantiality of all that which distinguishes Orthodoxy from heterodoxy, that is and that caused a complete falling away from Her, and therefore also from the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, founded by Christ the Saviour, of Roman Catholicism and thereafter of Protestantism and the other, now numberless, sects and every possible self-directed confessional entity, which without any rationale lays claims for itself to the name “Church of Christ.”

Grace and truth, which abide only in the true Church, which has received the promise of Christ that the gates of Hades shall not prevail against Her, are, apparently, completely forgotten!

And how strange it is to hear from the “First Hierarch of the Holy Orthodox Church” that all the distinguishing characteristics of Holy Orthodoxy, which form a definite barrier between it and Roman Catholicism, are no longer to be the subject of theological discussion.

The dogmas of Holy Orthodoxy are not somehow abstractions, out of touch with the life of truth, such that we can consider them or recognise them as inconsequential.

The dogmas - the great and saving truths of the Faith, were revealed to us by the incarnate Son of God; they are His Divine words. And these “words, that I speak unto you,” as He Himself says, “they are Spirit and they are life” (John 6:63).

How can we consider them as having no substance in the great work of the union of all Christians, which can only come about in grace and in truth?

How can one think that this task can consist only of “brotherly” embraces and kisses?

And are such kisses not those of Judas, if behind them there is concealed the betrayal of grace and truth?

And furthermore, the fundamental difference between us and the Roman Catholics and all the others, who profess to call themselves Christians, obtains precisely in spirit and in life.

It is awful to say, but apparently for the contemporary ecumenists, in whose number one can think to include both Patriarch Athenagoras and Pope Paul VI, even Baptism itself, which was inaugurated for all who desire to become Christians by Christ the Saviour Himself on the great day of Theophany, is not a great Mysterion (sacrament), which opens to us the entrance into the Heavenly Kingdom, but just an empty subject of “theological discussion,” devoid of any significant meaning. And therefore, for eternal salvation, in the view that is precisely theirs, it is not a necessity to be baptized and to be clothed in Christ. For their talk now is of a general union not only of Christians, but with Jews, though they do not recognise Christ the Saviour as the Messiah - (concerning this the notorious proposal of the Vatican Council testified regarding the Jews and the amicable regard that the Pope now has for the state of Israel) - and with the Muslims and with the pagans.

They speak and write more and more nowadays about the one, common, universal religion for all peoples, just as they do about a one world government.

Yes, this is in very truth a sign of the times, but a dreadful sign! The union of all peoples, “at any price,” and “in spite of everything,” is required, as we have long since known well from the prophesies of the ancient Fathers of the Church, so that in the last days all peoples will be united under one authority, and it will attempt to substitute another for Christ.

Truly, even now it is fearful to live in the world in the midst of such anti-Christ untruth, such deception, such falsehood and hypocrisy, through which the servants of the coming Anti-Christ strive even now to replace in the consciences of the people and to obliterate the true Church.

But, God is with us! And “the fear of them we shall not fear, neither shall we be troubled!” For we know that the “gates of Hades” shall not overcome the true Church. It remains only for us to adhere to this true Church until the very end, to draw from her the grace and truth of Christ, and always to bear in mind that we, who have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ, and therefore we must live worthily of our high calling as Christians, as ones dead unto sin, and raised again to a new, God-pleasing life - life in Christ.

 

Source: The Shepherd: An Orthodox Christian Pastoral Magazine, January 2012, pp. 2-9.

A person can spend his entire life within the Church without ever allowing the Church to enter into him.

Theoktistos the Cretan | August 10, 2026

 

 

We ask many things of Christ. We ask for health, work, protection, for our children to do well, for a sick person to be healed, for a marriage to be saved, for a financial difficulty to be resolved, for a road that has been closed to open, for a temptation to depart.

We run to the Panagia, we invoke the Saints, we hold Paraklesis services, light candles, write down names, make vows, go on pilgrimages, beseech, weep, and persist. And rightly so. We are children of God, and it is to God that we will have recourse. But amid this unceasing stream of our requests, we usually avoid one very simple and very difficult question: What are we prepared to offer Christ? What do we offer the Panagia? What do we give to the Saints whom we so readily invoke? For many times our relationship with God ends up becoming a strange spiritual transaction. We submit the request and expect God to grant it. If what we asked for happens, we say, “Glory to God.” If it does not happen, the complaints begin. “Why did God not hear me?”

Have you ever listened to God? That we do not ask. Christ told you to forgive. Did you forgive? He told you not to judge. Did you stop judging? He told you to love your enemy. Did you love him? He told you to repent. Did you repent? He told you to take up your cross. Did you take it up? He told you to cut off your own will. Did you cut it off? And then we stand before His icon and say plaintively, “My Christ, why do You not hear me?” But, my child, when did you ever listen to Him? We want a Christ who will listen to us unceasingly, while we reserve for ourselves the right almost never to listen to Him.

We want a Christ who heals, but does not rebuke us. A Panagia who protects us, but does not teach us, through her “be it unto me according to thy word,” what surrender to the will of God means. We want Saints who work miracles, but we do not want to learn how they became Saints. We go to Saint Nektarios and ask for healing, but when we are wronged or slandered, we do not remember at all how he accepted injustice. We ask Saint Paisios for help, but we leave philotimo, self-denial, simplicity, self-reproach, and sacrifice to Saint Paisios. We ask Saint Porphyrios for enlightenment, but we are not prepared to cut off even a single evil thought about our brother. We want the Saint’s icon in the house, but we do not want the Saint’s way of life in the house. We want his vigil lamp, his holy oil, the amulet, the pilgrimage, the miracle. We do not want his life. Then what exactly are we asking of the Saints? To cooperate with our passions? To intercede so that we may get our own way? To persuade God to adapt His will to our own desires?

The Saints are not intermediaries of our will. They are the people who surrendered their own will so that the will of God might live within them. But this is the part of holiness that does not move us so much. The miracle moves us. The ascetic struggle that preceded the miracle does not. The incorrupt relic moves us. The mortification of the old man that preceded it does not. The icon of the Saint moves us. The repentance that made that person an icon of Christ does not.

And here, we who wear the cassock must be the first to take heed. For it is very easy for a monk to speak about the secularization of others and not see his own. A person can leave the world and take the whole world with him into his cell. He may have no personal property and yet have a terrible attachment to his own will. He may not seek worldly honors and yet seek monastic honors. He may want to be taken into account, to be consulted, to have his spirituality recognized, to have his discernment praised. Even ascetic struggle itself can become food for the ego. I may fast more than another and despise him. I may keep vigil more and consider him negligent. I may say more prayer ropes and feel that I have become something. Well then, what have I done? I took off the worldly garment and dressed the same old man in a cassock. If the monk asks Christ for Grace but does not give Him his will, if he asks for enlightenment but does not accept correction, if he prays for the whole world but cannot tolerate the brother in the neighboring cell, something is not right. You may say a thousand times, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me,” while at the same time thinking that you are not the one who needs mercy, but that everyone else needs correction. Then the mouth says the Prayer while the mind has set up a tribunal. What benefit is the prayer rope if every knot passes through our fingers, yet not one of them loosens a knot of our egoism?

A hierarch may speak ceaselessly about Christ, while his heart is more disturbed over primacy, rank, recognition, forms of address, who honored him and who did not honor him. Then what did he offer Christ? The mitre? The engolpion? The throne? What would Christ do with these things? He was born in a manger, and upon the Cross He revealed His Kingdom. What a strange thing it is to serve a God who emptied Himself, while we worry lest our prestige be diminished. To preach Him who washed the disciples’ feet, and to be troubled over who will sit first. To exalt the Cross liturgically and yet be unable to endure even the slightest personal humiliation. And a priest may serve the Liturgy for decades, hear confessions, preach, cense, bless, and eventually become accustomed to the holy things. This is more terrible than many outward falls. To become accustomed to the Holy Chalice. To become accustomed to the Sanctuary. To become accustomed to the Gospel. To say, “Peace be unto all,” and not speak to his brother. To say, “Let us love one another,” and harbor resentment. To read the Gospel of forgiveness and not forgive. To hold the Body of Christ in his hands while at the same time holding in his heart antipathies, rivalries, ambitions, and pettiness. How terrible for Christ to be in our hands and yet not to have found a place within us. And how much more terrible for this to happen so many times that eventually it no longer frightens us.

Only after saying these things about ourselves can we also speak about the person who enters the church. Otherwise, strictness becomes hypocrisy. If I am not fighting against my own will, how can I speak to another about repentance? If I desire honors, how can I speak to him about humility? If I do not forgive my brother, how can I tell him to forgive his own? First, then, the knife upon ourselves, and afterward the word to others. But the faithful person too must at some point ask himself what exactly he is going to the church to do. We do not go to church in order to do God a favor. Someone says, “I went to church today as well.” So what? You went. What happened within you? Did you enter angry and leave angry? Did you enter judging and leave judging? Did you enter not speaking to your brother and leave still not speaking to him? Then you changed place; you did not change your life. You can light twenty candles and not forgive one person. You can hold forty Paraklesis services and torment your household every day. You can fast from oil and devour another person with your tongue. You can receive Communion frequently and harbor resentment within you. You can venerate the icons with compunction and treat living human beings, who are images of God, with unimaginable harshness. What kind of piety is this? The candle is good, but the candle cannot be burning while the heart remains frozen. Fasting is holy, but the mouth cannot fast from oil while not fasting from poison. Pilgrimage is beneficial, but what benefit is there in traveling a thousand kilometers for a Saint and not traveling two meters to ask forgiveness from our brother?

A person can spend his entire life within the Church without ever allowing the Church to enter into him. He may know all the services, all the fasts, all the monasteries, all the Saints, all the Elders, which spiritual father is strict and which is lenient; he may be able to discuss ecclesiastical matters for hours, while his heart remains unmoved. This is very dangerous. The person who is far from the Church at least knows that he is far away. But the one who has learned all the outward forms of piety is in danger of thinking that he has already arrived. And then he begins to measure others. Who dressed properly, who made the sign of the Cross properly, who fasted, who did not fast, who received Communion, who did not receive Communion. But he does not measure himself. For ourselves, we want all of God’s mercy. For the other person, we want all of His justice. We ask God not to remember our sins, while we remember with remarkable precision what the other person did to us fifteen years ago. We ask for forgiveness and do not forgive. We ask for longsuffering and tolerate no one. We ask God to raise us up when we fall, and as soon as the other person falls, we rush to trample him down. We ask God to look upon us with leniency, while we examine our brother under a microscope. And then we stand in prayer and say, “Lord, have mercy.” On whom should the Lord have mercy? On me alone? Is the other person not His child?

We often do the same thing with the Panagia. “My Panagia, do this for me and I will bring you a candle.” But what is the Panagia, my child? Is she a merchant? Is she waiting for your candle? She is waiting for your heart. You can buy the candle in five minutes. It may take you a lifetime to cut off your will. The Panagia offered her very self to God. “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.” We, many times, pray in exactly the opposite way. Instead of “Thy will be done,” in practice we say, “My will be done.” This is what I want; let this happen. Let this person come. Let that person leave. Let this door open. Let this difficulty disappear. Let this plan succeed. Let everything around me change. But should I change? No. I am to remain as I am, and God is to rearrange the whole world so that my will may be satisfied. And when it does not happen, we say, “The Panagia did not hear me.” How do you know that she did not hear you? Perhaps it was precisely because she heard you that she did not give you what you were asking for. Perhaps her protection was precisely the closed door about which you are complaining.

And how skillful we become when it comes to justifying our passions. Our own anger becomes “righteous indignation.” Our own ambition becomes “zeal.” Our own harshness becomes “boldness.” Our own judgment becomes “discernment.” Our own curiosity becomes “concern.” We find a fine spiritual word, place it over the passion, and put ourselves at ease. Instead of repenting of the passion, we baptize it. The Saints, however, did not change the names of their passions. They changed themselves. We want to change the name and keep the disease. That is why we have multiplied in words and become impoverished in lived experience. We share sayings about humility and become angry if someone does not greet us. We speak about silence and comment on everyone. We admire the poverty of the Saints and count what our neighbor has. We speak about the Martyrs and cannot endure a single insult. We read about the ascetics and cannot bear for someone to disrupt our schedule. We venerate the Cross and ask Christ for a life in which nothing of our own will be crucified. We want the Crucified One, but without crucifixion. We want the Resurrection, but without Golgotha. We want holiness, but without ascetic struggle. We want Paradise, but without repentance. Well, how can all these things come to pass?

And even our time we give to God by the dropper. Hours on the phone do not tire us. Hours at a table pass quickly. Hours spent in conversations, traveling, and entertainments do not seem like much to us. But we enter the Divine Liturgy and before long we are looking at the clock. People telephone churches and monasteries and ask, “What time does Holy Communion come out?” What kind of question is that? What does “What time does Holy Communion come out?” mean? As though it were something delivered at a specific time and we wanted to stop by and pick it up. The Divine Eucharist is not the final five minutes of a service. The Divine Liturgy begins with “Blessed is the Kingdom,” and the entire assembly moves toward the Chalice. If some great person of this world invited you to a formal dinner, would you telephone and ask, “What time should I come just to eat and leave?” You would be ashamed. But before Christ we are not ashamed. We want to receive and leave. To receive Communion without having communed in the prayer of the Church. To receive the Gift without offering even our time. And then we wonder why our life is not transformed. But do we want Christ as something we receive, or as the One to whom we surrender our life?

What, then, does Christ ask of us? Our money? Everything is His. Our candles? He is the Light. Our votive offerings? What need does God have of gold? Our great churches? Heaven and earth cannot contain Him, and will our buildings impress Him? Christ asks for one thing, and it is precisely this that we find most difficult to give Him: “My son, give me thine heart.” He asks for you. Because you can offer all the other things and remain exactly as you were. You can give money and remain avaricious. You can light a hundred candles and remain in darkness. You can make countless pilgrimages and not move even one step away from your egoism. You can build a church and leave your soul in ruins. You can fill your house with icons and find no room for Christ within your heart. You can even put on the cassock and not have surrendered a single inch of your own will. But when you give your heart, then the other thrones we have set up within it must fall: my sense of being right, my will, my ambition, my malice, my vindictiveness, my self-love. There the true offering begins.

For this reason, love for Christ is not proven when we say, “My Christ, I love You.” That is easy. It is proven when the time comes to choose between Christ and something we have loved more than Him. On the one hand, self-interest; on the other, His commandment. What will I choose? On the one hand, revenge; on the other, forgiveness. What will I choose? On the one hand, ambition; on the other, humility. On the one hand, my sense of being right; on the other, peace. On the one hand, my will; on the other, “Thy will be done.” There the grand words come to an end. There, faith is revealed. For we easily offer God that which costs us nothing. The difficult thing is to offer Him precisely that which we have turned into an idol.

Could it be, then, that the greatest prayer is not, “My Christ, change what is happening around me,” but, “My Christ, change me”?

Not only, “My Panagia, protect my child,” but, “My Panagia, teach me to love my child without making him the possession of my own will.”

Not only, “My Saint, help me to succeed,” but, “Help me not to lose my soul in order to succeed.”

Not only, “Lord, take this cross away from me,” but, “If this cross is becoming a road that leads to You, grant that I may not flee from beneath it.”

These are difficult prayers. Because they may indeed be heard. And then God will not simply change the circumstances around us. He will begin to change us.

The Saints gave everything and asked for Christ alone. We, many times, ask everything from Christ and find it difficult to give Him even one passion. One grudge. One old enmity. One stubbornness. One injustice. One ambition. One hidden sin. This is the vow that we find most difficult to make. Not, “My Panagia, if this happens, I will bring you a candle,” but, “My Christ, this thing separates me from You. Take it. And because You see that even now, I find it difficult to give it to You, at least make me want to give it to You.” There repentance begins. Not when we ask God to become a partner in our plans, but when we allow Him to tear down within us whatever does not lead to Him.

For this reason, before we ask Christ for something again, before we beseech the Panagia again, before we run again to a Saint, let us for a moment ask the question in reverse. Not, “What do I want from God?” but, “What does God want from me?” And this one question may be worth more than a hundred requests. Because then we will understand that Christ was never waiting for our candles, our vows, our promises, our grand words, or our displays of piety. He was waiting for us. From the monk He awaits the monk, and not his cassock. From the hierarch, the man, and not his throne. From the priest, his heart, and not only his priestly ministry. From the faithful person, the person himself, and not only his candle. And it will be terrible if one day we come before Him having held prayer ropes, having lit thousands of candles, having made pilgrimages, attended services, made vows and prayers, having spoken countless times about Him, and then realize that throughout our entire life we offered Him almost everything except the one thing He truly asked of us: ourselves.

 

Greek source: https://aktines.blogspot.com/2026/08/blog-post_614.html