Letter of Elder Philotheos Zervakos to Papa-Dimitri Gagastathis

Concerning the Invalid Deposition of Archimandrite Cyprian (Koutsoumbas) by the Official Church of Greece for Joining the Church of the G.O.C. of Greece

Paros, May 16, 1973

To the most revered and beloved brother in Christ and concelebrant, Father Dimitrios, greetings.

Christ is truly risen, granting life eternal and the Heavenly Kingdom to all of the Faithful who maintain right belief and have knowledge of the truth.

I received your letter and am responding to your questions.

Firstly, concerning Father Cyprian, who has joined the Old Calendar movement, for which the official Church has deposed him, but who still carries out his office, liturgizes, and is designated "Abbot of the Holy Monastery of Sts. Cyprian and Justina," let me inform you of the following:

If the official Church deposed him only on account of the Old Calendar, in order for his deposition to be valid, it would be necessary:

• for all Old Calendarists to be deposed;

• to condemn the Old Calendar itself;

• [to condemn] even the First Ecumenical Synod, which, on the basis of the Old Calendar—the so-called Julian Calendar—prescribed that the Feast of Pascha remain unaltered and eternal;

• to condemn all of the six Ecumenical Synods, which followed the Old Calendar;

• [to condemn] the Synod of Antioch, which, in its first Canon, decrees that whoever dares to alter the decree of the First Ecumenical Synod (which prescribed that Pascha remain unaltered), be deposed, if a clergyman, and excommunicated, if a layman.

* * *

No Synod, either Ecumenical or local, introduced the New Calendar into the Orthodox Church.

It was uncanonically and illegitimately introduced by Ecumenical Patriarch Meletios, a Thirty-third degree Mason, with six Hierarchs of unorthodox beliefs, in order to show contempt for the Orthodox Church and the Traditions of the Holy Apostles and the Holy Fathers, while being in agreement with the innovationist, modernist, schismatic, and heretical Papists and Lutheran-Calvinist Protestants.

The New, Gregorian, Papal Calendar, which Pope Gregory [XIII] first introduced into the Western Church, and then attempted to introduce also into the Eastern Orthodox Church, was not only not accepted by the Orthodox Church, but was even anathematized in two local Synods that convened in Constantinople.

* * *

The official Church would do well to exonerate itself from two anathemas to which it is subject:

The first anathema is that of the Seventh Ecumenical Synod which decrees: "Whosoever violates any Church Tradition, written or unwritten, let him be anathema."

The First Ecumenical Synod, composed of 318 God-bearing Fathers, gave us the Old Calendar. The New Calendar was given by Pope Gregory and the Freemason, Meletios Metaxakis.

The official Church accepted it without difficulty, despising and violating the Tradition of the First Ecumenical Synod, and consequently incurring the aforementioned anathema of the Seventh Ecumenical Synod, as well as the following anathema of the same Synod:

"Any innovation made against Church Tradition and the teaching and formularies of the Holy and ever-memorable Fathers, in the past or in the future is subject to threefold anathema" (Synodikon of Orthodoxy).

The illegitimate and uncanonical introduction of the New, Papal Calendar by Patriarch Meletios Metaxakis is an innovation antithetical to the Tradition of the Holy and God-bearing Fathers.

The second anathema is that of the herald of God, the Apostle Paul: "If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that you have received, let him be accursed" (Galatians 1:9).

The Holy Apostles have handed down to us a fast after the Sunday of All Saints, which the illegitimate introduction of the New Calendar at times completely eliminates.

The Fast of the Holy Apostles is either non-existent, or sometimes lasts one day, sometimes two. This year it is four days.

* * *

But are even the so-called True Orthodox Old Calendarists exempt from anathemas?

They are transgressors and despisers of the first Tradition: the great commandment of Love.

They have despised, violated, and cast aside the commandment of Love, hating one another, biting one another, beating one another.

They re-Baptize and re-Chrismate many New Calendarists who have been Baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

The Orthodox Church accepts even heretics, provided they have been Baptized with the Orthodox form of Baptism. It re-Chrismates those who have denied Christ or their Baptism; it does not re-Baptize them.

Certain Old Calendarist zealots believe and think that the Mysteries are invalid without the [Old] Calendar and that without the [Old] Calendar there is no salvation.

There is no greater heresy than this!

* * *

Dear Father Dimitrios:

For forty years I have been beseeching and still beseech God to bring to an end the fearsome turmoil, the frightful tempest of the Church and to restore peace to it; and one night I heard an invisible voice saying:

"To the perverse, God sendeth perverse ways." [cf. Proverbs 21:8]

I am distressed, disheartened, I mourn and lament, and do nothing else, as one of little faith, than to call out with the voice of Peter: "Master, save us, we are perishing!" [cf. St. Luke 8:24] Save us, O Lord, from the present crooked, perverse, depraved, polluted, shameful, and wicked generation.

Let us not completely despair, however, but let us continue crying out like Peter: "Master, save us, we are perishing!" And let us hope that as One sympathetic, compassionate, and merciful, He will extend His hand to us, as to Peter, and will say to us: "O ye of little faith, wherefore did ye doubt?" [cf. St. Matthew 14:31].

Wish and pray and implore that the Heavenly Father enlighten the leaders of the Church to cease biting one another, so as not to consume [one another], but to make peace among themselves and return the Church to the Traditional Orthodox Calendar, so that it might become once more one Church.

With brotherly love in Christ,

+ Archimandrite Philotheos Zervakos

 

Source: Agios Kyprianos, No. 324 (January-February 2005), pp. 151-154.