Sunday, March 9, 2025

The Church in the Last Times...

...All the faithful must understand that the Church is not where it appears to be. The Liturgies will continue to take place, and the temples will be filled with believers, yet the Church will have no relation to those temples, nor to those cassocks, nor to those believers. The Church is where the truth exists. The faithful are those who continue the uninterrupted tradition of Orthodoxy, this work of the Holy Spirit. Priests are those who think, live, and teach as the Fathers and Saints of the Church, or at least those who do not deny them through their teaching. Where this continuity of thought and life does not exist, it is delusion to speak of the Church, even if all external appearances speak of it. There will always be a canonical priest, ordained by a canonical Bishop, who follows Tradition. Around such priests will gather the small groups of faithful who will remain at the end of times. These small groups will each be, in themselves, a local "Catholic" Church of God.

- Hieromonk Theodoretos (Mavros) the Hagiorite (+2007)

 

Original Greek: https://orthodox-voice.blogspot.com/2020/11/2007.html

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