1924-2024: Our Heavy Debt One Century Later

A Speech by His Eminence, Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Attica and Boeotia

at the Synodal celebration of the Sunday of Orthodoxy Holy Cathedral of Saint Athanasios,

March 11/24, 2024

 

Your Beatitude Archbishop of Athens and All Greece, kyr Kallinikos,

Holy Hierarchs,

Reverend Fathers,

Most Venerable Nuns,

Beloved brethren in Christ,

Allow me, first of all, to express my thanks to the Triune God, Who blessed that we might gather here tonight, in the Holy Cathedral of Saint Athanasios, and perform the Second Lenten Vespers, as well as to the Holy Synod for entrusting the ministry of the word to my unworthiness.

Beginning my speech, I borrow the sacred words of the Synodikon of Orthodoxy and with a loud voice I proclaim:

"To the champions of Orthodoxy, pious Kings, most holy Patriarchs, Hierarchs, Teachers, Martyrs, Confessors, Eternal be their memory"!

Eternal be the memory of all those timeless true children of Christ, of our Saints, who with their steadfast hands responsibly lifted the Cross of confession and sacrificed themselves in order to preserve the Orthodox Faith intact. They sacrificed themselves not out of stubbornness, but out of pure love. They sacrificed themselves because they knew very well that Orthodoxy constitutes the only road to theosis, the ark of salvation, our jewel, the adornment of the human soul, a light which shines, illumines, and warms. They knew that Orthodoxy is a magnet which attracts those who thirst for true life; the bridge which permits the relationship of man with God and of God with man. They knew that Orthodoxy is what Christ taught, what the Prophets foresaw, what the Apostles bore witness to, and what the Fathers received and delivered to us with the command to transmit it to the next generations intact, without concessions.

Eternal be your memory, our blessed Fathers and Mothers! “As lions breathing fire” you rushed forth into the struggle for Orthodoxy and suffered and endured afflictions, mockeries, slanders, persecutions, exiles, imprisonments, tortures, even martyrdom itself. And among all these, you did not lack the obstacles skillfully placed in your works by your supposed fellow combatants, the false brethren. Of what benefit were their hindrances?

If, my beloved, Christ had not come into the world, I would truly wonder where man could find such strength to endure and to come forth victorious from so many difficulties. Now, however, we all know that our Saints, faced with all temptations, had their eyes fixed nowhere else but on the place where the salvation of the human race was accomplished — dreadful Golgotha. They beheld the Creator hanging upon the Tree, sacrificing Himself “for the life and salvation of the world,” and they drew strength and consolation to lift up their own Cross for the sake of the Church.

From the same Crucified Christ from Whom the Saints — Athanasios of Alexandria, Eustathios of Antioch, Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Maximos the Confessor, Germanos of Constantinople, John of Damascus, Theodore the Studite, Methodios of Constantinople, Photios of Constantinople, Mark of Ephesus, Gregory Palamas, and so many others — received strength to go forward, fighting and sacrificing themselves, from that same Crucified Christ our blessed forefathers also received strength, those who lived “at that time,” one century ago. They were not children of another, false god. They were Orthodox Christians, and to Golgotha they too had their eyes turned, so as to endure all that was caused by the great wound which, as it ought not, was inflicted upon the Church exactly one hundred years and one day ago. It was then, as if yesterday, that the 10th of March became the 23rd, and the Body of the Church was torn apart, while the ecclesiastical leaders of those days exulted over the temporal exactness of the reformed calendar, imposed by an Aristinian [i.e., appointed, ad hoc] Synod.

I do not know if I am thinking wrongly. I am deeply troubled. What did Christ desire from us? Did He desire the astronomical precision of the calendar, or the unity of the Church for which He prayed in agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, a short while before the betrayal by the treacherous Judas? “Holy Father, keep them in Thy Name which Thou hast given Me, that they may be one, even as We are one”! How good it would be if all Christians had in our thoughts this desire of the Saviour Christ. Our unity in love and truth would be the strongest sermon for those who have not yet known the incarnate Truth, Jesus Christ.

Perhaps with this mindset the supporters of the calendar reform moved a hundred years ago, as they intended, through the change of the calendar, to achieve “the simultaneous celebration of the great Christian feasts by all the Churches.” Of course, by this phrase of the 1920 encyclical of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, “Churches” are meant not only the local Orthodox Churches, but also all the heretical groups. Certainly, the return of the heretics to Orthodoxy in repentance and the unity of all under the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church is a desired thing, a divine longing. I repeat that Christ prayed for this on the night of the betrayal. However, for such a thing to take place, a strong spiritual condition is required, along with correct actions in accordance with the Canons of the Fathers. The change of the calendar was not an effective move, since it was known that not all the Orthodox would follow it. From what became evident, those who changed the calendar were more interested in approaching the heretics than in preserving communion with Orthodox brethren. How do I explain this? From the fact that, instead of preferring the common celebration of the great Christian feasts by all the Orthodox, they preferred the common celebration with the heterodox. Thus, even if they acted for a good purpose, “a good thing, if not done rightly, is not good.”

Our forefathers, pious and for the most part simple people, saw in the change of the calendar an ulterior motive. For so many centuries the Orthodox Church had followed one calendar without problems. What was the reason for this hasty change, without the convocation of a Pan-Orthodox Council? Of course, for truth’s sake, there was convened what some called a “Pan-Orthodox Congress.” This did not take place on proper foundations, and that is something which will not be analyzed today. Why then the calendar change without Pan-Orthodox agreement? And moreover, why the change at such a historical juncture? After five hundred years of slavery, after the weakening of the Ecumenical Patriarchate because of the Autocephaly of the Church of Greece, after the Balkan Wars, after the First World War, after the genocide of the Greeks of Asia Minor and the Asia Minor Catastrophe, after the violent uprooting of hundreds of thousands of Greeks from their ancestral homes and their mass transfer to the underdeveloped Greek state — was there really such a luxury for the Church to concern itself with the correction of the calendar, knowing very well that this would divide? And all this for what? Perhaps to turn toward the West? We have heard in the recent past from high-ranking government officials emphasizing that “we belong to the West”! They said this in order to pass the well-known law they have recently passed. When we heard this, all conscientious patriots — not only we of the Patristic Calendar — were indignant. But perhaps the former leaders of the Church also contributed, willingly or unwillingly, to our having this outcome toward the West?

This westernization of the Church was felt and feared by those pure fighters who, on the very day of the change itself, went out and went around cities and villages denouncing the betrayal and shouting, “They have made us Franks! They have made us Franks!” Among them — and I record this as a historical testimony, since I served in the Holy Church of the Annunciation in Thebes and met ear-witnesses — were also spiritual children of Saint Nektarios. Loukas Kalatzis, Kimon Stefaniotis, and Antonis Skoumas, when they visited him in 1918, two years before his repose, and asked him about the then-rumored change of the calendar, received the instruction: “Remain as you are”!

– Master, we will not have churches, they said to him.

– Make your houses into churches.

– Master, we will not have Priests, they said again.

– The Panagia will send priests from the Holy Mountain.

And so it happened exactly. The houses became churches, and the Athonite monks joined with the pious faithful, whose “crime” was that they wished to remain as they were, steadfast in tradition. In a single night, struggling Orthodox Christians were mockingly called “Old Calendarists” and were given the pastorally unacceptable label “schismatics,” or, in more recent years, “disorderly members,” solely because they simply continued in the path which for twenty centuries the Church had traced. They did not place themselves outside the Church. The leadership of the Church at that time placed them outside and did nothing to embrace them.

In recent decades, within the official Church it has been permitted for churches to operate according to the old calendar. This constitutes an act of oikonomia, according to ecclesiastical terminology. Such a thing, however, was not accepted from the beginning. In order to extinguish the mighty “movement of piety,” the tactic of the Iconoclast emperors was chosen: persecutions.

Perhaps this sounds exaggerated. Unfortunately, however, it is not. Those who chose not to accept the new calendar did indeed suffer persecutions. This is a large chapter of our more recent ecclesiastical history, over which we are certain no one rejoices. History, therefore, we cannot erase, nor, unfortunately, can we change it. We can, however, allow it to teach us for the present and the future. At this point, I draw the attention of all — both ours and that of our brethren of the new. Let neither we accept the reference to the persecutions in order to recycle the old passions, nor they think that there is an attempt to anoint the wounds of the Lord’s Body with “vinegar mingled with gall.” On the contrary, let us take as “an example of suffering and patience” our fathers and mothers, who with fervent love for God endured grievous circumstances, so that we might imitate their zeal and make use of it for the advancement of the work of the Church. And let them understand that those before them bear a great share of the responsibility for the situation we are experiencing today, as they deepened the division and raised unscalable walls.

I have said before in the past that Greece suffered something worse than what happened to the Orthodox Christians of Russia, Romania, or Albania in the past century. There, the Church was fought against by atheists, whereas here, Orthodox persecuted brothers of the same faith. Our fathers and mothers, because they preserved the calendar tradition, suffered consequences; not only elderly people were mocked, but also schoolchildren; public employees were dismissed; liturgical gatherings were forbidden; there was no possibility even for secret regular church attendance and participation in the Mysteries, because the priests were few and many times traveled great distances to serve secretly. If priests happened to be caught serving according to the old calendar, they were defrocked and imprisoned. If liturgical gatherings were discovered, they were broken up by the authorities, sometimes in so violent a manner that there were even casualties. The most well-known example is that of the New Martyr Saint Catherine from Mandra, who left behind two orphaned children. Indicative of the circumstances is the testimony of one of the leading hierarchs of the official Church, according to whom police, following the orders of ecclesiastical figures, broke into the Monastery of Kosmosoteira, stole valuable objects, and, after throwing down the Holy Bread from the Altar, trampled upon It. Why all this? When in history has the Church of Christ ever been the perpetrator?

Despite the strict measures, our fathers and mothers endured and remained steadfast. Contributing to this, among other things, were wondrous signs that were witnessed during the century, the greatest of these being the third appearance of the Cross in the sky during an All-Night Vigil for the Exaltation [of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross], in the year 1925. If we did not have personal experiences and contact with eyewitnesses, we might consider some accounts exaggerated or unreal. However, such is not the case.

The conclusion drawn regarding the matter of the persecutions is that not only did they not benefit, not only did they fail to achieve the unity of the Church in the bond of love, but they brought results opposite to those desired, as the chasm grew wider and every possibility of rapprochement was minimized. The persecutions compelled the “movement of piety” to become even more established and strengthened. Indeed, in certain cases, fanaticism was provoked.

And while such was the situation, and those following tradition continued to regard the innovation as a step toward the Church’s turning to the West, about twenty-five years after the change of the calendar, the Orthodox Church of Greece officially joined the so-called “ecumenical movement” and became a founding member of the World Council of Churches. In this way, within Orthodoxy, the heresy of Ecumenism came to the forefront — an invention of men, not God-bearing ones.

Recently I heard that the participation of the Orthodox Church in the World Council of Churches is limited only to dialogue. And this dialogue, it is said, takes place so that Orthodoxy may make known the treasure which it bears. Certainly, it is our duty to make known to all the treasure of Orthodoxy. This divine beauty with which Orthodoxy is adorned is not our exclusive possession, but must be transmitted, if possible, to all. However, we reasonably wonder: after so many decades of dialogues with people who are in heresy, how many of them have been drawn into the ark of salvation? Who has accepted Orthodoxy? From what we have seen in recent years, those who come to know and embrace Orthodoxy are people who, having no contact whatsoever with such organizations, seek and find the truth on their own — chiefly through lived experience, and secondarily through words.

Nathanael, as we heard in today’s Gospel reading, came to know and believe in the Saviour Christ through experience. Philip did not say many words to him. He only said, “Come and see.” He came, saw the Light of Christ, and believed. Orthodoxy is a magnet, as I mentioned at the beginning. When it approaches people, converses with them, and does not attract them, it means either that it is not approaching them in the right way, or that these people do not meet the necessary conditions to be drawn. However close, and however long you place a magnet next to plastic, the plastic will remain there, unmoved.

Certainly, we should speak with those who have fallen into the nets of delusion cast by the hater of the soul. Perhaps the lost sheep will return in this way. However, let us not forget: “A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject,” the Apostle Paul teaches us. Is there anyone among the successors of the Apostles greater than the Chief Apostle Paul? Yet here, not only is there no sign of willingness to reject, but even common prayers take place. And all these actions, under the invocation of love. However pure the intentions may be, we ask: is this love in truth? We read in the Proverbs of the Old Testament that “whom the Lord loves He chastens.” Love chastens, educates, reproves, and corrects. If we correct our own people, Orthodox Christians, when they err, should we not much more help those who are not Orthodox to understand their error and correct it? Common prayer with them means legitimizing them and constitutes a transgression of the boundaries “which our Fathers set.” Then, how will they be brought to reflection and return to Orthodoxy? Is it perhaps that by this tactic, in reality, the possibility of their return to Orthodoxy is taken away from them? On the other hand, if someone accepts that heretics are also on the path of salvation, then why do we today celebrate the Triumph of Orthodoxy?

Closing this chapter, with a heart in distress we ask again: how has participation in the affairs of ecumenism benefited the Orthodox Church? Not only have the heterodox not been captivated, but many of the brethren of the new have been scandalized and have raised a patristic voice — a voice of concern and anxiety for the future course. Should we not, in the Holy Spirit, look with humility and a disposition for self-criticism at how the internal wounds, those of our own household, might first be healed?

Much more could be said, not for condemnation, but for reflection. After all, throughout the century there have been many condemnations, as there ought not to have been. We have grown weary of hearing about ecumenist events and the like. For a hundred years much has been written about them, and we know them very well. We have no need of reminders or of information. We have need to know Orthodoxy in our hearts, to live out honesty, love, solidarity, brotherhood, abstaining from ulterior motives, self-interest, and envy. What has never been written, nor ever heard, is of someone among our fellow men who took part in such events, seeing our shining example — we who follow Holy Tradition — becoming thoughtful and voluntarily abstaining from them. Should we not reflect on this? Perhaps now each of us should look with devotion, individually, at how we will manage to become Light, as Christ desires us to be, so that all may be illumined and may glorify in an Orthodox manner our Heavenly Father.

Earlier I mentioned twice that Orthodoxy is a spiritual magnet which draws toward it. Have we become magnets? If yes, this is a cause for joy and doxology to God. If, however, not, then this happens because we have likely not managed to experience Orthodoxy in our hearts. The Orthodox experience is the salt with which we give savor not only to our own life but also to our surroundings. This salt is active when we take care to cultivate in our soul the fruits of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control.

Full of these divine gifts were holy persons who adorned the Sacred Struggle and call us to imitate their example. The Saints: Ieronymos of Parnitha, Ieronymos of Aegina, John the New Merciful, Joseph of Desfina, and certainly Chrysostomos, the former Metropolitan of Florina, and many others in whom we boast in the Lord, were not fanatics. They first took care to adorn themselves with holiness, and then, with their discreet yet dynamic struggle, they managed to prompt reflection, to draw people to tradition, to secure the respect of all, and finally to lend glory to the “movement of piety.”

Unfortunately, however, in many cases their example was not chosen to be followed. At times zeal was not according to knowledge, at times the Sacred Struggle was seen as a field for personal display, at times the passions prevailed, and in the end the Struggle — the Just, the Holy, the Sacred — was not vindicated.

With sorrow our martyric Church experienced, from the first years after the calendar reform, internal wounds, seeing her children weaken her, cut themselves off from her, carry out work parallel to hers, or at times even hostile against her, taking advantage of the absence of legal protection. The schisms were, and continue to be, a painful wound. Matters of faith ceased to be the causes of separation, and in their place came situations of self-interest, personal differences, and, in any case, things unworthy of the circumstances.

Separation is sorrowful, because the struggle is common. It is a struggle for the preservation of the traditions, a struggle against ecumenism. Why, then, the separation?

On the other hand, the difficult internal situations, the excessive zeal which turns into a judge devoid of discernment, the lawlessness which has at times been observed, the envy of what is good — these have been obstacles to the possible progress of the Church’s work. These, of course, are human passions, and it is natural for them to exist in the spiritual infirmary of the Church, provided, of course, that there is also the willingness for their healing — not their enlistment against the Church. Let us not forget, moreover, that just as God is not pleased with ecumenism, so He is not pleased with personal passions, self-interest, suspicion, and ingratitude. What meaning does a struggle for Orthodoxy have on an unorthodox basis, without love, without striving for the purification, the illumination, and the theosis of the soul?

The struggle against ecumenism does not automatically mean the struggle for the Church, and this is something we should take note of. Ecumenism is an external matter, in the sense that we ourselves have never been involved in it. There are so many other, internal matters for which it is worth working. It is worth working so that our children may love Christ and so that our churches may be filled with young people, who constitute the future of the Church and of society. It is worth struggling so that our children are not led astray by the sirens of the world, as we have seen happen many times. It is worth transmitting to our children true Orthodoxy, the spirit of love and openness, so that they will not only avoid being caught in the nets of the world, but will also draw souls to Christ. It is worth working to bring forth new clergy, with education, with the love of Christ, with zeal to labor in the spiritual field of the Lord, where “the harvest indeed is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” It is worth working so that our churches are not left without liturgy. It is worth working to secure the trust of Orthodox Greeks toward our great mother, the Church. It is worth working so that the flame of the monastic state is rekindled. In former times our monasteries teemed with dedicated souls. Now? In the Church, beloved, there must be no decline, but only progress! It is our duty to work for the preservation of our traditions and our history, while also playing an active national role. We have the capacity for all this. We can overturn the situation by the grace of God. We can spread the Light of Christ. It is enough to cultivate our soul in the Holy Spirit, setting aside any personal shortcomings, and to move forward united and with unity as our guiding principle — the unity which was shaken exactly one hundred years and one day ago.

I pray on this holy day of Orthodoxy, today when our Church celebrates the restoration of the icons and the peace and unity that was sealed after 116 years of separation caused by the heresy of iconoclasm, that God may bless, that the impossible may become possible, and that we may see the unity of the Church as something for which we bear upon our shoulders the heaviest of debts. We have the duty to look intently into the necessary matters with a pure gaze and a spirit of reconciliation and love in Christ, so that another century may not pass in this way. We owe it to the relics of our departed. We owe it to our children.

 

Greek source: https://www.imab.gr/index.php/latest-news/2919-1924-2024-t-vary-mas-xreos-nan-a-ona-meta-milia-to-sev-ttik-s-ka-voiotias-k-xrysostomou