Holy Hierarchs, guard your flocks and drive away the wolves...

Counsels of Elder Philotheos Zervakos

It is not enough, it does not profit only to know the law of God, the commandments, the dogmas, the canons, the apostolic and patristic traditions; we must also keep them. The Lord said, “Whosoever therefore shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matt. 5:19) and “Blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it” (Luke 11:29) ...

Holy Hierarchs, guardians of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church…, take heed, I beg you fervently and implore you with tears. Wolves in sheep’s clothing, having entered into the fold of the rational sheep through politics and the antichristian Masonry, seek to abolish the ordinances set forth by the all-wise Holy Apostles and the God-bearing Holy Fathers, and to Europeanize, Latinize, and modernize. These, and all the despisers of the Apostolic and Patristic Traditions, cast out as infectious wolves from the Orthodox Church, lest they render it heretical, pantheistic, and pan-heresy-bearing with those foreign and heretical things which they strive to introduce…

Holy Hierarchs, take heed, guard the flocks which the Lord entrusted to you, drive away the wolves. Those who speak and act contrary to the ordinances, exhort them to repentance….

The Church has need of many laborers, not lukewarm and lovers of the flesh, but true ones, with faith and zeal, self-denial and wholehearted love toward God and man…

Therefore, these great and mighty ones, falsely entitled as infallible and most holy, puffed up with Luciferian pride, enemies of Orthodoxy and of those faithfully following the Orthodox faith and the apostolic and patristic traditions, it is to be expected that they should war against us, to exercise violence; but we must remain steadfast in the faith and not be afraid… The Apostle Paul, the mouth of Christ, commands us: Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather even reprove them. In circumstances wherein our holy Orthodox faith is despised or insulted, rebuke is permitted, even righteous anger, but silence is forbidden. Yet the rebuke must be done with discernment and prudence, not with agitation and excessive anger…

 

Greek source: Πιστοί υπέρμαχοι της Ορθοδοξίας των Αγιών Πατέρων μας [Faithful Defenders of the Orthodoxy of Our Holy Fathers], Orthodox Kypseli, Thessaloniki, 2010.

Online: https://katanixi.gr/gerontas-filotheos-zervakos-agioi-arch/