Monasticism and Its Importance in Our Age of Apostasy from True Orthodox Tradition

by Archbishop [Metropolitan] Chrysostomos of Etna (+2019)

 

 

We see increasingly, today, a derisive and dismissive attitude among Orthodox Christians, both in the West and more and more in countries where Orthodoxy has been entrenched since Apostolic times, towards Holy Tradition and those who support it, as well as, correspondingly, a clear deviation in the Church from the traditional standards of Orthodoxy. We have gone beyond modernism and innovation, so dominant for some years in the life of the Orthodox diaspora, into an era of what can only be described as worldwide apostasy from what Orthodoxy is and always has been. In the name of an ecumenical ideology that of necessity dismisses as fundamentalism and "right-wing" bigotry the Orthodox Church's claim to primacy in Christianity, we now speak shockingly freely of Orthodoxy as one among many equally true faiths, as one of the branches of the Christian tree, one of the two lungs of the Body of Christ, or as an "Eastern" style of Christianity. While much to its credit, one must say, the Vatican—whatever one may think of the claim—stands firmly, even in its ecumenical outreach, on the foundation of its claim to primacy in Christianity by virtue of its Petrine ecclesiological doctrine (that the Church of Christ was built on St. Peter and that the Bishops [Popes] of Rome are his successors), most Orthodox Churches have, by contrast, come to embrace, at least unofficially, the branch theory of the Church in some form, by way of their ecumenical ties and accords.

From the earliest times, of course, the Orthodox Church has proclaimed Herself to be the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, founded, not on one Apostle, but on the witness of all of the Apostles and on the foundation stone of St. Peter’s confession of the Divinity of Christ. She has always believed Herself, as expressed in an ancient formula, to contain the fullness of the truth that Christ preached, the Apostles proclaimed, and the Fathers of the Church preserved. All outside Her She considers separated, whether by departure from Holy Tradition or through heretical teachings, from the One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, deeming it Her sacred duty to reconcile them, albeit in humility and love, to the historical Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church. If She is, as She sees Herself, the lux ex Oriente, and yet the universal Church, Her witness is a call for all to participate in that light: "Eluceat omnibus lux." Her light is a beacon shining from an undivided Christendom, beckoning all who have strayed from Her to the “unwaning light” that was once shared by all Christendom.

I must reiterate with sadness that contemporary Orthodox, embarrassed by the very self-identity of their Faith, have relativized and betrayed their status. Rather than calling others to draw from the light of Orthodoxy and achieve enlightenment, sanctity, and deification in uniting with God, Who became man so that man might restore the Divinity within him, they have succumbed to the temptation of becoming part of a unified world religion, seeking, rather than deifying union with God (on which genuine human unity is based, and from which it ultimately derives), the lofty but fanciful humanistic aim of human restoration in a mere unity of common commitment to virtue. The folly of this desire is that, without human transformation in Grace and with struggle—the taking on of Christ, the Archetype of man restored—humankind is incapable of such heights, as human nature and history have shown us. Man, without ontological transformation in Being Itself and direct communion with Perfection Itself, is incapable of self-restoration. Indeed, that fantasy leads to the very absurdity of negating the purpose of Orthodox Christianity, which is our deification in Christ. Additionally, it eventually leads, in the quest for worldly recognition, to self-degrading contradiction.

Thus, the Oecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, in an astonishing expansion of neo-Papal "Patriarchal ecclesiology," has of late so dismantled the basic dogma of Orthodox ecclesiastical order itself, which proclaims the equality, under Christ, of all Bishops in the Church, that he has floated a notion of his See as that of the unus sanctus, the "holy one." Encyclicals from Constantinople have gone so far as openly to transform the primacy of honor held by the Patriarch, the primus inter pares (first among equals), into a universal primacy, that of the primus sine paribus (first without equals), oddly enough surpassing, save for infallibility ex cathedra (no doubt soon to come), even the claims of modern-day, post-Schism Roman Popes. Ironically enough, all of this makes a farce of Orthodox ecumenism. How can the unus sanctus and first without equals reconcile ecumenical ecclesiological relativism and neo-Papism—ideas inimical to the self-definition of Orthodoxy—without seeming just a bit disingenuous? [1]

In this age of apostasy in Orthodoxy and in Christendom in general, not just the Constantinopolitan Hierarchy, but Orthodox clergy at many levels, who should be calling others to the treasure that we too often unworthily hold in our hands, have lost or abandoned any commitment to what Orthodoxy is and what our responsibilities to the Church actually are. An ersatz Orthodoxy, moving from the already distorted view that Orthodoxy is simply a corrective to heterodox Christianity, rather than the surviving ancestor and an intact model of undivided Christianity, has given way, at last, to a growing abandonment of Orthodoxy itself. A sort of Byzantino-Protestant religious aesthetic tradition, focused on the “exotica” of Eastern Christian “religious customs,” is slowly emerging in its place, replacing both the Orthodox way of life and the ascetic and sacrificial struggle for self-transformation and salvation in sanctified enlightenment that are at its core. A substitute for Orthodoxy, mere religion, has taken root, wherein life is foremost, afterlife an afterthought. The things of the world are acquired by fervent affirmation (the “name-it-and-claim-it” ritual of American spiritual hucksterism), and the things of the spirit affirmed by tepid declaration. The Church is made to serve the family, not the family the Church, and God is first in word, though not in deed. Justified by vacuous words, earthly gain comes to rule man’s actions. And the Gospel, in imitation of a strange spirit wholly foreign to the Fathers, is studied and touted, rather than lived and revered.

There was a reaction to this trend as early as the first decades of the last century, when the underpinnings of today’s apostate age were being set in place by dynamic forces that assailed the Orthodox Church from all sides: from occult societies to an invasion of the hierarchy by Freemasonry, with its bathetic secret rituals and humanistic teachings about universal human goodness through fraternal charity; from visions of a universal, all-inclusive secular religion to the Living Church movement in Russia, an odd creation of Bolshevik atheism; and from the reform of the Church Calendar, endorsed by the Masonic Hierarchs and the Living Church movement as a first move toward an international religion served by the budding ecumenical movement, to a spirit of witless reform in the name of modernity. Reaction to these forces, with their unhindered commitment to modernism, reform, and religious internationalism, profoundly inspired and affected by such idealist political bodies as the League of Nations, took the form of organized religious movements—some admittedly reactionary, others falsely accused of political aims—for the preservation of “True” or “Genuine” Orthodoxy, [2] often, and especially in Greece and Romania, under the banner of the Church Calendar. [3] The Orthodox advocates of Freemasonry, the Bolshevik atheists, and the early ecumenists saw this reaction as an impediment to the integration of the Orthodox world into a scheme of religious cooperation aimed at establishing a universal Church in service to society and its ends and prerogatives, rather than the acquisition of sanctity and the clearly other-worldly spiritual pursuits of traditional Orthodox spirituality.

In addressing the deviations of contemporary Orthodoxy from the ethos of the ancient spirituality of the undivided Christendom which it is Her mission to preserve and preach, and in recounting the resistance to the aberrant Orthodoxy that we see in the guise of a supposedly new and vibrant Orthodoxy, growing in worldly recognition and relevance (the statement issued by a gathering of Orthodox Prelates in Constantinople during the first week of the Great Fast this year reads like a manifesto from the playbook of the “Gospel made timely”), I am addressing what all Orthodox know to be true, yet dare not utter. Resistance to innovation and an insistence on spiritual and not merely social relevancy exist mostly on the fringes of Orthodoxy today. Why? Because the countercurrents acting against the winds of change that first assailed Orthodoxy almost a century ago arose primarily in conservative monastic circles. Who were, for example, the champions of resistance to the calendar change? The monks on Mt. Athos, who indeed served the Old Calendarist communities in mainland Greece prior to their organization under a synodal structure. This is true in Romania and Bulgaria, as well, where the monastics rose up and led the reaction against secularism in the Church. It was they who were instrumental in checking the disintegration of Orthodox spirituality in the face of seduction by worldly concerns and the spread of secularism, innovation, and trends drawn from the whims and weaknesses of the world. Yet, the genuine voice of monasticism has been marginalized today, since monasticism itself is misunderstood and its centrality in Orthodox life is disappearing.

Traditionally, monasticism was always the barometer of the health of a Church. There is no Orthodox Christian with even a rudimentary foundation in the Faith who has not heard the words of St. John of the Ladder, resounding like an echo from the seventh century even in the deaf ear of our forlorn age: “Christ, the light of the Angels; Angels, the light of monastics; the monastic way of life, the light of all men.” Where the monastic way of life, centered on the purification and perfection of the fallen man and his restoration to true life, is absent, the Orthodox Faith becomes impotent. While spiritual growth and human transformation do not make one blind and deaf to the ills of society—indeed, quite the opposite, I would say—the true Christian way of life, focused on the spiritual world and the inner amelioration of the human condition, stands on the monastic way. This does not mean that all Christians must be monastics, even if that is a wonderful vision and ideal for all to hold in their hearts; however, it does mean that things of the spirit, inner struggle against sin and the passions, and the embracing of asceticism, even while living in the world, are required by all Christians. This is why fasting, including fasting from the flesh, is appointed to lay people and monastics alike. This is why there are no “black” and “white” clergy, clergy and laymen, spiritual aspirants and mere members of the Church. These are all human inventions and a corruption of the oneness of spiritual life. We are all called to the monastic way of life as a standard, and we are all one in striving for that standard: Patriarch, Bishop, married clergy, monastics, Readers, or laymen. There is no distinction.

Without striving for the priorities of the monastic life, Orthodox today are transforming the ascetic road of the Church. The “comfortable pew” (and this in a Church where the ascetic practice of standing in prayer is normative and pews were unknown until recent decades) and a “worship tradition” of religious opera (in fact, as the Divine Chrysostomos tells us, we “pray twice” when we chant, since we thereby eschew emotion and mere music for the quiet sounds of the heart) and exotic Iconography (an “art” which must be undertaken and viewed from within the strictest arena of Orthodoxy, lest it become effete or idolatrous) have taken its place. The Divine Liturgy is not mere worship. Like monasticism, it is a deifying participation in, and communion with, God. It takes on meaning only when it effects in us a complete change, a complete reorienting of the heart towards spiritual priorities, and a realization that this world is a world of folly, sickness, death, despair, and disappointment, unless we find our hope and joy in spiritual transformation and our richness in poverty of spirit, making Christ our refuge and our defense, the Theotokos our consolation and our protection, and the Saints of the Church our archetypes for renewal. Until, like monastics, we turn from this world and live like pilgrims, in but not of it, our worship remains essentially empty. To worship God is to participate in all that we can be, to become what we are not, and to transform ourselves into what we ought to be: what God created us to be. It involves a monastic way of life, again whether we are monks and nuns or laymen.

It is the absence of a monastic spirit in Orthodoxy that has led us to fall to the frightening level of apostasy that we see in the Church today. Gone are the days when families, steeped in the Faith and in monastic values, were described as small monasteries. In addition, monasticism itself has degenerated. And for this very reason, we see a false Orthodoxy coming to light, struggling to legitimate itself with “official status,” canonicity without adhering to the Holy Canons, and piety that comes from and serves the world. We also behold anti-monastic sentiments. While some Orthodox today pay lip service to monasticism—“Oh, I would be delighted to have one of my children become a monastic”—a litany of complaints and un-Christian reactions arises from others. I have even heard “Orthodox” parents say, “Well, I will let my children sow their oats. If they then want to become monastics, fine.” Can one imagine a more secular and un-Christian reaction? But more importantly, do our modernist Orthodox, who let such blasphemy spill from their lips, understand that their words betray their alienation from the Faith? The very life that they wish to deny to their children, and this by way of worldly perversion, is the way of life that they should be following themselves, even within the world. That life, and not sowing the seeds of sin in the destruction of their children’s souls, should be the goal of their own strivings.

We have forgotten, again, what Orthodoxy is: a religion grounded in ascetic efforts to become holy, to acquire Grace, and to become a wholly new person, a novus homo, in this life, so as to prepare for true life in the next world. It entails an attempt to close the gap between this life and the next one by taking on a new identity in Christ, Who reigns in both. A monastic takes on a new name and a new identity when he or she embraces Christ. Some monastics of great zeal even create a new persona, so as not to be distracted by their past in the world. Think of the women who have disguised themselves as men, so as to live in celebrated monasteries; men of strength and manly vigor who tamed their passions to live as virgins; princes of the world who became paupers in monasticism to take on the royal servitude of Christ; peasants who became princes by acquiring the nobility of virtue and humility; men and women of remarkable learning and spiritual insight, or with gifted minds, who feigned foolishness and madness for the sake of Christ, so as to escape the attention of the world and the temptation of pride. We must bring to mind the calling of Christianity: to die to ourselves, that Christ might live within us. Where, then, is there room for the ego, for putting family before God, for giving Caesar what is not his, and for being relevant and “making it in the world”? This is not the Orthodox way. We are called—all of us—to the monastic way, living in the world but not of it.

Only within the way of life that the monastic standard represents can we meet the apostasy that awaits us in the world in every age, and especially in our own. Only by rejecting the ways of the world and its distractions can we attend to what is most necessary: our souls. God allows us to age and to become ill, in order to learn this; yet, we squander the opportunity. The spirit of monasticism is presented to us as an example, from the earliest Christian years, of how to age prematurely in spirit. We reject it or, sadly, pervert it, too. Orthodoxy is given to us as the criterion of spiritual life. But we are defiling it by attempting to conform it to a world that it seeks to renew and transform. We seek minimalism in Orthodoxy and maximal indulgence of the world. Economy becomes the standard, exactitude the exception. Canons that elevate them and give them power and human glory are the main concern of Church leaders, whereas Canons that call us to a life of observance and other-worldliness are dismissed as man-made—the irony of ironies. We seek to expose the sins of others and hide our own. We revel in Church gossip and show indifference to the soul-stirring witness of the Fathers and Mothers of the Church, whose noetic feats have changed the world from within. We exalt social works and denigrate sacrifice for the sake of the spirit. In all of this, we lack the spirit of monasticism, which is the essence of Orthodoxy and the goal of all Christian life, in and outside monastic communities. The result: Orthodoxy, the last bulwark among the historical Churches, is succumbing to the temptation of the world.

There are those who say, when I speak of what I have written here, that the sway of the world is inevitable and that, if we do not embrace it in a realistic way, we will become irrelevant. Monasticism, they say, is outmoded and has become an antiquated institution. Even if, as a poor Christian and a weak human, I am at times tempted to listen to such words, two things dissuade me. One is the example of every good monastic that I know. For every hundred poor monastics, I know a handful who are inspiring examples of perfection in Christ. For me, these “new men and women” are the successful majority of the future: eschatological men and women in our degenerate times who defy apostasy and who make the majority of this age neither here nor there. If one is looking for reasons to believe, why look at the failures instead of the successes? The other thing that dissuades me from accepting an Orthodoxy that bows to apostasy is the vision of the Divine Archetype of the novus homo: Jesus Christ. Taking on our imperfect temptation, His perfect mind perfected our perceptions. When, after His forty days of fasting in the wilderness, Satan said to Him, pointing to the world, “All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me,” Christ said in response, “Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, ‘Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.’” The monastic spirit and the final words of our Lord have implanted in our hearts this clear answer to apostasy.

 

NOTES

1. Of central concern, here, is the dogged opposition of the Orthodox Church to the Petrine doctrine of the Papacy and what it sees as subsequent post-Schism western deviations from the beliefs and practices of the undivided Church. The anti-Papal tradition in Orthodoxy, basic to its confession of faith, does not dispute the pre-Schism eminence of the Latin Fathers or the Roman See, many of the early Bishops of which are esteemed by Orthodox as pillars of sanctity. Often understandably misinterpreted in the West as something akin to backwater anti-Catholic bigotry (a misinterpretation reinforced by certain Orthodox polemicists), this tradition finds its roots in the hermeneutics of the Petrine doctrine, which the Orthodox consider foreign to the Patristic consensus of the early Church; in the different administrative models that came to prevail in the East and West; and in the very Orthodox ethos, which attributes theological primacy and any notion of infallibility to no single individual. Such belongs to Christ and the conciliar authority of the Holy Synods, the infallibility of which, in turn, resting as it does in the conscience of the Church, is affirmed over time and by the unwavering constancy of what each Synod proclaims together with its predecessors.

It is not that the East did not flirt with the ideas from which western Papal monarchy developed. But they were ultimately rejected as violations of the ecclesiastical primacy of Christ and the paramountcy of the conscience of the Church and the People of God. In the early Church, the People even elected and removed Bishops, as they can in Orthodoxy today. Anti-Papalism is thus part of the historical identity and conscience of Orthodoxy. This fact is, of course, lost in the modern and ancient claims of Constantinople to universal sovereignty, which ironically enough were first criticized by a Roman Pope, St. Gregory the Great (†604), who argued for the equality of all Bishoprics. Whether or not he was arguing against Rome’s claim to primacy, as well, as the Orthodox contend, depends on how one interprets the copious references in his writings to the status of the Bishop of Rome. Parsing his commentaries with reference to the later vocabulary of a fully developed Papal theory, he can be said to support Papal primacy. Examining them in the language of a primacy of honor and spiritual eminence, which held sway in the East, one comes to different conclusions. In any case, the irony abides.

2.Most Orthodox traditionalists (originally sarcastically dubbed “Old Calendarists,” an epithet nonetheless subsequently accepted by them as an “honor”) still, in fact, call themselves “True Orthodox Christians,” for which various of their critics have ridiculed them, pointing out that “Orthodox” is simply a synonym for “true.” Thus, the appellation “True→Orthodox Christians,” these critics argue, poses a ludicrous notion: “true truth.” Of course, “orthodox” does not, in the first place, literally mean “true.” But more to the point, this criticism is specious. In logic and statistics, true truths and false truths are certainly valid concepts. Indeed, in scientific methodology, the avoidance of false truths that are wrongly taken as true is a matter of primary concern. In any event, the phenomenon of an artificial Orthodoxy renders its opposite, “true Orthodoxy,” a perfectly apposite description of the repudiation of the deviations of a counterfeit Orthodoxy or an Orthodoxy marked by deficits so salient that they risk changing its very character and objectives.

3.The Greek Old Calendarists, first organized as a union of laymen, and then later, when they were joined by three Bishops from the Church of Greece who disavowed the calendar change, as an ecclesiastical body, were the first to call themselves “True [sometimes the less precise term “Genuine” is used] Orthodox Christians,” or “Γνήσιοι Ὀρθόδοξοι Χριστιανοί”; hence, the acronym “TOC” or “GOC,” the latter often incorrectly used as a transliteration of the Greek acronym, “Γ.O.Χ.,” which is properly transliterated “G.O.Ch.” As noted above, this appellation was adopted by the Old Calendarist traditionalists in other countries, as well— though “Old Stylists,” with reference to anyone who uses the “old style” system of dating, is also sometimes used in Romania and elsewhere.

Among the national Orthodox Churches using the New Calendar, large numbers of organized True Orthodox Christians, formed under resisting ecclesiastical structures, are found to this day in Greece, Bulgaria, and Romania. Traditionalists are also found in Orthodox Churches, such as those of Russia and Serbia, that, while using the traditional Church Calendar, are nonetheless involved in the ecumenical movement. After years of persecution by state and ecclesiastical authorities, fragmentation, and isolation, there is an emerging movement towards a pan-Orthodox traditionalist witness, especially in view of the deeper involvement of world Orthodoxy in ecumenism and its increasing deviation from the traditional teachings and practices of the Church.

 

Source: Orthodox Tradition, Vol. XXXI (2014), No. 2, pp. 17-25.