Unknown Facts from the Beginning of the Holy Old Calendar Movement (Part 2)

 

 

Thus is explained why Vasileios of Drama and Prokopios of Hydra resigned from the Ecclesiastical Court that was to judge the confessors (Ta Patria, vol. VII, p. 126). Furthermore, Vasileios of Drama published writings in favor of the holy movement, denouncing the New Calendar, while Prokopios of Hydra, in a journalistic interview, described the situation as “lamentable.” But the one who reproved the innovation more than anyone else—and in particular its chief instigator, Archbishop Papadopoulos—was Irineos of Kassandreia.

He, from as early as 1929, together with Vasileios of Dryinoupolis and Germanos of Demetrias, protested in writing (Ta Patria, same vol., p. 383), and did so even more vigorously in 1933 along with the same bishops, with the addition of Vasileios of Drama (The Agony in the Garden..., p. 47). A year earlier (1932), through a personal letter, he reproached the Archbishop for certain liturgical disorders and especially for the calendar innovation, which at that time was shaking the entire Greek nation, demanding that his letter be read in Synod. Unfortunately, however, following a telephone request by Papadopoulos, his successor to the throne, Chrysanthos, intervened on his behalf, and with a lengthy letter persuaded the late Irineos not to persist—“and thus this sorrowful episode was resolved.” (P. Stamou, Metropolitan Irineos of Kassandreia, Athens 1970, p. 10).

Unfortunately, this is how the confessional crowns are lost! Men who, by reason of their education and virtue, ought to have walked together with the blessed Chrysostomos of Florina remained “uncrowned,” precisely because, at the last moment, human emotions and worldly friendships choked the voice of their conscience, which longed for the opposite! How many, even today, alas, do the same—while their heart desires one thing, that which is Orthodox and praiseworthy, they nevertheless follow the opposite, to the great harm of their immortal soul and of the flock led astray because of them! Truly, unless a man conquers and turns away from the pursuit and esteem of the world, it is impossible for him to please God and to confess His truth with boldness.

THE BETRAYED LEADER

I did not have the fortune to know personally the contemporary confessor of Orthodoxy, the former Florina, Kyr Chrysostomos, who revived the days of Studite boldness and confession in the midst of the twentieth century. But I came to know him through his writings and his collaborators—and most importantly, through the tangible experience of his preaching, having followed, by the mercy of God, the path that the ever-memorable one also followed during the years 1935–1955, when he led the holy movement of the Old Calendarists.

Although God endowed him with many gifts and adorned him with numerous virtues, which he multiplied through his personal, toilsome labor from his youth in the mystical vineyard of the Lord, nevertheless, the difficult circumstances he faced as leader of the G.O.C., and above all, the largely unfit character of his clerical collaborators—with few exceptions—revealed him to be a sorrowful and betrayed ecclesiastical leader. We write the above in full awareness, being well acquainted with the sorrowful and at the same time heroic twenty-year-long pastoral leadership of this man, during which he drank many “bitter cups” at the hands of both his collaborators and his opponents, having as his only reward and consolation the assurance of his conscience that he was fulfilling his duty as a Hierarch of the Church of Christ.

The sorrows arising from his unjust exiles and from the double-minded and timid stance of his fellow Hierarchs—a stance that reached the point of complete abandonment and hostility through the Matthewite Schism of 1937—were sufficiently described by one of his most trusted collaborators, the struggler in Christ, brother Stavros Katramitsos, in his well-known work The Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. But the other tribulations of the man, which followed him until his death—those arising from the pettiness and misunderstandings of his collaborators who were theologically and spiritually weak—are known only to God and to those close to him.

Yet he endured all with calmness and serenity, with saintly meekness and confessional steadfastness. Only one who has followed in the footsteps of his confession in our own days can comprehend what it means to lead such a holy movement without the proper collaborators, being assailed by both enemies and “friends,” and yet continually preserving the sobriety of one who believes in the righteousness of his struggle.

For us, the younger faithful and followers of his holy calling, Kyr Chrysostomos will remain a radiant beacon of Orthodox confession; and thus, with deepest reverence, we bow the knee of soul and body before him, invoking his intercessions before God for the continuation of the holy struggle, the torch of which he handed down to us “with much sorrow and anguish of heart.”

- Hieromonk Theodoretos (Mavros), Hesychasterion of the Divine Ascension, Paros.

Greek source: https://353agios.blogspot.com/2016/05/blog-post_67.html