Our Honorable and Sacred Struggle

Monk Mark Chaniotis (+1977) | July 6, 1932 | Athens

 

 

“For the common possession of the paternal treasure of the sound faith, we have stood, fighting.” (St. Basil the Great, Epistle 234)

“Better a praiseworthy war than a peace that separates from God.” (Defense of St. Gregory of Nazianzus)

 

A clear and universally acknowledged schism was caused in the unified body of the One, Holy Orthodox Church of Christ by the introducers of the innovation of the Gregorian Calendar, as we wrote in the immediately preceding issue [of “The Herald of the Orthodox”]. The greater responsibility for this great evil against the Church is borne by the Archbishop of Athens, who, with unjustifiable haste, cooperated in the imposition of this innovation, which a distinguished hierarch, Metropolitan Irinaios of Kassandreia, in a memorandum submitted to the Synod of the Hierarchy of the Church of Greece (1929), characterized as uncanonical, that is, contrary to the very divine and sacred canons of Orthodoxy. But it is indisputable that this innovation of the calendar, as shown previously, overturned the ancient ecclesiastical order and tradition and violated the Church’s most ancient custom, a venerable institution shaped by God-bearing Fathers

In such a case, the innovators not only fought against the external unity of the Church, as it progressed under the holy Ecumenical Councils, but they also clashed with explicit provisions of both the Holy Scriptures and the sacred Synods and holy Fathers—that is, they resisted the very teaching of the Holy Spirit! The matter is admittedly paradoxical! And yet it is true and becomes clear when one considers by what spirit the preachers of the ecclesiastical reform among us were animated, concerning which we wrote in our first article.

This Paul, the Apostle of the nations, ascending to heaven, moved by the Divine Spirit, established as an unalterable commandment for all Christians the unwavering observance of the traditions, enjoining: “Stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle” (2 Thess. 2:15). This commandment Orthodoxy safeguarded as the apple of its eye, from which all the innovators deviated—and thus trampled upon the commandment—whether they introduced innovation through heresy or through schism.

Before this commandment were crushed and shattered the gates of Hades, as well as the mouths of the heretical misbelievers and schismatics! For this reason, the Orthodox Church is held in great reverence even by clergy foreign to her, as preserving unblemished the tradition of the holy Apostles, unwaveringly adhering to what she received from them through the God-bearing Fathers, in accordance with a similar commandment of the Divine Paul: “Continue in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them” (2 Tim. 3:14). “If ever I am to leave my Church,” once said an English senior cleric in London, “I will come to the ancient and deeply revered Eastern Orthodox Church, not to innovative Rome.” And this opinion, added the periodical “Ecclesia,” is that of the majority of English clergy (see no. 42/1924).

But the present leaders of ecclesiastical innovation have declared that tradition pertains only to matters of faith. These new preachers, that is, have limited tradition solely to the objects of belief, forgetting that it simultaneously refers both to the moral teaching of the Christian faith—that is, to the things to be practiced, concerning which the Holy Paul says: “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you” (Phil. 4:8–9)—as well as to the very worship of God, this external expression of faith.

This sacred tradition of the Church concerning divine worship is called unwritten custom by the profoundly discerning ecclesiastical Father, Basil the Great, who assigns such significance to this custom that he writes to the blessed Amphilochios: “…For if we should attempt to dismiss the unwritten customs, as if they do not possess great power, we would err in harming the very essentials, damaging the Gospel itself—indeed, we would risk branding ourselves with shame, we who have placed our hope in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Who taught us in writing to turn to the East during prayer? What Scripture instructed us in this?” (Rallis and Potlis, Collection of the Sacred Canons, vol. 4, p. 283).

Perhaps someone may have any kind of doubt as to whether ecclesiastical tradition also pertains to fasting and feast days, or to the order of the Church. This possible doubt is entirely dispelled by the great among Patriarchs and Confessors, Saint Nikephoros, who clearly defines ecclesiastical tradition and writes the following significant words: “It is possible to observe, even in the sacred assemblies, during the Divine Liturgy or at other times, not a few things performed by us that have been handed down unwritten and are upheld—some depending on the places where they have been instituted or otherwise formed—which we have received from the unwritten and divinely-originated tradition that has come down to us, and all these we honor, preserve, embrace, and uphold no less than those things legislated for us in writing, both of which we claim as securely established from apostolic teaching. For every custom is that which confirms, since practice prevails over speech. For what is law but an unwritten custom, just as again, custom is an unwritten law.” (St. Nikephoros, Patriarch of Constantinople, from the Third Antirrhetic)

Thus, according to the divine Nikephoros, ecclesiastical tradition—which exists and continues among us by custom from the ancient times of the Church—is equivalent and equal in honor for every Christian to those things “legislated for us in the Scriptures,” because both ecclesiastical tradition and the teaching of Holy Scripture are the work of one and the same Holy Spirit.

For this reason, the holy and wise Meletios Pegas, at the Great Synod of 1593 in Constantinople, proposing among other things the condemnation of the Gregorian Calendar, speaks those most profound words: “…Since indeed the Orthodox Church has attained perfection in the doctrines of the knowledge of God and piety, it is just that we too should set limits to every innovation concerning the institutions of the Church, knowing that the authors of innovations have always been the cause of confusion and division among the Churches…” (Tome of Love, Dositheos, p. 542).

Therefore, the complete and perfect opposition of the innovators in the matter of the ecclesiastical calendar to the teaching of the Holy Spirit concerning ecclesiastical traditions is evident, and we shall continue on this in the next issue.

 

Source: Τα Πάτρια, published by Metropolitan Kalliopios (Giannakoulopoulos) of Pentapolis, Vol. 3, No. 9, January-March 1978, pp. 63-66.

Online: https://353agios.blogspot.com/2017/01/blog-post_87.html