Chorbishop Maxim of Novo Brdo and Panonia | August 16, 2021
In the recently published Letters
of Saint Justin of Ćelije, in two volumes, the depth, Orthodoxy,
evangelical character, and vitality of the spirit, tradition, and words of this
holy father have been even more fully revealed to our Orthodox public. It is
not possible in one brief article to convey all the spiritual pearls from Saint
Justin’s Letters, especially those confessional ones directed against
the church-destroying and God-opposing heresy of Ecumenism. Therefore, here we
shall present only a few quotations that are especially interesting and
important for us, because they confirm that our Abba and the blessedly reposed
Bishop Artemije always had, as the chief guiding principle of his actions and
deeds, the tradition and blessing of his holy elder Justin.
Our blessedly reposed Elder
Artemije transmitted to us more than once the oral tradition, the blessing of
Saint Justin, which had been left to him. We have already publicly conveyed
this blessing and testament of Father Justin many times, in written and spoken
form, but we shall repeat it, so that the unwavering correspondence between the
theological position of our blessedly reposed Bishop Artemije, and therefore
also of our Diocese, and the theological position and stance of Saint Justin of
Ćelije may be clearly seen. Namely, when Bishop Artemije asked whether he
should accept the episcopal rank, if it were offered to him, Father Justin
answered: “Yes! For if the entire Synod in the Church strays from the path
of the Faith, a bishop has the authority to set apart his own diocese and
thereby save and preserve the Church.” Bishop Artemije, like a good
disciple faithful to his great teacher of the Faith, Justin, carried out and
fulfilled this blessing conscientiously and in a patristic manner, recognizing
the proper moment for it and finding canonically adequate ways.
On the other hand, in the Letters
of Saint Justin we read the following lines:
“I am not surprised that the
zealot of Orthodoxy, Metropolitan Ambrose of Eleutheropolis, [1] has
ceased commemorating the unfortunate Patr[iarch] Athenagoras. THIS IS WHAT ALL
TRUE ORTHODOX BISHOPS SHOULD DO. [2] It seems that there is no measure
to his falling and ruin. To the terror and horror of heaven and earth, today
two wretched Orthodox patriarchs are competing in Judas-like betrayals: the
Patriarch of Constantinople—Athenagoras, and the Patriarch of Moscow—Alexei.
And the greatest responsibility falls upon the Orthodox Church of Greece, which
alone is in freedom, and is obliged to call all the Local Churches to a
conciliar and synodal resistance against the Judas-like betrayals of these two
mindless patriarchs. — Many thanks to you, my dear child, for sending me
clippings and information about the apostasy of these two patriarchs.” [3]
This letter, the 70th in order,
was addressed to the then Hieromonk Amfilohije, later Metropolitan of
Montenegro and the Littoral. Saint Justin of Ćelije wrote a great deal against
Ecumenism both to Metropolitan Amfilohije and to Bishop Atanasije Jevtić,
evidently foreseeing and already then perceiving that both of them were
inclining toward that heresy. Unfortunately, Saint Justin’s foreboding did not
deceive him, for later both of them fell deeply and became mired in this
impious heresy, gave themselves over to the foul waters of globalist
liberalism, and became the chief bearers and introducers of this anti-Christian
spirit into our holy Serbian Church. The letters of Saint Justin addressed to
them are a kind of exposure of them, because they show how much they ignored
and sinned against almost everything that Abba Justin had written to them.
On the other hand, this
epistolary tradition of Saint Justin, that is, his God-inspired, warm, paternal
letters, shows how much our blessedly reposed Bishop Artemije remained faithful
in every detail to his spiritual father, the all-Serbian Abba Justin of Ćelije,
the great teacher and confessor of the Faith. Amfilohije and Atanasije Jevtić —
Bishop Irinej Bulović is not worthy of mention as a disciple of Abba Justin,
because of his ecumenist extremism, in all likelihood irreversible — went along
the broad path of contemporary globalism: Ecumenism and liberalism-innovationism.
But Bishop Artemije, of blessed memory, went against the current of this world,
swimming upstream. For this reason, evidently, when Father Justin mentions him
in the letters addressed to the two aforementioned men, he does not call him
“Father Martirije” by chance, which in Greek means “martyr.” Every pious soul
reads from this the divinely enlightened foresight of Saint Justin, by which he
foresaw the paths of his disciples in the future: the ecumenist path of those
two, and the martyric, that is, confessional and suffering path of our elder
and bishop Artemije, of blessed memory.
On this occasion we shall point
out to the public only one more profound and moving confessional testimony of
Saint Justin against the pan-heresy of Ecumenism. Thus, in the same 70th
letter, he says: “The Church: a Theanthropic organism, the Theanthropic
Body, a Theanthropic Person, and therefore always indivisibly one, one in all
worlds… [4] Contemporary Ecumenism: ‘false Christs’ = false messiahs,
‘false prophets.’ There: diversities of faith, alien faiths, half-faiths,
little faiths, unbeliefs. The problematic of contemporary Ecumenism is purely
worldly, politicking; in fact: communist-papist, everything reduced to ‘social’
values, earthly, humanistic, transient. [5] There is neither the
Theanthropic center nor evangelical problematic; it does not seek ‘first’ the
Kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matt. 6:33), but rather the kingdom of
this world and everything that is of it and for its sake. The problem of unity,
[6] according to its ontological essence, cannot be solved by any
‘dialogue,’ but only by repentance before the God-man, Who is the Church.
‘Remember therefore from where you have fallen, and repent’… (Rev. 2:15–16).
Through Ecumenism, a purely worldly, international, atheistic-communist,
humanistic, and God-fighting humanist problematic has crept into the Church and
taken mastery over it. In communist countries, the communists dictate to the
Orthodox Churches the ecumenist problematic and the solution of its problems.
There is not a trace of apostolic-patristic conciliarity, of freedom in
expressing and confessing the Faith. This is: Ecumenism = the nihilism of
Judas-like Nikodims, Alexeis, Germans… ‘Rhodes’? — Pro-communist understandings
of Orthodoxy and of the problematic of the Orthodox Church. Under the tyranny
of Russian-Serbian communist nihilism, and Greek libertarian-Protestant
rationalism, scholasticism, anarchism, and Athenian adventurism.” [7]
The tradition and testament of
Saint Justin set forth here will be a wholly sufficient lesson for every
Orthodox conscience, and especially for bishops who consider themselves, or
wish to be, “true Orthodox bishops.” Here the measure of their rectitude
and their Orthodoxy has been set forth, according to Saint Justin, by which
they will be able to measure themselves in this time, the time of the same
apostasy, only further advanced; for almost all of today’s patriarchs and many
hierarchs, in free-thinking, betrayal of the Faith, that is, non-Orthodoxy,
have surpassed their ecumenist predecessors from the time of Father Justin. In
the lines cited above he mentions Nikodim Rotov, Russian metropolitan from 1963
to 1972, a crypto-Catholic, an ecumenist, who died at the pope’s feet; Alexei
I, Patriarch of Moscow; Athenagoras, Patriarch of Constantinople from 1948 to
1972, a mindless ecumenist; German, Patriarch of Serbia from 1958 to 1990, who
enrolled the Serbian Orthodox Church in the Geneva ecumenist gathering in 1965.
And in place of them, in more recent and present times, we have had Amfilohije,
Atanasije Jevtić, Patriarch Irinej, and Irinej Bulović and his exponent,
Patriarch Porfirije, together with their whole ecumenist brotherhood, continue
to act in the Serbian Church. These newly enumerated ecumenist laborers are
only an advanced variant of the old heresy called Ecumenism, secularism, and
apostasy.
Although in many tendentious
footnotes Atanasije Jevtić, as editor of the Letters, tries to blunt
Saint Justin’s anti-ecumenist edge, and to muddy the clear water of his
patristic purity of confession of faith, he did not succeed in this. But he did
succeed in revealing the theological richness of Saint Justin of Ćelije,
especially where a sound stance toward the heresy of Ecumenism is concerned;
and may the Lord, at His inexorable judgment, at least count this unintentional
good deed to the departed Bishop Atanasije Jevtić.
The only path of the Serbian
Church, and of the Church in general, is the path of the holy fathers;
especially in this time, the only true path is the path of Saint Justin of
Ćelije. It is not at all a question of whether this path will triumph; that is inevitable,
for not even the gates of Hades shall prevail against the Church (Matt. 16:18),
let alone a handful of ecumenist and globalist bishops. The only question that
remains is who will stay on the path of the Church, that is, in the Church? It
is for all of us, in this sense, to keep constant watch over ourselves and to
hold firmly to the patristic and Saint-Justinian path, until the ecumenist and
globalist “little cloud” [8] passes; and, God willing, it will pass.
NOTES
1. His Eminence Metropolitan Ambrose of Eleutheroupolis
(1917–1984), Greek Orthodox Church. Secular name: Elias Nikolaou. He was born
in Nafpaktos in 1917. He studied theology at the Theological School in Athens.
He was ordained deacon in 1940 by Metropolitan Ambrose of Phthiotis, and
presbyter in 1946 by the same metropolitan. He was a parish priest, military
priest, and secretary of the Holy Synod. On March 4, 1956, he was consecrated
titular Bishop of Christoupolis, auxiliary bishop of the Metropolis of Mytilene.
On September 22, 1958, he was elected Metropolitan of Eleutheroupolis. He
reposed in Athens on July 27, 1984. (+Chor. Maxim)
2. Emphasis ours. (+Chor. Maxim)
3. Venerable Justin the New, Letters, Book 2,
Belgrade, 2020, p. 185.
4. Saint Justin emphasizes this in opposition to the
ecumenists, who by their heresy precisely blaspheme against this dogmatic
truth, acknowledging heretics as also being the Church in a “historical” sense
— the definition adopted at the heretical Council of Crete in 2016 — from which
it follows that the Church is not one, but that there are several Churches,
which is the essence of the ecumenist delusion and heresy. (+Chor. Maxim)
5. Especially today, in the era of the imposition that we
accept various globalist perversions through false love and tolerance; false,
because such love and tolerance is reserved only for those who accept
liberalist ideology as their way of thinking and living, as the ecumenists,
Patriarch Porfirije, and the others have done. (+Chor. Maxim)
6. Of the Orthodox with the heterodox. (+Chor. Maxim)
7. Venerable Justin the New, Letters, Book 2,
Belgrade, 2020, pp. 173–174.
8. When Emperor Julian apostatized from the Faith and began
to lay waste to Christianity throughout the whole Roman Empire, Saint
Athanasius the Great calmly said of him to the faithful: “A little cloud — it
will pass!” (Nubicula est, transibit) — The Prologue of Ohrid,
Reflection for May 29, Saint Nikolai Velimirović.
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