Wisdom from the Matthewite Elder Gennadios of Akoumia (+1983)

 

Relevant to the confession of the Venerable Father is also the following incident (Stylianos Papadogiannakis describes it in his book)… When the blessed Gennadios “was caught up into Paradise,” he saw, among others who were saved, a Christian woman from Akoumia…Then a woman, whom Mr. Papadogiannakis characterizes as “hasty,” asked him:

“Father Gennadios, but how did this woman go to Paradise, since she lived according to the New Calendar?”

“How many people with the New,” the Venerable One clarified, “will be found in Paradise, and how many with the Old will be found in Hell! The old festal calendar is, without doubt, the correct one; however, the calendar alone will not save us, whether old or new, but our works, our Christian life, and above all the philanthropy of God.”

From this incident it follows that the blessed Father HAD NOT DOGMATIZED THE QUESTION OF THE CALENDAR, just as, moreover, the Genuine Orthodox Church has not dogmatized it either. The Elder taught that man’s salvation is “above all” the work of the philanthropy of God and not the result of a formal attachment to the Old Calendar; that man is saved in the Church and through the Church; that the Church is One, the very Church in which he himself lived, struggling, and was perfected, being sanctified: the Genuine Orthodox Church, which on the local level was expressed by his spiritual father, Hieromonk Kallinikos, and not by the New Calendarist priests of his area, with whom he maintained excellent friendly relations, but no spiritual relations at all.

- Ο Όσιος Γεννάδιος Ακουμίων Κρήτης (+1983), by Professor Antonios Markou. Translated from the original Greek.

 

Source: https://syghorisis.blogspot.com/2013/12/1983_29.html