The Mission of the Greek People – Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) of Kiev and Galicia (+1936)

On the 90th Anniversary of his repose

 

The Ever-Memorable Metropolitan Anthony at the Holy Monastery of St. Panteleimon on Mount Athos (4-9-1920)

 

Homily Delivered in the Metropolitan Cathedral of Athens on April 5, 1920

Today the Holy Church calls to mind that event in the earthly life of our Lord Jesus Christ in which, for the first time, a mouth of man called Him God. For such a confession, the holy Apostle Thomas is extolled today in various ways in the hymns of the Church, for faith in the Divinity of Jesus Christ is the principal dogma of Christianity; and in this sense one may say that, on the day of Antipascha, the beginning of the Christian faith among men is celebrated.

Everyone knows that, until Christ, the Jewish people possessed the true faith; yet they continually departed from it and betrayed their Lord, being led astray by the idolatry of the neighboring peoples, who attracted them by the superiority of their civilization, despite their inner corruption and moral degradation. Israel was unable to perceive this, just as it was unable to appreciate its own immense moral superiority over its neighbors, until the Lord chastened it by the grievous seventy-year captivity among the Gentiles, after which Israel became impervious to its former temptation. Unfortunately, however, it gave itself over to the opposite extreme and became so deeply possessed by contempt and hatred for the other peoples that it was unable to recognize the long-awaited Messiah, Who brought the proclamation of the reconciliation of all men and peoples. Instead, it rejected Him and was itself rejected by God, and the words of Jesus Christ were fulfilled: “The Kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof” (Matt. 21:43).

And which language, which people received the Kingdom of God according to these words? Many, very many peoples—but preeminently the Greek people, in whose language the Holy Spirit was pleased that the Gospels and, in general, all the books of the New Testament should be written by the hands of the Apostles, as likewise the canons of the holy Apostles, and, by the hands of the Fathers, the divinely inspired decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. Like ancient Israel, the Greek people also, for their strengthening in the faith, endured captivity and conquest by the enemies of Christ—not merely for seventy years, but for five hundred and six hundred years, and in some parts of their land for more than a thousand years. During those centuries of suffering, the people, strengthened in the Christian faith and in Christian patience, proved themselves a worthy firstborn of the Christian Church and, certainly, most fully worthy not only of that freedom and glory which they have received in the present time, but also worthy to restore once again the ancient Byzantine Empire, with Constantinople as its capital and with the Patriarchal throne in Hagia Sophia.

But at the very time when pleasing and splendid prospects are unfolding before Hellenism, it must not close its eyes to those dangers which confront it in its new and glorious position. They are the very same dangers to which ancient Israel was exposed before its captivity. For the Greek people, these dangers have arisen after its liberation from Mohammedan captivity.

The Greeks are now entering into contact with the European peoples, who are more highly civilized, but who have lost the fullness of Christian truth and have fallen away from the Church of Christ. The Greeks borrow, and will continue to borrow, from them the technical advances of commerce, industry, agriculture, and other fields. All these things are good; but God forbid that the Orthodox Greeks, like the Jews of old, while adopting these improvements of earthly existence, should cease to appreciate, or should forget, the immense and incomparable superiority bestowed upon them by God—that is, the holy Faith and Orthodox virtue. It is well known that Western life differs from the life of the Orthodox peoples not merely in certain corruptions of dogmas and canons. No, for the fall of the West has proceeded more deeply. The driving forces of its civilization possess a plainly pagan character; the life of the West, its conceptions and tendencies, differ little from those of ancient pagan Rome. There, the first and chief commandment of the New Testament, the commandment of humility, has not merely been forgotten, but utterly abolished: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” As in ancient Rome, so also in the modern West, man’s sinful egoism has been elevated into a virtue, and senseless combinations of unrelated words have been devised, such as “noble pride.” And yet the West delights in speaking of philanthropy; but hearts filled with egoism are incapable of it. Cold and vainglorious philanthropy does not unite men, but divides and separates them.

It would be a great misfortune for the Greeks if they were to begin not only to receive telephones and phonographs from the West, but also to adopt that harsh, egoistic, and proud spirit by which the peoples of the West are guided both in private and in public life. May no such thing occur. May the Greek people, in their freedom and in their future political glory, preserve all the treasures of the spirit which they did not squander, but rather increased, during the days of affliction and the centuries of servitude: that Christian enthusiasm, that inclination toward struggles, that breadth of soul, that evangelical compassion for the poor and strangers, those virtues which they have always possessed and which, in these days, they are abundantly manifesting toward their Russian brethren in the Faith. Yet the sacred mission which Divine Providence has entrusted to the Greeks is not limited to these holy qualities.

What do I mean by these last words? This: tomorrow, April 6, is the commemoration of two great Greeks, zealous fulfillers of the aforesaid mission of the great Nation: the commemoration of the Equal-to-the-Apostles Methodius, teacher of the Slavs and Khazars, and of his contemporary, the blessed Photius, Ecumenical Patriarch. Imitating these two great men in the enlightenment of all peoples through Orthodox Christianity, and repelling every emerging heresy and every schism, the Greek people, while expanding and strengthening their state, ought to regard this secular work, though great, as secondary; and as their first and principal mission they ought to regard the preservation and strengthening of Orthodoxy and that spirit of lofty asceticism by which, in antiquity, their compatriots, the teachers of the inhabited world, enlightened the world, and which, to this day, the finest Greek ascetics, monks, and theologians hold forth not only to their own people, but also to all the Orthodox nations. For, if the French succeeded in making their Paris the world capital of fashion, the English and the Americans London and New York the world capitals of technology, and the Germans Berlin the world capital of the sciences, the Greeks, a thousand years ago, made the Holy Mountain the world capital of asceticism and piety, where even now representatives of all the Orthodox peoples—Greeks, Russians, Serbs, Bulgarians, Romanians, and Georgians—are spiritually perfected in the service of Christ and dwell together in friendship. Unity in Christ triumphs there over differences of blood; divine truth and eternal salvation are set forth there as the principal and almost sole object of the aspirations of the monastic communities and of individual persons.

Let the Greeks guide along this same path not only the life of the Athonite monks, but also, insofar as possible, that of all the Orthodox peoples, so that they may understand themselves as one people of God, as was also the case in antiquity, in the times of the holy martyrs, whose lives were usually concluded with the following words: “These things took place when the impious Decius reigned over the Romans, but over us the Lord Jesus Christ.”

May the Orthodox Greeks and the other Orthodox peoples, free from heterodox influence, regard themselves as constituting one Kingdom of Christ, one Church—His Body (John 2:28; Col. 1:18), one new man, as the holy Apostle Paul taught us, in whom there is no place for racial enmity or national fanaticism, and may the emulation among men and peoples be an emulation in love (Rom. 13:8).

Nevertheless, do not suppose, Orthodox Greeks, that such a disposition can diminish your patriotism or the development of your national spirit. On the contrary, the national spirit, intellectual abilities, and creative powers of peoples advance when their patriotism is not egoistic but idealistic and religious—when the fatherland appears to her children not merely as the most precious thing in the world, but as the union of her children for lofty, universal, and ecclesiastical purposes. It was precisely under such conditions that the sciences and arts, and even military power itself, flourished in the history not only of the Orthodox peoples but also of others. In such glorious epochs the national character is formed and attains its highest development. By contrast, national fanaticism causes national abilities to wither, and men, casting off their finest national traits, acquire the character of narrow egoism devoid of true national feeling. May this not happen to you, Orthodox Greeks. Rather, may the holy Faith and religious enthusiasm be preserved and developed within you—an enthusiasm that will attract and draw toward Christian Hellenism not only your fellow countrymen, but also all peoples, Orthodox and heterodox, who come to know you, so that in the future also the inhabited world may be taught by you the true Christianity, just as in antiquity, on this present day, mankind was taught it through the response of the Apostle Thomas, filled with faith: “My Lord and my God.”

 

Source: Η ΚΑΙΝΗ ΔΙΔΑΧΗ [The New Teaching], vol. II, Athens, 1920, pp. 357–361.

Greek source online: https://krufo-sxoleio.blogspot.com/2026/07/1936.html