Subdeacon V. Kirillov [of ROCOR-A]: The important letter by the renowned Greek elder reproduced below is also valuable because it not only demonstrates a patristic approach to the calendar question, free from fanaticism and “zeal not according to knowledge,” but also explains the moderate position of the Old Calendarist Metropolitan Cyprian, who was a spiritual son of Archimandrite Philotheos (Zervakos).
[Note: This letter was written after
the reception of extremist Mother Magdalene Karagatsidou and her convent of the
Annunciation in Kozani by the Church of the G.O.C. of Greece. She was the
author of Nektarios Kethalas: Iconoclast, Latinist and Ecumenist and
other defamatory works against St. Nektarios of Aegina, who was Elder
Philotheos’ spiritual father. The elder wrote elsewhere: “Without humility, all
virtues are useless. The nun Magdalene was hostile to the fact that St.
Nektarios performed and continues to perform miracles. She even wrote a book.
Among her other blasphemies, she declared that the Mystery of the Eucharist is performed
by the Holy Spirit only when the Julian calendar is followed. She also said
that anyone who recognizes Nektarios as a saint will be accursed by an
Ecumenical Council, and so forth. Thoughtlessly, she curses God and the saint.
For God has glorified His saints on account of their humility, faith, and love”
(The Blessed Elder Philotheos Zervakos, Thessaloniki, 1994). – Blog
Admin.]
My dear and
beloved child Angelos, rejoice in the Lord!
I received your
letter of August 17/30, 1975, and am replying, although I am old and infirm.
The Old Calendar was established
by the 318 holy God-bearing Fathers who gathered at the First Ecumenical
Council; all the other Ecumenical and Local Councils agreed with it, and for
approximately sixteen centuries, millions of holy Orthodox Christians followed
it. This continued until 1923, when Meletios Metaxakis, the Ecumenical
Patriarch, entered the sheepfold—not through the door, but by climbing in like
a thief, criminally, with the aid of the political power of England and France.
He unlawfully abolished the patristic Orthodox calendar and criminally and
uncanonically introduced the new, papal calendar, because he was in secret
collusion with the Freemasons (being himself a thirty-third-degree Freemason)
and with the falsely Christian, falsely infallible Pope of Rome.
The introduction
of the new papal calendar abolished the tradition of the First Ecumenical
Council concerning the celebration of Pascha. Regarding this same tradition,
the Great Local Council of Antioch also decreed that those who dare to alter or
violate what the First Ecumenical Council laid down concerning the time for
celebrating Pascha, if they are bishops, priests, or deacons, are to be
deposed, and if they are laypeople, are to be excommunicated. The Seventh
Ecumenical Council decreed: “Whoever rejects any Tradition, whether written or
unwritten, let him be anathema.”
The criminal adoption of the new
papal calendar, introduced by the utterly lawless arch-Freemason, Ecumenical
Patriarch Meletios, has, in this year of 1975, entirely abolished the fast
established by the holy apostles, which begins after the feast of All Saints
(it is treated with contempt in the new calendar). Sometimes this fast lasts
one day, sometimes two. The foremost Apostle Paul, the mouth of Christ, says in
his Epistle to the Galatians: “If anyone preaches to you a gospel other than
what you have received, let him be anathema” (Gal. 1:9). Moreover, all the
Ecumenical and Local Councils subject those who transgress and despise the
apostolic and patristic Traditions to anathema and excommunication. In the
epilogue to the sacred canons, the holy apostles decreed: “This is what we
command you, O bishops, concerning the canons. If you hold firmly to the
canons, you will have peace; but if you violate them, you will incur
retribution and will perpetually wage war against one another; you will be
punished and receive the recompense you deserve.”
The war that
contemporary bishops wage against one another and the calamities they bring
about, acting like Cain, Judas the betrayer, crucifiers, murderers, reprobates,
boors, and rabble, are the fruits of ignorance and contempt for the sacred
canons and apostolic and patristic Tradition. If the Head and Founder of the
Church, the Prince of Peace, does not have mercy on His few faithful and chosen
servants and send discerning, prudent, meek, humble, peaceable men (to remedy
this problem), utter destruction will ensue. “But if you bite and devour one
another, beware lest you be consumed by one another” (Gal. 5:15). So much for
the New Calendarists, who despise the sacred canons and apostolic and patristic
Tradition.
Now let us also
look at those schismatic Old Calendarists who call themselves “Genuine Orthodox
Christians.” A truly Orthodox Christian is one who has a firm and fervent faith
in the True God, love for God and neighbor with all his soul and all his heart,
sincere humility, and meekness. When our Lord Jesus Christ sent His disciples
into the world, He said to them: “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel
to every creature” (Mark 16:15). He told them to preach the Gospel; He did not
tell them to preach the old calendar! “He who believes and is baptized will be
saved” (Mark 16:16). Whoever believes and is baptized in the Name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit—not in the name of the old calendar! The
Evangelist John, the high-soaring eagle of theology, said: “God is love, and he
who abides in love abides in God, and God in him” (1 John 5:20) [sic: 1
John 4:16]. He did not say that the old calendar is God or that whoever abides
in the old calendar abides in God.
Our Lord Jesus
Christ Himself, perfect God and perfect Man, said: “Learn from Me, for I am
meek and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matt. 11:29).
He did not say that they should learn from Him because He was an Old
Calendarist, as some Old Calendarists claim in their excessive zeal that Christ
was an Old Calendarist. What nonsense—Lord, have mercy! Learn from Me, He says,
for I am meek and humble in heart, and you too will become like Me and find
rest for your souls. He did not say, “Become Old Calendarists.” Thus, the Old
Calendarists falsely boast and claim that they are truly Orthodox; they are
truly heterodox, since they believe not in God but in the old calendar. The
Apostle Paul, the mouth of Christ, says: “Without faith it is impossible to be
saved.” The Old Calendarists say that without the old calendar it is impossible
to be saved.
Our Lord Jesus
Christ calls us to love not only those who love us but also our enemies. The
Old Calendarists hate even their fellow Old Calendarists. They hate one
another, insult one another, beat and wound one another. They should be ashamed
to call themselves not only genuinely Orthodox but even Christians or rational
human beings. Even unbelievers, the impious, and the most degraded people
behave outrageously, fight, and beat one another on the roads, in marketplaces,
and in taverns, but they do not dare to humiliate others inside a church. The
insolent bishops, priests, and other clergy who call themselves “Genuine
Orthodox” and who beat their brethren in the Church of the Annunciation in
Chalkidiki must repent of this and cease exercising their sacred ministry; if
they do not do so themselves, Apostolic Canon 27 nevertheless deposes them.
The Orthodox Church holds that
all the saints—apostles, martyrs, prophets, hierarchs, venerable monastics, and
the righteous—were sanctified and saved through faith, love, humility, and good
works, through observing and keeping the commandments of God. The Old
Calendarists (fortunately not all, but unfortunately many) are extreme
fanatics, zealots not according to knowledge, who believe that without keeping
the old calendar there is no salvation. Some of them think and preach that if a
Christian has a multitude of sins and is immersed in them up to his neck, yet
keeps the old calendar, he will be saved!
The Orthodox Church believes and
teaches that the Holy Spirit performs the Holy Mysteries: Baptism, Communion,
Repentance, Confession, and the others. Bishops and priests celebrating the
Mystery of Baptism pray with faith and reverence, asking Almighty God the
Father to send down the Most Holy Spirit and sanctify the water, making it
water of redemption and sanctification, cleansing soul and body, releasing the
bonds of sin, for the remission of transgressions, the illumination of the
soul, the renewal of the spirit, the grace of adoption, a garment of
immortality, a fountain of life, and so forth. When celebrating the Holy
Eucharist, they pray for the descent of the Holy Spirit and the
transubstantiation of the bread on the diskos into the precious Body of Christ
and the wine in the chalice into His precious Blood. After confession, the
priest says to the person receiving absolution: “The grace of the Most Holy
Spirit absolveth and forgiveth thee in this age and in the age to come.”
Likewise, in all the other Mysteries, following the prayer, the Holy Spirit
sanctifies mystically and invisibly. But the fanatical Old Calendarist zealots worship
the old calendar, deny all this, and think that the Mysteries are invalid and
that the Holy Spirit does not descend because the old calendar is absent,
because the bishops and priests are not Old Calendarists! There is no greater
spiritual delusion (error), impiety, or madness than this. Gregory the Great,
the Theologian, says: “The Holy Spirit does not ordain everyone, but He acts
through everyone.” And the divine Chrysostom says that the Mysteries are
performed even through an unworthy priest, since it is the Holy Spirit who
performs them, regardless of the unworthiness of the clergy, for the
sanctification of the faithful and their communion with God through the
Mysteries. All the holy fathers agree with this view of the three great
luminaries of the world (Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and John
Chrysostom). Only the fanatical Old Calendarist zealots disagree and, wishing
to show that they are superior to and wiser than the holy fathers, preach that
those who partake of the Holy Mysteries in New Calendarist churches consume
bread, wine, straw, and hay!
A hieromonk and spiritual father
at a monastery on Syros, wishing to demonstrate his extraordinary zeal (though
for the old calendar rather than Orthodoxy), held that without the old calendar
the Mysteries could not be performed and salvation was impossible. He advised
Christians not to attend churches or receive Communion, because the New
Calendarist priests and their churches had become Catholic. He advised
everyone: “It is better to stay at home, fill a cup with wine, dip a slice of
bread into it, and eat and drink, but do not receive Communion from the New
Calendarists. I abhor it, trample it underfoot, and revile it with obscene
expressions.” O supreme impiety and madness! For this, the most merciful God
(Who is often patient and does not repay us according to our iniquities and our
sins), being righteous, punished the impious, insolent blasphemer. “For … every
transgression and disobedience received a just recompense, how shall we escape
if we neglect so great a salvation?” (Heb. 2:2–3), and “Tribulation and anguish
upon every human soul that does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek!”
(Rom. 2:9). The aforementioned utterly impious hieromonk, who with obscene,
foul words blasphemed and insulted the Holy Body and Blood of our sweetest
Christ with his foul tongue, was manifestly punished as an example to others.
Having lost the grace of God, deluded and ungrateful like Judas, he took a rope
and hanged himself in the narthex of the church he had built.
Yet even at that moment, the
all-good God, Whose patience is beyond words, again wished to save him, as He
had saved the wise thief on the cross, and sent someone there who, seeing him
hanging and gasping for breath, called the neighbors for help. They quickly cut
the rope and saved him. However, since he did not sincerely repent, he went mad
and was confined in an institution for the insane. He lived there for a short
time, and as he approached death, the director of the institution, a devout
woman, called a priest to administer the Holy Mysteries to him so that he would
not die without Communion. The priest eagerly hastened to come, but when he
approached to administer Holy Communion, the Bread of Life, the Heavenly Bread,
he witnessed a horrifying sight. As he himself told me, he saw the impious and
insane hieromonk, the blasphemer of Holy Communion, eating his own excrement! O
how ineffable and righteous are Thy judgments, O Christ, Who lovest mankind and
art also righteous! The priest did not give Communion to the man who was eating
his own excrement. The same priest buried him and was present when his body was
later exhumed. His remains were found entirely undecomposed, black, and
foul-smelling, with his tongue protruding from his mouth! God is not mocked. It
is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God! And the man who
had previously boasted beyond measure that he was supposedly truly Orthodox
because he followed the old calendar, and who had condemned the “New
Calendarists” as anathematized and accursed, whose bodies would remain
undecomposed forever, himself died a miserable death, eating his own excrement!
O foolish Old
Calendarists! Who has led you astray? Who taught you to think and believe that
the old calendar is equal in power to the Most Holy Spirit, or greater, and
that when the New Calendarists pray to God to send down the Holy Spirit and
sanctify the Mysteries, the old calendar does not allow Him to come because
they are “New Calendarists,” but permits Him to come only to those who strictly
observe the calendar—the “Old Calendarists,” the fanatical zealots!
When the holy
fathers handed down the old calendar to us, they said: “We hand down to you the
Julian calendar, on the basis of which we have decreed that everyone should
celebrate the feast of Pascha together, in peace and unanimity, on the same
day, so that some do not celebrate earlier and others later, giving rise to
enmity, verbal disputes, and strife.” They did not say that whoever keeps the
old calendar will be saved, or that on this old calendar hang all the Law and
the Prophets. This is the teaching of the deceitful Satan, the hater of good,
utterly wicked and exceedingly destructive. The evil enemy brought about the
downfall of our first parents by telling them not to listen to God but to
listen to him, so that they might become gods. This same deceiver also beguiled
the Old Calendarists into calling themselves “Genuine Orthodox” on their own
authority, and in their heedlessness they accepted his counsel rather than the
commandment of God given to His disciples and to all of us, the faithful: “When
you have done everything commanded you (that is, kept My Law, My commandments,
and all My injunctions), say: ‘We are unprofitable servants, for we have done
what it was our duty to do’” (Luke 17:10). He did not command us to say that we
are genuinely Orthodox.
By accepting the counsel of the
evil Satan, the hater of good, and calling themselves “Genuine Orthodox,” the
Old Calendarists abandoned the commandment of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who
commanded: “When you have done everything … say: ‘We are unprofitable
servants,’” and “Learn from Me, for I am meek and humble in heart, and you will
find rest for your souls,” and rejected humility. God, Who resists the proud
and gives grace to the humble—the Holy Spirit, Who, according to the wise
Solomon, rests in meek hearts—withdrew from the hearts of the Old Calendarists;
more precisely, they drove Him out, choosing the spirit of pride, which taught
them anger and strife. A troubled heart is the seat of the devil. He taught
you, Old Calendarists, to have no love but to harbor hatred, to rage, fight,
and savagely beat one another, even inside the church. The devil taught you to
think and preach that the Holy Spirit, for Whose descent the New Calendarist
bishops and priests pray to the Heavenly Father, God Almighty, does not descend
because they are not Old Calendarists. Thus, you believe that the Holy Spirit
did not descend upon Christians from apostolic times until the year 325, when
the 318 holy fathers established the old calendar, because there was no old
calendar!!! Consequently, in the Mystery of Holy Communion they ate bread and
drank wine, and they also remained unbaptized! The spirit of pride taught you,
Old Calendarists, to rebaptize and chrismate a second time New Calendarists who
had been baptized in the Orthodox manner. The holy apostles and the holy
fathers of the seven Ecumenical Councils prescribed “one baptism” in the Name
of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, performed by triple
immersion in water. They decreed that it must not be repeated. Those who
violate this decree are anathematized. Only those who have renounced Christ are
anointed a second time with holy chrism. The New Calendarists have not
renounced Christ.
My spiritual child in Christ,
beloved Angelos, it should be clear from what has been said above that both the
New Calendarists and the schismatic Old Calendarists are transgressors of
apostolic and patristic Tradition, especially the Old Calendarists. They
trample upon more apostolic and patristic Traditions, and particularly despise
the commandment of love, concerning which the Apostle Paul says: “If anyone
does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema. Maranatha!” (1 Cor.
16:22). “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have no love, I
have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of
prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all
faith, so as to move mountains, but have no love, I am nothing. And if I give
away all my possessions, and if I give my body to be burned, but have no love,
I gain nothing” (1 Cor. 13:1–3).
The schismatic Old Calendarists,
having no love, gain nothing spiritually and possess nothing good. Boasting and
calling themselves “Genuine Orthodox Christians” on their own authority, they
are in fact truly heterodox. The lack of love and humility in all people—Old
Calendarists and New Calendarists, laity and clergy, rich and poor, great and
small, kings and patriarchs, ministers and soldiers—leads to the blinding of
their spiritual eyes. Then they cease to see and call light darkness and
darkness light, sweetness bitterness and bitterness sweetness, truth falsehood
and falsehood truth, day night and night day, virtue evil and evil virtue. For
all, as David prophetically said, “have turned aside and together become
worthless,” and according to the Apostle John the Theologian, “If we say that
we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us” (1 John
1:10). Consequently, we too are sinners, and I more than anyone. Therefore, we
must always repent and fervently beseech the all-good God and our Heavenly
Father, the Giver of good gifts, the Prince of Peace, to send down from heaven
His great and abundant mercy and grant us repentance and the forgiveness of
sins, and to grant us the two great virtues—love and humility—so that through
them, as on two wings of a dove, according to the words of David, we may be
purified, rise aloft, and find rest in the eternal resting places, in the
courts of the Lord, in the beloved tents of Paradise, in the splendor of the
saints, and be deemed worthy to become heirs of eternal blessings and the
Kingdom of Heaven. Amen.
As I conclude
this fatherly letter, I pray that the all-good God, Who loves mankind, our
Heavenly Father, may preserve you from the many, varied, and cunning snares of
the deceitful Satan, spread everywhere. Seeing these in a vision, Anthony the
Great groaned and exclaimed: “Who can escape them?” And he heard a voice:
“Humility.”
As your
spiritual father, I advise you to pray unceasingly and ask God to grant you
humility and love. If you ask with faith and reverence, He Who instructed us,
“Ask, and it will be given to you,” will grant them to you. And when He grants
you humility and love, He will dwell within you, destroy the devil’s snares,
and save you.
Your
difficulties concerning the question of the old and new calendars are resolved
on the basis of the teaching of Holy Scripture and the wise and holy teachers
of our Holy Church, common sense, and discernment. “Of two evils, choose the
lesser.”
The new calendar is bad because
it entered the Church unlawfully through the falsely Christian, falsely
infallible Pope of Rome and the Freemason Ecumenical Patriarch Meletios. In
some years, the new calendar abolishes the Fast of the Holy Apostles; it does
not, however, abolish the faith, the dogmas, or the feasts of the saints, but
merely runs thirteen days ahead of the old calendar. Nevertheless, it is bad
because it entered in an evil, unlawful, and uncanonical manner and split the
One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church into two: Old Calendarists and New
Calendarists. For the sake of preserving the old calendar, the schismatic Old
Calendarists have fallen into many errors, more numerous and worse than those
of the New Calendarists, as we have already mentioned above. The Old
Calendarists have abolished the first and greatest commandment of love, divided
into numerous groups, adopted rebaptism, introduced new dogmas, and begun to
serve the calendar, elevating to a dogma the claim that the Holy Spirit does
not sanctify the Mysteries of the New Calendarists because the old calendar is
absent, and so forth. The errors of the schismatic Old Calendarists are more
numerous and worse than those of the New Calendarists.
In this case, it
is fitting to choose the lesser of the two evils before you. Do as many Old
Calendarists have recently done: having seen and understood the terrible
spiritual delusion of the schismatics—their lack of love, their biting at one
another, and so forth—they chose the lesser evil.
Follow their
example and pray earnestly that the Lord may enlighten everyone, and that all
may return to the old calendar and, above all, to repentance, love, and
humility, and become one flock with the Good and True Shepherd, Who offered
Himself as a sacrifice for His rational sheep.
With fatherly
love and heartfelt prayers,
Archimandrite
Philotheos Zervakos
Russian source (translation credited to Archimandrite
Mitrophan):
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