September 16, 2026
The questions are asked by Mr.
Giorgos P. Pavlos of the “Hellenism Network.”
ELDER GABRIEL: We cannot go and
attend church services celebrated by priests who are ecumenists. Who tells us
this? The Saints tell us. Saint Germanos II of Constantinople, an eminent
ecclesiastical figure, writes a letter to the Cypriots who had become Uniates
and tells them:
“Friends of the Pope, worshippers
of the Pope, I adjure you in the name of God to flee with all haste from those
priests who have fallen into the heresy of the Latin-minded. Do not go to a
church where they celebrate the Liturgy, receive Communion from their hands, or
take antidoron from them, but stay in your homes and pray; otherwise, you will
suffer the same damnation as they.”
We cannot attend church services
celebrated by ecumenists. If someone—whether a patriarch, an archbishop, or a
bishop—does not respect the Apostolic Canons that prohibit concelebrations and
joint prayers with heretics, does not respect the Canons of the Ecumenical and
Local Synods, and does not observe what the Fathers taught, that patriarch,
archbishop, or bishop is not a shepherd.
What is he? A great Father of our
Church from the first century tells us: “Anyone who speaks contrary to what has
been ordained, even if he is trustworthy, even if he fasts, even if he remains
a virgin, even if he works miracles, even if he prophesies, let him appear to
you as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, bringing about the destruction of the
sheep.” [Saint Ignatius the God-bearer].
Do you hear what he says? They
are not shepherds. They are wolf-shepherds. We must not follow them.
QUESTION: Tell us, Elder, about
Mount Athos as well. What is Mount Athos’s responsibility at this moment
towards Orthodoxy, but also towards the whole world?
ELDER GABRIEL: Epiphanios the
pseudo-bishop… these men are unordained and self-ordained. They are
excommunicated and deposed. They are not priests; they are perpetrators of
sacrilege. They will not be saved. Nor will those monasteries on Mount Athos
that concelebrated and prayed jointly with him, such as Simonopetra,
Pantokrator, Xenophontos, and Vatopedi, be saved.
Who tells us this? Our Church
tells us.
What is the Church? The pillar
and foundation of the truth.
What does Canon 2 of the Synod of
Antioch, ratified by the Fourth, Sixth, and Seventh Ecumenical Councils, say? “Let
anyone who communes with an excommunicated person be excommunicated.”
What does “excommunicated” mean?
I am outside the Church; I am not saved. We will not be saved if we do not heed
the Canons.
And those bishops in Greece who
do not respect this 45th Apostolic Canon, which forbids us to pray jointly with
heretics, are disobeying God Himself. What did God say to the Apostles? “Whoever
hears you hears Me, and whoever rejects you rejects Me; and whoever rejects Me
rejects Him who sent Me.”
And for those who justify the
patriarch’s actions, who do not tell the truth and distort the facts, the
terrible “woes” pronounced by the Prophet Isaiah will apply on the Day of
Judgment: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for
light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”
The terrible words that the
Apostle Paul spoke to Elymas the sorcerer on the island of Cyprus, in the city
of Paphos, will apply to all those who distort the truth and justify the
unjustifiable. The Apostle was instructing the proconsul Sergius in the faith
when the sorcerer intervened and tried to distort the truth. The Apostle said
to him (he did not say these things because his pride had been wounded; the
text says he was filled with the Holy Spirit): “You who are full of all deceit
and all villainy, son of the devil, enemy of all righteousness, will you not
stop perverting the straight ways of the Lord?” On what charge will God condemn
us to eternal damnation? That we are sons of the devil who distort things and
do not tell the truth. What did He say about Judas? “One of you is a devil.”
The devil distorts the truth and does not speak the truth.
ELDER GABRIEL: Some Christians
get confused and say, “My spiritual father told me to be obedient. Since my
spiritual father said so, I should not concern myself with these matters.” A
theologian used to say of such people, “They are pious fools!”
If your spiritual father tells
you not to eat or drink water for a month, will you obey? He says, “I will
not.” In that case, he disobeys to save his body. Yet here he obeys to lose his
soul?
QUESTION: Many people say, “We
obey the Church,” and, “Since the Church tells us something, we will accept
it.”
ELDER GABRIEL: Which Church? The
Church is the Fathers—those who taught and who forbid concelebrations and joint
prayers. The Church has Canons; it has laws.
We have duties towards our
spiritual fathers and duties towards God. Our duties towards God take
precedence over our duties towards our spiritual fathers. If a duty towards our
spiritual fathers conflicts with our duty towards God, it ceases to apply. It
is annulled. We have an example in Holy Scripture, the eternal and infallible
word of God. The Jewish chief priests were the spiritual leaders in our Lord’s
time. They seized the Apostles, put them in prison, and told them not to
preach. The Angel came and released them. He told them to preach. And when they
seized them again and said, “What did we tell you? Why do you not obey?” what
did the Apostle Peter say in his defense? “We must obey God rather than men.”
We will obey the patriarchs, the
bishops, everyone, our spiritual fathers, when what they say accords with the
will of God; otherwise, we will obey no one. Even if an Angel from heaven
preaches a gospel to you.
Some bishops tell priests to
solemnize a marriage between an Orthodox Christian and a heterodox Christian!
And the priest says, “Bishop, I cannot do this because the Canons forbid it.”
And [the bishop] quotes the Apostolic saying: “Obey your leaders and submit to
them.” “Do you hear what the Apostle says? I am your spiritual father. You are
obliged to obey!” [Editor’s note: The bishops say this constantly.]
How does Saint John Chrysostom
interpret “Obey your leaders and submit to them”? The Saint asks:
“What then, someone asks, if he
is wicked, and we do not obey?” And he asks and exhorts as follows: “Wicked in
what sense, do you mean? If it is in matters of faith, flee from him and reject
him, not only if he is a man, but even if he is an angel descending from
heaven; but if it concerns his manner of life, do not pry . . .”
Do you hear what the Saint says?
Even if he is an Angel. How can we obey a bishop who tells you to solemnize a
marriage between an Orthodox Christian and a heterodox Christian? Who says that
they are our brothers and that we must unite with them?
QUESTION: Many people today
regard their Elder as being like God and say, “My Elder…” That is, we see this
among laypeople in the world, on Mount Athos, and in the monasteries: the Elder
is the beginning and the end.
ELDER GABRIEL: Listen. Saint
Symeon the New Theologian wishes to step down as abbot, so he calls the
brotherhood together, gives them advice, and introduces his successor. “Obey
him as you have obeyed me.” And what does he tell them at the end? “If he too,
being human, does something that does not accord with the Church, then obey him
temporarily, and let the older members go and protest to him, telling him that
what he is saying is not right. If he does not listen, then do not obey him—or
even an Angel.” Read the life of Saint Symeon the New Theologian. This is
mentioned there. How can we obey? An Elder is an Elder when he is in accord
with God, when he does what God says.
And shall I tell you something
else terrible? Some priests in Greece have made their own “Gospel.” They do not
accept the Gospel and have made their own “Gospel.” A man with many children
came here, and his spiritual father had told him, “Avoid having children, and I
will take that sin upon myself.” Avoiding childbearing is a mortal sin. A young
man came and told me [that] he had married a girl, but not in the Church. He
had a child. He went to his spiritual father, confessed, and was told to fast
for a few days and then receive Communion. And the young man said, “I felt that
I had placed the Lord inside something unclean.” His conscience reproached him.
For fornication, the Fathers
prescribe a penance of fifteen years: fasting, prostrations, xerophagy, and
abstention from Communion. They have changed the Gospel. And I know of other
cases. Couples live together, and their spiritual fathers give them a blessing
to abstain for two or three days and then receive Communion. We must be wary of
priests.
QUESTION: Elder, as a monk who
has been on Mount Athos for many years, can you tell us how this mentality
arose, with the Elder being treated like God and everyone saying, “My Elder,”
“My Elder”?
ELDER GABRIEL: What can I tell
you? In the past there were holy Elders, and people used to say this, but now
things have changed. When he says something that accords with God’s will. I
will give you an example. What did the Apostle Paul say to the Galatians? “But
even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to
what we preached to you, let him be anathema.” Why did the Apostle say this?
Could an Angel ever go to the Galatians and tell them things contrary to what
the Apostle Paul had taught? No. Then why does he say it? So that we do not
fall into the trap of saying, “Our Elder is holy. He raises the dead, opens the
eyes of the blind, and makes paralytics walk.” Even if he does all these
things, if he says something that does not accord with the Church, we must not
obey—not only the Elder, but even an Angel.
QUESTION: If Saint Paisios were
alive today, what would he say about everything we are experiencing?
ELDER GABRIEL: He would oppose
the roads and the tourism on Mount Athos. He was strongly opposed.
QUESTION: And what about the
decisions we are seeing concerning digital identity cards?
ELDER GABRIEL: Of course, the
Saint was opposed to all these things. We must not accept a personal
identification number. When we are baptized, God gives us a name and an Angel
to guard us. He does not give us a number.
QUESTION: Some have said that
Saint Paisios said these things because he had been influenced by Protestants
and Americans, but that later, after being advised, he changed his mind. I have
heard some monks say this too.
ELDER GABRIEL: That letter he
wrote is a very fine little text. Those who read it with a good disposition
benefit from it.
QUESTION: And did Saint Paisios
change his mind at all about what he wrote there?
ELDER GABRIEL: No. No.
We must be careful. Heretics are
enemies of God and of the Mother of God, and we cannot have friendships with
them. What does John the Evangelist say? Is he not the Evangelist of love? Is
he not the foremost theologian? What does he say? “If anyone comes to you and
does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your home or greet him;
for whoever greets him shares in his evil deeds.”
Do you hear what the Saint says?
We must not even say hello to them, greet them, or welcome them into our homes.
And whoever has friendships with heretics is an enemy of God and of the Mother
of God and will not be saved.
What does Saint John Chrysostom
say? “For someone who befriends the king’s enemies cannot be the king’s friend;
nor is he deemed worthy of life, but he will perish along with the enemies and
suffer even worse things.”
The following is recounted in a
book called The Spiritual Meadow:
One day, an ascetic in the region
of the Jordan saw our Most Holy Lady outside his cell, accompanied by two men
of priestly bearing. He ran, made a prostration, and said, “Most Holy Lady,
come and bless my cell.” The Mother of God never speaks sternly, yet she spoke
sternly to him and said, “I will not come in, because you have my enemy
inside.” And she left. The ascetic was distressed. He had no one inside, nor
could he understand what our Most Holy Lady had said to him. Some time earlier,
he had borrowed a book from a fellow ascetic. And when he reached the end of
it, he found that the book contained two discourses by Nestorius against our
Most Holy Lady, in which he called her the Mother of Man and not the Mother of
God. This was what the Mother of God meant when she said, “You have my enemy
inside.”
The Fathers sent some men to
Saint Agathon to test him, and they said to him, “You are a fornicator.” “I
am.” “You are a glutton.” “I am.” “You are proud.” “I am.” “You are this.” “I
am.” Finally, they said to him, “You are a heretic.” And he objected. The
Fathers said to him, “We said so many things about you, and you accepted them.
Why do you object now?” “Because,” he said, “the things you accused me of do
not separate me from God. When I repent, God forgives me. Heresy separates me
from God.” That is what the Saint said.
[When we] pray jointly with
heretics, we will not be saved. We are enemies of God and of the Mother of God.
When the Latins came here to
persuade the Fathers to pray jointly with the Papists, the Fathers resisted.
They hanged Saint Kosmas the Protos. They slaughtered the others and cut off
their heads. They drowned the monks of Iviron. Outside the … monastery there
was an elderly monk who was reciting the Salutations one evening. When he said,
“Rejoice, O Bride unwedded,” the Mother of God spoke to him from the icon and
said, “Rejoice also, Elder of God.” The elderly monk was frightened. She said
to him, “Do not be afraid. Run to the monastery and tell the Fathers that my
enemies and the enemies of my Son are coming. Let those who wish to leave do
so, and let those who wish to stay remain and struggle.” This was at Zographou
Monastery. The elderly monk went and told them, and some fled into the forests.
Twenty-six shut themselves inside the tower, and the Mother of God came to
strengthen them. The Latins came and told them, “Recognize the Pope as the head
of the Church.” They refused, saying, “We recognize Christ as the head of the
Church,” and they burned them. Their names are recorded in the … Horologia.
She said, “My enemies and the
enemies of my Son.” We will not be saved if we have friendships with heretics.
This will deprive us of eternal life.
Greek
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