(semi)related. Got this email today, a shared letter between a bishop and a correspondent...
Quote:
Your Eminence, Bless,
I think, with rare historical exceptions, the corruption of the Church intensifies as its intimacy with the state increases.
As the political and economic situation continues to deteriorate in Greece, and the disestablishment of the ecumenists as the "state" Church becomes more likely, I wonder how the "traditionalists" within the state Church will react. Despite the turmoil to individual Greeks and the nation as a whole, perhaps some will be released from their bondage to the state Church and return to the traditional faith as preserved in the GOC.
Kissing Your Right Hand, [name removed]
Dear (name removed),
God bless you.
The mantra of the monks throughout Byzantine history was obedience and order with regard to the state, but never to the point of compromising the Faith. As His Eminence, Metropolitan Chrysostomos once wrote: "This is a bedrock of Byzantine theocracy." This helped me more than anything else to understand, to some extent, the enigma of modern Orthodox nationalism (what the holy Bishop Nikolai (Velimirovich) of Serbia called "tribalism"), as well as the distortion of Orthodox monarchy by the western idea of "absolute monarchy," which became very evident in post-Byzantine times. In our day, as Bishop Photiy in Bulgaria says, we do not even understand the spiritual nature of government and lack both rulers and citizens who have the virtue to rule and to followand especially with regard to the establishment of genuine Orthodox monarchies. I agree totally.
As for the Greek traditionalists in the State Church, they can be accused of some cowardice for not having moved more definitively and sooner, but that is a human trait that many of us show from time to time. The important witness of these people is that they serve as a chastisement to the traditionalist extremists who, with all of their lip service to the Faith, forget the overarching service of the heart to Christ. Their arrogant and firm condemnations of the New Calendarists do nothing to invite and enlighten them. If the modernists suffer from cowardice, what spiritual bravery do we show our errant brothers, some of whom have been brought to the brink of apostasy by their spiritual leaders, in happily and almost casually calling them schismatics, heretics, outside the Church, without Grace, and so on? I hope to God that we have gotten far past that Protestant backwater fundamentalism and can enter into the realm of love and of the heart. That way, when those in error come to us, we can repent with them, if not more than they. They sin in falsehood; we sin in Truth, and with pride of a spiritually sick kind: condemning others, speaking against them, ruining their reputations, and so on, and often even with our own circles, too!
I am, in writing this, following what His Eminence, Metropolitan Chrysostomos has preached and taught for years (instructed, as he and many were, by the example of his spiritual Father, Metropolitan Cyprian). If his words sound familiar, it is not because I am mouthing them. It is because they are true and I believe them, and especially because they are taught without those who express them declaring them indisputable "dogma" or with horrible words of condemnation for those who may disagree with them. We must, as all of them and as I also say, be sensitive to the Faith yet wholly loving to the people. His Eminence told me a story about St. Dorotheos of Gaza, if I am remembering correctly. I have heard him repeat it frequently. When the Abba would enter the cell of a monk and find it dirty and cluttered, he would say: "This Father must love spiritual things, for he is undistracted by worldly cares." And when he entered the cell of a monk who was meticulous and had everything in its place, he would say: "This Father must be spiritually virtuous, for the exterior condition of his cell shows the interior condition of his soul."
How far we all are from that Abba in our hateful condemnation, in the name of the Faith of the Lord of love, of the New Calendarists, of anyone who differs from us in our pet beliefs and views, and of those who lack the courage to do what they well may feel in their hearts. Rather than approach everyone where he is, looking for virtue, we condemn, hate, and gleefully take arrogant and sinful pride in the fact that others are going to Hell and we are going to be saved. And I apply this not just to the extremist traditionalists. It applies especially to the extremist New Calendarists, ecumenists, and "official," Orthodox, who have used their influence and association with governments (often at the cost of violating their Faith) to humiliate, quiet, and try to disgrace us as renegades, schismatics, outside the Church, gutter trash, illiterates, and peasantsand this,
ad nauseam, in the name of their liberal ecumenism and religious toleration! What surprises await us at death. Even a sensitive agnostic would have a better chance at salvation than we do when, called to to be loving Christians, we preach hatred, whatever side, right or wrong, we may be on when divisions occurs.
I have wandered off on tangents in responding to your question. I just hope that I have still offered spiritual
terra firma on which you may stand.
...
Let us pray for one another and commend all of our life to Christ our God!
Your humble servant, Bp. Auxentios of Etna and Portland
