On Georgian Autocephaly

This is mostly a reminder-to-self, but I've been meaning for years to write a post on the Patriarchate of Antioch's historical relationship to the Church of Georgia [in the meantime, read this about the Patriarch Macarius III ibn al-Za'im's description of Georgia here.]. Someone should hold me to that. In any case, this recent post by the must-read site Orthodox Synaxis on the acknowledgement of Georgia's autocephaly by the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1990 is worth reading. Among the many oddities of this acknowledgment is that it did not in any way involve Georgia's mother church, the Patriarchate of Antioch.

The Case of Georgian Autocephaly


In recent months, various representatives of the Ecumenical Patriarchate have spoken about how Constantinople has granted all 19th and 20th century autocephalies, including among them the Church of Georgia. In the case of that church, however, things are much more complicated, as Georgia’s autocephaly was originally granted at a very early point by Antioch, a fact recognized in the medieval canonical literature. While the autocephaly of the Georgian Church was suppressed by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1811– an action that could hardly be considered legitimate– it was reasserted in 1917 and recognized by Moscow in 1943. Recognition from Constantinople was a more difficult process, as the Georgian Church’s history poses obvious problems for the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s claims to have the exclusive right to grant autocephaly.

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Read the rest here.

Patriarch John X's Reply to the Letter from Patriarch Bartholomew

Translated from the Russian version here. I have been able to confirm its authenticity and accurate portrayal of His Beatitude's letter. For the letter this is in response to, see here.

[UPDATE: An official English translation of the full letter is now available here.]







His Beatitude Patriarch of Antioch John X:
It is Unreasonable to End a Schism at the Price of the Unity of the Orthodox World

Responding to Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew's letter regarding his intention to grant autocephaly to the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, His Beatitude Patriarch of Antioch and All the East John X stressed that these events are worrisome not only because of the disunity that they provoke in the Orthodox world, but also because the opinion of the local Orthodox churches was not taken into account in this situation.

"We wish to see the unity of the Orthodox world strengthened and consolidated," said the head of the Antiochian Orthodox Church to Patriarch Bartholomew. "From your letter it appears that you have decided to continue the process of granting autocephaly... Therefore we urge you not to make any decisions about which there is no consensus of the autocephalous Orthodox churches. For it is unreasonable to end a schism at the price of the unity of the Orthodox world."

His Beatitude Patriarch John expressed confidence that "the most beneficial thing for the peace of the Church, for her unity and for the common Orthodox witness in our world today is to suspend and postpone this process until the Ukrainian problem is examined and a pan-Orthodox solution found."

"Therefore, we implore Your All-Holiness to call upon Your brothers, the primates of the Orthodox churches, to study these questions in order to protect our Church from dangers that will not lead to peace and harmony, neither in Ukraine nor in the Orthodox world."

"Our love for your Orthodox Church and for Your Beloved Holiness prompts us to write these words in the hope of seeing the Orthodox world united, especially in your remarkable era, bearing witness to the truth of our Lord Jesus, who is incarnate for the salvation of the world," stressed Patriarch of Antioch and All the East John X.

Met Silouan (Muci): The Image from Christmas to Theophany

Arabic original here.

The Image from Christmas to Theophany

I was recently asked to talk about the Feasts of the Incarnation and Theophany and about their connection to both our life and the life of Christ. The idea occurred to me for a meditation on the meaninc of "the image"--that is, since we are created in God's image-- that is earthly and spiritual for our encounter with God.

I have to discuss the background of our civilization a bit, which has come to focus on sight more than on hearing, to the point that you can tell that what people seek the most in their daily life is to receive or to see images. I don't know what image each person wants for himself or what image he has of himself. Of course, true self-knowledge helps us heal our burning desire in this regard. And this is necessary if a believer wants to live an honest and authentic spiritual life. Here I mean the bond that brings together God and man.

The bond is clear in our Holy Bible. It speaks to us about the "image" in which God has seen us since the beginning. We are created in His image (Genesis 1:27). This takes you from talking about how people see you or how you see yourself to talking about how God sees you. If you take this matter seriously and examine it carefully, a new horizon will be revealed to you, in which you can learn to see yourself with the right eyes. That is, with the eyes of God the Creator. The result of this is that your entire life changes, since it brings you abiding joy because you realize that you are beloved of God, who has granted you to become much greater than yourself, to become like Him by grace! This is the final "image" for man.

So that we do not exert too much in our study and make the mistake of using inappropriate theories or picking images that do not agree with us, God has granted us to "see" our true image. His Son became incarnate and we have seen in Him the perfect union between the image and the likeness, the image of perfect man and perfect God. At Christmas, we saw how He took our body-- that is, He took the image that He created. And at Theophany, we saw how the Father announced that the one who had " increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men" (Luke 2:52), who now is the one being baptized in the Jordan, is Himself His "beloved Son" (Matthew 3:17). God showed us this union in the person of Jesus Christ.

At that point, the "image" on the basis of which I was created becomes the arena for a heart-to-heart encounter with my Creator, an image within me upon which I was based, but it is an image called to be transfigured in all the splendor that God has given for me to be in. "The image" is my connection to my Creator and Lord. I bear it in a vessel of clay. It is this existence that groans and strains for glory to be manifest in it and through it. That is, the likeness which is realized whenever we strive to receive the word of God and have it bring forth within us behavior, life and a mind like the mind of Christ. It is the "space" in which we encounter God and become united to Him, if we truly believe in Him. It is our launchpad into a process of becoming that never ends, which the Bible told us about and for which it gave us many names, such as "eternal life".

Between the Feasts of Christmas and Theophany, we stand in humility before the majesty of the image and likeness before our eyes. So we strive for the "beloved Son" just as we strive for the beloved that our souls search for. At that point, we realize ourselves in a certain way, a way whose splendor we see in those who have robed themselves in light and have put on God and become christs in word and deed, one christ after another, in the likeness of Christ, the Lord and Savior. This is what we hope for ourselves, for each other, and for all those created in the image of God.

Silouan
Metropolitan of Jbeil and Batroun (Mount Lebanon)

Met Ephrem (Kyriakos): Theophany

 Arabic original here.

Theophany

"Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be baptized by him. And John tried to prevent Him, saying, 'I need to be baptized by You, and are You coming to me?'" (Matthew 3:13-14).

Did John know Him previously? Chrysostom says that he had heard of Him but he became sure of knowing Him at the baptism.

"I did not know Him, but He who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘Upon whom you see the Spirit descending, and remaining on Him, this is He who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God" (John 1:33-34). This is the testimony of John the Baptist.

When Jesus was baptized-- say Matthew and Luke-- He came up from the water and behold, the heavens had opened to Him. Mark mentions that "He saw the heavens parting" (Mark 1:10).

This is a human, symbolic expression of the Father's pain over His Son's death in the body on the cross.

Perhaps Mark heard this from John the Baptist who alone with Jesus saw the wondrous sight: the mystery of the Trinity, the appearance of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Hear we must mention the expression "parting" when "the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom" (Mark 15:38) [the word for "parting" and "torn" is the same in the Arabic] at Christ's death upon the cross.

The second part of inspiration lies in the expression of the voice of the Father: "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased" (Matthew 3:17), an expression that appears in the three synoptic Gospels. It reminds us of what is said in Psalm 2: "You are My son and today I have begotten you. Ask Me, and I will give you the nations as an inheritance."

Also in the Book of Hebrews: "For to which of the angels did He ever say: 'You are My Son, today I have begotten You'?" (Hebrews 1:5).

The author of Revelation takes the words of the Psalms and applies them to Jesus, saying of the woman "She bore a male Child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron" (Revelation 12:5).

The second part, "in whom I am well-pleased" is taken from Isaiah:

"Behold! My Servant whom I uphold, My Elect One in whom My soul delights! I have put My Spirit upon Him" (Isaiah 42:1). This is the Spirit coming down in the form of a dove. Isaiah goes on about Christ:

"He will not cry out, nor raise His voice, nor cause His voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed He will not break, and smoking flax He will not quench." Matthew recalls these words literally in chapter 12:18-21. This is the image of the suffering Son for the Prophet Isaiah.

The Trinitarian image in Jesus' baptism renews faith in the Trinity in us, just as it reminds us that it is necessary for us to live out our baptism by imitating Christ who suffers and rises:

"Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life" (Romans 6:3-4).

God's manifestation in this world takes place through the Holy Spirit. Then, God can say to each of us, "You are my son, in whom I am well-pleased."

+Ephrem
Metropolitan of Tripoli, al-Koura and their Dependencies

Jad Ganem: The Stubbornness that Destroys Unity

Arabic original here.

The Stubbornness that Destroys Unity

In a much-awaited and expected position, His Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew responded to His Beatitude Patriarch Kirill of Moscow during a New Year's Eve celebration at the Ecumenical Patriarchate. He confirmed that Constantinople will proceed with implementing what it has started, despite "fierce opposition" to its initiative from the sister churches. He emphasized that "Whatever the case may be, this opposition will not be an impediment to us because our decision is based on the holy canons, the privileges of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the order and tradition of the Orthodox Church." He ended by saying, "We pray that the sister churches that incorrectly oppose the decisions and initiatives of the Mother Church of Constantinople will finally start to think in a more logical and just manner and with great respect and gratitude to the Ecumenical Patriarchate."

One who looks closely at the words that he used will have to notice that they spring from a firm belief that the Ecumenical Patriarch and his Holy Synod constitute a church over the family of Orthodox churches gathered together and form a holy synod that governs all the other holy synods and that the one speaking these words considers himself and the synod around him to have a monopoly on the truth and to be infallible. Perhaps these words that cut off any path to dialogue and reject all the calls that have come from the heads of sister churches to deal with the Ukrainian issue in a conciliar manner not only constitute a rejection of the conciliar system, but also betray a pyramidal vision of the Church and presage the establishment of what could be termed "the infallibility of the Phanar" if it persists and is not stopped by the universal Church.

Who will remind His Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch of Orthodox theology, which holds that the word of the bishop, no matter what is rank, is neither sacrosanct in itself nor due to his position; that he is subject to error and misjudgment, just like every creature because passion can mix with godly purposes in man, who may regard himself as God's representative when he is in fact being led along by his own desires; that one who does not open his mind and his heart to the views of his brothers is satisfied with his own thoughts, which are filled as much with his ego, his whims and delusion as they are with inspiration or true insight.
Who will urge the Phanar to believe and accept that divine grace is not subject to the logic of ranks, hierarchy and sees, that it may come through the least in the Church and speak in them and through them, and if it did not it put itself in stubborn rebellion against the truth. Who will remind them that there is no witness more powerful than the witness of unity among the heads of the Church. Unity among them is for them to agree on what pleases God in the circumstances in which they are living. Has the time of talk ended and have we entered the time of stubbornness against the truth?

Patriarch Ignatius IV's Commandment

Arabic original here.

The Patriarch's Commandment

Perhaps one of the concerns that most occupied Patriarch Ignatius IV of blessed memory was making "Orthodoxy not only an element of the present and the past, but also a constituent element of the future." He always reminded that "it is fundamental for us to know what belongs to the tradition of the Holy Spirit and the Orthodox Church and what fundamentally belongs to historical circumstances, environments and cultural traditions," stressing that "change requires more adhesion to  Orthodox dynamism instead of adhesion to ancient texts tied to specific theories and a specific mentality." He also thought that in order for the Church to undertake her role, she must study "the various situations and circumstances that Orthodoxy knows today" and formulate "a new adaptation" because it is not sure "that analogy is the best manner in which to find the answers" to all the challenges of our age.

He observed that "We Orthodox behave in many areas as though God spoke once and after that kept silent and as though the Holy Spirit came down once upon the Church. Everything after it is an extension of this one and only event." He expressed his conviction that "It is necessary for us to do something serious to realize the witness of Christ's Church here and now." In words resembling a commandment, he said, "Behind us is a long past. Now we must face the future by rising up to the foundation and reaching the level of the starting-point... We need to push true tradition to the heart of the Church. This is what we confess whenever we say that the Lord is alive in His Church and that wherever there is Christ, there is the Church... Christ is before us and not behind us. We do not need to turn around to see Him."

Patriarch Ignatius was constant motion with deep roots, always reaching forward... May his memory be eternal.

Jad Ganem: The Only Orthodox Order

Arabic original here.

The Only Orthodox Order

This year comes to an end with the Orthodox Church suffering from an acute crisis among its constitutent parts and things coming to a head in relations between their leaders, almost reaching the point of a feud that threatens a break or even schism. Perhaps the underlying reason for this crisis is the chronic fall of words and their losing their meaning due to the severity of the chasm between what is said and what is practiced.

After boasting about a conciliarity that they haven't really practiced in centuries, the Orthodox have gone on, starting in 2014, in the course of attempting to practice it, to distort its meaning. The Synaxis of the Primates of the Orthodox Church invented the idea of "representative conciliarity", which required that each autocephalous church be represented by one vote and an equal number of bishops at the promised Great Orthodox Council, out of fear of the numerical superiority of the bishops of the Russian Church.
The distortion of the meanings of words continued with the interpretation given by the Ecumenical Patriarchate to the meaning of "the unanimity of the autocephalous churches", where it explained unanimity as sometimes being the agreement of those present and at other times as going along with the opinion of the majority.

The terrible loss of words' meaning reached its apex with the so-called "unification council" that was held at the Church of St Sophia in Kiev in the middle of last month. This "council" was unable to achieve the goal specified by its organizers, but it deepened the state of division through Constantinople's recognition of the schismatics and legitimization of the persecution of the legitimate church.

Over the past four years, political and nationalistic concerns, desire for authority, fear of the other, and trial of intentions have led to leaders in the Orthodox Church giving words senses contradictory to their meanings and being immersed in ecclesiastical politics. Clarity of vision has been lost. Churchly concepts have transformed into points of view. Leaders machinate with a handful of court theologians to justify it in the market of ecclesiastical rhetoric   that has come to resemble tragedy.

Faced with this fall [سقوط] that portends even worse, it has perhaps become necessary for faithful laypeople, in their role as guardians of the faith, to retake the lead and press for holding an Orthodox council in which with the participation of all bishops of the Orthodox ecumene in order to rescue words from their loss of meaning and to rescue the Church from fragmentation in the shadow of efforts to create a new global Orthodox order to accompany the new global order that is taking shape.