A LETTER FROM A BISHOP ON THE EVE OF THE HOLY AND GREAT COUNCIL

Facebook post by Prof. Nicholas E. Denisenko

My Beloved, Dearest Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

I greet you once again with the holy and joyous words: Christ is Risen! Truly, he is Risen! The Apodosis of Pascha and Ascension are before us, but our Risen Lord remains ever in our midst.

Today I write to respond to the multitude of messages I received from you about the Holy and Great Council to be held in Crete. Over two-hundred of you wrote: priests, deacons, women, men, even teenagers. In the middle of my first response, I felt the tension in my chest and realized I had no chance of responding to everyone. I want you to know that I am writing without having this letter vetted by a church official, so please forgive the unusually open and verbose style. You are accustomed to receiving “Churchy” letters from me, deliberately terse and laconic. I am opening my heart to you with this response because of the deep disillusionment that emerged from your letters.

Many of you wrote to express frustration and anger that the bishops in Crete are not attending to issues of contemporary importance. Others wrote to complain that the current documents were too charitable to secularism and non-Orthodox Christians. More than ten of you – including two priests – called me a heretic for suggesting in a recent media interview that Roman Catholics belong to a Church, and can be saved. What disturbed me most is that people on both sides are warning me that they will separate from Orthodoxy. In other words, a schism seems imminent whether or not the documents are endorsed and proclaimed by the council. More than a few of you suggested cancelling the council since the division among the bishops is so obvious to the world.

My response to you is this: our common task as a Church remains the same, regardless of what happens in Crete. Even if your worst-case scenario becomes reality in Crete, the Lord has still empowered you to bear him to the world and witness to his death and resurrection in your daily life.

Last year, you know that I was on leave for about six months. I took the leave on the advice of my physician, who was concerned about my health and my internalization of the stress of this ministry. You neither saw me nor heard from me. But that’s only partially true: many of you saw me in person, up close, but did not recognize me. You see, I cut my hair, shaved my beard, and attended many of your churches as an ordinary citizen in plain clothes, taking my position in the rear of the Church and observing you. I watched you worship and stood on the periphery of your lives. I was especially moved by my experience in the mystery of Holy Unction in one of your parishes during Holy Week; so many of you want to be whole and approached with the bold love in response to our Lord’s invitation. I liked much of what I heard: some beautiful words from our clergy.

I was struck, though, by the disconnection between many of our parishes and the world outside of our lives. I heard a lot of criticism of Pope Francis and his liberal views, but that did not stop three of our clergy from receiving the hospitality of local Roman Catholic parishes who invited them to represent Orthodoxy in the “Getting to Know our Neighbors” series, where two of the three managed to use the words “papist,” “heretic,” and “schismatic” in their remarks. While I applaud your generosity in offering assistance to our brothers and sisters overseas, I did not see much energy to attending to local needs. During this time, a Christian congregation nearby had been the victim of terrible racist vandalism, and four churches and a school in another city were damaged by epic tornadoes.

I also joined Facebook under an alias and befriended many of you, and it was here that I witnessed to some of the most painful and angry exchanges one can imagine. Many of you fought with one another over a multitude of issues, with one canon superseding the other in a bizarre exchange of canonical fire. My sense from this limited experience of being among you incognito, with an alias, is that we are deeply divided. How is it that we question the division among the bishops gathering for Crete when we cannot restrain our own selves from blasting our neighbor?

I learned a lot from this experience, painful as it was. And now I leave you with some instructions. First, I have instructed our clergy to be prudent when inserting canons into public discussions on Church issues. For parish life, we will focus on one canon: our Lord Jesus Christ and his Holy Gospel. We will become people who focus on hearing the word of God and learning the Holy Scriptures. We need to take on the mind of Christ and to love the commandments of God (1 Cor. 2:16). Our primary focus for the next five years, the center of our “strategic plan” will be to rehearse in Church and in daily life the most important canon of all: “love one another” (John 13:34).

Second, I am instructing you to receive Holy Communion regularly.

Many clergy have privately questioned this instruction, appealing to your examination of conscience and weighing your worthiness of receiving communion. Here is my response: if your conscience condemns you, come forward and receive anyway, because the Lord himself is reaching out to heal you. The beginning of healing is to receive the gift of himself offered by our Lord; too many of us are using our sinfulness as an excuse to refuse the Lord’s gift, and thus remain stuck in the pollution of sin and human bitterness. If you really want deliverance from this most painful and vicious cycle of bitter exchange, accept the invitation of our Lord commanded by our deacons, and approach: your reception of our Lord himself will begin the process of reforming your conscience.

Third, I am instructing all of you to fast in a new way: think before you talk, text, tweet, or post. Abstain from provoking others to anger. Hear the opinion of another in a spirit of civility, and conclude a disagreement with a handshake or embrace. You are free people and I do not have the authority to prohibit you from using social media or sharing your opinions with others, nor to discourage you from being yourselves. I ask only that you try to create truly open atmospheres of exchange without resorting to bitter polemics and name-calling. Think of how we are teaching our children, and then ask yourselves how the next generation of bishops will negotiate disagreement and disputes.

We will continue to pray for the council in Crete. We need the fathers to gather so that they will be in one place together and will truly talk to one another, regardless of the outcome (Acts 2:1). I reach out to comfort you: God will send the Holy Spirit upon all of us when we gather, over and over again, and is giving us the power to become people who shape this and the next generation of Orthodox Christians into people who hear the word of God, love his commandments, accept his gift of love which heals our sins, and are able and willing to hear one another by honoring the divine image of God borne by all. Let us see God for who he is: the lover of humankind who sends us the gift of the Holy Spirit over and over again, so that we may become his body, offered for the life of the world. Thus, it is never too late to begin our work in the Lord’s vineyard.

Do not be afraid; place your hope and trust in our Lord, and greet one another with a holy kiss and the joyful words appropriate for all seasons: “Christ is Risen! Truly, He is Risen!”

[NOTE: This is a work of fiction, not an actual letter]