Ecumenical Patriarchate Clergy-Laity Congress 2020 Greeting
Your Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros of America, most honorable exarch
of the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans, beloved brother and
concelebrant of our Modesty in the Holy Spirit; Most Reverend and Right
Reverend brother Metropolitans and Bishops; Very Reverend clergy
Hieromonks, Reverend Presbyters and Deacons; most honorable
representatives of the Communities and Parishes; most esteemed Archons
of the Mother Church; dearest delegates of the major Institutions of the
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese and all participants comprising its 45th
Clergy-Laity Congress: May the grace, peace, and blessing of our Lord
God and Savior Jesus Christ be with you all.
With the assent of
God, the Giver of all good things, the 45th Clergy-Laity Congress of
this great Eparchy of our Ecumenical Throne, the united Greek Orthodox
Archdiocese of America, takes place for the first time virtually, as a
result of the difficult circumstances that the pandemic of the novel
coronavirus Covid-19 continue to create. As we convey the commendation
of the Mother Church and our Patriarchal blessing to all of you, we
congratulate you for continuing this beautiful tradition, which, for
many decades now, has strengthened the good witness of the Church in
light of the demands and challenges of the times, thereby securing the
broad participation of the people of God in the Church affairs, the
exchange of opinions in a spirit of love and concord, as well as the
reaching of decisions beneficial for the mission of the Church.
The theme of this Clergy-Laity Congress – the first under your
presidency, dearest brother Elpidophoros – is the wonderful verse from
St. Paul: “but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor 13.13), which
expresses the quintessence of the Christian ethos. The meaning of love
was revealed in God’s love for humankind: “In this the love of God was
made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so
that we might live through him” (1 Jn 4.9). It is to this love, as the
source and model of love from the faithful to their neighbor, that St.
Paul looks when he composes his eminent “hymn of love” (1 Cor 13.1–13).
Love is the “new wine” that bursts the “old wineskins” (cf. Mt 9.17).
It is from this love that new values were sprung, social movements were
inspired, and the charitable conquests of modernity were nurtured,
despite the many conflicts between Christianity and modern humanism; for
while these were inevitably the consequence of essential differences in
the perception of human freedom, nonetheless they were primarily the
result of circumstantial misconceptions and repudiations. Today it seems
both sides have understood that, despite the differences, they meet in
the joint mobilization for the sake of the protection of human dignity,
justice, and peace. In this context and encounter, the Orthodox Church
highlights the social dimension of freedom, the priority of the culture
of solidarity. The late professor Fr. Georges Florovsky was right to
underline the central place of social sensitivity in the Orthodox
tradition: “There is still, as it has been for centuries, a strong
social instinct in the Eastern church in spite of all historical
involvements and drawbacks. And possibly this is the main contribution
which the Eastern church can make to the contemporary conversation on
social issues.” (“The Social Problem in the Eastern Orthodox Church,” in
Christianity and Culture: Volume Two, The Collected Works of Georges
Florovsky, Belmont, MA: Nordland Publishing Co., 1974, 131–142, at 132)
And the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church that convened in
Crete (June, 2016) emphatically promoted the social message of Orthodoxy
and “the supreme value of the human person:” “The Orthodox Church
confesses that every human being, regardless of skin color, religion,
race, sex, ethnicity, and language, is created in the image and likeness
of God, and enjoys equal rights in society. Consistent with this
belief, the Orthodox Church rejects discrimination for any of the
aforementioned reasons, since these presuppose a difference in dignity
between people.” (The Mission of the Orthodox Church in the Contemporary
World, V.1)
In love and through love, Christians are more
humanists than all humanists. The Christian mandate concerning the human
person transcends the humanistic ideal pertaining to human rights. The
freedom “to which Christ has set us free” (Gal 5.1) is not the
vindication of rights, is not individual freedom from the other, but
rather it is the freedom for the other, our brother or sister who needs
help. Christian love is always concrete; it is not associated with an
impersonal sympathy or a vague philanthropic disposition. It always
constitutes an expression of the eucharistic identity of the Church, “a
liturgy after the Liturgy,” and is experienced not as our own
achievement but as a gift from above. Such a Christian ethos is embodied
by the blessed Philoptochos Societies of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese
of America, both in their National and regional expressions. It is
completely inappropriate to describe the Church’s social witness and
diakonia as a secularization of the Church, inasmuch as it is its
salvific imprint in the world.
Most honorable brothers and beloved children,
The contemporary world and its culture is not some “sinful Nineveh,”
whose punishment and destruction by God are desired by those overcome by
the “Jonah syndrome,” who believe they are the “chosen ones” in the
“household of the father,” but have no connection to the contemporary
reality, no sensitivity for the adventures of human freedom, and no
sharing in the pain of the victims of violence, injustice, and
discrimination. Our objective should be a Christian witness and action
in the world, which implies engagement and not disengagement, praxis and
not just theoria, acceptance and not just rejection, dialogue and not
just barren disputation.
This is the good and timely witness of
coordinated concern for the ecclesiastical affairs that you have
demonstrated, Your Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros of America, over the
past year, your first in pastoral leadership in the New World. We
commend you for your tireless efforts to complete the construction of
St. Nicholas Church at “Ground Zero,” rendering possible the celebration
of its opening next year. We also applaud your initiatives to remedy
the Pension Fund of the clergy and lay employees of the Archdiocese.
Noteworthy is also your contribution to the restructuring of the Holy
Cross School of Theology in Boston for the sake of a more efficient
response to its financial problems and academic challenges that have
emerged in the function of this historic institution.
The Greek
Orthodox Archdiocese of America has also demonstrated, and continues to
demonstrate, tangible love throughout the period of the novel
coronavirus pandemic, through its undivided support of those suffering
and their families, by establishing a special Relief Fund for those
affected by this virus, through its word of patience and comfort, with
pastoral imagination – all of these, in the unfailing conviction that
suffering and evil do not have the final word in history, whose master
is Christ Himself. It is the same spirit of Christian solidarity that is
also expressed by the observance of the mandated measures in response
to the spread of the coronavirus, with the full knowledge that these do
not affect our faith, piety, and traditions, which we maintain as the
apple of our eye, but that they contribute to the protection of the
health and life of us all. At all time, but especially in such
circumstances, fraternity, self-sacrifice, and love constitute the
presence and image of the Kingdom of God in the world. The current
pandemic has shattered many things that we take for granted, but it has
also revealed the value and power of faith in the living God and of our
hope in eternal life, so that we do not break beneath the weight of
these “limit situations” and of the fear of death.
With these
thoughts, we bless, from the Phanar, the deliberations of this
Clergy-Laity Congress and wish you every success for the benefit of the
clergy and laity of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, for the
glory of the “God of love” (2 Cor 13.11), whose name is above all names,
the Founder of the Church, to whom your Patriarch earnestly prays for
the children of the Mother Church of Constantinople in America and
throughout God’s world.
We close our greeting with the words of
the Apostle Paul, in which the “hymn of love” is culminated, inspiring
words, which reveal the horizon, the final perspective and ultimate
meaning, the hope and endless joy of the faithful in the Kingdom of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: “Love never ends; as for
prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as
for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our
prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will
pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a
child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish
ways. For now, we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I
know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully
understood. So, faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest
of these is love” (1 Co. 13. 8–13). May the God of love bless you all!