AAC Address of Metropolitan Onufry, Greetings from Archbishop Leo
During the week of July 26, 2015, as the OCA web team continues to receive additional texts of various addresses, greetings and other items related to the 18th All-American Council, they will be posted in the right “feature” column of the OCA web site, on Facebook page, 18th AAC Facebook pageand in other venues.
Below you will find the address delivered by His Beatitude, Metropolitan Onufry of Kyiv and All Ukraine during the formal dinner on Thursday evening, July 23, and the written Greetings of His Eminence, Archbishop Leo of Karelia and All Finland.
Address of His Beatitude, Metropolitan Onufry of Kyiv and All Ukraine
at the 18th All-American Council of the Orthodox Church in America
Atlanta, GA, July 23, 2015
HOW TO EXPAND THE MISSION
Your Beatitude!
Your Eminences and Your Graces!
Dear fathers, brothers and sisters!
It was with great joy that I received from Your Beatitude, beloved brother in Christ and concelebrant, Metropolitan Tikhon, your invitation to visit the blessed land of America and to address to this highly esteemed gathering of participants in the 18th All-American Council of the Orthodox Church in America and to the distinguished guests who are present here today with a word about the Orthodox mission in the contemporary world.
The word “mission” itself, has two aspects: the internal Church Mission and the external Church Mission.
The internal Church Mission lies in the fact that the hierarchy of the Church—monastics, clergy and those laypersons who possess a significant level of personal spirituality and who lead a pious life—open the path to spiritual development for those who have just entered the church yard or those who attended long ago, but for some reason have not been concerned about their own spiritual improvement.
The external Church Mission on which we would like to dwell and expound in more detail lies in the need to illustrate or reveal the path leading to the Church to those who are beyond the boundaries of the Church.
The first thing that the missionary must begin with is to become thoroughly acquainted with and to study profoundly the traditions and customs of the people amongst whom the missionary intends to preach about Christ. The missionary must respect these traditions and customs, even though he might not like them.
In connection with this, I would like to make mention of one missionary, whom I had met many years ago. He was a man of about 40 to 50 years of age and his face was as yellow as wax. I focused my attention upon him and asked him why he did not take better care of his health, which is a gift of God to every human.
In response, the man said that he is a missionary preaching the word of Christ in the criminal world. For some reason, he was sentenced to a prison and there, in his heart, appeared the desire of preaching to the prisoners the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. However, no one from the prison heavies would listen to him. Then he studied the criminal customs and prison vocabulary—that is, precisely those words and phrases that criminals commonly used. Afterward, when he came in amongst them to accomplish his mission. He took with him several bottles of vodka, ten wickedly hot chili peppers, and some Havana cigars. Taking all this with him, he approached the criminals and, using their language, explained to them that he had something to say to them. In response, he heard, in violent form, swearing and threats against him. The missionary listened patiently until the end the onslaught, and then boldly took out a bottle of vodka, poured out two equal measures, and in criminal jargon said, “Let anyone of you come and we shall determine who is the real man among us. The prisoners chose one of their largest friends. The missionary drank half of a litre—or even more—of vodka before them. Then he took up about five hot peppers and ate them all. And then he lit up a Havana cigar and deeply inhaled the cigar smoke three, four or five times. Having done all this, the missionary boldly told his opponent, “If you’re a real man, you must do the same as I did.” The criminal downed the vodka, ate no more than two peppers, and then tears began to flow from his eyes. Everything inside started to burn, and he did not know what to do with himself. And when the missionary gave him a Havana cigar and demanded that he inhale it, the criminal simply fell on the ground.
After this, the criminals allowed the missionary to say a word. And he spoke. At first he said not a word about Christ, but called the prisoners not to hurt the elderly, weak, widows, and orphans. Later, after some time, he began to reveal to them the mystery of Christ and Christ’s laws. And he achieved success.
Such a marvelous missionary the Lord opened to unworthiness and through me, to other people. He was a remarkable man, who was blessed with a special grace of God. In actuality, he was a very sick man; he could eat only light diet food and he did not consume alcohol at all, but when he went on the mission, he consumed such poisons, which healthy people would not survive.
This story is a unique example of missionary service, but we would like to say a few words about the regular daily mission of the Church, which as a rule, is a combination of the two types of mission: internal and external Church missions.
When it comes to hear about the mission of the Church in the contemporary world, usually in our minds there arise images of Church activities, such as social, apologetic, educational, or information ministry which are provided for by different Church structures at the diocesan and parish levels. Occasionally, it seems that all these areas of Church activity are sufficient in order to make Church life complete and full. However, the experience of Church history from apostolic times to the modern period provides convincing evidence that the main factor in missionary work is the role played by the Holy Spirit. A priest, who seeks, by the words of Saint Seraphim of Sarov to acquire the grace of the Holy Spirit, becomes not only a moral authority, but also a beacon which guides us onto the only right direction in earthly life. Today, in this time of various crises and disappointments that disorientate modern man and often lead him to despair, an extremely important task that both bishops and priests have is to act as good examples of piety and of a life in the grace of the Holy Spirit. Such a life is not only a challenge to secularism, but also a response to those global questions which modern man is unable to answer through science or economics or politics. Real examples of such life were revealed to us by many saints, especially those who are closest to us historically.
Today I would like to make special mention about the identity of the holy Patriarch Tikhon (Belavin), who at one time was the Archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church in America. He had spent eight years here, which significantly changed his approach to Church ministry.
An important step taken during the time of his stay here was the translation of Church Services into English. Different nations have their own liturgical language, the language of prayer. The Greeks have ancient Greek. The Georgians have Old Georgian. The Slavs—mostly Church Slavonic. The Romanians and Moldavians have their own liturgical language, which is a mixture of Romanian or Moldavian and Slavonic. As for the Anglo-Saxon peoples, services are conducted mostly in Old English. As we can see, the language of prayer differs from everyday speech, and it is this that differentiates Church life from secular life. Sermons are indeed another matter. They should be delivered in the contemporary language, which helps people understand the dogmas of the Church, its history and the particulars of spiritual life.
From the legacy of Saint Patriarch Tikhon, we can learn another lesson. This focuses on grassroots level religious communities, in which Church life is conducted not through strict administration, by the power of an authoritative person who is appointed head of the Church but facilitated through initiatives based on the involvement of the general Church people.
Archbishop Tikhon lived during the times of the Synodal era of the Russian Orthodox Church, which included a strict vertical chain of command under the supervision of the state on behalf of the Chief-Procurator. The time he spent in America, where government interference in religious affairs was restricted by the law, in turn taught him to focus on the principle of collegiality. Later, this was adopted in the Russian Orthodox Church and reflected in the decisions of the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church during the years 1917-1918.
This principle of orientation on community initiative and on the ordinary priests and bishops was important during the time of the management of our Church by my predecessor, His Beatitude, Metropolitan Volodymyr of Kyiv and All Ukraine. He enjoyed meetings with the ordinary people and loved Ukrainian folksongs and traditions. This proximity to the people and its culture helped him clearly and knowledgeably protect and affirm the canonical principles of Church life.
It is also hard to pass by the difficult situation that has developed today in my native country Ukraine. To this day, war is being waged in Eastern Ukraine, which was the result of a conflict between differing political ideologies. This has become a painful experience for our Church, which unites Orthodox Christians in all parts of our country. Our faithful are both Ukrainian-speaking and Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine. Our faithful are Rusyns in Transcarpathia, and Romanians and Moldavians in Bukovina and the Odessa region, and of course the numerous Russian-speaking populations in the Donbass, Crimea, as well as many other minorities. Our faithful are people who have different and often diametrically opposed political views on the perception of the past and understanding of the various paths of future development that the country can take.
And so, the response of the Church to these challenges has been to strive to rise above fleeting ideological and political preferences. Orthodox Church history shows that identification with any political ideas can be dangerous to the Gospel of Christ. On the political basis, one can only divide people, while at the same time people can be united only through Christ.
“In Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew (Colossians 3:1 1), said the Apostle Paul. This has been the position our Church has sought to defend in the difficult situation of confrontation in the past year. I think that this question also is partly relevant for Orthodoxy in America as well. After all, there is a great diversity of Orthodox jurisdictions here, and it is pleasing to note that they are increasingly seeking to cooperate with one another. The ethno-phyletic factor recedes into the background and it is right. The following apostolic criterion—“l have become all things to all people so that by all
possible means I might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22) — is the criterion by which we must be guided in extending the mission.
And finally, as part of the reflection on the mission of the Church, I would like to remind you about the anniversary the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is celebrating this year. It is now 400 years since the foundation of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Compared to universities in Western Europe, it is a relatively short period of time; however, for Orthodox Ukrainians, these four centuries represent a significant period in our history. And finally, we must see the situation from both sides. On the one hand, the reforms of Metropolitan Petro Mohyla, who was at the forefront of the Academy, opened up Orthodoxy to a greater influence from Western models of theology. At that time, there was the feeling that theology had the ability to answer many questions of the times and that it was possible to make the Church a guide for education for the general Orthodox population. But eventually there appeared an inherent danger to this approach—scholastic schemes were suitable for teaching and memorization, but poorly perceived by ordinary parishioners. Archpriest Georges Florovsky called this a rupture between theology and piety. And so, for us, it is important to keep this relationship between reflections on God and the history of the Church on one hand, and piety and prayerfulness on the other.
In conclusion, I would like to say briefly that the missionary is one who lives alone with Christ and speaks with God’s love and seeks to share the joy of eternal life with his neighbors. From this also comes the feeling about the preacher, of whom the Apostle Paul expressed in the words, “Woe unto me if I do not preach the Gospel!” (1 Corinthians 9:16).
So in this way, I have outlined the important aspects that, in my opinion, are able to facilitate the mission of the Orthodox Church in the contemporary world.
- This is the personal example of the pious, God-loving life of the missionary.
- This is the elevation of Church life over ideological and political disputes.
- This is the understanding of Church prayer by the population, which concurrently is not reduced to the primitive.
- This is the orientation on the initiative of ordinary laymen and rank-and-file priests who, through the sacrament of Baptism and Ordination, are full members of the Church of Christ.
- And finally, this is maintaining the balance between academic theology and pious prayerfulness.
Thank you for your kind attention!
NOTE: The text of Metropolitan Onufiy’s address in Ukrainian may be accessed on the web site of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
Greetings from His Eminence, Archbishop Leo of Karelia and All Finland
to the 18th All-American Council of the Orthodox Church in America
Kuopio, Finland
July 17, 2015
The Most Blessed Tikhon
Archbishop of Washington
Metropolitan of All America and Canada
Your Beatitude, Your Eminences, Your Graces, Fathers, Mothers, Beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
When I realized I would not be able to attend this Council in person, I thought, “Family does not formally greet one another at gatherings—they offer each other a kiss, and pick up the conversations where they left off since the last time they saw each other.”
So, consider yourselves all kissed. Now, what were we saying the last time was about both being younger children of the Church of Russia in an Orthodox world dominated by older siblings, and a temporal world dominated by secular ideas. How is that working out for you?
Let me share, brothers and sisters, how it is working out for us, based on the theme of this Council, “How to Expand the Mission.”
Like you, we found ourselves suddenly independent of the Russian Church after the Revolution of 1917—a minority Church, cast adrift financially and politically in a largely Protestant, increasingly secular land. Like you, we have been through a Depression, two World Wars, and while your conflict with Soviet Russia was a Cold War, our Winter War in 1939-1940 was a war. As a result of that war, and what we call the Continuation War from 1941-1944, the Finnish Church lost 90% of our Church buildings, our only seminary and all four of our monasteries, including 90% of our people who were forced into exile, losing their homes, jobs, and their centuries-old village culture. “How to Expand the Mission” has not been a theme for the Church of Finland these past 70 years: it has been a matter of survival.
We survived, and are now thriving, because we did not give into the temptations of withdrawal, reductionism or judgment. We refused the temptation to become a colorful museum of old ideas run by exotic people, amid pretty sights and smells. Rather, we challenged and changed ourselves, as the Gospel itself commands. Or, to quote the Church’s greatest missionary, Saint Paul, “I became all things to all people, that I might by all means save some” (1 Corinthians 9🔢22).
Let me share three concrete examples.
In the 19th century, almost the entire Church of Finland used Church Slavonic for its services, and Karelian, not Finnish, was the language of many Orthodox people. But for the liturgical language, we made the choice to seek the future, not to preserve a lost past, since God is the God of the living, not the dead. We switched entirely to Finnish. It was not an easy decision, but that openness to the wider society eventually allowed non-Orthodox Finns to consider Orthodoxy as a spiritual option, not just as a folk museum. We have been slowly growing in numbers every year since 1985. Brothers and sisters, in expanding your mission, choose the future.
In the dark post-war years, it would have been easy for us to withdraw from society, to give into a reductionism that said everything in secular culture was bad, that our only future was as a oppressed faithful remnant amid a corrupt society. We made a choice not to close in upon ourselves in fear of the future, but rather to be open to good ideas and thoughts, in terms of society, in terms of ecumenical partnerships with fellow Christians, and in terms of deeper understandings of Orthodoxy itself. Such openness, in turn, led to a profound spiritual and liturgical awakening in our Church—thanks to yours. It was Fathers Schmemann, Meyendorff and Hopko, among so many others from the OCA, who have helped guide our Church into ever more profound understandings of our own liturgy and tradition. Brothers and sisters, in expanding your mission, be open to the future.
Having tried to make our Church more accessible, in both word and attitude, we learned the way to expand our mission practically was by not judging others. The Orthodox moral, pastoral and monastic Tradition, exemplified by our common Father, Saint Herman of Alaska, prays for the power to see one’s own sins, not for power to judge our brothers for theirs. This is how we reach out to our society—not with judgment and condemnations, but always humbly and pastorally, taking each and every situation, each and every person, into account, individually. We make it known that we are interested in all God’s children—all of whom are fallen human beings—and welcome all who are searching for a deeper experience of Truth, which none of us possesses in all its fullness, save God. Brothers and sisters, in expanding your mission be humble towards the future.
Such is our experience, and it has allowed us not only to survive, but thrive. Older siblings may dominate in this family. But it was Joseph, the younger child, who by being forced to go to Egypt, and adapting, was able to save Israel in the time of famine.
We ask for God’s blessings on your deliberations and decisions. Most importantly, know that you have our enduring love, dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
+ Leo
Archbishop of Karelia and All Finland