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FROM
THE SACKING OF CONSTANTINOPLE
UP TO THE PRESENT DAY
At our last
talk we saw the events that lead to the Great Schism of East and West that
divided the Christian world into two Churches. Today, it being our last
talk on the History of the Church, it remains for us to see what happened
to the Orthodox Church after the Sacking of Constantinople up to the
present day. Of course we cannot cover every event in detail in just one
talk, just as we left out many other past events during our previous nine
talks. Events like the Baptism of the Slavs – Bulgaria, Moravia (Czech
Lands and Slovakia), Serbia, Romania, and Russia. Missionary work on these
people began as we saw last week under Patriarch Photius in the Ninth
century. Two brothers were selected to lead the mission - Sts. Cyril and
Methodius, known as the Apostles of the Slavs. They were Greeks from
Thessalonica, who were familiar with a wide range of languages including
Hebrew and Arabic, but Slavonic was a language they had leant from
childhood from Macedonian Slavs around Thessalonica, and they could speak
it fluently. Their first task was to translate the Bible and the Church
Services into Slavonic and to do this they invented the Slavonic Alphabet,
which is known as the Cyrillic Alphabet after St. Cyril. It was based on
the Macedonian dialect they had leant as children and up to this present
day, it has remained the liturgical language of the Russian and certain
other Slavonic Orthodox Churches. This is of the greatest significance
because it shows that from the very beginning the Orthodox Church of
Constantinople was concerned that people should hear and understand the
Christian faith in a tongue they could understand. It has always been the
policy of the Orthodox Church to hold services in the language of the
people, unlike the Church of Rome which had until recently insisted that
its services had to be in Latin.
These
countries were at first under the jurisdiction of Constantinople, but in
time became independent Churches with their own Patriarch. Bulgaria was
the first to create a Patriarchate recognized by Constantinople in 927.
The Patriarchate of Serbia was created in 1346 and recognized by
Constantinople in 1375 and Russia, although independent from the
Ecumenical Patriarchate since 1448, did not become a Patriarchate untill
1589. Other Churches headed by a patriarch are the Churches of Romania and
Georgia. Romania, remained under the jurisdiction of Constantinople until
1885 when she was recognized as an autocephalous church and became a
Patriarchate in 1925. The Church of Georgia on the other hand is one of
the oldest Christian Churches and traces its origins in tradition to the
missionary efforts of the Apostle Andrew in the first century.
Historically it adopted Christianity with the missionary efforts of St.
Nino of Cappadocia beginning in the early fourth century. Initially, the
Georgian church was part of the territory of the Patriarchate of Antioch.
The church was granted autocephaly by the Patriarch of Antioch in 466 with
the title of Catholicos given to her first bishop. Subsequently, the
Catholicos was given the added title of Patriarch in 1010, making the
title of the primate of the Georgian Church the Catholicos-Patriarch of
All Georgia. The Georgian Church remained autocephalous until 1811 when it
was placed under the administration of the synodal Church of Russia.
Following the 1917 February Revolution, the Georgian hierarchs restored
autocephaly that was eventually recognized by the Church of Russia and the
Church of Constantinople in 1989.
The largest
autocephalous Orthodox Church today is the Russian Church with members
estimated near to 80 million. So how did Russia receive Baptism into the
Orthodox Church? In 954 Princess Olga of Kiev was baptized in
Constantinople. This paved the way for what is called the greatest events
in the history of the Ukarainian and Russian church, the baptism of
Vladimir of Kiev and the Baptism of Rus’ in 988. Undoubtedly influenced by
his Christian grandmother and by a proposed marriage alliance with the
Byzantine imperial family, Olga's grandson Vladimir (reigned 980-1015) was
converted to Christianity and married Anna, the sister of the Byzantine
Emperor. Orthodoxy became the State religion of Rus', and eventually
Russia until 1917.
The chronicle
says that before Prince Vladimir decided to adopt Christianity, he
considered other faiths. Muslims came to him, but he did not like Islam.
Also Jews from a neighboring Khazaria came to him to advocate Judaism. He
asked them: “Where is your land?”. And they replied: “In Jerusalem”. The
Prince asked in doubt: “Is it really so?” And they replied: “We possessed
Jerusalem, but God took it from us for our sins” The Prince then got angry
and said: “Do you wish the same for us?” and cast them away. It should be
noted that Vladimir also refused to accept Latin missionaries of the
German origin. We saw last time that before the Great schism, these
missionaries were at work in the Slav countries together with Greek
missionaries and came into conflict with each other. Vladimir chose to
take Christianity from the Greeks. He had sent envoys to Constantinople
and on their return told him about the beauty of the service in Hagia
Sophia: “We did not know if we were on earth or in heaven”. Vladimir
received holy baptism himself and ordered all the people of Russia to be
baptized, which took place everywhere starting from Kiev.
Possibly the
next most important event in the life of the Orthodox Church is what is
known as the Hesychast Controversy. The Controversy was between the
Athonite monks who practiced the Hesychast spirituality and supported by
St. Gregory Palamas and a Greek monk named Barlaam from Calabria Italy who
had come to Constantinople in 1330. To understand the conflict we must
first understand what the Monks of Mount Athos practiced. Hesychast comes
from the word Hesychia meaning silence or peace. The Hesychastic practice
has often been compared to the mystical prayer or meditation of Eastern
religions like Buddhism, Hinduism and Sufism and yoga, although this
similarity is often over-emphasized in popular accounts and is generally
rejected by actual Orthodox practitioners of Hesychasm. The practice may
involve specific body postures, and be accompanied by very deliberate
breathing patterns. However, these bodily postures and breathing patterns
are treated as secondary by both modern Athonite practitioners of
Hesychasm and by the more ancient texts from the Fathers. Today we know
this practice as the Jesus Prayer that is practiced by both monks and lay
people, which we have spoken about at a previous talk. Of course it is not
just the practice of praying that caused the conflict with Barlaam, but
also the fact that the monks claimed to have an experiential knowledge of
God.
The Hesychast
begins in solitude and retirement by repeating the Jesus Prayer – Jesus
Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me a sinner. It should be noted that
the Hesychast never treats the Jesus Prayer as a string of syllables
without meaning, which would then just be repetitious and worthless. His
pays extreme attention to each word of the prayer and collects his mind,
not letting it wander, which is what usually happens when we start
praying. In time the prayer is said continually 24 hours a day and the
Hesychast’s aim is to bring his mind (his nous) into his heart. There are
various stages to the prayer but eventually the goal is for the prayer to
continue in the heart with the grace of God. At this stage, the Hesychast
usually experiences the contemplation of God which is seen as light. It is
this light that caused the controversy. What was it? Was it just a
physical light or was it a contemplation of God? When Barlaam of Calabria
encountered Hesychasts and heard descriptions of their practices, he was
scandalized by Hesychasm and began to combat it both orally and in his
writings. He had been trained in Western Scholastic Theology, unfamiliar
with Orthodox spiritually and could not comprehend the possibility of
material eyes physically beholding the immaterial God. How can a man see
God’s essence with his bodily eyes? The light which the Hesychasts beheld,
in his view, was not the eternal light of the Divinity, but a temporary
and created light. He also believed that philosophers had better knowledge
of God than did the prophets, and he valued education and learning more
than contemplative prayer. As such, he believed the monks on Mount Athos
were wasting their time in contemplative prayer when they should instead
be studying to gain intellectual knowledge.
Hesychasm was
defended theologically by St. Gregory Palamas, who was asked by his fellow
monks on Mt. Athos to defend Hesychasm from the attacks of Barlaam.
Contrary to Barlaam, Gregory asserted that the prophets in fact had
greater knowledge of God, because they had actually seen or heard God
himself. St. Gregory defended Hesychasm at several Synods in
Constantinople in the 1340s and he also wrote a number of works in its
defence. In these works, St. Gregory Palamas uses a distinction, already
found in the works of the Cappadocian Fathers in the 4th Century, between
the energies or operations of God and the essence of God. St Gregory
taught that the energies or operations of God were uncreated. He taught
that the essence of God can never be known by his creature even in the
next life, but that his uncreated energies or operations can be known both
in this life and the next, and convey to the Hesychast in this life and to
the righteous in the next life a true spiritual knowledge of God. It is
the uncreated energies of God that illuminate the Hesychast who has been
vouchsafed an experience of the Uncreated Light. St. Gregory further
asserted that when the Apostles Peter, James and John witnessed the
Transfiguration of Jesus Christ on Mount Tabor, they were in fact seeing
the uncreated light of God; and that it is possible for others to be
granted to see that same uncreated light of God with the help of
repentance, spiritual discipline and contemplative prayer. The event of
the Transfiguration in the life of Christ has never really been understood
by the Western Churches in the same way the Orthodox Church understands
the event. Christ appeared to His disciples as God, the light that they
saw was the uncreated light of God. But it was the human body of Christ
that shone with this light: in other words it was man’s nature that
appeared in the divine glory. Thus not only can the uncreated light of God
be seen by human eyes, it can also be received by the human body. It
brings as to that statement repeated by so many fathers: “God became man
so that man may become God.”
The doctrine
of Hesychasm was eventually upheld as the doctrine of the Orthodox Church
at a Synod in Constantinople. Barlaam returned to Italy where he became a
Roman Catholic bishop. Up to this day, the Roman Catholic Church has never
fully accepted Hesychasm, especially the distinction between the energies
or operations of God and the essence of God, and the notion that those
energies or operations of God are uncreated. In Roman Catholic theology as
it has developed since the Scholastic period, the essence of God can be
known, but only in the next life; the grace of God is always created; and
the essence of God is pure act, so that there can be no distinction
between the energies or operations and the essence of God.
Gregory
Palamas was consecrated Archbishop of Thessalonica. He died in 1359 and
was glorified by the Orthodox Church in 1368. He is considered one of the
greatest Theologians of the Church and is greatly venerated in
Thessalonica as the cities second great saint after St. Demetrios.
Another
important event in the History of the Church is the second reunion Council
held at Florence in 1438-1439. At that time the eastern part of the
Byzantine Empire had been conquered by the Turks. After the unsuccessful
siege of Constantinople in 1422 by the Ottoman Sultan Murad II, the
emperor, John VIII Paleologos, undertook negotiations with the Pope,
Eugene IV, and made preparations for an ecumenical council in the hope for
a reunion of the Churches. On November 27, 1437, seven hundred bishops,
abbots, monks, priests, and laymen set sail for Italy. The Emperor John
VIII attended in person, together with the Patriarch of Constantinople and
representatives from the other Orthodox Churches. The Patriarchs of
Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem declined to appear personally at the
council, but grudgingly appointed representatives. The Patriarch of
Alexandria chose for one of his representatives the Metropolitan of
Ephesus Mark Eugenikos, whose theological works had gained him fame
throughout the empire.
At
the Council the primary issues in dispute were: (1) the procession of the
Holy Spirit (that is, the addition by the Latin Church of the Filioque
clause to the Nicene - Constantinopolitan Creed); (2) the primacy of the
Pope; (3) purgatory; and (4) the use of unleavened bread (azymes) in the
Eucharist. There was another important subject that some of the delegates
wished to discuss, the distinction in Orthodox theology between the divine
“essence” and the divine “energies,” which was the recent dispute between
Gregory Palamas and Barlaam we mentioned earlier. The Emperor wanted to
avoid getting into deep theological matters which might cause a deadlock
and destroy any attempts of a reunion and so forbade the Greek
participants to discuss this issue.
We
saw in the previous talk the issues of the Filioque, the Papal claims, the
use of unleavened bread. What we didn’t see was the new Roman Catholic
dogma of Purgatory. They believe that all who die in God’s grace, but
still imperfect, can still be saved after being purified in the fire of
purgatory. In other words they say there are two kinds of hell fire, a
temporal and an eternal. The elect go through this temporal fire that
cleanses them which is entirely different to the hell fire which is the
punishment of the damned. The Orthodox Church rejects the idea of two
fires and believes rather that the temporal punishment of sinful souls
consists in that they, for a time, depart into a place of darkness and
sorrow where they are deprived of the Divine Light. However, they can be
delivered from this place of darkness and sorrow through the prayers of
the Church, the Holy Eucharist and deeds of charity done in their name,
but not by fire. Thus, both churches affirm that the soul undergoes
continued purification after death, but the Orthodox, because it is not
supported by Holy Scripture, deny that a purgatorial fire is the means of
such purification.
There were
prolonged discussions at the Council, and a genuine attempt was made by
both sides to reach a true agreement on the great points of dispute, but
the Greeks were not really there to discuss theology: the political
situation with the Turks had become desperate and the only hope of
defeating them was with help from the west. This made things easy for the
Roman Catholic Church to draw up a one-sided formula of reunion in
exchange for the much needed military help. For the Pope this was not just
helping a sister Church, but an opportunity to subject the eastern
churches to his ecclesiastical authority.
Against the
Emperors command to avoid heated disputes, St. Mark of Ephesus insisted
that on the matter of the Filioque and the Papal claims, the canons of the
Church pertaining to these disputes should be read aloud before anything
else. He read the decrees of the Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh
Ecumenical Councils, as well as quotations from various saints, including
several popes, all of which affirmed the original creed and forbid any
changes to it. Many of the Latin monks present at the council, after
hearing the decrees and acts of the Ecumenical Councils, together with
Mark's explanation, confessed that they never heard anything like it
previously. They exclaimed that the Greeks teach more correctly than their
divines, and marvelled at Mark of Ephesus. Mark and another bishop Anthony
of Heraclea were proving to be two fierce defenders of the Orthodox faith.
The Emperor wanted the talks to proceed without problems that might
jeopardise the reunion. He therefore forbid Mark to attend any more of the
meetings and confined him to his cell and posted guards at his door to
prevent him from leaving.
With
Mark out of the way, a formula of union was drawn up in which the Orthodox
accepted the Roman Church’s position on every disputed point of doctrine.
The Florentine Union was based on a twofold principle: complete agreement
in matters of doctrine and respect for the legitimate rites and traditions
peculiar to each Church. Thus in matters of doctrine, the Orthodox
accepted the Papal claims for supremacy; they accepted the Filioque; they
accepted the Roman teaching on Purgatory. But so far as unleavened bread
was concerned, no uniformity was demanded: Greeks were allowed to use
leavened bread, while Latins were to continue to employ unleavened. This
was then signed by all the Orthodox present at the Council except one,
Mark, Archbishop of Ephesus. The Byzantine Patriarch Joseph had a private
meeting with St. Mark to persuade him to sign the decree. But Mark was
steadfast and said: “In matters of faith, there must be no concessions and
no wavering.”
Eight days
after, Patriarch Joseph died and the Emperor John took over the direction
of the church, an action which St. Mark condemned: “Let no one dominate in
our faith: neither emperor, nor hierarch, nor false council, nor anyone
else, but only the one God, who both himself and through his disciples has
handed it down to us.”
On July 5,
1439, the Florentine Union was confirmed. After the Greek bishops had
signed the decree, and while Pope Eugene was signing, he inquired whether
Mark of Ephesus had signed. When he was told that Mark had not, he
exclaimed, “Then we have accomplished nothing!” Nevertheless, a service
celebrating the union was held the next day, and the Greeks then returned
to Constantinople. St. Mark’s achievements and fame had already reached
the capital and the people were waiting to applaud their hero. On the
other hand the faithful avoided the bishops that had signed and even cast
insults at them. The clergy that remained in Constantinople also would not
concelebrate with the unionists. In due time, the eastern Patriarchs
announced that they were not bound by anything that their representatives
had signed. The Union of Florence, although celebrated throughout Western
Europe with bells ringing in all the parish churches, couldn’t be enforced
on the Orthodox people. The decrees of the Council were never accepted by
more than a minute fraction of the Byzantine clergy and people. The Grand
Duke Lucas Notaras, echoing the words of the Emperor’s sister after Lyons,
remarked: “I would rather see the Moslem turban in the midst of the city
than the Latin mitre.”
The emperor
John and his successor Constantine XI, the last Emperor of Byzantium, had
hoped that the Union of Florence would secure them military help from the
west, but small indeed was the help which they actually received. On 7
April 1453 the Turks began to attack Constantinople by land and sea.
Outnumbered by more than twenty to one, the Byzantines maintained a
brilliant but hopeless defence for seven long weeks. In the early hours of
29 May the last Christian service was held in the great Church of the Holy
Wisdom. It was a united service of Orthodox and Roman Catholics, for at
this moment of crisis the supporters and opponents of the Florentine Union
forgot their differences. The Emperor went out after receiving communion,
and died fighting on the walls. Later the same day the city fell to the
Turks, and the most glorious church in Christendom became a mosque. It was
the end of the Byzantine Empire. But it was not the end of the
Patriarchate of Constantinople, far less the end of Orthodoxy.
In general,
the fall of Constantinople in 1453 was a great misfortune for
Christianity. As a result of the Ottoman conquest, the entire Orthodox
communion of the Balkans and the Near East was suddenly isolated from the
West. For the next four hundred years it would instead be confined within
a hostile Islamic world, with which it had little in common religiously or
culturally. Orthodox Russia alone escaped this fate.
How did Orthodox Christians fair under the Muslim crescent? It was not an
easy transition: but it was made less hard by the Turks themselves, who
treated their Christian subjects with remarkable generosity. The new
Ottoman government that arose from the ashes of Byzantine civilization was
neither primitive nor barbaric. Islam not only recognized Jesus as a great
prophet, but tolerated Christians as another People of the Book. In Moslem
eyes, the Christian religion was seen as not entirely false, but
incomplete. People of the Book, were therefore not be treated as if they
were mere pagans. According to Mohammedan teaching, Christians are to
undergo no persecution, but may continue without interference in the
observance of their faith, so long as they submit quietly to the power of
Islam and pay their taxes which were heavy.
As such, the
Church was not extinguished, but rather encouraged to continue in its
administration. One of the first things that the Sultan Mohammed II did
was to install the monk Gennadius Scholarius as the new Patriarch when the
office became vacant. Gennadius was a determined opponent of the Church of
Rome, and his appointment as Patriarch meant the final abandonment of the
Union of Florence. Doubtless for political reasons, the Sultan
deliberately chose a man of anti-Latin convictions: with Gennadius as
Patriarch, there would be less likelihood of the Greeks seeking secret aid
from Roman Catholic powers. The Sultan himself instituted the Patriarch,
ceremonially investing him with his pastoral staff, exactly as the
autocrats of Byzantium had formerly done. The action was symbolic:
Mohammed the Conqueror, champion of Islam, became also the protector of
Orthodoxy, taking over the role once exercised by the Christian Emperor.
Thus Christians were assured a definite place in the Turkish order of
society; but, as they were soon to discover, it was a place of guaranteed
inferiority. Christianity under Islam was a second-class religion, and its
followers second-class citizens. Christians were formally reduced to a
ghetto existence: they were the Rum millet, or the "Roman nation"
conquered by Islam, but enjoying a certain internal autonomy. They paid
heavy taxes, wore a distinctive dress, were not allowed to serve in the
army, and were forbidden to marry Moslem women. The Church was not allowed
to undertake any missionary work, and it was a crime to convert a Moslem
to the Christian faith. On the other hand, converts to Islam who returned
to Orthodoxy were put to death. From a material and economic point it was
enticing for a Christian to apostatise to Islam. In fact a great many did.
We have in Cyprus many villages that are named after saints, or have Greek
names, but the inhabitants were Turkish Cypriots. During the Ottoman
occupation, they were originally Greek Christians, but accepted Islam so
that they didn’t have to pay the heavy taxes.
Under Islam,
the Patriarch of Constantinople received a considerable amount of power
over the other Patriarchates. He became the “millet-bachi,” the head of
the entire Christian millet, or in Greek the "ethnarch," with the right to
administer, to tax, and to exercise justice over all the Christians of the
Turkish Empire. The other Patriarchates within the Ottoman Empire,
Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem remained theoretically independent, but
were in practice subordinate to Constantinople. The Churches of Bulgaria
and Serbia likewise within Turkish dominions gradually lost all
independence and by the mid-eighteenth century had passed directly under
the Ecumenical Patriarch’s control. His power ceased to be purely
canonical and spiritual but became political as well. To the enslaved
Greeks, he appeared not only as the successor of the Byzantine Patriarchs
but also as the heir of the Emperors. For the Ottomans, he was the
official and strictly controlled administrator of the Rum millet. In order
to symbolize these new powers, the Patriarch adopted an external attire
reminiscent of that of the emperors: the mitre in the form of a crown,
long hair, eagles as insignia of authority, and other imperial symbols.
This system where the Patriarch was not only the spiritual head of the
Greek Orthodox Church, but the civil head of the Greek nation, the
ethnarch or millet-bashi, was enjoyed on a smaller scale by other bishops.
This situation continued in Turkey until 1923, and in Cyprus until the
death of Archbishop Makarios III (1977).
The new millet
system had many significant consequences. Most important, it permitted the
church to survive as an institution and made possible the survival of the
Greek nation as a distinctive unit through four centuries of alien rule.
But on the life of the Church itself, it led to a confusion between
Orthodoxy and nationalism. The Orthodox faith should be universal and not
bound to geographical boundaries, but to the Greeks of the Turkish Empire,
Hellenism and Orthodoxy became so intertwined and fused together that even
today when Greeks say they are Greek they also mean they are Orthodox and
vice-versa- Orthodoxy means you have to be Greek.
Another sad
result of the millet system was that the bishops became involved with
worldly affairs and political matters and as a result fell prey to
ambition and financial greed. Each new Patriarch required a berat (an
imperial decree, a diplomatic certificate) from the Sultan before he could
assume office, and for this document he was obliged to pay heavily. The
Patriarch recovered his expenses by exacting a fee from each bishop before
instituting him in his diocese; the bishops in turn taxed the parish
clergy, and the clergy taxed their flocks. Under the Turks everything was
for sale. When there were several candidates for the Patriarchal throne,
the Turks virtually sold it to the highest bidder. And they made sure that
the Patriarch was changed often so that they could benefit financially.
The same man sometimes held office on four or five different occasions,
and there were usually several ex Patriarchs watching restlessly in exile
for a chance to return to the throne.
The Greek
nation and the Church may have survived the Ottoman Occupation but they
suffered for four centuries a spirituality decadence, which even today we
witness among the people a great ignorance of the very basics of the faith
they claim to be members of. But it is a miracle in itself that the Greeks
managed to cling to their Christian civilization which they had received
from Byzantium. They had very little opportunity to develop considering
that in the first two hundred years of the occupation learning Greek was
outlawed in the Ottoman Empire. Very few people had the benefits of a good
education and even the majority of the clergy had just a basic and
rudimentary education. During the occupation Greek boys were forced to
learn Greek in secret schools taught often by monks and priests. Thus the
Greek people owe a great deal to the Orthodox Church for the preservation
of the Greek language and culture. Everyone in Greece and Cyprus knows the
rhyme that the boys sung as they secretly went during the dark nights to
the secret schools to be educated:
“Φεγγαράκι μου
λαμπρό φέγγε μου να περπατώ, να πηγαίνω στο σκολειό να μάθω γράμματα,
γράμματα σπουδάσματα του Θεού τα πράγματα.”
“My little bright moon, shine that I
may walk, that I may go to school, that I may learn letters, letters and
studies of the things of God.”
As we said
earlier the Church under Islam was allowed to survive, but at the same
time there were many cases of brutality and during those four hundred
years of slavery, hundreds of Greeks, Bulgarians and Serbs received a
martyr’s death because they remained steadfast to the Orthodox faith and
denied the Muslim faith of their oppressors. With the Greek uprising in
1821 and the war of independence many more received the crowns of
martyrdom. In Cyprus alone between the 9th and 14th of July 1821, hundreds
of Clerics and laypeople were martyred by the Turks. They arrested and
hanged the Archbishop of Cyprus Cyprian and beheaded the Metropolitans of
Paphos Chrysostom, of Citium Meletius and Kerynia Laurence, the Abbots of
Monasteries and many others.
With the new
independent state of Greece, the Patriarchate of Constantinople began to
lose its hold on the other Churches and soon one by one all received
independence and recognition of autocephaly. The first was the Church of
Greece which was recognized as autocephalous in 1850, then followed the
Churches of Romania, Bulgaria, and Serbia. Today only a small fraction of
Orthodox are under the Ecumenical Patriarchate and these mainly from the
Orthodox Churches belonging to the Diaspora.
Looking back
on the whole history of the Church we can say that it was indeed a miracle
that the one true Church survived against the many enemies that tried to
extinguish her existence. The Church survived the early persecutions from
the Jews, then from the Romans, the heresies, the Arabs, the Seljuk, the
Crusaders, the Latin Church, the Mongols, the Ottoman Empire and others we
didn’t mention during our 10 talks on the history of mankind and the
Church. St. Paul said that “It was given to us not only to believe in
Christ but also to suffer for him.” (Phil. 1:29) This was very true for
almost two thousand years, and the Twentieth Century was no exception. A
new tragedy and misfortune befell the Church as had never been encountered
in the past Centuries.
A new enemy
with fierce demonic horns sprung up with the communist government of
Bolshevik Russia after they seized power in 1917. None of the past regimes
were ever as insistent as communism in its belief that religion must not
be tolerated. According to Lenin, a communist regime cannot remain neutral
on the question of religion but must show itself to be merciless towards
it. There was no place for the church in Lenin's classless society. The
Communist were not satisfied merely with a separation of Church and State,
but sought to overthrow all organized church life and to extirpate all
religious belief. The result of this militant atheism was that it
transformed the Church into a persecuted and martyred Church. Thousands of
bishops, monks, clergy, and faithful died as martyrs for Christ, both in
Russia and in the other communist nations. Their numbers are said to even
exceed the Christians who perished under the Roman Empire. Equally
frightening for the Church was communism’s indirect, but systematic,
strangulation policy. In the Soviet Union, in addition to the methodical
closing, desecration and destruction of churches, ecclesiastical
authorities were not allowed to carry on any charitable or social work.
Nor for that matter, could the Church own property. The few places of
worship left to the Church were legally viewed as state property which the
government permitted the church to use. More devastating still was the
fact that the Church was not permitted to carry on educational or
instructional activity of any kind. Outside of sermons during the
celebration of the Divine Liturgy it could not instruct the faithful or
its youth. Catechism classes, religious schools, study groups, Sunday
schools and religious publications were all illegal. We will probably
never know the true extent of the Church’s suffering under the Communist
government and there are those today who insist that it never even
happened.
The twentieth
Century was indeed melancholy for the Russian and other Slavonic Churches
under the communist regime and as Christian brothers we must pray for
their loss just as we also share in the glory of their many saints. But
there is another side to the twentieth Century which is bright and sunny
for Orthodox history.
In the past
the Orthodox Church was almost unknown in western societies and was
considered by many almost exclusively as an eastern church, confined by
cultural and geographical boundaries. The Bolshevik Revolution, forced
more that a million Russians into exile. This together with the migration
of hundreds of thousands of Greeks, Greek Cypriots, and on a smaller
scale, peoples from other Slavonic countries, to western countries like
France, England, Canada, America and Australia, has pulled down these
boundary walls. Today the Orthodox Church has attained such dimensions as
to make her presence a significant factor in the religious life of
non-Orthodox countries. Certainly the Roman Catholic, Anglican and other
Protestant Churches, have sat up and taken note of her continuous growth.
Their own churches have seen an alarming decline in the number of their
practicing members, so much so that they have been forced to close down
and sell many of their churches. The Orthodox Church, on the other hand,
can boast a religious revival and is continually building new churches to
accommodate the needs of her growing numbers. One need only attend a
normal Sunday service to see that the church pews are full. On special
Feast days one would be contented to find standing space and on Good
Friday and the Easter Vigil, one would have to attend 2 or 3 hours before
the start of the service so as not to find oneself amongst the hundreds
[with some parishes thousands] standing in the church courtyard.
Orthodoxy
today is relatively at peace and slowly but surely, with educated Priests
and theologians, the Church is educating the faithful in the true faith,
although there is even now a new enemy from the west. This enemy is
probably doing more harm to the Christian faith than any other enemy that
took arms against the Church. The Church now has to defend the truth
against the many western teachings and heresies, ideas, superstitions and
fantasies that have been portrayed in films, books and magazines; all of
which have literally confused people’s minds.
Of all the
events in the life of the Church the greatest misfortune that befell
mankind was the Great Schism between Rome and the Ecumenical Church. The
greatest blessing for which mankind can hope would be the reunion of East
and West, the reconstitution of the great Christian unity. But after so
many centuries of separation, is this a possibility? Certainly in recent
years we have seen an increase of communication with Rome and other
Churches belonging to the World Council of Churches. Many are striving for
an Ecumenical world church, “a super church” or “The World Church”
composed of all the different branches. For the Orthodox, ecumenism rests
on the understanding that the Orthodox Church is the one, holy Catholic
and Apostolic Church. It sees the encounter with the non-Orthodox as an
opportunity to witness to Orthodox truth, and perhaps also learn something
from aspects of the life of the non-Orthodox.
But
the realities of the contemporary ecumenical movement are such that
Orthodox find themselves in a minority and often have difficulty in being
heard. The majority of the WCC is generally made up of people who have
spent their entire lives as Protestants, and come from generations of
Protestantism. Orthodoxy believes that it possesses both the unity and the
faith which alone will produce the reunion that all Christians seek, and
will not compromise the faith she has received from Christ and the
Apostles and to which she paid heavily to keep intact and unimpaired. If
there ever is a reunion of the Churches, I cannot see the Orthodox Church
as a member, unless the many Protestant Churches eventually realize and
accept that they came into their existence as illegitimate children of the
Reformation or the Anglican Church, who in turn are the illegitimate
children of the Roman Catholic Church, which broke away from the One True
Catholic and Apostolic Church. God’s providence has always protected the
truth and at all times has enlightened his true followers to speak up and
defend it. Saintly men like St. Mark of Ephesus who even under pressure
from the Emperor and the Patriarch to sign the decree which would have
brought about a reunion, but a reunion with Latin false teachings, stood
steadfast and said: “In matters of faith, there must be no concessions and
no wavering.” Amen.
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