Friday, June 08, 2007

A letter from Archbishop Chrysostomos, Exarch in America of the Synod of Met Cyprian

My dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

I humbly ask for your prayers, assure you of my own, and send on to you my poor blessing.

May God reward you for your love of unity in the Church, which is a goal that we must all make our priority, and especially those of us who wish to preserve and uphold, in moderate and God-pleasing resistance, the Holy Traditions of the Church. Our strength is found in our unity and in our ability to forgive and sincerely place the Church before all opportunism and personal ambition.

Our spiritual Father, Metropolitan Cyprian, has given his life to the preservation of the conscience of the Greek Church, yet rising, in that task, above the nationalism, phyletism, and personal prerogatives by which the catholicity of Orthodoxy is so easily lost. He has also transcended the slander and false accusations that extremists of sectarian mentality in the Greek Old Calendar movement have hurled against him and which have so sullied the name and goals of that movement in Greece. I urge you to imitate his actions, which have brought our Sister Churches in Greece, Romania, and Bulgaria into spiritual unity.

May God enlighten Archbishop Tikhon and Bishop Agafangel to bring all of the Russian spiritual flock that derive from the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (as do we Greek Old Calendarists) into union, that with them we and our Sister Churches may build a coalition of resisters who can change the face of an ailing Orthodox witness, assailed by ecumenism and innovation, and restore and preserve the spiritual legacy of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad.

I trust that someone among you will able to read my English, sadly ignorant as I am of the Russian tongue.

Least Among Monks,
+ Archbishop Chrysostomos
Exarch in America and unworthy servant to Metropolitan Cyprian