By: Parishioners of the Greek Archdiocese in Canada
A response to his blasphemous speech during the Sunday of Orthodoxy
We just celebrated the First Sunday of Lent celebrating Orthodoxy, the great festival of our Church. It celebrates the one who gave birth to all the saints and martyrs, the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church”. It celebrates her glorious victory against the heresy of iconoclasm.
The Church is founded on what Christ taught, what the Apostles preached, what the Fathers and Teachers of the oikoumeni interpreted, what the Ecumenical Councils ordained, what our Orthodoxy confesses. And we do not have the right to change even “one iota” as our Christ Himself taught us in the Gospel of Matthew. Father Alexander Schmemann writes in his diary “The Church was founded in this world to celebrate the Eucharist, to save man by restoring his Eucharistic existence. Eucharist is impossible without the Church, that is, without a community that knows its unique character and calling, that is, to be love, truth, faith and mission”. But unfortunately for us here in Canada, the love, faith and truth have been taken away from her mission.
On March 13, 2022, the Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church of
Canada, during his speech at the end of the Liturgy at the Annunciation
of the Theotokos Cathedral, on the feast of Sunday of Orthodoxy,
frustratingly did not honour this great day at all! He spoke and boasted
about his distorted achievement, bare-headed, to treating the church
like a “restaurant with a menu”, so that each “customer” can
individually line-up in two different rows and choose between a)
multiple spoons, or b) from one common spoon for everyone, the holy
Lavida. Choose a chalice of your choice, and get it! Oh what grave
sacrilege and blasphemy!
He went on to say that in the 1960s he noticed a “holy” Christian(?)
who was the president of a church in Montreal where he was a priest at
the time, stating that this man was a regular church goer, but yet never
seen him communing. So he asked him why he did not commune, and the man
responded that he was disgusted(!) because of the common spoon(!) which
everyone’s saliva comes into contact with!! And instead of instructing
him, building him, and strengthening him in his faith, he felt that the
best possible remedy would be to change the way of offering the
Eucharist!! He informed those attending the Church of the Annunciation
of the Theotokos that he sent a letter to the Patriarch, before the
coronavirus, asking him to change the way of distributing Holy
Communion, making reference to the example from the 60s! In other words,
instead of pure gold, the Archbishop gave us the rust of heresy.
The Archbishop also stated
that the reason he ordered teaspoons and napkins be used for the
distribution of Holy Communion was that he had an order from the
Government. But he did not tell us why all the other Orthodox Churches
(Russians, Serbs, Antiochians, Bulgarians, Romanians, etc.) in the same
province and region did not adopt the same innovations. Why didn’t they
implement the same changes? We are still waiting for an answer. The real
answer is that the Canadian government
had never requested what the Archbishop has been using as an excuse for
two years now, reinforcing untruths and teaching the error. Indeed the
emperor is naked without excuses!
Isaiah tells us, stop
offering useless sacrifices, I am disgusted with incense. Celebrations
of the New Moon and Sabbaths, invitations to celebratory gatherings,
disrespect along with solemn worship I cannot tolerate. I despise your
celebrations and your holidays! For me it is a burden, I am bored having
to tolerate them. When you raise your hands, I close my eyes not to see
you. And when you say your prayers aloud, I do not hear them because
your hands are dipped in blood. Bathe and purify yourselves, lest my
eyes see your wicked deeds, cease to do evil (Isaiah 1: 13-17). By
faith Moses, when he grew up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s
daughter. He preferred to suffer with the people of God, rather than
enjoy the temporary sinful life.
Who
has not more or less read the lives of Saints and heard their
synaxaria? And with what admiration we bow down to such impeccable
faith, to such sacrificial offering of soul and body, to such strong
witness that inspires and makes one wonder how much these people loved
our Christ. Where is this man today?, A saint, a living sacrifice, a
confessor, willing to be arrested, to be judged, to lose his property,
to be thrown in prison, to be abused, to be exiled, to be tortured, to
be thrown to the beasts and to suffer all the torment, without seeing
any external intervention of God to stop his torment? This Christian
firmly believed in God, he saw clearly with the eyes of his faith
<the Invisible> he saw the invisible rewards that God has prepared
for those who love him. (A. Kantiotis) But this presupposes courage and bravery of soul along with humility of God’s grace and righteous ecclesiastical life.
The
good courtier (layman or clergyman) is a curious creature. It used to
be in danger of extinction but now it is in abundance. Like the
harehead, the poisonous fish that “invaded” from the Red Sea to the
Mediterranean, with a deadly neurotoxin that kills. It is not eaten with
anything. So is the good courtier, who submits to every order of the
boss. He does not know (the boss). It’s enough that he knows the boss’s
ordinances. These are for him his masters, who will say a good word
about him, who will throw him a shred of freedom, power,
recognition or maintenance of what has been rightly or unjustly acquired
so far, even a small loss in relation to the majority. Collaborative
and submissive in every way. It is difficult to classify as a species. (A. Daskalakis)
If
he is a clergyman and especially a bishop, he exchanges God, the
Gospel, the Holy Tradition of the Church, with power, with officialdom,
with the suspension of tax audits, with publicity, with silver pieces
gained from betrayal. He kisses the hands of cardinals, of the pope, he
blesses masons, he casts his oath not to offend infidels, he insults the
Patriarchal tradition, he persecutes confessing clergy and laity. He
considers the Holy Temples his own sanctuary, blocks the entrances,
forbids the Holy Mysteries, the worship of icons, and promotes the covering of the face of the image of man. He
walks with certainty in the loss. He thinks he has built a career,
until at some point someone feels that he is no longer needed. And while
the demons surround his bed, he falls asleep and wakes up with the
illusion of success. Until the clock of the heart stops providing him
with extra minutes of error, sin, condemnation. And so he leaves having
surrendered to the curse.
Saint Niphon of Constantia (Cyprus) tells us, “the
clergy in the last years will become an instrument of the Antichrist.
He will teach blind obedience as a virtue of peace and salvation. A
satanic obedience, which will require from the faithful ignorance,
contempt for the teaching of the Saints, indifference truth and
superficial piety. ” Thousands of times in the past centuries,
people thought that the boat of Orthodoxy would sink. But it neither
sank nor will sink. Such is the hull and such is the Helmsman that it is
impossible to sink. Jesus, in words of love and meekness, said, Judas, with the kiss, which is a sign of love, do you betray your Master? (Luke 22:48) Yes,
we are living in a time when some people are taking advantage of and
flashing their vestments, thinking that God is on earth. Fortunately,
there is still time for repentance, and that is why we pray that He will
humble us all in repentance and help us return to the way of the Lord.
St James, called the “Brother of the Lord” urges the faithful to “show me your faith from your works.”(James 2:18) Your
words and your deeds Archbishop are for the actors, they successfully
close the eyes of the unsuspecting people. Of course you forget that one
cannot make fun of the Fair Judge! We do not boast that we are good and
we hold the truth. The Truth is in the words of our Lord, the Apostles,
the Saints and the Synodal decisions. We are sinners and miserable, but
we strive to mobilize in the practical experience of our faith. After
all, being orthodox does not seem to be very easy, because the measure
of this faith is given to us, not by the people of this world, but by
our Saints.
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Originally posted a here: Archbishop Sotirios - A Torrent of Blasphemy and Lack of Faith - Orthodox Reflections
https://orthodoxethos.com/post/archbishop-sotirios-a-torrent-of-blasphemy-and-lack-of-faith
