What is required for Orthodox Unity? - Manos Koumbarelis

"I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory, which You gave Me, I have given them, that they may be one, just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me" [John 17:20-23]. Just before the betrayal of Judas, our Lord Jesus Christ uses these words to pray to His Father for His Disciples and for us, the members of His Body, the Church, who believe in Him through their message. He prays for all the members of the Church to be in complete and perfect unity.
What is the source and the nature of this unity? It is divine. It derives from the mystery of the relation of the Persons of the Holy Trinity. As described in this passage, our unity has four characteristics:
1] We are called to be one in Them as Jesus is in God the Father and God the Father God is in Jesus. He does not say, "As I am one with You", but "As I am in You." The depth and perfection of the unity is such that the persons are not simply separate individuals with a good relationship, but they are inseparable, the one existing in the other. Unity is no longer a characteristic of a relationship, but in its perfection it absorbs relationship. When we are truly united we cannot understand ourselves without
the other.
2] Through the relationship of believers with Jesus, He gives them the same glory that was given to Him by His Father. The fact that all believers are glorified makes themunited among themselves in accordance with the unity of the Father and the Son. The glory lost by Adam after his expulsion from Paradise is restored. The true believers have a foretaste of Paradise. Complete unity is a characteristic of Paradise, and those who experience it, even temporarily, experience the glory and the joy of living with God.
3] The unity of the Father and the Son is interwoven with the Love between Them. So, the unity of believers with Jesus is directly connected with the boundless Love of God for them. Unity without Love cannot be imagined.
4] There is no distinction in the quality of unity between God and His only-begotten Son Jesus Christ, between believers and the Trinitarian God, or amongst the believers themselves. The quality of unity which the Persons of the Holy Trinity have by nature is fully transmitted to believers by Grace through their authentic faithfulness to the message of Salvation. Therefore, no compromise in the perfection of our unity may be accepted.
Is Unity, which is so accurately described in this Gospel passage, easily achieved, or is it given as a gift to believers? If their faith is as fervent and steadfast as that of the saints, the answer is yes. We know that the saints live in full unity with God and the whole world around them, irrespective of time and place. But the faith of the majority of believers is incomplete, which makes their unity incomplete. That is why Jesus prays so fervently to His Father for this unity just before entering into His Passion.
To conclude this short study of the teaching of our Lord on unity, we should pay special ttention when He says that the world will know and believe that God sent Him by the unity we share with God and with others.
What distinguishes us from others in the fallen and fragmented world should be our unity. Sin is a characteristic of this world and the fruit of sin is division. The world suffers from division, but those who are not of this world do not share in this division. If we are not united, we fail to be distinguished from the world. We fail to testify and witness the Good News of the Resurrection and salvation to the world. We cannot be called believers and members of the Church, the Body of Christ. We betray Him like Judas and we become cause for His name to be blasphemed by the world. So, unity is not a luxury; rather, it is
an essential part of our Orthodox Christian identity. Without it we are like those heretics who misguide themselves and many others from the way to salvation.
This lecture aims to focus on the unity among the members of the different local Orthodox churches, that is to say the Patriarchates and the Autocephalous and Autonomous Churches. However, we cannot discuss unity on this level without considering the structures that are under it - namely the diocese, the parish and the family.
I will put special emphasis on the family for two reasons. First, because the other structures, although based on the community, are lead by clergymen. This may allow some people to draw the false conclusion that unity is primarily the responsibility of the clergy. But we should remember that parishes in which the parishioners are fully united in their families suffer no divisions. No diocese whose parishes are internally united is divided. And this is the case throughout the whole Body of the Church, having its basis on our personal spiritual health.
The other reason is that if we study the causes of divisions within our families and project them to our local Churches, we will understand better what we have to correct in order to contribute to the full restoration of the internal unity of our Church. Let us now briefly make such an attempt without being explicit.
What may be the causes of disunity between husband and wife? Everything is rooted in selfishness. But how is this expressed? Often the one does not make enough effort to understand that the other is brought up in a different way, possesses different sensitivities, priorities and convictions, different tastes and habits, different talents and shortcomings. It is a great mistake to explain the behaviour of another person according to our own standards. We should always start by respecting deeply the other person, remembering that he or she is an image of God, and deciding to make a lifelong effort to understand the other person before allowing any judgement to pass through our mind. This is what the leaders and the faithful of the local Orthodox Churches should always do when they meet brothers from different Orthodox traditions and experience the diversity of expression of the same faith in different environments. They should deeply respect the others instead of making judgements and drawing conclusions about them, and they should try to learn about the conditions in which they live, to understand them and ask t hem without any prejudice to explain their behaviour and actions.
Another cause of divisions among a couple can be the lack of sincere, deep and stable love for one other. This progressively leads to indifference. The one makes plans for his or her future independently of the other, or dreams and considers life without the other, or thinks as if the other is not a part of himself or herself, but someone quite separate and distant. In the end, the presence, the existence, the relationship with the other person becomes burdensome. The less the one loves the other, the more miserable they become when they are together. These rules apply equally to the various local Orthodox Churches. The husband and wife become, according to the teaching of our Church, "one body" and "one flesh" after the Sacrament of Marriage. It is insane not to love your own body. Through Baptism, all Orthodox Christians become members of the same Body, too - members of the Church that is the Body of Christ. How can a Patriarchate or an Auto-cephalous Church have its own separate policy about which it does not even inform the others? How can it make decisions on major issues while ignoring the effects that such decisions will have in the life of the other Churches? How can we live happily - and this happens very much on the parish level - in a closed community, isolated around our spiritual leader, satisfied in our shelter, and expressing indifference for our brothers and sisters in Christ who have another spiritual father? No one said that being a Christian, an Orthodox Chris-tian, would be a convenient and easy thing. It takes great spiritual effort and boundless love, lest we betray Jesus everyday in front of the world.
Let us now discuss those things which alienate parents from their children, regardless of their age.
When children are very young, they cannot make decisions for themselves. Instead, parents make such decisions on their behalf, judging what is most beneficial for their children. As children grow, they begin to develop their own judgements, which are not necessarily identical to those of their parents. At first, such judgements are not mature enough upon which one should make decisions. The process by which parents progressively allow their children to make more and more decisions for themselves,
until in the end they become totally independent, is not an easy one, and very often mistakes that can would their relationships are made on both sides. Parents need to follow carefully the day-to-day growth and development of their children. Some children mature earlier; others mature later. On some issues it is safe to permit them more freedom, while on others less freedom should be given. Parents should not be unwilling to step aside and allow their children personal autonomy, nor should they force their children to take on heavy responsibilities before they are mature enough to handle them. They should always operate with love and respect for their children who, while being born and brought up by them, have souls of their own, for which they will soon be responsible in front of God and in front of society. Often it is for the good of the children that parents will allow them to make mistakes, because otherwise they will not grow spiritually. The Father of the prodigal son knew very well what would happen to his son after he left home, but he allowed him to go. He respected his freedom and his age. And he waited with great love for him to repent and find his own way to correct his mistakes. On the other hand, children should always respect and love their parents for everything they have offered them. They hould not push too much for more independence, nor should they consider that they know everything and that their par ents are narrow minded and old fashioned.
These rules also apply to the local Orthodox Churches. Some of them have a longer history than others. Some were enlightened in the faith by the others, became a part of them, and later were granted autocephaly or autonomy. In other countries the churches are still not self-governing. There is no need for a thorough study of the history of our Church in the last centuries to discover that in most cases this process was not a smooth one, but one which involved great disputes, debates, and schisms. Bishops and Holy Synods frequently used words and methods of which any baptised Orthodox Christian should have been ashamed. And this history continues today. I will not say more on how our Church leaders and each one of us should learn from the ever-shifting balance of dependence and indepenence in the parentchild relationship.Maintaining mutual respect, discretion, love, maturity, humility, magnanimity, and the careful, objective longterm study of the problems while avoiding hasty decisions and pronouncements should always characterise those who involve themselves in inter-Orthodox Church relations.
The last kind of family relations from which we will take examples are those among brothers and sisters. Here we can find a wide variety of potential causes of division. One of them is the birthright, the primacy. It is true that from an early age children compete for the love, the care and the attention of their parents. It is here that the seed of the sin of selfishness is sown and that the ground for the growth of the temptation of power into a passion is prepared. Claiming one's own rights is also strongly related to lack of healthy self-confidence and humility. Brothers and sisters should in fact have no rights vis-ŕ-vis their parents. The gift of life and the par-ents' efforts to bring them up are already enough. Everything else is a prerogative of the parents and may not be claimed. The order of birth should only be understood as greater responsibility on the part of the older child and additional cause of respect
and honour - which has to be mutual - on the part of the younger. But all brethren are equal. Any pride which arises from something that we did not achieve ourselves does not even have logical grounds. And any jealousy towards our own brothers is a terrible sin that we should struggle against, lest it takes root in our heart. Jesus is the Founder and the Head of the Church. The organisation of our Church into Patriarchates and Autocephalous Churches aims at better serving the People of God, rather than dividing the Body of Christ. Dates of foundation, wealth, size or privileges given by political rulers are
secular criteria to create ranks among those who are of this world. The children of God are all equal. They love and respect each other. And those who ask once again to sit at the right and left hand of Jesus will always receive the same answer received by the Apostle John and his brother James: "You do not know what you ask.... Whoever wants to be great among you, let him be your servant" [Matthew 20, 20-28]. We should all remember that Saint Andrew was the first disciple of Jesus, yet he never
claimed any privilege. Saint Paul was not even among the disciples of Jesus, yet he became the Apostle of the nations. Any power struggle among the sister Orthodox Churches is the greatest blasphemy of the name of our Lord to the world. Those responsible for it, and those of us who support them by our behaviour and attitude, will answer for it on the Day of Judgement.
Another potential cause of dispute among brothers and sisters is the inheritance of the fortune of their parents. As I said before, in principle they have no right to it, because they did not work for it; furthermore, nothing on this earth is ours. The legislation for inheritance, as any legislation, is of this world, and we observe it because the law is the best way to regulate the differences among all of us who live in a fallen world. Brethren who love each other always find easily a fair way to divide the fortune that is given to them. And they respect the fact that sometimes they do not all have the same needs and, therefore, they should not all take equal parts. Competition and disputes between the sister Orthodox Churches over jurisdictions, usually far away from their See, as if the faithful are subjects and citizens to be ruled, are unacceptable. People are not a fortune to be inherited and distributed. Pastoral responsibilities are given to Bishops and Synods by God in order to serve His People with humility, not
in order to fight over them.
Brothers and sisters may also experience a crisis in their unity as a result of diversity. Although they have the same blood and were brought up according to the same principles, their characters often develop in very different ways. Their political beliefs, their attitude towards life, their taste and priorities may vary significantly, and this may create difficulties in their relationships when they live together. Hence, before we speak or act we should consider the possibility that what we say or do may annoy them or tempt them to feel offended by us. We should also learn to respect diversityas a basic characteristic of the beauty of God's Creation. These principles are extremely important for the relations of the local Orthodox Churches. We must study with respect the traditions of the others and enrich our spirituality from their wealth. If it is important that we share the same blood with our biological brothers, it is much more important that we share with all Orthodox believers the Holy Blood of Christ. In
the name of this Blood we should love them and never offend them or their local traditions.
There is a false but prevailing opinion in our Church that for every question there is only one correct answer. This applies only for issues of dogma. We should not be shocked by the diverse understandings of our brothers and sisters coming from different traditions. Pluralism in the Church is a blessing that is not contradictory to unity but, on the contrary, strengthens unity when it is expressed with humility. Uniformity and unity are two different things. Uniformity is related to lack of freedom. But
authentic and long-lasting unity is not only based on the One Truth, but also on the free expression of the faith of the believers.
Another interesting question I would like to discuss briefly before I conclude is the significance of the witness we give as Orthodox Christians to other Christians according to the extent of our unity. We understand ourselves as the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. Our unity is based on sharing exactly the same dogmatic faith and the same ethos in our everyday ecclesiastical life and is nourished and renewed by our sacramental, and especially Eucharistic, communion.
However, we must admit that we have made, and we continuously make, serious mistakes that damage the impression we give to the heterodox. In countries where several jurisdictions coexist, we show such deep division that people cannot be ieve that these are components of he One Church of Christ. The impression of fragmentation that we often give to ecumenical bodies does not allow us to propose our unity as the nucleus of the unity of all Christians. We insist on the absolute importance
of not deviating from the dogmatic faith revealed to us by our Lord and expressed in the Gospel,
the Holy Synods and by the Holy Fa-thers of our Church. If we could show to other Christians and the whole world that this common faith alone is able to keep us in full unity amongst ourselves, then others would pay much greater attention to our faith and many would return to it. Of course, the problem is not with the faith itself, but with our faith, which is so weak and incomplete.
To conclude this lecture, I would like to summarise some of the above-mentioned requirements that would make the unity of the Orthodox more complete and evident.
1] We must realise the enormousignificance of unity for our spiritual integrity and for the witness we give to the world. In particular, we need to realise the theological nature of our unity.
2] We should learn from the other local traditions and try to re-spect, love, and understand then and refrain from criticising our brothers who come from them.
3] We should not isolate our-selves and be indifferent towards the others, in our feeling of self-suffi-ciency. In particular, we should not make one-sided decisions which ignore the other local Churches.
4] Throughout the process by which local Churches obtain autocephaly from their Mother Churches, discretion, patience, marity, mutual respect and humility should always be shown.
5] Competition for worldly power and primacies among sister Orthodox Churches is foreign to the spirit and the mission of our Church in the world.
6] Regulation of jurisdictional problems should be made exclusively with pastoral criteria.
7] Diversity and pluralism in the expression of our common faith should be welcomed as a gift of God that allows us to reach out to the world and spread more effectively the Word of God.
8] If our common faith leads the Orthodox to full unity in their lives, this will serve as a witness and an example to other Christians and the whole world, to return to the true faith, and to experience life in Christ.
May God bless us all to experience His unity during this SYNDESMOS programme here in Russia and to carry back in our hearts and spread in our homelands the sweet feeling of having true brethren in Christ all over the world - brethren who are different and unique images of God, yet who are in us as we are in them.