Patriarch Kirill

Remarks of Patriarch Kirill on Seminarians

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Source: Preachers Institute and Mystagogy.

This is a topic that the American Orthodox Church (all jurisdictions) needs to resolve.

Below is a small portion from Patriarch Kirill’s report presented before an assembly of rectors of Russian Orthodox theological schools.

We constantly speak about obedience in our theological schools. But does not this mask a desire to obtain totally obedient and intimidated individuals incapable of speaking up before authorities under any circumstances? Do we not, along with obedience, inoculate them to act like toadies and cow-towing hypocrites? Can such a person be a spiritually unimpeded and a responsible pastor, a true leader of their flock? We both know too well that often, behind a noble external facade, there lurks hypocrisy, pretense and cynicism. I am now reading some of your reports asking about canonical procedures for coping with certain clerics. I also read correspondence from the laity. I sometimes wonder what kind of priests some of these people are… I read all this with a heavy heart. Somewhere and somehow these priests received their formation. They didn’t drop from the heavens. The majority of these are seminary graduates; some even finished an academy. We both know what hypocrisy and cynicism can be found in Church circles.

We must prepare and educate neither slaves nor rebels, but free and, at the same time, responsible people. Freedom does not mean a lack of discipline. Freedom must primarily be an internal freedom, a freedom in Christ. We must be convinced that all restrictions and burdens placed by sacred ministers are accepted by them consciously and voluntarily. This recognition of the voluntary acceptance of the burden of the Cross must be a characteristic of every priest since, the taking up of the Cross is inherent in the very desire to be a priest.

Discipline must first of all be self-discipline, and obedience to the hierarchy must not be motivated by fear but by a firm and conscious adherence to tradition as a preservation of the Divinely established structure of the Church. This canonical discipline and obedience is not something dreamed up by the present hierarchy. This is a principle from the Lord Himself. It lies in the foundation of Church life and every priest must understand this clearly. Every seminarian must understand this before his ordination, that he is entering upon a path of obedience.

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OCA’s Moscow representative at May 24 celebration of Patriarch Kirill’s namesday

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Although it is history now, the Divine Liturgy held in Moscow on May 24 f by Pat. Kirill and Pat. Bartholomew included a representative of the OCA as a co-celebrant. This is clearly an affirmation of the canonical legitimacy of the OCA and Abp. Demetrios was entirely correct in inviting the OCA to the Episcopal Assembly. The autocephaly of the OCA is the real issue, not canonical legitimacy.

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HT: Orthodox News

OCA's Moscow representative at May 24 celebration of Patriarch Kirill's namesday

MOSCOW, RUSSIA [OCA/St. Catherine Church] — On Monday, May 24, 2010, the Feast of the Holy Spirit, which coincided this year with the Feast of the Holy Equal to the Apostles Saints Cyril and Methodius, was marked with the concelebration of the Divine Liturgy at Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral by His All Holiness, Bartholomew, Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch, and His Holiness, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, who was celebrating his namesday.

Concelebrating with the Primates of the Churches of Constantinople and Moscow were the Moscow Representatives of the Patriarchates of Alexandria (His Eminence, Metropolitan Athanasius of Kirinis); Antioch (His Eminence, Archbishop Niphon of Filipopolsk); Jerusalem (Archimandrite Stephanos); Serbia (His Grace, Bishop Antony of Moravich); and the Autocephalous Orthodox Churches of the Czech Lands and Slovakia (Archpriest Alexei Yuschenko) and America (Archimandrite Zacchaeus).

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Norm of faith as norm of life

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This essay is outstanding. It represents the quality of thought that should be coming from all Orthodox Churches; the words that speak to the foundational questions of culture as I wrote yesterday. Frankly, the Orthodox in America are capable of contributions of this depth and importance. I have my doubts however, that Constantinople will ever achieve this level of creative engagement with the culture. I wish it were different but I have not seen any evidence that it is.

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by Kirill I, patriarch of Moscow and all Russia

Pat. Kirill

A religious way of life – in our case, a Christian-Orthodox way of life – is distinguished by its foundation in the tradition of the Church. Tradition presents itself to us as a collection of truths that by means of the witness of the holy apostles were accepted by the Church, are preserved by her, and are developed in relation to the challenged posed to the Church in the various historical periods. In short, tradition is the vital flow of the grace of faith in the life of the Church. Tradition is a normative phenomenon, it is nothing other than the norm of faith. […] Only a life that corresponds to tradition as norm of faith can be considered a truly Christian-Orthodox life. […]

Preserving this norm and affirming it in society as a fundamental ontological value is a task of every member of the Church. […] This norm is stable and fragile at the same time. The experience of contact with other cultural and social models tells us that from that contact, this norm can emerge damaged or even destroyed, or unharmed and even strengthened. […] When the models of life different from our own are also based on their respective traditions, then most of the time they do not constitute a threat to the values on which the Christian-Orthodox way of life is founded. Historically, the Orthodox have coexisted, coexist and interact in Russia with Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and other Christian confessions. They have always lived peacefully beside the members of other confessions and religions; except for the cases in which a faith or a way of life seen as foreign has been imposed on our people by force or by means of proselytism. Then the people have risen up in defense of their own faith and their own norm of life. As a rule, these are cases that have taken place following aggression on the part of foreign powers. […]
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Patriarch Kirill & Pope Benedict: A Tale of Two Leaders for a new Missionary Age

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I’ve been asked to become an Orthodox columnist on Catholic.org and accepted. Below is my first essay. Regular readers will notice ideas we discussed on the AOI Observer.

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Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

Pope Benedict and Patriarch Kirill know that virtue is the only bulwark against oppression. That’s why they exhort their flocks to moral virtue in almost identical language.

NAPLES, FL. (Catholic Online) – Over four decades ago Pope John Paul II said that the restoration of the Russian Orthodox Church was necessary for the cultural restoration of Western Europe. At the time his words seemed audacious. Russia was still under the Communist yoke, the winds in Poland were just starting to blow, and the Berlin wall loomed invincible.

Culture watchers dismissed the statement as the wistful longing of a faithful man. Yet John Paul, with his gift of seeing through the clutter of immediate events into the deeper and far-reaching ways of God, knew better. He believed that the fall of Communism would unleash a transformation that could only come from those who suffered.

His words are proving true. The Orthodox Church in Russia, after 80 years of brutal persecution, is emerging not only as a religious force in Europe, but also as the new leader in worldwide Orthodox Christianity. More Christians have been killed for their faith in the last century than all other centuries combined. Many of them were the Orthodox Christians of Eastern Europe.

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