I echo your words, “Holy Father Innocent, pray for us!”

I think the unfathomable recent meeting of the Synod of Antioch, and its inexplicably unanimous decision to do the third radical about-face in once again restructuring the North American Archdiocese, simply underscores that the Church needs to dissolve and re-form from time to time to keep pace with secular political realignments. Those who desperately cling to ancient and faded maps of the world as though they are Holy Writ frustrate and jeopardize the true Mission of the Church, to bring the good news of salvation in Christ “to every people, tribe, tongue and nation.” Incarnational evangelism requires us to recognize and affirm the distinctives of each ethnicity and political group, and to indigenize the Gospel into each of those distinct settings – and to do it from WITHIN.

Sadly, releasing the grip on one’s offspring is one of most difficult aspects of human parenthood, and apparently the paradigm carries over into spiritual parenthood as well. Rare are the hierarchs like St. Innocent of Alaska, who urged his Alaskan flock at the time of the Alaska Purchase to embrace their new political alignment with America, and to regard it as the work of God in opening up an enormous new mission field for Orthodoxy. Holy Father Innocent, pray for us, your children in America, in this time of dissension and turmoil within the Church.