The Path to Orthodox Unity, October 27, 2013

The Path to Orthodox Unity, October 27, 2013

Nearly 300 clergy and laity attended a pan-Orthodox forum on Sunday, October 27 to learn about the Assembly of Bishops, pose questions, and comment on the progress of Orthodox unity in America. Metropolitan Savas of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and Bishop Peter of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia served as panelists, together with Protodeacon Peter Danilchick, member of the Assembly’s Secretariat.

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The Path to Orthodox Unity, Q&A

The Path to Orthodox Unity, Q&A

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Archpastoral Letter for the Great Fast 2014

ARCHPASTORAL LETTER FOR THE GREAT FAST 2014

 Dearly Beloved Members of our Diocesan Family:

 Christ is in our midst! –He is and ever shall be!

 As we begin the Lenten journey of the Great Fast this year, I am mindful of a question often asked of us by non-Orthodox --“Why do you fast in Lent?”--and a question often asked by our ownfellow Orthodox Christians --“Why do we have to fast during Great Lent? ”

 The answers to both questions, of course, can be found in the pages of the Holy Scripture within the deposit of Holy Tradition.

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Ecclesiological notes

Ecclesiological notes

^{By Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann}

1. One of the greatest "ecumenical" difficulties the Orthodox Church has is that her thought forms and "terms of reference" are different from those of the West. And, since the ecumenical movement was shaped primarily by Western theological presuppositions and antecedents, its Orthodox participants were, from the very beginning, forced to express their positions and points of view within a theological framework alien to, or at least different from, the Orthodox tradition. This is especially true of ecclesiology. The Orthodox East has not been challenged either by the politico-ecclesiological controversies typical of the Western Middle Ages or by the Reformation. It remained free, therefore, from the "polemical" and "definitional" ecclesiology which underlies the Western De Ecclesia, whether in its Roman Catholic or Protestant form, and which conditions to a great degree the ecumenical debate on the Church. In our own "sources"– the Fathers, the Councils, the Liturgy – we do not find any formal definition of the Church. This is not because of any lack of ecclesiological interest and consciousness, but because the Church (in the Orthodox approach to her) does not exist, and therefore cannot be defined, apart from the very content of her life. The Church, in other terms, is not an "essence" or "being" distinct, as such, from God, man, and the world, but is the very reality of Christ in us and us in Christ, a new mode of God's presence and action in His creation, of creation's life in God. She is God's gift and man's response and appropriation of this gift. She is union and unity, knowledge, communion and transfiguration. And, since apart from the "content" the "form" has no meaning (cf. the reluctance of Orthodox theologians to discuss problems of "validity"), Orthodox ecclesiology rather than precise definitions or forms, conditions and modalities, is an attempt to present an icon of the Church as life in Christ – an icon which to be adequate and true must draw on all aspects and not only on the institutional ones of the Church. For the Church is an institution, but she is also a mystery, and it is mystery that gives meaning and life to institution and is, therefore, the object of ecclesiology.

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