Sermon of His All Holiness
The Ecumenical Patriarch
BARTHOLOMEW I
During the Divine Liturgy
At the Hill of St. Vladimir of Kyiv
(July 27, 2008)
***
Your Beatitudes,
dear Brothers and Prelates of the local Holy Churches,
Your Excellency,
the President of Ukraine,
Most Reverend Brothers,
Reverend Priests and Deacons,
Blessed sons and
daughters of the Church,
Dear children of
Ukraine!
Archangelic
trumpets sounded through heavens and by the prayers of St. Vladimir
Equal-to-the-Apostles gathered in the shadow of his statue all of us, the
reverend Prelates of the local Churches, the holy choir of Hierarchs, the
representatives of the state, political, ecclesiastical and intellectual
leadership of the God-protected Ukraine, the invited guests from every corner
of the earth, the masses of pious Ukrainian faithful devoutly praying and us
from Constantinople in order to celebrate
together, in spirit and in truth, the one thousand twenty year anniversary
since the baptism of a multitude of Kievites in 988.
A thousand and
twenty years ago Constantinople, the Queen
City, sent Metropolitan
Michael together with a solid number of Roman-that
is, Byzantine-missionaries in order to guide this great people to Christ through the holy Baptism and the holy Catechism.
After the baptism of the Grand Duke Vladimir in
Cherson and his wedding with the Byzantine Princess Anna born-in-the-purple, the collective
baptism of the truth-thirsting Ukrainian nation took place, guided by a
miraculous omen, in the nearby river Potchayna. So did Potchayna become the new
Jordan
of the North, the flowing grace of regeneration! Today, this very same
Constantinople sent here the Ecumenical Patriarch himself in order to offer
dutifully, together with the rest of his venerable co-celebrants, a sacrifice
of praise and a worship of gratitude to our Savior God, but also in order to
bring in his own person to the children of the Church in Ukraine her love, her
care, her maternal blessing and her wholehearted greetings. On behalf, then, of
the venerable Mother of us all, namely the Most Holy Great Church of Christ in
Constantinople, we greet each one of you, most dear Brethren and Children in
Christ, addressing to you all the "Rejoice!" "Peace be to the brethren and love
with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" (Eph. 6:23).
Having gathered,
then, by the grace of the Holy Spirit at this historic place we were able to
unite our soul, heart and tongue to one common and fervent doxology of the most
holy name of God for all the miraculous and salvific events that took place
back then and to offer to Him, as it is our duty, the divine Eucharist. We
confess the grace gratefully and we preach loudly the good work that the Lord
has done for this great nation, emphasizing, together with Nestor of the venerable
Kievite Lavra, who preserved for us the description of the collective baptism,
that that holy day of the illumination of the Kievites "a great joy filled
heavens and earth for such a multitude of souls were saved!" Glory be to God!
Glory to the Father and to the Son and the Holy Spirit unto the ages of ages!
That collective
baptism of 988 was, my dear, the result of the Ecumenical Patriarchate's long
effort to evangelize the Grand Duchy of Kiev. About a hundred and thirty years
earlier (860), the Ecumenical Patriarch among the Saints Photius the Great
assumed a similar initiative by catechizing and baptizing for the first time a
good number of Kievan Rus' merchants at the suburb of St. Mamas in
Constantinople. Later, he sent here a group of missionaries with a Bishop at
its head who begun to catechesize and baptize. He wrote, indeed, that great
Patriarch to the other Patriarchs of the East relating joyfully how "the zeal
of faith has burnt them to such an extent that they received a Bishop and shepherd
and they accepted Christian religion with great eagerness and care" (PG 102,
736-737). Circumstantial reasons did not allow that effort to bear fruits. It
remained though in the memory of the Kievites as well as in the memory of those
in Constantinople. When Princess
Olga came to the Queen City
some time later and received the Holy Baptism the door for the evangelization
of Kiev and
nearby Russian countries was opened again. In this way, we come to the year of
our Lord 988, when the grandson of that very Olga
was baptized in Christ at Cherson and after him his
people who desired the light and salvation. That great event was methodically
prepared and generously supported by the Church of Constantinople, by making
available to the numerous missionaries under the command of Metropolitan
Michael every necessary means, both material and spiritual, so that the light
of the Gospel might travel faster, not only in the Grand Duchy of Kiev, but
also from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea. By the grace and blessing of God the
fruits of that collective baptism were plentiful in every field of the public,
spiritual and private sphere of the life of the baptized, for through their
baptism they were grafted, not only in Orthodoxy's sacramental experience and
spiritual life, but also in the whole of the Byzantine edifice, which
constituted the utmost expression of the harmonious synthesis between the
Christian spirituality with the highest cultural heritage, far from any
discrimination, be it national, racial, linguistic or other.
The Metropolis
of Kiev that was immediately established by the Mother Church of Constantinople
as well as the beautiful Church of St.
Sophia in Kiev, which alluded clearly to that Church of the same name in the
Queen City, the most treasured sanctuary of that Ecumenical Orthodoxy, became
the administrative centers of the entire effort to re-born in Christ all the
Slavic tribes in the region. The first native Metropolitan Hilarion was right
to rejoice in 1051 saying that "the darkness of the demonic worship has
vanished, and the sun of the Gospel has risen over our land. The temples of
demons are destroyed and Churches built; the statutes crumbled down and the
icons of our Saints appeared. The demons flew away, and the Cross sanctified
our cities. The bishops have come like shepherds of logical sheep, priests and
deacons are offering the immaculate sacrifice...The angel's trumpet and the
Gospel's thunder has sounded to all our cities. Men and women, young and old
have filled the holy Churches." Indeed, dear brethren and children, "this is
the change of the Lord's right hand!"
The plentiful
fruits of that collective baptism proved not only the unselfish dedication of
the Byzantine missionaries to their difficult and multifaceted mission here, or
the unwavering care of the Mother Church for the successful fruition of that
mission, but also the willing support of the political leadership to assist the
fuller utilization of the Baptism's beneficial effects in the relationships
among people and nations. Thus, through the co-operation of the political with
the ecclesiastical leadership the desire for the faith and the zeal of the
baptized became all the more manifest in experiencing the new spiritual life in
Christ that is continuously nourished by the common
partaking of the immaculate Sacrament of our Lord's most holy Body and
life-giving Blood at the divine Eucharist. It is the Eucharist that assures and
seals the unity of all the members of the ecclesial body among each other and
with the divine head of the Church, our Lord and God Jesus Christ.
The baptism, through
which we who are baptized become participants of Christ's immaculate Passion
and Resurrection, of "one body and one blood" with Him according to St. Paul,
is par excellence a sacrament of unity of the whole ecclesial body and it is
been confirmed continuously by the common participation in the one Divine
Eucharist, in the one Chalice of Life. The great supporter of the Byzantine
mission, Ecumenical Patriarch St. Nicholas the Mystic (901-907 and 912-925), invokes
that unifying power of the Holy Baptism when he writes to the Prince Symeon of
Bulgaria in order to avert the bloody conflicts among Christians that through
the baptism "we are one body in the faith, and we have one head, Christ, and we
are members of each other, and ought not the members revolt against each other"
(PG, 111, 77).
Therefore, the
unity in Christ of the local as well as of the
ecclesial body throughout the Œcumene cannot
tolerate divisions or conflicts because, as St. Paul points out, "for we were all
baptized by one Spirit into one body...if one member suffers, every member
suffers with it; if one member is honored, every member rejoices with it. You
are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a
part of it" (1 Cor. 12:13,
26-27). Any division of the ecclesial body offends its divine Head and renders
the gifts of the Holy Spirit inoperative for those who are the cause of the
division and those who are indifferent of it. For this reason, that holy
Ecumenical Patriarch reminded the Prince of the Bulgarians of the indissoluble
spiritual kinship that binds all Christians "the God who loved the world, and
returned to Himself His own creature by the Cross and the death of His Son,
allowed us to be illuminated by the light of His knowledge, abolishing thus the
wall of hostility and He invited us to the illumination of His glory, joining
the Romans so in love as in faith; the enmity is abolished, the motion of arms
has ceased and separation was followed by love and unity and the befriending of
each other" (PG 111, 61-64).
In this sense,
today's splendid celebration of the one thousand and twenty year anniversary of
the Kievites' baptism that reaches its peak in this Liturgy functions, on the
one hand, as remembrance (anamnesis)
of God's many and rich benefits to the great Ukrainian nation that were the
baptism's outcome, and, on the other hand, as a compelling invitation (prosklesis) to overcome as fast as
possible the divisions of the ecclesial body that were the outcome of our
times' confusion and to confirm the common baptism by the gathering of all in
one place "arranged in one obedience" as St. Ignatius the God-bearer said (ΒΕΠΕΣ 2, ΙΙ 28), and by
approaching unanimously and partaking communally of the one, soul-nourishing
Eucharistic altar of the Lord. The Mother Church of Constantinople suffers
together with the dearest daughter Church
of Ukraine for the
dangerous divisions of its ecclesial body and cares, as if it were her own
body, for the speedy and full restoration of the desired and God-loving unity.
At the same time, she calls upon all the parties of the continuing
ecclesiastical crisis to consider each his own responsibilities and-in the name
of God!-to act in sincerity, doing whatever is necessary for the peace and
unity lest the evil, hardened in time, worsen with obvious repercussions for
the spiritual and societal coherence of the Ukrainian people.
Today, gathered
around the Lord's altar, we the Patriarchs and Prelates of the local Churches, and
through us the entire Orthodox Church, participate in the joy for the one
thousand and twenty year anniversary of the baptism of the pious Ukrainian
people which opened the way for the dissemination of the Gospel's salvific
message to all the Russian Duchies of Eastern Europe. Our joy is complete
because in this significant mystagogy rejoices and celebrates with us His
Beatitude the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, our beloved brother and
co-celebrant Alexei
II. On the one
had, his participation emphasizes the beneficial power that that baptism had
for all; on the other hand, his personal experience during difficult times
expresses the sacrificial struggles that are needed for the continuous
confirmation of the divine gifts that flow from baptism to all the faithful.
His struggles in defense of baptism's divine gifts under extremely hostile and
adverse circumstances during the time of atheism's prevalence are known to all and
written indelibly in the memory of the martyred Russian people. His struggles
are for our holy brother a testimonial account, and for us all an account
of pride. Thus rightly we honor in his venerable person the holy Church of Russia because on account of this
memorial mystagogy a great joy permeates both heavens and earth for the glory
of the Triune Holy God and His holy Church. The Mother Church
knows and recognizes all this, and for this reason she bears witness in honor
of our beloved brother and co-celebrant Patriarch Alexei.
Having said this
confessing from the depths of our heart, we wholeheartedly bless Ukraine, land
of saints, its esteemed authorities, its Christ-loving people, invoking on
their behalf the prayers and intercessions of Our Lady the Theotokos, of the
Saints Vladimir and Olga Equal-to-the-Apostles and of all the saints. "Finally,
brethren, farewell. Be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in
peace; and the God of love and peace shall be with you" (2 Cor. 13:11). | |
|
