THE HOLY AND GREAT COUNCIL OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCH 16TH TO THE 27TH OF JUNE IN CRETE

my source: Ecumenical Patriarchate

The Convening of the Holy and Great Council of worldwide Orthodox Christianity – the first in over one thousand years, is a sign of hope and reassurance for not only Orthodox Christians, but for all people of faith around the globe. The remarkable and relentless pursuit of this Spirit-filled event is a signature characteristic of the life, mission and leadership of His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. In convening the Great and Holy Council this June, during the holy celebrations of Pentecost, His All-Holiness is bringing to fulfillment the vision of his two predecessors, Athenagoras and Demetrios, both of blessed memory.

But more than the completion of a more than fifty-year dream, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has transformed the process beyond the mere structural process of the last fifty years, by adapting to the radically changed reality of Orthodoxy in the 21st Century.

When the road to the Holy and Great Council was embarked upon, World War II was only fifteen years in the past, the atheist Soviet Union controlled the lives of most Orthodox Christians and the church institutions that struggled to minister to them, and the world was deep into the winter of the Cold War. Orthodox Christianity in the Diaspora was profoundly segmented, if not outrightly fragmented. The Ecumenical Patriarchate had – only five years before – suffered a massive and systematic persecution in Constantinople, displacing hundreds of thousands of its communicants. Mount Athos was turning one thousand years old, and though life on the Holy Mountain had scarcely changed over the centuries, the world at-large was bracing to change at a pace unknown in history.

The need for dialogue, thinking together, interconnection, and new perspectives was everywhere. At the same time the Orthodox were commencing a process that is now taking place on the Island of Crete (a sacred topos of Apostolic visitation!), Pope John XXIII was convening the Second Vatican Council, a council that would radically push the Roman Catholic Church – in many ways quite unprepared – into the latter half of the 20th Century. Although the process has been much slower for the Orthodox Church to convene such a similar process, in retrospect we can see that the deliberate and slower pace has been more of an advantage, rather than the reverse.

Nearly half of the time that it has taken to finally arrive at the Holy and Great Council has occurred under the patriarchy of His All-Holiness Bartholomew, which coincided with the dissolution of the former Soviet Union and the resurgence of the Moscow Patriarchate under the autocracy that currently governs the Russian Federation. As the national aspirations of the Ukrainian, Estonian, Czech, and Slovak peoples have created conditions for national and autocephalous or autonomous Churches, it has been Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew who from a position of only spiritual strength, has steered the Ark of Salvation through the dangerous shoals of self-interest and power-seeking. From the Phanar, despite and perhaps because of the difficulties as a religious and ethnic minority that continue unabated, His All-Holiness seeks only the benefit of all the local (autocephalous) Churches, putting the good of all above the ephemeral desires of any one. This has manifested as the kind of leadership that leaves a legacy of unity and conciliarity in its wake, even as the naysayers and gainsayers give rise to fear and even paranoia.

The significance of this Holy and Great Council cannot be overstated. The fact that all the Autocephalous Churches have agreed to meet, to dialogue, to exchange view and position – this in itself is an accomplishment of historic proportions. There are those who would contradict the former statement, but let us remember, that this has not happened in centuries, and for Orthodoxy, there have been no serious doctrinal disputes in over six hundred years, since the Hesychast controversies of the 14th Century.

Inasmuch as Orthodoxy is based in model of conciliarity under the aegis of the Holy Spirit, Hierarchy must be as much horizontal in its orientation as it is vertical, with consensus and unanimity forming the core of the process of adaptation. This is precisely why the Holy and Great Council is so necessary and so timely. As long as the local, autocephalous Churches are only speaking among themselves, each Church’s local culture, economy, language, and local traditions will limit its scope and perspective on is own mission. The Bishops must be in dialogue with one another in order to see the world from a differing perspective and consider the needs of their flocks from the holistic sense of the whole Body of the Church, whose Head is Christ.

The six preparatory documents: Autonomy, Diaspora, Ecumenical Relations, Fasting, Marriage, and Mission, address contemporary concerns of all the faithful. In doing so, the Bishops of the Church, under the guiding hand of His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, are demonstrating the living, breathing vibrancy of the Spirit of God, that infuses the Church to be the living Body of Christ.

     

Pre-Conciliar Documents Documents with Unanimous Approval 

The Mission of the Orthodox Church in Today’s World 

The Orthodox Diaspora 

Autonomy and the Means by Which it is Proclaimed

The Importance of Fasting and Its Observance Today

Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the Christian World

DOCUMENT WITHOUT UNANIMOUS AGREEMENT

The Sacrament of Marriage and its Impediments

There is a very vocal opposition to the Council, as shown by these videos:

BULGARIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH WITHDRAWS FROM PAN-ORTHODOX COUNCIL IN CRETE

  

Source: The Sofia Globe

June 1, 2016    

The governing body of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, the Holy Synod, signalled on June 1 its withdrawal from the Pan-Orthodox Council to be held on Crete from June 16 to 26.

Strictly speaking, the Holy Synod demanded the postponement of the council unless its various demands were met, but given that this is unlikely to happen, the Synod’s decision effectively amounts to withdrawal.

The Pan-Orthodox Council has been planned as the first such gathering in about 1000 years, but has been beset by controversies – one of the most significant ones being the fact that it is being held in Crete, not in Istanbul, the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch. The move was made under Russian pressure because of the tensions between Moscow and Ankara.

The Bulgarian Orthodox Church, where senior figures are strongly influenced by their Russian Orthodox co-religionist Church figures, said that it would not participate if Bulgarian proposals for “thematic and organizational changes” to the planned council were not taken account of and respected.

The Holy Synod said that at its June 1 meeting, it had held “extensive discussions” on issues related to the convening of the Great and Holy Council of the Orthodox Church in Crete in June.

The Bulgarian Orthodox Church’s leaders found a number of pretexts to call for the postponement of the Pan-Orthodox Council meeting and to say that unless the council was postponed, the Church would not participate.

The Holy Synod listed six objections.

These included, the Church said, the absence from the agenda of the council topics of particular importance for Orthodox Christianity “that have contemporary relevance and require a timely Pan-Orthodox Council resolution”.

The Synod did not say what these topics were.

The Holy Synod said that the Autocephalous Orthodox Churches had already officially declared disagreements on some of the texts already approved for the council meeting.

It also objected to the rule that at the Pan-Orthodox Council, texts being discussed would not be subject to editing in the course of discussions.

Further, the Bulgarian Church objected that the proposed seating arrangements for the primates of the Orthodox Churches in the meeting room “violates the principle of equality of the primates of the Autocephalous Orthodox Churches”.

It also objected to the “inappropriate location of observers and guests of the Pan-Orthodox Council”.

Finally, the Holy Synod objected to the need to undertake “large and unjustified” expenses for the Bulgarian Orthodox Church to take part in the Pan-Orthodox Council.

The Holy Synod said that it had decided unanimously for the Pan-Orthodox Council to be postponed while preparations continue, and unless this postponement happened, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church would not take part.

Councils Are the Norm for Church Life, Not It’s Distortion
Source: DECR
VLADIMIR LEGOYDA | 02 JUNE 2016

A Pan-Orthodox Council, which has not been convoked for more than thousand years and has been in preparation for more than fifty years, will take place on Crete in June. At a meeting of the First Hierarchs in January in Switzerland the drafts of six documents were approved which are intended to be adopted at the Council. They were published on the internet so that people could familiarize themselves with them. Some of them were subject to criticism among the Orthodox.

Councils Are the Norm for Church Life, Not It’s Distortion

Vladimir Legoida

In an interview with Interfax-Religion the head of the Synodal Department for Church-Society Relations and the Mass Media Vladimir Legoida gave us an insight into the forthcoming Council and its preparation, and also spoke of how it differs from an Ecumenical Council and how the criticism of this forum should be perceived.

– What place does the Pan-Orthodox Council occupy in the life of the Local Orthodox Churches?

– First of all, it is important to emphasize that Councils are the norm of Church life and not its distortion. The Seven Ecumenical Councils – the most important assemblies of bishops in the period of ancient of Christianity – have become firmly embedded in our consciousness. However, there were other extremely important councils of Orthodox hierarchs. For example, the Fourth Council of Constantinople, also known as the Council of Hagia Sophia, convoked in 879 under the presidency of Patriarch of Constantinople St. Photius. This Council, among other things, included the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 among the Ecumenical Councils. The decisions of the Council of 879 have become a part of the canon law of the Orthodox Church. Some saints considered this Council to be the Eighth Ecumenical Council. And although there was no later council in Church history which would affirm that this Council had such a high status, the importance accorded to the Council of Hagia Sophia has to be taken into account, especially when we look at the fact that people say that the conciliar life of the Orthodox Church ended with the Seven Ecumenical Councils. This is not the case.

– An Ecumenical Council has not been convoked for a long time. How do we account for the thousand-year pause in their history?

– One of the reasons for the cessation of the Councils was the Schism. The events of 1054, which led to the breakdown of unity between Rome and Constantinople, the two capital cities of Christianity at the time, could not but have an effect on Church life. It would appear that for a time Christians believed that Church unity would be restored. There were, after all, divisions before the Schism, but they did not have such far reaching consequences. When the finality of the Schism became an insuperable reality, the Orthodox Church found herself under the dominion of the Ottoman Empire, which in effect excluded the possibility of holding further Councils.

At the same time, it would be wrong to say that Councils on dogmatic issues were no longer convoked after the ninth century. Thus, for example, the so called Palamite Councils condemning Barlaam and his adherents and affirming the teaching of St. Gregory Palamite on important dogmatic issues. These Councils were not called Ecumenical, they were attended primarily by the bishops of the Church of Constantinople, but the resolutions they adopted were also recognized by the other Local Churches.

His Holiness the Patriarch, when presenting the drafts of the Pan-Orthodox Council at the Episcopal Council of the Russian Orthodox Church on 3rd February 2016, went into detail on how the idea of holding the Pan-Orthodox Church was developed, beginning with the twentieth century. I should note that he personally was present at the many stages of Orthodox consultations on this issue. Incidentally, the Patriarch specially emphasized that the Council would not have the status of an Ecumenical Council.

– Why is the Council not Ecumenical?

– Unlike the ancient Ecumenical Councils, the present Council does not have the task of resolving dogmatic issues as they have already been resolved and cannot be reviewed. Moreover, the Council will not introduce innovations into the canonical structure or the liturgical life of the Church. Even more so as the review of dogma is nonsense that can enter the head only of a non-Church person. The Church has no need too of innovations in her canonical structure – there simply is no necessity for this, and this is evident to any believing Orthodox Christian.

All of the issues that the Council will look at are outlined in the published drafts of the Council documents. And the schedule of the Council, which has also been published, clearly and precisely states that no other issues can be the subject of review of the Pan-Orthodox Council on Crete. Full stop. So there is absolutely no foundation for those who voice their concern that it will permit second marriage for the clergy, adopt the Gregorian calendar, abolish the fasts and so on. These are all fantasies that bear no relation to reality.

– What role is played by the fact that the delegations of the Local Churches consist of twenty four bishops?

– Constantinople’s initial proposal was that the delegations should have only twelve bishops. Then the Russian Church proposed as an alternative that the Council should be held with the participation of all Orthodox bishops. There are about seven hundred of them throughout the world. We said that in order to make this proposal a reality we would be prepared to take upon ourselves the organization of the Council and hold it with the participation of all bishops in, for example, St. Petersburg or Moscow, which was within the bounds of possibility. Unfortunately, this idea did not find any support. Then we decided upon the number – twenty four – of members in each delegation, also thanks to the stance of the Russian Orthodox Church, which insisted upon enlarging the numbers of participants. But this also means that, let’s say, the Polish Orthodox Church will be represented by the entirety of her bishops, while the Russian Church only by one fifth of her bishops.

In this regard one Greek bishop expressed his opinion that under these conditions the Council on Crete can hardly be called Great (the official title is the ‘Great and Holy Council’ – Interfax-Religion), and that it would be more correct to call it an enlarged sessions of heads of the Local Churches. This point of view has some justification.

– You said that the Council would not review dogmatic problems. What is the reason for the selection of six topics for the affirmed draft documents?

– Here we should recall the history of the preparation of the Council. In 1961at the first Pan-Orthodox convocation held on the island of Rhodes in Greece one hundred topics were proposed for discussion. Let me emphasize that all of these topics were thoroughly examined by our Church and that quality documents were produced on each of them. However, in 1971 representatives of a number of Local Churches agitated for a reduction in the Council’s proposed agenda. And the Pan-Orthodox Pre-Conciliar Convocation of 1976 cut down the list of topics to… ten. Today there remain only six documents which are expected to be adopted by consensus, that is, without objections on the part of any of the Local Churches. At a later stage there was removed from the agenda the document on autocephaly which had in effect been ready since agreement could not be reached on the order in which it should be signed by the First Hierarchs of the Local Churches.

Incidentally, the proposal that decisions should be reached by consensus was also keenly supported by the Russian Church. The alternative would have been to reject unanimity and adopt decisions by a majority vote. However, this would mean there could be issues where the number of those Churches voting ‘for’ would be very small, while consensus means that if one Church is against, then the resolution is not adopted. This, of course, better reflects the conciliar nature of taking decisions in the Church.

– What do you think of the criticism expressed publically of the drafts of the Council documents?

– We do not consider the draft documents to be ideal. But it cannot be otherwise. These texts are the result of long and difficult discussions, attempts to balance often various perspectives. They are compromise texts. There are no deviations from dogma or the canons, as was also testified by the Episcopal Council of the Russian Church in 2016. But this does not mean we cannot make more precise certain formulae, clarify not fully clear places or remove possible ambiguities. Our Church initiated their publication, proceeding from the need to receive a wider reaction from the Orthodox faithful of all the Local Churches. We therefore can only welcome the discussion and reasonable criticism of the documents. Our Church held a seminar on this topic at the Ss. Cyril and Methodius Theological Institute of Post-Graduate Studies and a conference at St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University which published the final document and also sent to His Holiness the Patriarch their proposals for improving the drafts the of three documents: ‘The Relationship of the Orthodox Church towards the Rest of the Christian World’, ‘The Mission of the Orthodox Church the Contemporary World’ and ‘The Sacrament of Marriage and Obstacles Towards It’. Strictly speaking, there is only one proposal concerning the third document, that of a more rigorous formula for rejecting so called same-sex unions. In the first two instances there are proposals for making more precise certain formulations or additions, including, for example, quotations from the Fathers.

Moreover, the publication of the drafts of the documents will, as I have already said, reassure those who even now believe that something terrible and concealed from the faithful will be signed or approved. The schedule clearly states: ‘The Council will not discuss newly presented texts or issues which have not been unanimously approved by the Pan-Orthodox Pre-Conciliar Convocations and assemblies of First Hierarchs’.

Here is Metropolitan Kallistos Ware talking on the present state of the Orthodox Church and the importance of councils:

Here is Pope Benedict XVI talking about another council:

Vatican II and Eastern Orthodoxy’s Approaching Council
June 02, 2016

There are stylistic and substantial differences between the upcoming Great and Holy Council of Orthodoxy and the Second Vatican Council, but also three important similarities.

Dr. Adam A. J. DeVille 
my source: Catholic World Report

Pope Francis walks with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, left, and Orthodox Archbishop Ieronymos II of Athens and all of Greece as they met refugees at the Moria refugee camp on the island of Lesbos, Greece, April 16, 2016. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

After much anticipation, the Great and Holy Council (GHC) of Orthodoxy is finally set to begin in mid-June on the island of Crete. After decades of discussion and preparation, including much recent commentary on the draft documents that were published—commentary to which I have myself contributed in official Orthodox venues—the leaders of the Eastern Orthodox churches from around the world will gather to deliberate on some issues unique to them, and on other issues that are very familiar to Catholics. 

How are Catholics to view this upcoming GHC? Naturally for most Catholics the analogue closest to hand is Vatican II. And in certain respects this GHC will be similar to Vatican II—a gathering of bishops, with theological advisors, trying to grapple with both old and new challenges to the Christian life today.

But in other crucial respects the GHC will be both different in itself, and very likely be very different in its aftermath also. (Let me go on record as hoping that its aftermath is indeed very different from what happened in the Catholic Church after 1965!) A great deal of the difference stems, of course, from the fact that there is no centralized papal authority in Orthodoxy, a fact that I discussed in detail in my 2011 book Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy.

Stylistic Differences

Other differences are merely superficial, such as size (Orthodoxy’s GHC will be much smaller than Vatican II because Orthodoxy is much smaller—approximately 250 million faithful compared to well over 1 billion Catholics); or length: Vatican II met in four sessions, running to many weeks, over four years whereas the GHC is only meeting from June 16-27, 2016. Whether future meetings can be expected after this one remains to be seen, and will very likely depend on how acrimonious this first meeting is.

Preparation has also differed: Vatican II was a surprise council, announced in January 1959, and convened in October 1962. Orthodoxy’s GHC is no surprise at all, having been talked about in some form for nearly a century now since a partial, informal gathering was held in Constantinople in 1923. More proximate preparation began in 1961, but more serious and more immediate preparation was not begun until 1976, the first (of several) pre-conciliar pan-Orthodox consultations over the last forty years to work out an initial agenda.

Substantial Differences

The ten-point agenda from 1976 has continued to guide discussions to the present day. More than half the agenda items had no corresponding Catholic counterpart a decade earlier at Vatican II. Only the final three treat issues that Vatican II also addressed, and with similar difficulties and controversy as we now find in Orthodox discussions.

A Catholic looking at this Orthodox agenda (and doing so, I stress, without the slightest bit of triumphalism for the modern papacy is, as we have been learning recently, a double-edged sword) could easily see that the first four items are all questions of leadership that could not really arise in the Catholic Church under the modern centralized papacy: Thus the questions of the Orthodox diaspora, of autocephaly and its manner of proclamation, of autonomy and its manner of proclamation, and of the diptychs were never on the agenda of Vatican II.

Diaspora: Most Orthodox churches began, and maintain roots in, some “homeland” or other—Greece, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, etc.—but have, thanks to modern immigration, existed in Western Europe, North America, and Australasia for over a century in some cases. How should a Greek parish in Manhattan, say, or a Russian parish in Palermo, or a Ukrainian one in Montreal relate to both its surrounding culture and to its homeland? What language should liturgy be in—Greek or English, Russian or Italian, Ukrainian or French? Should these “diasporic” parishes be more self-governing, or continue to report to bishops back home? Catholic ecclesiology, with a much stronger “universalist” and trans-national thrust, scarcely regards such questions as worth asking. A parish founded by, say, Irish Catholics in Boston reports to the archbishop of Boston, not to some bishop in Ireland.

Autocephaly and Autonomy: Following on from the above, when an entire diocesan, regional, and national structure gets set up in a new country, does it continue to report to the old country and be accountable to bishops and synods there, or can it be granted total independence (autocephaly) or partial independence (autonomy) in its new place? The dispute here is whether the “mother-church” grants such independence or whether doing so is a prerogative that belongs exclusively to the Ecumenical Patriarch. Again, Catholic ecclesiology and canon law don’t even consider these as live issues for Catholics because the pope himself (Sovereign Pontiff indeed!) is the only truly “independent” authority in the Church: “the first see is judged by nobody,” as canon 1404 of the Latin code bluntly puts it.

Diptychs: The diptychs are merely prayers in the liturgy which commemorate by name the bishop with whom one is in communion, and the bishops in communion with him. (Latin Catholics also do this during the eucharistic prayer, when the celebrant prays for “Francis our pope and Kevin our bishop.”) The usual practice is to name these bishops by the seniority of their see, starting with the ancient patriarchates (Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, Jerusalem), but there are several problems here for the Orthodox: does the lack of full communion with Rome justify moving Constantinople into the first place, and perhaps granting additional authority to it? And what about patriarchates created in the second millennium—Moscow, Bucharest, Sofia, and others? Finally, if one church’s autocephaly is not recognized by others, how, if at all, should one pray for them?

If the foregoing four issues were not on the agenda of Vatican II, thanks largely to a different Catholic ecclesiology and the role of the modern centralized papacy in dealing (often unilaterally) with many structural issues, then the next three items on the GHC agenda were not discussed at Vatican II either, though for different reasons.

First, the matter of a common calendar has almost never been a serious issue in Catholic circles since the sixteenth century. The only treatment of this issue at Vatican II comes in its ecumenical debates, when it briefly called for Christians to work towards one common celebration of Easter (Orientalium Ecclesiarum no. 20). But Orthodox attempts to adopt a common calendar since 1923 have led to schisms in places such as Greece and Romania, which remain unhealed today. (As I argued last summer, calendar questions are absurdly vexed because they have nothing to do with science, logic, or reason. They are, rather, emotionally fraught issues of identity.)

Second, the question of adaptation of church regulations on fasting was not on the agenda of Vatican II because, once more, the papacy unilaterally imposed changes on the entire Latin Church, beginning with Pope Pius XII’s relaxation of the ante-eucharistic fast from midnight to three hours, and then down to one hour under Pope Paul VI. Lenten fasting regulations were similarly changed by papal fiat.

Finally, marriage questions (including contraception) were largely thought too delicate for debate at Vatican II, and so were debated later, and are debated still as we have recently seen with the publication of Amoris Laetitia. Catholic debates have been enormously messy and controverted, and there is little reason to think it will not be similarly messy at the GHC and for some time afterwards. Here the Franciscan papacy has proven to be of no advantage at all, denying Catholics any excuse for smugly assuming they can come up with a more coherent or consistent answer than one finds in Orthodoxy’s more decentralized approach.

Similarities

Only when we get to the last three items on the GHC’s agenda do we find startlingly similar issues following a remarkably similar trajectory as at Vatican II. The final three issues on the agenda of the GHC were, in fact, on Vatican II’s agenda also:


One should expect no controversy with the last item on the GHC’s agenda—who isn’t in favor of peace and justice?—but the first two have long engendered a furious reaction from some Orthodox, very much like the reaction of some Catholics at and since Vatican II. For the fundamental problem that VII and the GHC have to grapple with is the same: “soteriological exclusivism” (as the Polish theologian Waclaw Hryniewicz called it), that is, both the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church believe themselves quite simply to be the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church proclaimed in the Nicene Creed.

The problem here is that if I think my church the only true church, to the exclusion of all others, then what do I make of those others who claim to follow Christ outside my church—German Lutherans, say, or Brazilian Pentecostals? Both Catholicism and Orthodoxy have answered this question in one of three ways. The first, more “traditional” answer in both Catholicism until Vatican II and parts of Orthodoxy still today is the same: such “Christians” are not really Christians at all and their rites and sacraments are utterly null and void. (In this view the pope isn’t a bishop for he isn’t even a Christian, having never been baptized!) The only solution is for these wayward, unbaptized pagans to “return” to “holy mother Church” and become Christians for the first time. This remains a minority view in Orthodoxy, but a vocal one.

An even smaller minority within Orthodoxy (as within Catholicism) takes a relativist approach: anybody who feels himself a Christian and tries to follow Christ is fine. The solution to division is either to just accept it, even perhaps to rejoice in it (“let a thousand flowers bloom!”); or at best to think that we can find unity by setting aside whatever divides us and just focusing on what we have in common. This position has virtually no traction (and certainly no official sanction) within Catholicism or Orthodoxy, but it has proven, for the latter, a useful straw dog to denounce any and all discussions with Catholics and Protestants as being guilty of the “pan-heresy of ecumenism.”

The final approach to this, which may well be the one adopted by Orthodoxy, was the ingenious (inspired?) solution adopted by Vatican II in what I would regard as the most important passage of the entire council:

This is the one Church of Christ which in the Creed is professed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic, which our Saviour, after His Resurrection, commissioned Peter to shepherd, and him and the other apostles to extend and direct with authority, which He erected for all ages as “the pillar and mainstay of the truth.” This Church constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him, although many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible structure. These elements, as gifts belonging to the Church of Christ, are forces impelling toward catholic unity (Lumen Gentium no.8).

At one stroke, the fathers of Vatican II cut the knot and freed Catholics to maintain their self-understanding while expanding it to see how God was working in the lives of non-Catholics, compelling them and us towards the fullness of catholic unity.

Will Orthodoxy’s GHC take a similar approach? It is hard to tell just now, given how controversial such notions remain. The more likely course seems to be the cautious one: they will avoid taking a stand on this, perhaps waiting for a more opportune time. After all, not having had a pan-Orthodox council of this sort since 787, what’s the sudden rush now?

My hope, for what it’s worth, is that this first meeting will soon give rise to further sessions of the GHC where these and other issues can be slowly worked through. Given Orthodoxy’s fissiparous nature, any haste now will be fatal, leading to fresh schisms. Let us as Catholics pray fervently that the Spirit of truth will serenely guide the fathers on Crete, allowing them in God’s good time to say “It seems good to the Holy Spirit and to us….”


About the Author

Dr. Adam A. J. DeVille  

Dr. Adam A. J. DeVille is Associate Professor and Chairman of the Department of Theology-Philosophy, University of Saint Francis (Fort Wayne, IN) and author of Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy (University of Notre Dame, 2011).

 Holy Synod issues Statement, Petitions on the Holy and Great Council

The Holy Synod of Bishops of the Orthodox Church in America

Synod
The Holy Synod of Bishops of the Orthodox Church in America has issued a Statement on the Holy and Great Council, slated to be convened on the Island of Crete from June 16 through 27, 2016.  Concurrently, petitions have been made available and are to be included in the Litany of Fervent Supplication at all Divine Services, beginning immediately.

The Statement and Petitions that appear below also are available in PDF format.

The Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church in America

Statement on the Holy and Great Council to be convened on the Island of Crete
June 16-27,  2016
We greet you in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ,  Who is the Way and the Truth and the Life (John 14:6).

For many decades, the Orthodox Church has witnessed the efforts to assemble a Holy and Great Council as a contemporary witness to the Holy Orthodox Faith.  The initiative in this modern endeavor belonged to the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras.  The long pilgrimage toward the Holy and Great Council began in the 1960s.  There were long pauses in this pilgrimage, followed by a renewed period of intense preparation at the initiative of His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.  Through the decades, Pan-Orthodox conferences, consultations, and meetings of patriarchs and primates have revised the list of topics.  During recent months, as the churches have reviewed draft documents and reflected on their formulations, new proposals have been brought forth and fresh disagreements have arisen.

Even at this late stage, participation in the Holy and Great Council is uncertain, and its outcome is equally uncertain.  In the midst of all this uncertainty, there is one certainty:  the Orthodox Church in America, not being universally recognized as an autocephalous church, is not invited to be a participant.  Our reaction to this is one of sadness, but not alienation.  With gratitude to God, we affirm our identity as the Orthodox Church in America.  We also affirm with gratitude to God our autocephaly, as granted to us by the Russian Orthodox Church, and as recognized by the Churches of Georgia, Bulgaria, Poland, and the Czech Lands and Slovakia.  We affirm with profound gratitude to God our Eucharistic communion with all Orthodox Churches, beginning with the Ecumenical Patriarchate.  We therefore accept and affirm our right and duty to accompany the Holy and Great Council with love and reflection and prayer.

The discussions and debates surrounding the draft documents express concerns and objections that emerge in the Orthodox Churches.  It is argued that the intensity of the objections demonstrates that the Holy and Great Council should be postponed so as to avoid possible schism.  Such a conclusion appears to reject the conciliar vision and practice of the Orthodox Church.  The challenges of our time require more theological reflection and debate, not less.  The urgency of such theological reflection and debate calls for more conciliarity, not less.

At the heart of concerns and objections to the Council and its draft documents is the fear of eroding the Orthodox identity and self-understanding, diluting Orthodox theology (the truth about God) and ecclesiology (the truth about the Church).  Today’s challenge to the Orthodox Church is the same it has always been: to bring to all people the Christ who is the way and the truth and the life, to bring the Gospel of Christ to all people with love and compassion, to worship God eucharistically in Spirit and in Truth.  In faithfulness to this Orthodox way lies deliverance from fear and growth in life and faith and spiritual understanding (Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom).

The commitment of His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to the building of consensus, as shown by periodically convening the Synaxis of Patriarchs and Primates, has opened the path to the Holy and Great Council. Even at these last moments of preparation the obstacles on this path are emerging with even greater strength than before.  The most recent sign of the crisis came at the meeting of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church on June 3, 2016.  The minutes of this meeting enumerate the procedural and substantive challenges faced by the Orthodox Churches on the eve of the Council – including the unresolved dispute between the Patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem, the demands for changes in some of the draft documents coming from the Churches of Georgia, Serbia, and Greece, and also from the Monasteries of Mount Athos, and finally the decision of the Church of Bulgaria insisting on the postponement of the Council and declaring categorically that she will not participate in the Council set for the end of June 2016.  The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church concludes that this extraordinary situation may be resolved by the convening of an extraordinary Pan-Orthodox Preconciliar Consultation not later than June 10.  This Consultation would have as its purpose a review of the existing situation and a study of the proposed changes to the Council documents.  On the basis of the conclusion of the Consultation the Churches could determine whether the convening of the Council on the announced dates is possible.

The convening of the Holy and Great Council as a sign of unity and as a witness to unity is a worthy vision for Orthodoxy pursued with patience and determination by His All Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.  The painful difficulties in realizing this vision have always been evident.  The dangers on the road towards this vision are now seen in bold relief, yet the beauty of the vision is clear as never before.  Today, the Orthodox Churches stand before the world unable to conceal the wounds of our fractured relationships.  Yet the vision of unity will not be denied, because it comes from the heart of the Orthodox Faith and is intrinsic to the Good News of Christ. Whatever the difficulties and wounds we bear, we are following the Risen Christ and are empowered by Pentecost to witness to the Gospel of Christ everywhere and at all times.

It is our sincere hope and fervent prayer that the pilgrimage towards the convening of the Holy and Great Council will bear fruit for the Orthodox Church’s unity and for her mission and witness in the world.  Just as we pray in the Divine Liturgy for the descent of the Holy Spirit on us and on the gifts that are offered, so let us pray that the Holy Spirit may descend on us all and on the gifts of conciliarity that are offered to God.

Petitions for the Holy and Great Council
To be Included in the Litany of Fervent Supplication at All Services
Furthermore we pray: O Lord our Almighty and Eternal God, Source of all wisdom and understanding!  As Thou didst send Thine All-Holy Spirit upon Thine apostles and disciples, gathered on the great day of Pentecost, confirming them in the fullness of the faith which they proclaimed to the ends of the earth, fill the hearts and minds of our Holy Fathers gathered in Council with that same Spirit, enabling them to discern Thy holy will, that they may serve and glorify Thee, enlightened with right judgment and good purpose to the building up of Thy Holy Church throughout the world, we pray Thee, hear us and have mercy…

Again we pray: O Lord our God, Giver of every good gift, look with favor upon Thy Church and bless and guide the minds and hearts of those gathered in Thy Name, granting them and us by the grace of Thine All-holy Spirit an increase in faith and understanding, that in vigilance, fasting and prayer they may discern Thy holy will with one heart and one mind, we pray Thee, hear us and have mercy…

Again we pray:  O Lord our God, send Thy Holy Spirit upon them and upon us so that, inspired by Thy gifts of discernment and understanding, Thy will might be accomplished throughout the world in these turbulent times, for the good of all Thy People, that all might be one, even as Thou—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—are one, we pray Thee, hear us and have mercy…

Again we pray: O Lord our God, in Thy holy and providential care for Thy Church, grant our Holy Fathers gathered in Council wisdom, understanding, mutual love and respect, sanctity, and the faith and hope to reflect and reveal Thy abundant love for mankind throughout the world, so that Thy Holy Church may be that light on the lampstand and salt of the earth in loving service to Christ our God and thus to one another, we pray Thee, hear us and have mercy…

THIS IS THE FIRST OF SEVERAL POSTS IN WHICH I WILL TRY TO ASSEMBLE ARTICLES FROM DIFFERENT SOURCES, MOSTLY ORTHODOX, ON THE HOLY AND GREAT COUNCIL.

HEART TO HEART: THE FEAST OF THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY

The feast of the Immaculate Heart, eccentric as it may appear to non-Catholics, point us to a wonderful truth acceptable to most: our religion is a religion of the heart, of grace that has its home in our deepest self.   This is illustrated in the Gospel of St Luke in which the Blessed Virgin kept all that God told her, either by words or in events, in her heart.   She did not allow them to become fleeting memories, here today and gone tomorrow: she allowed them to sink in to become ruminations in her very soul, part and parcel of what she was becoming, our most holy Theotokos (God Bearer).

She took into her heart the words of the angel, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow, and so the child will be holy and will be called Son of God;"  and from her immaculate heart came her answer, "I am the  handmaid of the Lord.   Let what you have said be done to me."   It can be said that Jesus was conceived through the heart of Mary.  

The Visitation is a story of the meeting of John the Baptist with Jesus within the depths of Elizabeth and Mary, and it is from within the heart of Mary that the Magnificat flowed. The events and words that express the meaning of Christ's birth are also contemplated by Mary, deep in her heart.  At the presentation of Jesus in the temple, Simeon prophesied to Mary that a sword would pierce her soul " so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.”   For the first time, St Luke hints that will happen in the depths of Mary will have a direct effect on others. Finally in St Luke's Gospel, we have the Holy Family visiting Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover.   Mary and Joseph have the experience of losing  Jesus for three days.  They are  reminded by his replies that, although they are the legal parents, Jesus belongs to the Father and thus has a prior loyality.   This loyalty would lead him to the cross.  St John's Gospel shows Our Lady, with sword in her heart, suffering with Christ deep down in her self.   When her heart had expanded by its synergy with the love of Christ crucified, she became our mother as the disciple whom Jesus loved took her into his family.

We saw in yesterday's feast that, according to Thomas Merton, "in the deepest ground of our being we remain in metaphysical contact with the whole of that creation in which we are only small parts."   It is that point within us in which God breathes on the matter of this world to make each one of us a living soul.  It is our point of contact with God by which we are human: it is what we call "our heart".   When Mary received Jesus into her heart by her humble obedience, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord..." and continued to receive him by her life of humble obedience, right up to the foot of the cross where she stood with St John, her heart became the heart of the human race, and the situation of every other heart "metaphysically" in contact with hers, humans across time and space, now beat in a new context: the offer of grace was everywhere.   For this reason we celebrate the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary involves a total commitment to respond to the Gospel with the same wholehearted humble obedience that Mary displayed, not just with words but with deeds.

Mary's message is always that which she gave in the Marriage Feast of Cana, "Do whatever he tells you."   It involves listening to and reading the Word of God meditatively, openly, in an attitude of humble obedience so that the Holy Spirit can speak to us as he spoke to her.   Praying the rosary is another way to place yourself in humble obedience to the truths of faith in union with Mary; but this prayer, however important, holy and wonderful it is in the experience of the Catholic faithful, should never be a substitute for the meditative reading of Scripture; but rather, it should be a way of extending its influence into the rest of the day.

Another dimension of our relationship of humble obedience to the will of God is penance, somthing we all tend to neglectAt least, we should not put off till later what we can do today.  On hearing of the plight of her cousin Elizabeth, even though this was not the main thrust of the message given her by the angel, she downed tools and, with haste, went to look after her cousin who was about to have a child. To learn to do unpleasant or difficult things immediately it is a good thing to take on fasting or 'giving up things'.  This strengthens our will to do the will of God when it is really important to do so.   Most of all, we should remember that what happens in our hearts is important, not just for us, but also for others, perhaps others we don't know or may never meet in this life.   We, like Mary, are  "metaphysically" connected with everyone else.

This brings me to the message of Fatima.  What I find most challanging and most exciting is the claim in Fatima that prayer and penance can alter history, but is no different from the claim of Saint Therese of Lisieux she can practise the love that causes martyrs to be ready to shed their blood and missionaries to spread the Gospel.  Both the Fatima messages and the teaching of St Therese take for granted that there is a unity of the human race that has its origin in God and of which we are only sometimes aware.

Part of the message of Our Lady in Fatima is about Russia.   Unfortunately, there is an apocalyptic right wing, both in the Catholic  Church and in the Orthodox, so that Youtube is choc-a-bloc with interpretations of the "secrets of Fatima" that say more about those who make them than about either Fatima or Russia.  What is true is that the Blessed Virgin told the three children that Russia would become a source of great evil, of persecution of war etc, and she told us to pray and do penance for Russia.

This happened.   We used to say "prayers for Russia" after every Mass; children gave up sweets for Russia, many went to Mass and said the rosary for Russia.   I doubt if any part of the world prayed so earnestly and over a prolonged period in favour of Russia and its conversion.  It is also true that when Communism eventually fell, with the loss of very little blood, the Orthodox faithful attributed this to the protection of Our Lady of Kazan.

I don't think the Russian Orthodox have generally appreciated the amount of prayer that was offered up in the West for them.   Some are intent that only bad things come from the West and have even; so they accuse us of praying to convert them, a prayer of aggression. The same would be only too glad to convert us.  However, most of us were thinking of the Communists who persecuted Catholics in other countries and were genuinely praying for their Orthodox brethren, even if they often had no idea what an Orthodox is.  On the other hand, a Catholic monk friend of mine was once taken on a tour of churches, Orthodox and Eastern Catholic in Minsk, and asked to guess which were Orthodox and which were Catholic. He was certain about one church because it had inside a statue of Our Lady of Fatima.  In fact, it turned out to be Orthodox - so some know of the deluge of prayer on their behalf because of the Fatima apparitions.

What is the difference between the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary?

The Sacred Heart of Jesus is the symbol and devotional expression of the divine and human love that the triune God has for us, for all human beings and for all creation through Jesus Christ.   The immediate object of that love is ourselves.

The Immaculate Heart of Mary is the symbol and devotional expression of that human, creaturely love that is enabled by the Holy Spirit to receive Jesus Christ himself with the fullness of divine-human love that is his, in which we participate and, by so doing, share in the divine life.  The immediate object of this love that comes from the Immaculate Heart is love of the Father, through the Son, in the unity of the Holy Spirit.  The reception of this love has two essential characteristics:
i)  Once Our Blessed Lady's heart  receives this love, Jesus uses it to "contaminate" as many other hearts as possible so that all these hearts become instruments of his love;
ii)When, through conversion, we receive this love of Christ, we never receive it as an individual, but always in communion with others: this is because of the nature of the heart which is in "metaphysical" contact with all other hearts; and it is also the nature of the Church.   As "those in communion" we are welded together in Christ as the Giver of salvation, and with Mary as the prime receiver of salvation.   As Khomiakov wrote:

We know that when any one of us falls he falls alone; but no one is saved alone. He who is saved is saved in the Church, as a member of her, and in unity with all her other members. If any one believes, he is in the communion of faith; if he loves, he is in the communion of love; if he prays, he is in the communion of prayer. Wherefore no one can rest his hope on his own prayers, and every one who prays asks the whole Church for intercession, not as if he had doubts of the intercession of Christ, the one Advocate, but in the assurance that the whole Church ever prays for all her members.(The Church is One by Alexei Khomiakov 1804-1860)

FEAST OF THE SACRED HEART: CHRIST'S HEART IN OURS AND OURS IN CHRIST'S HEART

Our Catholic Faith reaches up to heaven, out to our neighbour, and down into the depths of the soul.  These three dimensions seem to divide our efforts into three separate tasks, liturgy, love of our neighbour and contemplation, tasks which keep on getting in each other's way. However, for those who persevere to the end, they are seen to be inseparable, all three being dimensions of any authentically strong relationship with God, all three leading to the same goal and doorways into the same place.   In this essay we are going to look at the heart and discover how it connects us to heaven, to earth and to the whole cosmos.  We shall then be able to see the relevance of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.   Let us start with three quotations from Thomas Merton.

We must begin by frankly admitting that the first place in which to go looking for the world is not outside us but in ourselves. We are the world. In the deepest ground of our being we remain in metaphysical contact with the whole of that creation in which we are only small parts. Through our senses and our minds, our loves, needs, and desires, we are implicated, without possibility of evasion, in this world of matter and of men, of things and of persons, which not only affect us and change our lives but are also affected and changed by us…The question, then, is not to speculate about how we are to contact the world – as if we were somehow in outer space – but how to validate our relationship, give it a fully honest and human significance, and make it truly productive and worthwhile for our world.“ - From Love and Living

In the deepest ground of our being we remain in metaphysical contact with the whole of that creation of which we are only small parts.   Thomas Merton goes further, going on to describe what , according to  Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, Eastern Christianity calls the "heart" or "deepest self".

“At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is so to speak His name written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our sonship. It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely ... I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is every- where.” ― Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

 This was not Thomas Merton's philosophical theory, his abstract belief, or some monastic dogma: it was his direct experience, as well as a monastic theme in Catholic Tradition of East and West.   He recounts his own experience.

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world. . . . 
This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . . I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. . . . But this cannot be seen, only believed and ‘understood’ by a peculiar gift.” ― Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

The problem is that we live in a fallen world and in a fallen humanity that re-constructs the very being of things to serve ourselves, thus creating a false world and a false self, causing the "isness" of things to become opaque to the presence of God.   Created Being, once it became reflectively conscious in human beings, denied its own nothingness and simply left no room for God. Thus the transformation of created being by sharing in God's life through the Incarnation, which was God's plan for creation from the beginning, could only be achieved by Christ's "obedience unto death".   Christians are those who share in that obedience by dwelling in Christ and permitting Christ to dwell in us.  The place where he dwells when we receive him in communion is our "heart" which is "like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven."  It is here that we are united to everyone and everything else.  Our heart,  in metaphysical contact with the whole of that creation of which we are only small parts, becomes a monstrance of Christ's presence shining in the heart of creation.  It is the Church's job to shine, deep down in the depth of things, with the light of Christ.

St Peter Damian also sees the heart as the centre of Christian unity. In "On the Dominus Vobiscum", written to Catholic hermits to explain why they say, "Dominus vobiscum...Et cum spiritu tuo" in the solitude of their cells when they pray the Divine Office. He says:

Indeed, the Church of Christ is united in all her parts by such a bond of love that her several members form a single body and in each one the whole Church is mystically present; so that the whole Church universal may rightly be called the one bride of Christ, and on the other hand every single soul can, because of the mystical effect of the sacrament, be regarded as the whole Church.
 The cohesive force of mutual charity by which the Church is united is so great that she is not merely one in her many members but also, is some mysterious way, present in her entirety in each individual…..By reason of her unity of faith, she has not, in her many members, many parts, and yet through  the close-knit bond of charity and the varied charismatic gifts she shows many facets in her individual members.   Through the Holy Church is thus diversified in many individuals, she is none the less welded into one by the fire of the Holy Spirit.
And so the priest before he offers sacrifice and prayers to God shows by this mutual greeting that he is bound to the faithful by the bond of brotherly love; he does this so that he may make this commandment of the Lord clear by his outward actions, as well as keeping it in his heart.  Because of this, he sees as present with the eyes of the spirit all those for whom he prays, whether or not they are actually there in the flesh; he knows that all who are praying with him are present in spiritual communion.  And so the eye of faith directs the words of his greeting and he realizes the spiritual presence of those whom he knows to be near at hand.  Therefore let no brother who lives alone in a cell be afraid to utter the words which are common to the whole Church; for although he is separated in space from the congregation of the faithful yet he is bound together with them all by love in the unity of faith; although they are absent in the flesh, they are near at hand in the mystical unity of the Church (Chapter 18, 73-74).

Because of the mystical unity of the Church which unites the many in the heart of the one and allows the hermit to be the voice of many in prayer, our vocations complement each other so that the vocation of each glows with the beauty of the vocations of all the rest. No one understood this better than Saint Therese of Lisieux who believed that her vocation "to be love at the heart of the Church" would give courage to the martyrs, zeal to priests, perseverence and patience to those suffering trials etc.   She wrote:

Her desire to live all vocationsTo be your Spouse, O Jesus, to be a Carmelite, by my union with you to be the mother of souls, should content me... yet it does not... Without doubt, these three priviliges are indeed my vocation: Carmelite, spouse, and mother. And yet I feel in myself other vocations—I feel myself called to be a soldier, priest, apostle, doctor of the church, martyr. Finally, I feel the need, the desire to perform all the most heroic deeds for you, Jesus... I feel in my soul the courage of a crusader, of a soldier for the Church, and I wish to die on the field of battle in defense of the Church...
I feel in me the vocation of a priest! With what love, O Jesus, would I bear you in my hands, when at the sound of my words you came down from heaven! With what love would I give you to souls! But alas, just as much as I desire to be a priest, I admire and envy the humility of St. Francis of Assisi, and feel the call to imitate him in refusing the sublime dignity of the Priesthood....
Dreaming of the tortures in which Christians are to share at the time of the Antichrist, I feel my heart thrill, and I would like these tortures to be kept for me... Jesus, Jesus, if I wanted to write all my desires, I would have to take your Book of Life, where the deeds of your saints are recorded: all these deeds I would like to accomplish for you....
Each person has their own giftAt prayer these desires made me suffer a true martydom. I opened the Epistles of St. Paul to seek some relief. The 12th and 13th chapters of the First Epistle to the Corinthians fell before my eyes. I read, in the first, that not all can be apostles, prophets, and doctors, etc., that the Church is composed of different members, and that the eye cannot also be at the same time the hand.
Therese finds her vocation in charityThe answer was clear, but it did not satisfy my desires, it did not give me peace.... Without being discouraged I continued my reading, and this phrase comforted me: “Earnestly desire the more perfect gifts. And I show you a still more excellent way” (1 Cor 12:31). And the Apostle explains how all gifts, even the most perfect, are nothing without Love... that charity is the excellent way that leads surely to God. At last I had found rest.... Considering the mystical Body of the Church, I had not recognized myself in any of the members described by St. Paul, or rather, I wanted to recognize myself in all... Charity gave me the key to my vocation. I understood that if the Church has a body composed of different members, the noblest and most necessary of all the members would not be lacking to her. I understood that the Church has a heart, and that this heart burns with Love. I understood that Love alone makes its members act, that if this Love were to be extinguished, the Apostles would no longer preach the Gospel, the Martyrs would refuse to shed their blood... I understood that Love embraces all vocations, that Love is all things, that it embraces all times and all places... in a word, that it is eternal!
To be love in the heart of the ChurchThen in the excess of my delirious joy, I cried out: “O Jesus, my Love, at last I have found my vocation, my vocation is Love!... Yes, I have found my place in the Church, and it is you, O my God, who have given me this place... in the heart of the Church, my Mother, I will be Love!.... Thus I shall be all things: thus my dream shall be realized!!!”
I am a child... It is not riches or glory (not even the glory of Heaven) that this child asks for... No, she asks for Love. She knows but one desire: to love you, Jesus. Glorious deeds are forbidden her; she cannot preach the Gospel or shed her blood... But what does that matter, her brothers work in her place, and she, a little child, stays close to the throne of the King and Queen, and loves for her brothers who are in the combat... But how shall she show her love, since love proves itself by deeds? Well! the little child will strew flowers, she will embalm the royal throne with their fragrance, she will sing with a silver voice the canticle of Love.
Yes, my Beloved, I wish to spend my life thus... I have no other means of proving my love except by strewing flowers, that is to say, letting no little sacrifice pass, no look, no word--profiting by the littlest actions, and doing them out of love. I wish to suffer out of love and to rejoice out of love; thus I shall strew flowers before your throne. I shall not find one without scattering its petals before you... and in strewing my flowers I will sing (can one weep in doing so joyous an action?) I will sing, even if my roses must be gathered from among thorns; and the longer and sharper the thorns, the sweeter shall be my song.

The opposite is also true: if the holiness of each reflects the many-faceted holiness of all, if like Thomas Merton we are united to everyone deep in the heart where God's presence shines, and if our separateness is an illusian, we must also come to realise that we cannot separate our sin from that of others, and our sins are coloured by the many-faceted sins of the human race.  As Thomas Merton points out, "Through our senses and our minds, our loves, needs, and desires, we are implicated, without possibility of evasion, in this world of matter and of men, of things and of persons, which not only affect us and change our lives but are also affected and changed by us."   This leads us to Dostoevsky in his Brothers Karamazov and the teaching of the staretz Zosima.  If our own vocation, when properly lived, contributes to the holiness of all, our laxity and sin can, at a certain level lead to the weakness in temptation by bad example, by lack of good example, by the lack of support for others in prayer, by making Christ's presence less visible in the world.  If, however, we are united to Christ in the heart where humankind is most truly one beyond the reaches of sin, then, with St Therese, our love can become, in some mysterious way, the love of all who follow Christ, and, with Father Zosima, our own repentance can become the repentance for all who sin.  We can be "responsible for all to all" because we identify with all in Christ at the heart of humankind.  Father Zosima says:

"Love one another, Fathers," said Father Zosima, as far as Alyosha could remember afterwards. "Love God'speople. Because we have come here and shut ourselves within these walls, we are no holier than those that are outside, but on the contrary, from the very fact of coming here, each of us has confessed to himself that he is worse than others, than all men on earth.... And the longer the monk lives in his seclusion, the more keenly he must recognize that. Else he would have had no reason to come here. When he realizes that he is not only worse than others, but that he is responsible to all men for all and everything, for all human sins, national and individual, only then the aim of our seclusion is attained. For know, dear ones, that every one of us is undoubtedly responsible for all men -- and everything on earth, not merely through the general sinfulness of creation, but each one personally for all mankind and every individual man. This knowledge is the crown of life for the monk and for every man. For monks are not a special sort of men, but only what all men ought to be.

We unite ourselves to sinners, not by judging them like the pharisee, but identifying ourselves with them in their sin and repenting, with them if possible, and even for them, not as holy people for sinners, but as fellow sinners.  To be a Christian is to identify ourselves with the whole race, no matter who or in what state they are: we are brothers and sisters.  

Saint Therese believed herself to be so united with others that, when in  the last eighteen months of her life all taste for religious practice was taken away from her, she felt cut off from God, with the emotions of an agnostic, yet she did not diminish her prayer life; and she prayed that, when God chose to deliver her from this suffering, he would, at the same time, deliver the real agnostics whose negativity she shared.

 When, through living in the heart that has cosmic dimensions which are filled with divine Love through Christ's presence in the Spirit, the Christian comes to love universally:

Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light.  Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things.. . . for all is like an ocean, all is flowing and blending; a touch in one place sets up movement at the other end of the earth. . . . Every blade of grass, every insect, ant, and golden bee, all so marvellously know their path, though they have not intelligence, they bear witness to the mystery of God and continually accomplish it themselves. . . . All creation and all creatures, every leaf is striving to the Word, singing  glory to God, weeping to Christ, unconsciously accomplishing this by the mystery of their sinless life.

There is a purple passage in The Brothers Karamazov in which Alyosa realises the truth of Fr Zosima's teaching and, in ecstasy, embraces in love the earth, knowing he was connected to all reality.

The vault of heaven, full of soft, shining stars, stretched vast and fathomless above him. . . . The silence of earth seemed to melt into the silence of the heavens. The mystery of earth was one with the mystery of the stars. . . . Alyosha stood, gazed, and suddenly threw himself down on the earth. He did not know why he embraced it. He could not have told why he longed so irresistibly to kiss it, to kiss it all. But he kissed it weeping, sobbing, and watering it with his tears, and vowed passionately to love it, to love it for ever andever. . . .What was he weeping over? Oh! in his rapture he was weeping even over those stars, which were shining to him from the abyss of space, and "he was not ashamed of that ecstasy." There seemed to be threads from all those innumerable worlds of God, linking his soul to them, and it was trembling all over . . . He longed to forgive everyone and for everything, and to beg forgiveness. Oh, not for himself, but for all men, for all and for everything. . . . But with every instant he felt clearly and, as it were, tangibly, that something firm and unshakable as that vault of heaven had entered into his soul. It was as though some idea had seized the sovereignty of his mind––and it was for all his life and for ever and ever. He had fallen on the earth a weak boy, but he rose up a resolute champion, and he knew and felt it suddenly at the very moment of his ecstasy.

Alyosa had come to love at Christ loved, identifying himself with all, even the worst sinners and with the whole of creation, like St Benedict who saw all that exists in a veil of light.

My final quotation is from St Isaac the Syrian (7th Century), a Desert Father who saw the rigours of the desert as a school where people can learn to love as Jesus loves.  Here is his description:

What is a merciful heart? It is a heart on fire for the whole of creation, for humanity, for the birds, for the animals, for demons, and for all that exists. By the recollection of them the eyes of a merciful person pour forth tears in abundance. By the strong and vehement mercy that grips such a person’s heart, and by such great compassion, the heart is humbled and one cannot bear to hear or to see any injury or slight sorrow in any in creation. For this reason, such a person offers up tearful prayer continually even for irrational beasts, for the enemies of the truth, and for those who harm her or him, that they be protected and receive mercy. And in like manner such a person prays for the family of reptiles because of the great compassion that burns without measure in a heart that is in the likeness of God.
The person who is genuinely charitable not only gives charity out of his own possessions, but gladly tolerates injustice from others and forgives them. Whoever lays down his soul for his brother acts generously, rather than the person who demonstrates his generosity by his gifts.

St Isaac teaches that God is not like us who are changeable: God can only love, and this love is without boundaries and embraces all that exists.  The flames of hell are not God's punishment: they are the flames of God's love that threaten the egoism of the damned, hell thus becomes their own invention. 

In this article, we have not mentioned yet the Sacred Heart of Jesus, concentraing instead on the human heart transformed by grace.   If we, as humans, have such heart, Jesus, who is as human as we are and more so, must also have a human heart: and what a heart it must be!!   Read once again the quotations and ask yourself how they throw light on the heart of Jesus.   

Those of us who are concerned with Christian unity must remember that, before any formal negotiations and agreements, Christian unity begins and continues to exist in the heart.  If it is not in the heart, no negotiations will ever succeed.    The Sacred Heart actually unites East and West   It does so because all who receive Christ in their heart at communion or in any other way, all take up their abode in Christ's heart.   This is the work of the Holy Spirit.   Moreover, all who are united in his heart are also united in the hearts of each of us.   This happens whether we recognise it or no.   Deep in the hearts of the monks of Athos, Roman Catholics lie hidden because they are in the heart of Christ!   The heart of Jesus is much wider than our prejudices.

   Devotion to the Sacred Heart, and to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, that moon to Christ's sun, remind us what the Eastern monastic tradition keep telling us, that our religion at its deepest level, has its existence within us.   Devotion to the Sacred Heart should not just be expressed in sentimental pictures and statues. To be authentic, we must dig down deep within ourselves, break through the rock of our egoistic infidelity, and find Christ's living heart within our own, knowing that all who are in there with  us are our brothers and sisters.

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WHERE EAST AND WEST UNITE: IN THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS 

COSMIC LITURGY AND LITURGY OF THE HEART: MERTON ON SCHMEMANN & DOM ANDRE LOUF ON LITURGY OF THE HEART (both by Macrina Walker)

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