Reader’s Note: As you listen to this Appeal written in 1968 to then Patriarch of Constantinople, His All-Holiness Athenagoras, notice how few words would need correction or updating in order to apply to our own day, now in the year 2021.
“What do You think You have achieved by Your unique, but wholly uncanonical and unprecedented meeting with the Bishop of Rome? Most simply, You strengthened the Latin position on the schism. And what did Your melodramatic, far-fetched salutation, Your clinging embraces, and Your uncanonical exchange of gifts achieve? Precisely to increase the danger-the danger that the awareness the faithful now have that Papists are heretics will be blunted. Dialogue, prayers together, receiving of gifts, and "liberalizing" innovations are unforgivable according to Orthodox prescription, because they adulterate and change what has been transmitted through the holy Apostles, the holy Fathers, and the Ecumenical and Local Councils.”
“Glory be to God, there exist in this land of martyrdom a love of Orthodoxy and a spirit of resistance. Like an ocean wave, Orthodox thought will overwhelm and sink Your skiff on its course toward a servile, anti-Christ union (submission) with the superheresy of Papism. Florence shall never live again in any form whatsoever. We will tolerate no kind of betrayal. The Greek people, a people who has once given birth to many like St. Photios, Patriarch Michael Cerularios, and St. Mark Evgenikos [i.e. St. Mark of Ephesus (+1439)], will not tolerate betrayal. God has swept away the betrayers.”
“We rejoice over them as he that has found great spoil, and press to our bosom with gladness the divine Canons, holding fast all the precepts of the same complete and without change, whether they have been set forth by the holy trumpets of the Spirit, the renowned Apostles, the six Ecumenical Councils, by councils Iocally assembled,... or by our Holy Fathers... And those whom they placed under anathema we also anathematize; those whom they deposed, we also depose; those whom they excommunicated, we also excommunicate; and those whom they delivered over to punishment, we subject to the same penalty...” (First Canon of the Seventh Ecumenical Council).
Elder Philotheos Zervakos (+1980) was an Archimandrite, spiritual father, missionary, confessor, and wonderworker in Greece in the 20th century. The spiritual son of St. Nektarios of Aegina, Elder Philotheos preached and heard confessions for 68 years and built 12 churches, two monasteries, three cemeteries and two schools. The money he would receive from the faithful he would distribute to the poor, the widows and the orphans. He zealously confessed the faith, guarding his spiritual children and all who would listen against the many temptations and deceptions facing his people. Elder Philotheos is not formally glorified as a saint, but he is treated like a saint by the people of Greece and beyond.
Read more about his life here: orthochristian...
This Appeal was originally published in English in The Orthodox Word, Issue #18, Jan.-Feb., 1968. Read “A Desperate Appeal” here: orthodoxinfo.co...
Holy Father Philotheos, pray to God for us!
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