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Archbishop Gabriel of Comana
Our Future: the Local Church
Your Grace,
My reverend Fathers, priests and deacons,
Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Bishop Basil has explained to us the history and situated the Vicariate very
well in the context of Orthodoxy in Western Europe. Now you are expecting from me some indications about the future or rather about our future: the Local Church.
I want to say to you: ‘Go home and read all that Metropolitan Anthony was
constantly saying to you, and which I found expressed in an article in La Pensée
Russe of 20-26th July 2000:
Here in London, a whole group of people ( in fact not a very large group)
reproach me at present, saying: ‘You are betraying Russian Orthodoxy, because you are building a Church which is not Russian’. But I have said since the beginning: we are building a Church which, as far as is possible, resembles the early Church, where people had nothing in common, were not united except by Christ and their faith. Master and slave were found side by side, and people speaking all sorts of different languages. It is this to which I aspire here. That no matter who, may come and say, ‘Yes, we have one thing in common - God’.
This is a true definition of the Local Church: a Church open to all, a Church that is free.
This definition is also what the late Metropolitan Anthony worked for, our inheritance
from him, given to us all and for which we are responsible. For this Church exists! Your presence here, your fidelity to Bishop Basil, is the proof. The alternative is a Church founded on ethnic principles, which, unhappily, is still very often the general rule for the diaspora. Each Mother Church regards the diaspora as a no man’s land, where anyone can establish themselves and organise their own communities – and this is a canonical error. It leads to a situation where although the faithful who live in the West are happy to integrate themselves into our society on a social level and on the level of everyday life, in the Church they remain foreigners, belonging to a foreign Church.
Contrary to what some people think, we are not able to avoid the natural phenomenon
of assimilation; it will inevitably happen, as it happened to the waves of immigrants in the past. Metropolitan Evlogii already sensed this evolution in a prophetic manner hen he gave his blessing to the foundation of the first French-speaking parish in Paris, in 1927. In his memoirs he wrote: 'We must look to the future. If the use of the Russian language is lost, at least the Orthodox Faith will be saved and preserved by these Franco-Russians'. If Metropolitan Kyril wants to thwart the assimilation of the diaspora by using the joint efforts of the State, religious associations and religious communities, he is abusing the Faith and there is a risk that the Church will become the servant, or even worse, the slave of the State.
We who live in the West and consider it our home, give thanks to the Lord for the freedom we have to fashion an ecclesial organisation according to our conscience. You are the Vicariate, you have as your bishop Bishop Basil, who is truly the successor of Metropolitan Anthony. It was in order to save the pastoral, liturgical and spiritual inheritance of Metropolitan Anthony and to build a true Local Church, open to all, that Bishop Basil asked the Patriarch of Moscow to let him join the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Belonging canonically to the Ecumenical Patriarchate guarantees our communion with the whole Orthodox world and allows us to live here in Western Europe in a fruitful and fraternal collaboration with the other Orthodox communities in our countries.
The Patriarchate gives us complete freedom to develop the diocese, of which the Vicariate is a part, as we will. It gives us complete freedom in all that concerns our pastoral work and the administering of the diocese. But this freedom presupposes responsibility, for if we wish to speak of the Orthdox presence in the West and of the creation of a Local Church, we can no longer think of this as simply concerning the Russian jurisdictions; it concerns the whole of Orthodoxy. Every ecclesial act concerns all the Church present here in the West. The Local Church must be built by everyone. As a multinational diocese, we have the greatest experience of living Orthodoxy in Western Europe, for we are Europeans and Europe is our home.
We are called to live the truth of our Faith in the society in which we live and to witness unwaveringly to the unity of the Orthodox Church, to the truth of her teaching and to the fraternal love which gathers us together, beyond our sensitivities and differences.
In conclusion, I want to add a word about the linguistic and cultural differences within our Exarchate. The Gospel reminds us that there are many dwellings in the house of our heavenly Father. These words of the Lord also apply to our Exarchate. A simple look at our numerous parishes would clearly show us that at present we celebrate in Slavonic, French, English, Dutch, German, Swedish and Norwegian - and this list is far from being exclusive. Yet this difference of language must not prevent our fundamental spiritual unity. Nor must it hinder our liturgical unity. We must firmly understand that our Orthodox liturgical practices do not belong to us as personal possessions but are a sacred heritage which belongs to the whole Church. In the light of that heritage, we must carefully preserve the texts and order of our offices as something precious, without artificially altering or abitrarily shortening the offices. Here I congratulate you on the editions of the liturgical offices in English.
As your Archbishop, I must be concerned about all of our communities, taking
into account the linguistic and cultural specificities of each of them, supported by those in place, according to the linguistic and pastoral gifts of each. Let us not forget the words of the apostle: 'When I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, if I have not love, I am only a noisy gong or a clanging symbol' (I Cor. 13:1).
Here, I want to express my gratitude for the work you have accomplished, dear
Bishop Basil, inspired by that love and charity of which the Apostle speaks, for you are a good shepherd of the flock which has been entrusted to you, and I give thanks to God for your courage and your pastoral zeal.
In my address on the eve of my episcopal consecration, I spoke of the bishop
as a 'pontifex', a 'builder of bridges'. In the presence of this great cultural and linguistic diversity within our Exarchate, I, as your humble Archbishop, must be ever watchful to construct and then maintain unity and communion among us, a unity and communion according to the image of the Holy Trinty. We must all, before everything else, accomplish our mission in the present, here and now. This is our main task, our vocation and our responsibility.
May God bless you!
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