ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE

Exarchate of Parishes of Russian
Tradition in Western Europe

SEPTEMBER 1ST: BEGINNING OF THE CHURCH YEAR AND DAY OF PRAYER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT

Pantocrator, Christ Savior and Life Giver - painted by Metropolitan Jovan Zograf (1384); Church of the Monastery of the Holy Transfiguration, Zrze - Prilep.

Following the feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God, which brings to an end the annual cycle of major feasts of the Lord and the Mother of God, 1 September marks the beginning of the new Church Year, whose first Great Feast is the Birth of the Mother of God.

As early as 1992, His All-Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew, the Ecumenical Patriarch, proposed to the heads of all Orthodox Churches that September 1 of each year be fixed as a special day of prayer for the environment.

His encyclical of September 1999 explains what this means:

Brothers and Sisters and beloved children in the Lord,

When Paul the Apostle to the Nations advised the Thessalonians to "give thanks in all circumstances" (1 Thess. 5:18), he also counselled them to "always rejoice, and pray without ceasing" (1 Thess. 5:16-17), thus demonstrating that thanksgiving as prayer and everlasting joy go together and coexist inseparably. Truly, the one who gives thanks experiences the joy that comes from the appreciation of that for which he or she is thankful, and from the overabundance of joy they turn toward the giver and provider of the good things received in grateful thanksgiving. Conversely, the person who does not feel the internal need to thank the Creator and Fashioner of all the good things of this very good world, but ungratefully and egocentrically receives them -- when the person is indifferent toward the one who provided these good things and thus worships the impersonal creation rather than the Creator (Romans 1:25) -- that person does not feel the deep joy of receiving the gifts of God, but only sullen and animalistic satisfaction. Such a person is given over to irrational desires, to covetousness, and to "robberies from injustice" (Isaiah 61:8) that are despised by God. As a result, that person will undergo the breaking "of the pride of his power" (Leviticus 26:19), and will be deprived of the sublime, pure, and heavenly joy of the one who gives thanks gratefully.

The belief that every creature of God created for communion with human beings is good when it is received with thanksgiving (1 Timothy 4:3-4), leads to respect for creation out of respect for its Creator; it does not fashion an idol out of creation itself. The person who loves the Creator of a given work cannot be disrespectful toward it nor maliciously harm it; but certainly neither does a person worship it while disregarding the Creator (Romans 1:21). Rather, by honoring it, one honors its Creator.

The Ecumenical Patriarchate, having ascertained that natural creation commonly referred to as "the environment," which in recent times has to a great extent been maliciously harmed, has undertaken an effort that strives to sensitize every person -- especially Christians -- to the gravity of this problem for humanity and particularly to its ethical and theological dimension. For this reason, the Patriarchate has established the first day of September each year, which is the natural landmark of the yearly cycle, as a day of prayer for the environment. This prayer, however, is not merely a supplication and petition to God for the protection of the natural environment from the impending catastrophe that is being wrought by humankind, but it is also in thanksgiving for everything that God in His beneficent providence offers through creation to both the good and the wicked, the just and the unjust .....

The Patriarch at Lake Mikri Prespa in Northern Greece

Patriach Bartholomew has been called the “Green Patriarch”. Besides convening conferences, he has also personally led a number of symposia to threatened areas of the world, further details of which can be found in the Ecological Activities section of the Ecumenical Patriarchate website, along with annual messagesmessages for the beginning of the Church Year.

Here we also publish reflections for the environment and the new year by one of the clergy of the Episcopal Vicariate, Fr Patrick Radley, priest of the parish of the Holy Transfiguration, Great Walsingham. Fr Patrick notes the relevance of two texts - James 4:7-5:9 and Luke 4:16-22 - in our relationship to the environment:

To-day we enter the new Church year, and pray for the protection of the environment. 

We would do well if each of us were to experience today as a day of crisis and commitment.  The decisions to be made at the political and social levels concerning global warming and the spiritual resolutions that this community, as part of the Body of Christ, seeks to make at the outset of a new year, are inextricably linked.

Passages from the Letter of St James that we have just heard make this clear.  In part the Letter could be an indictment of what we call ‘the developed world’.  The Apostle warns of the miseries that are coming on those who have become rich, of the destructive rottenness of all that they have thought of as treasure.  ‘You have lived on the earth in luxury and pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter’.  It could be a description of the corruption, greed, violence and overwhelming inequalities of a world in which 20% of its inhabitants devour 80% of the earth’s resources and cause thereby the major part of the global pollution and ecological changes that threaten the lives of all of us.  We are slowly destroying the earth, our home.

And what should be our response?  St James is stern: ‘Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to dejection…..Humble yourselves before the Lord’.  But what, in fact, do we do?  We say: ‘To-day or to-morrow we will go into such and such a town to spend a year there and trade and get gain’.  Whereas, says St James, we don’t know about to-morrow.  ‘What is your life?  For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes….As it is, you boast in your arrogance’.  But, he says, ‘the Judge is standing at the doors’.  And indeed, as we contemplate the world’s present problems, we may feel the presence of a judging God close at hand.

The contrast with the Gospel words from the prophecy of Isaiah read by Jesus in the Synagogue of Nazareth could hardly be greater.  ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor…to set at  liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord’.  Surely we are among those who, knowing the misery and horror of this fallen world and fearing its destruction, will, like the congregation in the Synagogue, fix our eyes upon Jesus.  And our hearts will rise when He says: ‘To-day this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’.  Can this really be true?  We will want to believe it, desperately.  And yet, are we not tempted to ask, with the people of Nazareth: ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’

And this is the moment of commitment, the moment when, despite our crisis-ridden surroundings, we are called to place our absolute trust in – yes, Jesus, son of Joseph – Christ, the Son of God. ’The acceptable year of the Lord’ is that year when each of us acknowledges that the crucified Jesus is also the risen Christ.  The Judge standing at the door is no avenging God but a God of Love.  What we do to the environment and to the poor we do to God Himself.  ‘Christ’, said Pascal, ‘is in agony to the end of the world’.  And we crucify our God whenever, in our arrogance, we forget that our very lives, our breath, the atmosphere that sustains us all, all is gift, the gift of God’s love.

‘The acceptable year of the Lord’ is the year when we permit the risen Christ to take over our hearts.  The form of that resurrection within each of us has to be a constant remembering, a continual recall of a presence.  Let us use the simplest means of remembering: the notes of a Troparion, a phrase from a Gospel text, the words of the Jesus Prayer.  If we forget, we crucify and destroy.  And so our task is to retain continually within our hearts a realisation of the activity of the living God, transfiguring His creation at all times and in all places, renewing, recreating us as the very Body of the risen Christ.

Whether to a world in crisis or to this community entering another year of worship and praise, St James’ words are a call to commitment.  ‘Draw near to God and He will draw near to you’.

Amen