The Sunday of Orthodoxy and the Current State of Affairs
by Photios Kontoglou
The Sunday of Orthodoxy was established in order for the Church to celebrate
the restoration of the Icons and the victory of true religion over the
Iconoclasts. The Iconoclasts were the modernists of that time, who began with
the abolition of iconography, so that they might proceed gradually, as all such
people are wont to do, to other destructive reforms, the end result being to
leave nothing in Orthodoxy intact. The Icon was the symbol of Orthodoxy, and
Byzantium was in turmoil over the Icons, in civil war, for 116 years. In 787
A.D., the Seventh cumenical Synod took place in Nicea. This Synod proclaimed
the restoration of the Icons, and put an end to the Iconoclasm which had started
in 726, in the reign of Leo the Isaurian. But even after the Seventh cumenical
Synod, Iconoclasm was revived, and so another Synod took place in Constantinople
in 842, and this Synod confirmed the Seventh Ecumenical Synod. Thus did that
madness of Iconoclasm cease.
Unbelief and rationalism are the causes from which every heresy and modernism
in religion proceed. This is why the Iconoclasts were men of cold hearts,
unbelievers, braggarts, vainglorious, deprived of spiritual depth, and impelled
in whatever they did from political and other similar non-spiritual purposes.
The leaders of this movement, emperors and courtiers, attracted to their side
the vainglorious and the self-seekers, who counted on the political and social
power that these leaders of the Iconoclasts had.
From the other side, the pious clergy, from Patriarch to monk, struggled for
their Faith, as did the simple souls who had deep faith in Orthodoxy and its
Tradition, the humble and the "poor in spirit," those blessed by Christ, "the
foolish and base of the world" (I Corinthians 1:27-28). Assuredly, among them is
the "superstitious rabble," as the modernists and the reformists call them. But
this rabble appears many times to see more clearly and further than the
luminaries of cold rationalism, as happened in Constantinople shortly before the
Turks seized it, when the people obstructed the union of our Church with the
Papists and rescued our nation from annihilation, as the wise Adamantios Koraes
says, writing these words: "...[The Latins] mock us in particular because of
this superstition and attribute to this the stubbornness of the common people
(whom the 'clever' call rabble) against uniting with the Papists, and their
steadfast resistance to the emperors who wanted so to unite them. We Greeks of
today, however, owe our existence to this superstition (if ever superstition
gave rise to anything good). Without this most felicitous stubbornness of our
forebears, superstition would have increased, and the multitudinous ranks of
Western monks would have befouled the soil of poor Greece...."
These words were not written by some spiritually backward reactionary, nor by
some "Old Calendarist," but by Koraes, whose statue the Greeks erected in front
of the University of Athens, and who for years was very liberal and an
enthusiastic follower of the French Revolution. What reply is there to this from
the profound rationalists and modernists, who are confident that they hold the
key of wisdom and knowledge, and jeer at us, the "fools and fanatics"?
As we said at the beginning, the cause of every innovation in the Tradition
of our Church is lack of fear towards God, impiety and unbelief. Never among the
modernists and the reformers has there been found a Christian who believes
truly, not falsely. The unbeliever cannot have a humble attitude, but is
arrogant and conceited in every way. St. Ephraim the Syrian puts this
succinctly: "Arrogance, unable to endure what is ancient, compels people to
devise innovations." Do you see what he is saying? Arrogance compels, that is,
pride and vainglory force him who has it within him to want and to bring about
innovations, since he is a slave of this pride! And then he says, "unable to
endure what is ancient,- that is to say, because he has no liking for "what is
ancient," namely, Tradition. In other words, he is too burdened by vainglory to
accept what his ancestors, "those who came before us," have handed down to him,
as Koraes said. If one is to accept Tradition, he must have humility in himself
and must not want to insist on his own will. There is no modernist in the Church
who wishes not to demolish what we have received from those who guarded our
religion with their piety and their unshakable faith, and who endured every kind
of suffering, even death itself; and there is no such thing as a modernist who
is not unbelieving. Let him put on a disguise, let him present himself as pious,
let him feign humblemindedness, let him perhaps embrace his enemies with a word;
let him give the external impression of a meek and soft-spoken Saint. In truth
he is a hypocrite.
St. Ignatios the God-Bearer, that most holy Saint, one of the most ancient
Hierarchs of the Church, a disciple of the Apostle John the Theologian, he who
fought with wild beasts for the name of Christ in the Colosseum of Rome, an old
man of ninety years, felt such faith rooted in his heart that he told his
disciples, when they were working to rescue him from martyrdom: "Do not hinder
me, my children, from going to my beloved Lord. I am the wheat of God and I
shall be ground (by the teeth of the wild beasts), so that I may be presented to
Him as 'fragrant and pure bread."' Since there were many times that the lions
did not want to tear apart certain martyrs, Ignatios, this iron-hearted
centenarian and warrior, told his own disciples: "If the beasts do not want to
eat me, I will force them."
Oh, the incredible height which the Faith of Christ attains! It makes an
Achilles of a guileless old man, the meek Bishop of Antioch, who stepped aside
to avoid treading on an ant!
But why did I depart from the subject I was speaking about? I did so in order
to mention what the Saint said about the modernizers of religion. He said:
"Everyone who speaks contrary to what has been prescribed, even if he fasts,
even if he is a virgin, even if he prophesies, even if he works miracles, you
should see him as a wolf in sheep's clothing, who is contriving the destruction
of the sheep."
Hear these things, then, you who read, and impress them on your mind lest you
be deluded by flatteries, smooth talk, and the saccharin of "love," which such
transgressors and apostates use, with the intention of deceiving you. They cover
all their infernal plans with the allholy name of Christ, Who said eight times
"Woe!" and eight times "Alas!" about the hypocrites.
He said "Alas!" also about those who cause scandals, as do these modernists:
"Woe to that man by whom the scandal cometh!" (St. Matthew 18:7).
Yes! Today, in our days, certain other apostates have appeared, not only
Iconoclasts, but also "fighters against Orthodoxy" in general, who pass
themselves off as champions of Orthodoxy, just as the Pharisees passed
themselves off as champions of the Law, whereas they annulled it.
Forerunners of the modernists that appear in our evil days were certain
Hierarchs and Patriarchs who took "progressive" and modernist ideas from
"abroad," and wanted to "reform" the Church, in order to accommodate her to "the
demands of our age." They perceive this need for "adaptations," since they see
that the world is being alienated from religion, and they try, supposedly with
the quackery of innovations and "adaptations," to attract the irreligious. But
their zeal is "foolish zeal," because it shows that they want to support
religion with certain innovations that abolish it, and for this reason they
achieve nothing, since they are unbelievers. One "grain of faith" would have
fallen where the modernists achieve nothing, with all their consultations, world
councils, organizations, and "foolish questions, genealogies, and strivings
about the law" (Titus 3:9). And that all these things-the innovations in worship
and the attempts at "adaptation"are of no effect is proved by the fact that in
the countries where these things are done by the religious leaders, in the
countries of Europe and America, the "adaptations" are in vain, since there is
no yeast, that is, faith, for the bread to be kneaded with, and because true
religious feeling is quenched and lost, while day by day unbelief triumphs.
These conceited clergymen of ours who lived abroad and remained astonished at
the material power of the West have a hysterical admiration for everything that
happens in the West, which renders them blind and totally incapable of
appreciating the spiritual depth of Orthodoxy, and makes them ape the Papists,
the Anglicans, and the Protestants.
One fine of such Europeanized clergymen, like the clergy of the (Ecumenical
Patriarchate, the Patriarchate of Alexandria, and the Patriarchate of Jerusalem,
prepared the way for today's pope-worshippers and modernists of every kind, who
are going to abolish the Faith of our Fathers. A leading modernist was Patriarch
Meletios Metaxakis, an unscrupulous, impious, and atheistic man. May God forgive
him.
And yet, how many such destroyers of Orthodoxy will celebrate the Sunday of
Orthodoxy!
From Orthodox Tradition, Vol. XII, No. 3, pp. 71-74.
Translated from the Greek by Novice Patrick.
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