Excerpts from Follow Me
Concerning Church Scandals
by Metropolitan Augustinos of Florina (State Church of Greece)
One reason young people are
not attracted to missionary work is the sad state of the Church today. One has
to be blind not to see it. Must we bring to mind all that the Christianitke
Spitha and other Church publications and religious periodicals have written
in the past decade? How can our young people be attracted to serve the Church
when they see—unfortunately, holy fathers, they have eyes and do see—clever,
vile persons who offer no essential service to the Church or community, by the
most evil means succeed in jumping into the flock and climb to the highest
places, pushing aside the faithful and talented? Or when they see that such
people, taking the tiller of Church government in their hands in our democratic
homeland, exercise almost absolute authority and treat Christians as irrational
beasts? Or when they see that faithful men and women are held in ill favor, but
flattery and worldly minded relatives surround the bishop and comprise the
select staff of his Metropolis? Or when they see that a metropolitan’s tour reaps
a golden harvest? Or when they see that the ranks of the Church, coming from
the poorest of families, are carried around in gleaming limousines, which even
statesmen and generals envy? Or when they see that luxury reigns in certain
metropolitan palaces in which magnates are welcomed and are amazed at the life
of ecclesiastic rulers? Or when they see in the middle of Athens apartments and
palaces that are the personal property of bishops and their relatives? Or when
they hear that sisters and nieces are given generous dowries taken from
despotic treasuries or that elite grooms are bought for them with sacred
monies? Or when they hear that metropolitans do not happily stay in small or
poor metropoles but, after tasting the demon of greed and vanity, leave no
stone unturned in their efforts to be transferred to palaces and richer sees,
neither fearing God nor shamed by man? Or when they see that preachers of the
Gospel, faithful people, are persecuted to extinction for condemning illegal
and uncanonical practices by the leaders of the Church? Or when they see that
no war or battle is waged against the powerful of the day, who by
anti-Christian word and deed offend the laity? Or when they hear that scandals
of a moral nature break out in the halls of archbishops and are circulated
throughout the entire region without the official Church becoming alarmed or
disturbed? Or when they hear that dying bishops leave enormous amounts in their
wills to their blood relatives and other dear persons, and the heirs, like
blackbirds, gather round these wretched wills, coming to blows and going to
civil court to settle their differences? My dear Church, how can I express all
the sufferings that the Mystical Body of Christ has endured at the hands of the
evil shepherds, who have not entered into your holy flock by the gate, but
another way?
So, when our youth are
witnesses by eye and ear of the reigning disorder and wretchedness within the
Church, how do you expect them to be attracted by missionary ideals and make
the decision to serve the Church in extreme selflessness? There are no educated
young people with high interests in life today because there are no models, no
heroic examples among our priests. Youth is attracted by heroes; it worships
its heroes from whatever walk of life they come. Through his example, a heroic
general inspires the officers and soldiers under him and leads them to victory,
glory, and honor. On the other hand, a cowardly general can disappoint even the
bravest men, and create a spirit of defeatism, leading to shameful defeat. A
lion can lead deer to victory, but a deer commanding lions leads to defeat. So
when Christian orders are devoid of leaders who are equal to the task of holy
mission, nothing grand or high can be accomplished. The mission will vegetate.
As Church history bears
witness, holy bishops and priests have a following of young people with holy
desires who are eager to strive for missionary work, but bad bishops do not
attract such youth. Wretched people gather around the axle of episcopal
authority of bad shepherds, ready to take over wealthy parishes. Their goals
are the episcopal thrones, which they strive to attain through vanity and
greed, faithful copies of the bishops over them. As they destroy honorable
Gospel workers, they load down their favorites with crosses and monastic garb
and call them missionaries, into whose hands they place preaching and
catechesis. Wolves shepherding the laity! No wonder there has been a breakdown
of preaching, religious instruction, and confession in Greece. "This is the
charge against the leaders of the Jews," said St. Chrysostom, "that shepherds
were truly shown to be wolves. Not only did they not direct the masses, but
ruined their ability to do so" (Homily 32 on Matthew’s Gospel, Migne 57:379).
Therefore, the catharsis of metropolitan halls of their vile elements—of
God-peddlers and Christ-sellers in the garb of apostolic shepherds—is and must
be the most serious duty of every honorable Church worker, every believer who,
according to Gregory of Nazianzus, is a follower and imitator of Christ,
guiding by all his generation, from manger to Golgotha. He is also called to
take the three-pronged lash and chase the money-changers from the Temple. Let
everyone understand this. Without cleansing the Church, without the clean,
surging wind of the Holy Spirit, there can be no serious reason for mission,
here or abroad. It is a joke to think that by technical means, by decrees and
regulations, we can create a spiritual life and change every bishopric into an
upper room at Jerusalem, from which issue fiery men for the spiritual
edification of the world....
One final reason why the ranks in all but the fewest missionary centers are not sustained by an influx
of new stock is the same one that St. Chrysostom observed in his own time (of all the Church Fathers,
he had the most active passion for missions). The reason is this:
There are faithful young men and women who could offer much
to a missionary movement; however, these people (who are so scant yet so
precious) do not stay in the world and struggle under the Cross to help their
spiritual fathers and teachers whom they see groaning through lack of help—they
leave. Where do they go? They go to the desert or to the mountains and lead a
monastic life. The brilliance of Tabor’s light draws them. Let’s let St.
Chrysostom (who himself groaned under his same abandonment) speak to these
faithful beings, who could stay and help in missionary work and save souls, yet
leave their spiritual fathers and teachers to carry out the difficult struggle
in this generation alone.
Paul the Apostle, for one,
went from Jerusalem to Illyricum, another Apostle to the land of India, another to the land of the blacks, and others to various parts of the world; yet we do
not dare venture out from the borders of our own homeland, but look for luxury,
nice homes, and every other abundance. Who of us ever hungered for the word of
God? Who has ever undertaken a tiring journey for the Gospel? Who is in the
wilderness? Who has gone to a far-off country? Which of our teachers ever
worked to help others who were hungry or suffering? Who has died a daily
death?... And if one were to be found having traces of that apostolic life and
behavior, he leaves the cities, markets, the company of the world and his duty
to work the salvation of others, to order their lives through teaching the
Gospel, and goes off to the mountains. And if one were to ask him the reason
for his departure, he will start giving excuses. But his excuses contain no
pardon. For what does he say? "That I, too, not be destroyed, that I not be
drawn into the wave of evil, that my spirituality and virtue not be diminished,
I therefore abandon the world and flee to the mountains." However, would it not
be better to lose something of your spirituality that others may gain some,
instead of fleeing and seeing your brothers being lost from afar? So, when some
are indifferent to virtue and others who are zealous and concerned for virtue
flee far from the crowd, far from the holy war being waged in the world, I ask
you how will we conquer the enemies of faith and virtue?
Truly these are golden words
that have great significance, for they proceed from an Ecumenical Father of the
Church who like few others loved the monastic life!* O chosen young people, the
genuine preaching of the Gospel pulled you from the depths of sin into
spiritual life, and loving fathers and teachers for years prepared you for
missionary work. They had many golden hopes in you, but now you are leaving for
the mountains. You leave with empty excuses. You leave in hard days, when the
Anti-Christ is raging in the world; souls are lost every day, and your fathers
and teachers struggle hard for the sacred and holy. You leave them alone. Go
then to Mt. Tabor and there rejoice in your spirits. But we ask you, "Is your
conscience at rest?" Before you answer, meditate a second and third time on the
golden words of St. Chrysostom. They were written for you!**
Endnotes
* In his Sixth Homily on Ephesians, St. Chrysostom stresses that one cause for falling away from Church
life is that pious people, endowed with their gift of working in the world as
missionaries, flee to the mountains and stay there forever and thus leave the
ecclesiastical stage free to be taken by lazy and insufficient elements. This
is what he says in a related passage: "They, who were living virtuously, and
who under any circumstance might have confidence, have taken possession of the
tops of the mountains, and have escaped out of the world, separating themselves
as from an enemy and an alien and not from a body to which they belonged.
Plagues too, teeming with untold mischiefs, have lighted upon the Churches" (Nicene
and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 13, Philip Schaff, ed., Eerdmans
Publications, Grand Rapids, p. 78. See also, K. Kontogones, "Ekklesiastike
Historia," Athens: 1876, vol. 1, p. 480).
** What we wrote here we do
not wish to be misinterpreted. We are not against monastic life, an ancient
order of the Church that has offered resplendent fruit of the Holy Spirit. We
have also written in periodicals concerning the monastic order and published
two books, the Pearl Without Price and Holy Summons. But we
believe that we are not sinning in stressing that monastic life, as it presents
itself today, is going through a crisis and is in need of renewal to reattain
its ancient grandeur (see our book, National Anniversary, Athens, 1970,
pp. 37—63). Monastic life, renewed according to the ancient prototypes, can
offer so much to Church life and community. It is impossible not to well forth
from its bowels again missionary men who will continue the work of Cyril and
Methodios, Cosmas the Aitolean, and so many other monks known and unknown, who
for the sake of saving souls looked beyond their own spiritual interests and
threw themselves into the furnace of the world and underwent hardships. And by
flaming love for humble humanity everywhere they took up what Paul said, "For I
could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen
according to the flesh" (Rom. 9:3), as elsewhere he says, "Let no one seek his
own, but each one the other’s well-being (I Cor. 10:24), a saying which
signficantly had an influence on the soul of St. Cosmas the Aitolean, who left
the monastery to do missionary work, that from the hesychasm which he had
practiced for sixty years he went out to missionary activity and the famous
monk Christophoros Papoulakos during a dramatic interview with the champion of
the Orthodox Faith, Phlamiatos (see K. Bastia, "Ho Papoulakos," Athens, 1963,
ed. 4, pp. 112-20).
St. Chrysostom sighs in lack
of missionary zeal for saving souls and cries, "Woe is me, that I have not
known how much it takes to gain souls" (see Homily 18 on the Acts of the
Apostles, Migne 60, 149).
From Follow Me, by Augustinos N. Kantiotes, Bishop of Florina, Greece.
Trans. and Foreward by Asterios Gerostergios (Belmont, MA: Institute for Byzantine and Modern
Greek Studies, 1989), pp. 370-378.
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