четвртак, 26. новембар 2015.

Petition for the Establishment of Canonical Communion between the STOC and the Greek GOC

TO THE HOLY SYNOD OF THE CHURCH OF THE GENUINE ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS OF GREECE

Petition for the Establishment of Canonical Communion



Your Beatitude, Your Eminences, and Your Graces, Hierarchs of the Holy Church of the Genuine Orthodox Christians of Greece:


Moved by the commandment of the Lord that unity and love between His disciples is one of the main confirmations of true loyalty to Him and His Divine Will, and zealous to fulfill the commandment of the unity of the Church, we humbly address You with a petition to undertake with us all that is within our power to establish canonical communion between our sister Churches to the Glory of God.


We owe you immeasurable gratitude for the brotherly help which you have offered us from the very beginning of our holy battle for the rebirth of True Orthodoxy among the Serbian Christ-named Orthodox people by ordaining canonical, True Orthodox clergy for the needs of the Serbian Local Church, which due to the fall of the Belgrade Patriarch hierarchy into the heresy of ecumenism was left without a canonical episcopacy and clergy. 

To the great sorrow of all of us, communion between our two Local Churches ceased owing to the arising of a misunderstanding and disagreement about our desire and urgent need for the establishment of a national (Serbian) episcopacy to shepherd the Serbian TOC. At the time these disagreements seemed unresolvable and insurmountable, which forced us to take measures which were not in accordance with your judgment and position. 

Without your agreement we entered into communion with the Russian TOC, which, although canonical and Orthodox, is not in communion with your Church.  Also without your agreement, the Russian TOC granted us a hierarchy in the form of two bishops.  Such actions, though made with the best of intentions, with the vital interests of our Serbian Local Church in mind, were nonetheless inopportune, hurtful, and ungrateful towards you, our benefactors. 

For this offence we humbly beg your forgiveness with the most sincere sorrow and repentance. Also with sorrow and repentance do we beg forgiveness, with a deep prostration, for all the rough and hurtful words that we have spoken or published about you.

            We hope that you will have merciful, magnanimous, brotherly understanding and condescension towards us. From our point of view, the above-mentioned actions were made purely in the interests of our Local Church, and were never consciously or with ill intention directed against you and your Church. You were and have remained our true benefactors and helpers in the great work of the rebirth of Orthodoxy within the jurisdiction of the Serbian local Church, which through the machination of tragic historical circumstances fell into a very difficult and nearly inescapable position.  It was inevitable that our Church would need the help of other Local Churches, without which even the smallest progress would have been impossible to realize. 

            We Serbian hierarchs sharply oppose every sort of fanaticism (zeal not according to knowledge), isolationism, and sectarianism, destructive and delusional phenomena which have inflicted painful, difficult-to-heal wounds in the True Orthodox world.  We admire your supremely God-pleasing work towards the establishment of unity among the True Orthodox which magnificently bore fruit with the great union made in March of 2014.  Our wish is that the Serbian TOC unite with the newly-established front of the True Orthodox Churches so that the battle against heresy and for the Truth of the patristic faith be strengthened to the joy of the faithful, the strengthening of the weak, and the shame of the ecumenists.

In the coming year of 2016 we will celebrate the twenty-year anniversary of the beginning of the holy battle for True Orthodoxy in Serbia, and it would be a great blessing if this jubilee, so meaningful to us, would be marked by a concelebration of our hierarchs, which would be a great comfort to all of Orthodox-minded Serbia.

            With deep respect and gratitude as the youngest among hierarchs in the family of the True Orthodox Churches we greet you with the brotherly liturgical kiss of peace and love:

CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE IS AND SHALL BE!



Hieromartyr Dionysius the Areopagite
1/16 October 2015                                                                             
                                                                                           +Bishop Akakije of Uteshiteljevo
                                                                                            President of the Hierarchal Council
                                                                                    of the Serbian True Orthodox Church


                                                                                            Bishop Nektarije of Shumadia

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