Sunday of Orthodoxy
“For if mine enemy had reviled me, I might have endured it. And if he that hateth me had spoken boastful words against me, I might have hid myself from him. But thou it was, O man of like soul with me, my guide and my familiar friend, Thou who together with me didst sweeten my repasts; in the house of God I walked with thee in oneness of mind.’” (Psalm 54)
Today we speak the anathemas of the Church against the unbelievers and the heretics. We declare those who deny the intercessions of the saints, those who disallow the veneration of the icons, and countless other heretics to be, well… heretics.
Don’t be surprised if your friends who share these heretical beliefs and practices are offended. After all, today the Church violates that most sacred commandment – not of God, but of every pluralistic society: be nice. That is what most people mean when they say they are ‘ecumenical.’ They are nice. Where they have differences with others, they’d prefer not to address them. ‘Let’s just concentrate on what we have in common,’ is their cry.
Well, that isn’t going to work for us. You see, this stuff is personal. Those who have wandered from the True Faith are not strangers or enemies. If that were the case, maybe it would be easier to ignore it. No, these folks who have separated themselves from the Church are those who once went to the altar with us. They were our brothers and sisters and we once walked in oneness of mind. But no more.
That is why we take this stuff very seriously. That is why we are truly ecumenical. We know that we’ll never truly be reunited by ignoring our differences and pretending we don’t have some serious issues to work through. The only way we can restore unity is by recognizing the disunity that exists. The only way forward is through humility and repentance, but a false ecumenism, a ‘nice’ ecumenism, will never bring that about.
So we speak the anathemas. It isn’t a day to pat ourselves on the back. It is a day to look around with sorrow. After all, if St. Paul asks us, ‘Is Christ divided?’ either way we answer will be painful. Either He is divided, and that would be a cause for pain, or He is not, and that would be a cause for pain, because it would mean that all those outside the Orthodox Christian Church are simply not Christians. Speak the anathemas. Listen to the anathemas. Put faces on the anathemas – faces of friends and family, and with humility and sorrow, pray. Until the Lord Jesus Christ returns and every division ceases, pray for true unity.
