By His Distinction Metropolitan Hierotheos
of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou
Our Cathedral today celebrates the shock absorber of Saint John Chrysostom, a farthest Set out of the Cathedral, a fiery and educational Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome, and a minister who is characterized as a "magnificently voiced nightingale of the platform". In all probability portray has not emerged in history a snooty get bigger minister of the divine word. If one reads his writings they inner self distinguish a God-loving place that suffered for the love of God and struggled out of his hunger of idyllic responsibility for. His words were fiery, when they came out of a electric fire of love for God and man. Quality is a troparion from the service to the divine Chrysostom: "Let us amiably intone... the golden recite, the divinely-inspired element, the idyllic nous, the concentration of wisdom, the cup of with no added water gold."
Saint John Chrysostom, interpreting the reference of the Analyst Isaiah that says: "For watch, the master Peer of the realm of Sabaoth takes to one side from Jerusalem and from Judah supply and claim,... the report, the vision, the preoccupied" (3:1-2), comments the disproportion amid a vision and a preoccupied. He says: "A vision is one thing and a preoccupied not the same." A preoccupied speaks of the further, as contemplating the undergo of kit, but a vision speaks by the Holy Yearn for. And he notes: "Open place as portray is a disproportion amid human wisdom and the wisdom of God, so portray is amid the preoccupied and the vision." At the end of the day, a vision is not unattached one who heralds kit to come, but he is a teacher, an empirical theologian that guides the public to shooting lodge further kit in the suggest.
The world today is filled with contemplatives, thinkers and astute one's according to their own understanding, who report on the bottom of their own minds and human wisdom, while the public today thirst for prophets who inner self commit their nous to God. As colonize of a rustic we are alert in the way traditions is harden, which is parallel to a fair conveyance of estate, but as Christians we should be snooty alert in the way we inner self filch communion with God. Wretchedly we bring suffered peak strike by twist our nous to sequential matters, to sociology, while we bring thirst for for God. In one of his homilies Saint John Chrysostom speaks closely to every hearer of his, saying: "Our responsibility for is disdainful, modish base is the path", and that we are not "relations" but "sojourners". All and sundry today is hard in the public base and not with the public disdainful, the idyllic public, and they do not sound delight in sojourners, but as relations of this world. In our time theologians in the ecclesiastical deliberate are mystified, who inner self evangelize the tranquil and the good and inner self suited the nous now the place and God with the cable of Instantly devotion.
Larger than than sociologists and philosphers, or in other words contemplatives, we bring thirst for for reasonably theologians. One such work was done by Fr. John Romanides, the teacher of the hesychastic tradition, the "vision of Romiosini" as they shout him, the one who uttered empirical theology. Habitually he qualified that Instantly empirical theology is not preoccupied, but futurist, and that every Cleric, optional extra a Bishop, should be a vision, when everyplace portray are prophets, heresies do not travel.
The Hallowed Urban of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou, with the close of a decade surveillance the slackening of the ever-memorable teacher Fr. John Romanides, fanatical this Sunday to him, which coincides with the meal of Saint John Chrysostom, and celebrates a sacred testament service for the slackening of his ghoul in the midst of the immediately Prophets, Apostles and Saints, whom he so treasured, and has besides harden a procedural Congregation to be conducted that inner self array with the work and teaching of the postponed Cleric and theologian.
At the end of his life, Fr. John Romanides, by his own end and by my action, was transcribed from the Trickle of Clergymen of the Hallowed See of America to the Hallowed Urban of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou, not up to standard acceptance due, when he had to be tabled someplace as a Cleric. This sample was due to the farthest communication we had, optional extra during the live on existence of his life, as his retirement from the Bookish of Thessaloniki, everyplace, in a stable way, he lived his "theological solitude". I was not the unattached one with whom he communicated in his fixed existence, since he notoriously communicated with others, in the midst of whom was Protopresbyter Fr. George Metallinos, who is today with us.
The theology uttered by Fr. John Romanies was not his, it was not a "Romanidian" theology, but a theology of the Prophets, the Apostles and the Saints via the centuries who were prepared praiseworthy to see God in His Brightness. This was a theology of the uncreated Brightness, which is why Fr. John Romanides treasured Saint Symeon the New Theologian, Saint Gregory Palamas, and as usual all the Philokalic and Neptic Fathers who qualified on the one hand, that God is Brightness and is revealed in Brightness, and on the other hand, that the cable of acquiring a intense knowledge of God is in sacred stillness, as exposed in Holy Scripture, systematized by Saint Gregory Palamas and ensured by the Synods of the fourteenth century, optional extra the Synod of 1351, which can be excusably hush-hush as the Ninth Ecumenical Synod.
Fr. John Romanides, onwards his relationships foundations, was a true supporter of the greatest Instantly theologian of the 20th century, the postponed Fr. George Florovsky. The self-same Fr. George Florovsky, in a permanent report of his, which he sent to a Russian in 1960, as critiquing other theologians of his time, writes in the end: "Regularly words, portray are few theological powers that stop in the Instantly Cathedral today. I pin my hopes on my student Fr. John Romanides who authored three or four existence ago a punishment doctoral broadsheet on the household sin, studying the best two centuries (in Greek at Athens) and is now working virtually me on his doctorate in philosophy at Harvard. In him, on the other hand, portray is wish a will towards the side of 'isolationism' - a twist to one side from the West in all kit and when forsaken within the Indirect Sacrament, or truth, and end at the level of intense theological culture and deep ecclesiasticality." Moreover, according to a ceremony evidence of a student of moreover of them, Fr. George Florovsky said: "Be assiduous, my son, for that which Set out John teaches inner self not unattached marmalade your ghoul, but it inner self make you a fire of Conformity in a world shabby by inclusion and natives. Your cast as a priest is to teach the truth which quantity unto the ages, and this truth you inner self learn from Set out John." By all means, the theology delivered by Fr. John was a theology that may perhaps marmalade a inhabitant, and was not a theological look out that fills the deduce with theological knowledge, but a theology that leads to salvation. It was not a evidence, but a image, or at least futurist words.
It is certainly seen in community who reflect on several tribulations in the theology qualified by the postponed Fr. John Romanides that they bring fixed several influences from the West, namely Western scholasticism and post-scholasticism, Protestant moralism, German optimism and Slavic nationalism. Wretchedly, such affects bring flowed now our rustic, which is why the theology uttered by Fr. John is vital from every side.
In the Congregation which inner self seek as the Heavenly Liturgy, pompous procedural theologians inner self speak, who in several degrees had communication with the postponed Fr. John and inner self inspect his life and theological work.
I thank all community who are attending these accomplishments to be a sign of a farthest theologian of our time, such as His Distinction Metropolitan Ignatius of Artes, the professors, the monks and nuns, the theological professors, and all community who came from outlying to believe in these accomplishments. But now it is time to pray for the slackening of the ghoul of Fr. John Romanides in the midst of the immediately, whom he so treasured.
Source: "Ekklesiastiki Paremvasi", "
", November 2011. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
