The Shepherd, June 2008
On the Occasion of the Commemoration of the
Holy Apostles Peter and Paul (29th June)
A Most Timely Question:
Witness to the Ethos of Orthodoxy
Or Syncretistic Coexistence?*
Having your way of life upright among the nations,
that they may, having witnessed your good works, glorify God.”
(I Peter 2:12)
IN our days, we are reexperiencing in our lives and are faced, as Christians, with an historic challenge, a social phenomenon, which had been intensely experienced by early Christianity: a globalized environment.
Peoples, races, and languages, civilizations, nations, and religions all make up the multiform context in which the pious by now daily move, and they are developing a dialogue of life, in practice, with the heterodox and those of other religions and nations.
The ecumenists, who are alienated from the Orthodox, no less than the worldly-minded politicians and intellectuals, attempt in various ways to impose their own rules, in order for this unavoidable dialogue of life to succeed.
Their endeavor is always made with the prospect of a peaceful coexistence and an unhindered share in the goods of an earthly chiliastic paradise; but—and why not?—also with the prospect of a convergence and a syncretistic synthesis, whereupon our attitude towards the Truth and our relation to it would ultimately be such that no one would be bothered.
* * *
Pious Orthodox Christians, however, “walking in the Spirit,”1 have, as steady guides in their earthly journey towards the Eighth Day, not the shepherds who are turning the Church into a mere religion, but rather the divinized members of the Body of Christ, the God-bearing and light-bearing Apostles, Fathers, and Teachers.
On this point, the Holy Apostle Peter emphatically exhorts us not to forget a fundamental rule, as we find ourselves among our contemporary “nations” of many kinds and names: a “right way of life.”2
The Chief Apostle reminds the pious, who live together with unbelievers, the impious, unorthodox, heretics, and the heterodox,
“to have right behavior in their relations with others and a virtuous life,” and “to be adorned with evangelical manners and Christian virtues.”3
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