On Sunday, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew sent multiple messages after the completion of the Divine Liturgy that took place at the Church of the Protaton in Karyes.
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew called on the monks to do their important work for the church and to preserve the sacred traditions and the “deviants” from the ecclesiastical canonicality to return to the Mother Church.
“We love Mount Athos, we honor its rulers and we are anxious whenever problems and divisions emerge,” Bartholomew said and continued: “We consider this sacred place an integral and vital part of the Great Church, we sympathize whenever the long-standing issues require, strongly, a solution. We long and patiently await the return of the deviants from the Mother Church.
We spare no effort, toil, and endurance, for the correct repositioning of the wrong. Perhaps, the tolerance of the Mother Church is perceived as weakness or indifference. But such a view would be completely misguided and unfair, as the Great Church of Christ has demonstrated and apparently proved that it is the Mother the truth of all things…”
He stressed that even critics confessed to the tolerance of the Church and added: “There is no other way but love and patient waiting.”
The Ecumenical Patriarch noted that there is a distance between the occurrence of problems in the Church and their recovery and stressed: “The Church waits”.
“So we did in the two recent cases of Ukraine and the neighboring country, North Macedonia. We can’t close our ears. Sometimes after an appeal and sometimes ex officio against debt and responsibility, the respective patriarchs exhaust themselves for the stability of God’s holy Churches.”
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew pointed out that “philanthropically and exhaustively” the church heals wounds and “heals algae” and does not escape its path.
“Do not be afraid, the Church does not deviate from the straight path. He does not expel the Tunic of Truth, which has been woven with the grace of God and with much effort by the Holy Apostles to this day,” Patriarch Bartholomew said.
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew added that the Church “does not accept conservatism, does not put forward secular imperatives at the expense of the holy religions, and does not accept a foreign and other faith”. He also stressed “Love and trust the great Church of Christ and your Patriarch”.
