Holy Monastery of Koutloumousiou*
On the occasion of the temporary ban on ecclesiastical worship, as well as of the decision of the Holy Community of Mount Athos to deal with the outbreak of the pandemic following the fathers’ practical philosophy, that is, vigilant prayer for the salvation of the whole world, our Holy Monastery considered the submission of the following thoughts to be constructive.
Current events bring to the fore three dimensions that positively or negatively shape our lives as individuals and as a society: fear, faith and repentance.
A pandemic or any other trial can act as an opportunity to engage oneself in philosophy and self-knowledge. Unfortunately, this is not the case when absolute fear prevails. Fear can protect, but it can also be more contagious and pathogenic than any virus. It stems from the instinct of self-preservation.
Someone said in astonishment: “If you dare to cough in the church, the others will look at you, at best, as if they were looking at a pickpocket.” In other words, we have weak faith, but we do not want to admit it.
And these things happen within the churchyard. Outside, things are tougher, and fear makes the instinct of self-preservation to move blindly, without self-control, without spiritual and mental infiltration.
According to a medical announcement, if the Holy Communion was an antidote to the virus, we might rush to snatch it from our brother’s mouth. Now, there is a suspicion that it is just the opposite! So, let’s abstain from it, some people suggested, or alternatively let’s initiate another way of giving it.
What the faithful say about the restriction, the caution, and even the alteration in the way of offering the Holy Communion, is good and reasonable. Of course, the Holy Communion does not depend on the way is being offered, and the Church, in her pastoral care, can change the way whenever she deems fit. But one wonders, how come – although believers have always been receiving the Holy Communion from the common cup with or without the common spoon – no one has ever been examined before the Eucharist to see whether he/she is physically healthy, or if they have a contagious disease, to avoid causing other people suffering! In the two-thousand-year-old Church’s conscience, gathering and communion “in the name of the Lord” cannot cause any harm, other than to bad people.
The congregation, in any case, comes in the fear of God, with faith and love not because they believe in the magical properties of precious gifts, but because the One Who both offers and is offered is Christ himself. But a highly advertised virus arrives, and a “danger” that, anyhow, has always been there and always will be, has filled our heads. The risk is that I never know whether the person I am embracing or share the communion with suffers from something, and what this something might be! Should the Church spare another way of offering the Communion, not for practical reasons, but because we are ultimately strangers to each other, suspicious and guilty, a mutual threat to each other, because our minds are impatient and sad, our hearts are locked, and our spirits are suffocating, so that there is no room in them for the greatness of faith?
Is it for all of the above, the unbelief, the ingratitude, the indifference, the selfishness, the disunity, the cruelty, the customer relationship with God and the avoidance of essential demands, that God has granted His people one trial after another, while being deprived of their divine worship too? It is not only the sins of the “outsiders” that cause suffering since we reap what we sow. It is also the inability of both the clergy and the people to experience and express the mystery of the faith. So, let us not look only at the enemies of the Church, who will not cease to exist. What God has allowed in the past and what He allows now is a call to everyone, faithful and unbelievers, to repent. And let this concession to prohibit unexpectedly, even temporarily, by law, what we take for granted, and especially our common worship, be an opportunity not for anger and inappropriate zeal, nor for discouragement and giving up, but for reflection and reconstruction, self-criticism and unity.
In our day and night monastic worship we ask God and Healer of the sick to enlighten and strengthen the whole suffering world, to soften this trial, to hype up those who have lost their faith, to open the gates of repentance, to eliminate fear, to bring peace in the Church and the whole world, to save us within the light of His love.
*The article was originally published in Greek in ikivotos.gr
