by Archpriest Dr. Georgios Lekkas of the Holy Orthodox Metropolis of Belgium
The idea of the European Union was born, as is well known, from the ashes of the Second World War. Today, with the prospect of a third and even greater conflict looming, Europe once again stands at zero hour: it must complete the project of European integration without delay, or risk finding itself reduced to ashes. True integration would place Europe among the decisive actors on the global chessboard, rather than leaving it, as it is now, exposed to the threat of nuclear annihilation. Europe must become a global geopolitical power at once, or else soon face a fate akin to that of Ukraine.
However, the completion of European integration requires a common European language, a shared educational framework, and a set of common values. For more than a thousand years, the vision of European unity has been steadily undermined. Europe became the stage for successive schisms within the Church: ruptures that were paid for through the gradual dechristianisation of the continent and the enthronement of a kind of void in the consciousness of its peoples. In time, many came to attribute the failures of the Church’s representatives not to human weakness but to Christ Himself.
For while the European peoples of the first millennium, acting in the Holy Spirit, carried out the evangelisation of the whole world, it was those same peoples who, tragically, in the second millennium wounded the Church of Christ throughout the world through schisms and religious wars.
The Apostle Paul shed bitter tears over the failure of his own people to recognise the divinity of Jesus, and today we Europeans ought likewise to weep tears of repentance. For over a thousand years, our peoples have progressively turned their backs on the Church of Christ and, for the most part, we have failed to live in an Orthodox manner.
European integration can be achieved only upon a foundation of the ecclesial communion that existed during the first millennium—by reclaiming the points of convergence that arise solely from life in Christ within the ‘one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church’. With the dawn of the third millennium, however, zero hour has sounded for Europe: there must either occur a profound repentance that swiftly restores ecclesial communion and paves the way for true European integration, or else a continued indifference which will be paid for in blood, as the peoples of Europe are progressively sacrificed to the interests of the three global superpowers and each weaker link is gradually extinguished.
When the wounds of the two World Wars were still raw, the vision of European integration emerged as the only viable path forward. Today, under the mounting pressure of the three great powers, America, China, and Russia, the urgent realisation of that vision has become an even more compelling necessity. Without it, Europe may witness in our own time the grim fulfilment of the prophecy of the ‘Waste Land’.
