Blessed are You, O Christ our God, who made fishermen all-wise, sending upon them the Holy Spirit and, through them, netting the world. O Loving One, glory to You. (Apolytikion)
Following the Sunday of Pentecost, the Church commemorates the Monday of the Holy Spirit. We celebrate the salvific event of the Holy Spirit’s descent upon the Apostles and other disciples of the Lord who had gathered in prayer and supplication in the “upper room” as described by Luke the Evangelist in the Book of Acts.
The significance of that seminal event in human history two-thousand years ago reverberates from Jerusalem to all parts of the planet today where followers of Jesus Christ – and indeed all people of goodwill – yearn to become “partakers of the Divine Nature” (2 Peter 1:4).
The Sunday of Pentecost and the Monday of the Holy Spirit are closely connected to contemporary historical events in the Orthodox Church.
Five years ago, the Holy and Great Council commenced with a Synodal Divine Liturgy celebrated on Pentecost at the Cathedral of St. Menas in Heraklion, Crete.
Fifty years ago, as the Holy Trinity Monastery – wherein the Halki Seminary was embedded – was celebrating its feast day, Turkish authorities were plotting to shut down the seminary.
While they forced its closure, the spirit and flame of Halki still permeates and shines brightly.
As we commemorate Halki’s half-century of closure, and pray for its reopening, let us bring the seminary’s spirit and ethos back to life through the vivid memories and candid observations of two of its graduates: Konstantinos Delikostantis and Christos Plengas.
Both distinguished gentlemen – who are today also Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate – spent seven years (three as high school students and four at the university level) studying, worshipping, and being transfigured by the unique pnevma that surrounded the seminary and those within it.
According to Prof. Delikostantis – an eminent scholar and professor who still resides in The City servicing the Great Church of Christ – Halki’s spirit was one of openness: “I like describing “the spirit of Halki” as a combination of unshakeable fidelity to the Church’s tradition and as openness toward the world and trust in the power of dialogue.”
Both Halki alumni highlighted the liturgical life at the seminary as formative parts of their educational journey and spiritual growth. According to Mr. Plengas, a former naval officer and today a prominent lawyer in Athens, “Halki was not a simple school teaching lessons for six or seven hours a day.
It was a modern ecclesiastical space of fraternal co-existence with a combined monastic and secular atmosphere, comparable to the military in terms of strictness and discipline, but at the same time similar to a monastery on Mount Athos.
Halki gave us the wings to spread to the universe and serve the needs of our fellow believers and to maintain friendly relations with our non-religious brethren as well.”
The constant connection between theory and praxis infused both faculty and students alike with a foundation of lived theology, weaving classroom learning with life in the cosmopolitan Queen of Cities.
As Prof. Delikostantis describes it: “Our uniqueness in Halki was found in the way of life, the personal encounters, the cohabitation of Monastery and School, it arose from the combination of theological study and liturgical life, of common study and shared trapeza, of tradition and ecumenicity.
Our life progressed from the pew to the school desk, from the church to the classroom, from the lectern to the library.”
Mr. Plengas fondly recalled the revered “atmosphere” and “apprenticeship” that Halki offered its students especially through church services and a living Orthodoxy.
Prior to learning how to study the Fathers of the Church and theological texts, “The seminarians of Halki,” according to Prof. Delikostantis, “were taught how to locate the entirety of our faith and theology within the services, the cassock, the stole, the vigil oil lamp, the candle, the incense, the chanting, and in the sweetness of the faces in the icons.”
For the local Greek Orthodox population in and around Constantinople, Halki’s educational programming was also often a lifeline for poorer or underserviced parts of the region whose towns or villages may not have had an operational high school to support students.
One such example is the current Ecumenical Patriarch, His All-Holiness Bartholomew, who studied and graduated from Halki and who, despite roadblocks and obstacles, has made significant progress to resurrect the sacred grounds of the Holy Trinity Monastery (including through the efforts of Archbishop Elpidophoros of America, formerly Metropolitan of Bursa), by organizing summits, symposia, ecological initiatives and regular meetings of the Holy and Sacred Synod at Halki.
While the seminary both has a direct and unique relation with the Centre of Orthodoxy, it produced 330 bishops during its 127 years of operation (from 1844 to 1971) for the oecumene.
We are told by the Rev. Dr. John Chryssavgis in his superb biography of the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew: Apostle and Visionary, that Halki nurtured “twelve [bishops who] rose to the ecumenical patriarchal throne; two were elected patriarchs of Alexandria; three became patriarchs of Antioch; one became exarch of the Bulgarians; four were ordained archbishops of Athens; [and] one became archbishop of Albania.”
Located on the “Hill of Hope,” Halki was not just for Constantinople or the Ecumenical Patriarchate, it was – and still is – for world Orthodoxy. The former students and today’s alumni have the wise words of their professors close to heart: “Hear the voice of the Fathers and the heartbeats of our fellow human beings.”
As Prof. Delikostantis explains, to the seminarians of Halki, the words of Gregory the Theologian were never too far: “Do not fear progress… fear alienation” (Homily 25, PG 35, 1224).
Like the tongues as of fire that appeared upon the disciples of Christ on Pentecost and like the Holy Spirit “Who dwell in all places and fill all things,” the idea, history, and ethos of Halki is an inextinguishable flame to the glory of God.
By Archon Evagelos Sotiropoulos