ELDER METROPOLITAN EMMANUEL OF CHALCEDON: “The Ecclesiastical and Canonical Meaning of Jurisdictional Changes”

CONSTANTINOPLE AND MOSCOW: 

TRANSFORMATIONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL ALLEGIANCE AND 

THE IMPACT OF IMPERIAL POLICY 

Vilnius Town Hall / Chodkevičiai Palace, Vilnius, Lithuania February 2026

 

ELDER METROPOLITAN EMMANUEL OF CHALCEDON

KEYNOTE ADDRESS: “The Ecclesiastical and Canonical Meaning of Jurisdictional Changes”

 

Your Excellency, Speaker of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania,

Your Eminence, Metropolitan Yevstratiy of Bila Tserkva,

Reverend Fathers,

Distinguished members of the academic community,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear friends,

The city of Vilnius possesses a memory denser than a usual historical narrative permits, transcending the limits of comfortable management in the framework of a speech. It is a city that knew, historically, conquests and empires, maps that were repeatedly redrawn, as well as identities imposed compulsorily. This experience – of a place that directly experiences violent subjection – adds to our subject a gravity, which academic vocabulary tends rather to weaken. At its core, without doubt, our issue remains a pre-eminently human question. Behind the cold legal words of “jurisdiction” and “canonical changes”, pulsates the agony of man for his integration, for the true meaning of ecclesiastical property and the determination of his spiritual homeland. These questions, instead of being archived, live inside the people, scourge consciences, dissolve families and shake whole communities. The Church in Ukraine has faced this reality in an almost unbearable way during the last decades.

The human tragedy that the issue encloses ought to constitute the starting point of our approach. The recognition is imposed, then, that the sacred canons and the synodal texts are primarily destined to serve man. I speak from a point that demands special attention. Every jurisdictional change constitutes, simultaneously, a legal category and a spiritual event, and this double nature renders any simplification dangerous. Confronting it exclusively as an issue of law and legality renders the word technical and sterilised, powerless to touch the deeper stake. Correspondingly, its approach exclusively as a spiritual issue contains the danger of slipping into an abstract piety, deprived of practical impact. The desideratum always remains the organic and harmonious coupling of the two.

The history of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine constitutes perhaps the most characteristic case of this intertwining. Three schisms, scattered throughout the centuries, formed a situation of exceptional complexity, which resists simplificatory schemes. All roads, we know, finally lead to New Rome-Constantinople, where the canonical genesis of these Churches is also located.[1] This relationship of descent – spiritual, canonical and historical – remains absolutely active, transcending whatever administrative decisions or political expediencies. Exactly at this point is the true difficulty located. The Church, often found selective in the management of her historical memory, presents a paradox: those same canonical texts that are destined to guarantee Christian freedom have sometimes functioned as tools of control. Geography was identified historically with theology, the cadastres of the episcopal territory assumed the power of dogmas, and pained people were found, inevitably, suspended among claims that transcend them. Our presence in this city bears a strong symbolism, which we also ought to preserve. Lithuania, after decades of occupation, conquered her freedom at a heavy cost, knowing well that nothing is gifted as given. Similarly, ecclesiastical freedom also emerges through agony, conflict, and many times through blood itself. The recognition of this cost constitutes the necessary starting point of our discussion.

Easy answers I do not bring, as, honestly, I doubt if indeed they exist. I share simply an agony – the agony of anyone who observes ecclesiastical matters far from the easiness of partisan integrations. If this agony becomes common, perhaps then we might approach the truth. In the end, the ascertainment that we have a high priest “who is able to empathise with our weaknesses” (Hebrews 4:15), constitutes the fundamental declaration that the Church exists in the world exactly to suffer with man, to lift his weight and to relieve him. We are unable to avoid this responsibility of the ministry. The historical example of Vilnius comes to confirm that ecclesiastical choices always bear the heaviest human consequences. And their judgement will depend, finally, on one single strict criterion: if they indeed served the life of man or if they subjected it to the expediency of institutions.

Often, in the various discussions about the Orthodox Church, a term circulates, especially among those who are ignorant of her internal logic: the term “Byzantinism”. Many mobilise it as a direct accusation, as a depreciative comment for something opaque, complicated or decadent. Yet, the understanding of today’s situation in the bosom of Orthodoxy – of the jurisdictional disputes, of the canonical recriminations and of the difficult communication – demands a return to our Byzantine roots, which also remain exceptionally strong. Constantinople, as New Rome, was the pre-eminent place of formation of a mental scheme for the relationship of Church and state, for the nature of power and the organisational structure of the religious community. The intertwining of Church and polity was so total and deep, that for the Byzantines any distinction was deprived of meaning, insofar as they constituted a unitary entity. This intertwining, deeply imprinted in Canon Law, continues to influence things even until today, sometimes creatively and sometimes consuming powers or tormenting the consciences of the faithful. From the history of the Ecumenical Councils, three sacred canons acquire exceptional importance: Canon 6 of the I Ecumenical Council (I Nicaea), Canon 3 of the II Ecumenical Council (I Constantinople), and Canon 28 of the IV Ecumenical Council (Chalcedon). These canons gradually consolidated the primary role of Constantinople as mother Church and as regulative authority in the whole Orthodox world. This historical and canonical retrospection is judged absolutely necessary, since it adds exact meaning to contemporary ecclesiastical events. Particularly revelatory remains Chalcedon 28, which renders to New Rome-Constantinople “equal privileges” to elder Rome, assigning to her the central role in the management of the ecclesiastical affairs of the East and in the foundation of new autocephalous Churches. The importance of this canonical provision proves determinative for the case of Ukraine. The Ecumenical Patriarchate leaned on this Canon, besides, in the year 2018, so as to proceed with the recognition of the independence of the Church of Ukraine and the revocation of the old anathemas.[2] A decision, undoubtedly, of huge consequences, which presupposes serious canonical depth for its correct evaluation.

At this point, yet, arises an absolutely critical question: What is the true meaning of the “canonical order”? Is a system of canons, which springs from radically different historical conditions, able to be applied today mechanically, overlooking historical evolution and man himself? The Ecumenical Councils were convened and legislated with the unique purpose of the ministry of truth, salvation and the unity of the ecclesiastical Body. So, the sacred canons constitute historical expressions of exactly this intention and remain absolutely inseparable from it. Such an approach expresses the authentic, traditional understanding of Canon Law: the canon is established to cure, to safely direct man towards the Kingdom of God and to protect the life of the community. This deep theological dimension is often overlooked, unfortunately, when the whole discussion is entrapped in a strictly sterile legalism.

Eucharistic ecclesiology places, correctly, the bishop at the centre of the local community, as a living image of Christ. Under this prism, the bishopric is experienced primarily as a ministry purely theological, communitarian and existential, and not simply as an administrative authority of a secular type. This deep, ontological interdependence between the bishop and the people of God functions as the strongest antidote against the temptation of ecclesiastical self-reliance and the mania for power. Yet, historical reality also reveals another, less attractive side: the absence of absolutely clear procedures often leaves the field free for the sharpest confrontations and dead ends. The inability, specifically, of the Byzantine mentality to strictly establish clear canons as to the foundation of new autocephalous Churches, bequeaths, unfortunately, an exceptionally difficult legacy, which Ukraine today is called to experience at the heaviest human cost. The crucial issue, in this case, is summarised in the following: does the canonical order serve and promote life, or perhaps restrict it and stifle it? While on the theoretical level the answer seems self-evident, in daily practice the existing chasm has deeply wounded ecclesiastical communities, having indeed alienated a multitude of young people, who, justifiably, turn away from sterile jurisdictional disputes and strife. Undoubtedly, our Byzantine past constitutes an inexhaustible wealth, which though demands today a critical and absolutely honest reading, far from ideological beautifications or, inversely, from easy and aphoristic condemnations. Through exactly this optic angle, the substantial understanding of the diverse jurisdictional changes is rendered possible, as well as the deeper consciousness of the responsibility of someone belonging as an active member in the Body of the Church, proceeding within human history.

The year 1054 constitutes a date which every Christian – either of the East or of the West – knows, even if dimly. It is the tragic moment of the Great Schism, of the definitive rupture between Rome and Constantinople, which also remains as an open wound, nine whole centuries later. This widely-known schism constitutes essentially the historical starting point of a long series of events, which immediately and particularly concern Ukraine. The whole ecclesiastical history of this country is organised, we would say, around three great ruptures, each of which brings its own special weight and its own distinct human tragedy. The events of 1054 inevitably pushed eastern Christianity into the creation of national and local Churches, which were found most closely connected with the various emerging states. Indisputably, the locality of the Church constitutes a theologically legitimate and evangelically secured condition. The problem, yet, swelled dangerously when the principle of locality was gradually transformed into national exclusivity, with the borders of the bishoprics identifying henceforth with the state limits and borders, and the respective national identity dictating and determining the ecclesiastical. In the Slavic territories of today’s Ukraine, this ethno-phyletic confusion gestated a new, painful rupture. In the year 1596, the notorious Council of Brest – deeply political as to its essence and its targeting – proceeded to the creation of the so-called Greek-Catholic Church, of a community which indeed preserved the liturgical type of the eastern tradition, but accepted in parallel the papal primacy. Certain historians hasten to characterise it as a “Small Schism”. For the people, yet, who experienced and continue to experience its impacts, the consequences have proven huge. Whole communities were violently divided, families were found separated into rival camps, and the sacred temples were transformed into objects of fierce and endless claim.

The third rupture came finally in the biennium 2018-2019, certifying officially a situation that had been maturing for decades. The Russian Church severed communion with the Phanar, placing the remaining Orthodox Churches before the painful dilemma: Constantinople or Moscow? This is a wound to the body of the Church. Behind, then, the diplomatic terminology, the question to whom the Church finally belongs remains essentially a question of soul. We know that the faithful in Kyiv or in Lviv, who go to church every Sunday, carry their personal pain and their human need, instead of the Canons of Chalcedon. The institutions often arbitrarily confront this human need, striking the ecclesiastical body in a way that canonical science and diplomacy are unable to heal. Burning remains the question of the property – of temples and of monasteries, like the two Lavras. The Lavra of the Caves in Kyiv is transformed into a centre of sad conflicts. There, the invocation of the “canon” seems distant, almost offensive. The three schisms constitute living wounds, which bleed without the synodal decisions or the administrative changes of maps healing them. The healing requires primarily repentance and a readiness to assume our own responsibilities, instead of the exclusive casting of them to the other side. Here exactly lies the difficulty. Repentance constitutes an internal process and not a political strategy or a synodal encyclical. These three schisms prove that the Church can suffer for centuries from wounds that she hesitates to face. Without doubt, the truth about our own mistakes costs and rarely promises honours and glories. “Blessed are the peacemakers, because they shall be called sons of God” (Matthew 5:9). This saying is demanding. A peacemaker becomes he who enters into the conflict, shouldering the pain of it. He denies the easy enlistments, seeking the essential healing. This is what is sought and simultaneously the most difficult.

When the Church exited the catacombs, rapid was the change. The transition from the position of the persecuted to the situation of the official and protected bearer constitutes perhaps the most radical cut in ecclesiastical history, exceeding in importance even the great schisms. While the schisms divide the body, leaving its self-consciousness intact, the acquisition of power mutates from its foundations the perception of the Church about her ministry. This alteration accumulates with time and ends up poisoning the source of her witness. Attractive remains through time the temptation of power, a fact familiar to those who approach the centres of decision-making. Ecclesiastical power possesses a special smokescreen: it is invested with theological terminology and is surrounded with sacred vestments. It is shielded thus against scrutiny much more effectively than secular power. The questioning of a Synod or the resistance to an ecclesiastical decision entails the danger of the accusation of heresy or disobedience. Jurisdiction in the Orthodox Church evolved as a complex phenomenon. It constitutes indeed a necessary canonical category for the function of every organised community, but it was transformed simultaneously into a tool for claiming and a field of competition. Jurisdictional power functions today as a vehicle of geopolitical influence. It constitutes the principal symptom of a Church that deviates from her fundamental orientation.

The Orthodox canonical tradition knows a concept which, paradoxically, the more it is needed, the less it is heard in modern ecclesiastical discussions. It is about “economy”. Beyond the common meaning of the management of material goods or of the arithmetic of revenues and expenses, the word bears a most deep theological weight. It constitutes the wise, prudent, flexible and philanthropic application of the canons with the healing of man as a guideline, instead of simple legal exactness. Economy constitutes the admission that the canon exists to serve man. The Church possesses the wisdom to deviate creatively, when the strict keeping of it causes greater harm than benefit. This principle constitutes a deeply patristic stance, rooted in the logic of the Gospel. It is expressed in the Lord who healed on the Sabbaths and conversed with the Samaritan woman, constantly reframing a law that had lost contact with its purpose. “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27). Replacing the word “sabbath” with the word “canon”, the meaning remains intact and timely. In the modern, though, jurisdictional disputes – in Ukraine and in the relations between Constantinople and Moscow – economy is absent almost entirely. “Exactness” dominates instead of it, namely the to-the-letter application of the canons and persistence with formal rights. Although necessary for the avoidance of arbitrariness, the unilateral use of it renders it theologically imperfect. It is transformed into a law that is deprived of love. The Church condemned this mentality in the person of the Pharisee, castigating the identification of faith with formal religious bigotry. In the case of Ukraine the results were painful. Communities that performed mysteries for decades were confronted as a foreign body. Clerics with conscientious ministry were considered invalid, and the faithful were found suspended in a canonical chasm that they did not understand. This situation is often recorded as arbitrary and theologically unacceptable. Economy would impose the evaluation of these communities through the prism of their spiritual reality. The existence of life, of faith and of love – elements evident in communities that endured under adverse conditions – created an obligation for the Church to find a way to embrace them. The Ecumenical Patriarchate preferred an act of economy in 2018, attempting exactly this. Economy contains of course its own temptation. It can become a tool of political expediency. When it is selectively applied for the legitimisation of prejudged decisions, it ceases to be economy. It is transformed into an opportunistic flexibility, and the often indistinct difference between the two intensifies the tragedy of modern conflicts. Regarding the limits of legitimate economy, the Church has developed wisdom. Demanding is the criterion: economy becomes genuine when it serves salvation and unity, healing wounds without causing new ones. It degenerates, on the contrary, when it is used as a pretext favouring the strong. The decision of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to recognise the autocephaly of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and to restore leaders who were considered schismatic constitutes a choice with canonical grounding. Simultaneously though, it generates questions, which history will judge, regarding the suitability of the procedure and the impacts on global Orthodoxy. The Church ought to decide with pure intention and awareness of the consequences.

At its core, economy expresses the maternal nature of the Church, which seeks to include instead of excluding. It incarnates the word of Ezekiel: “I desire not the death of the sinner, but that he may return and live” (Ezekiel 33:11). This phrase constitutes a rule of life that radically transforms the confrontation of every jurisdictional change. A long and gradual process was the prevalence of geography over theology. The limits of the Bishoprics, which were formerly determined by purely pastoral needs, were gradually subordinated to political borders. The local Church ended up expressing national identity, instead of incarnating the pleroma of the presence of Christ. She often functions to the detriment of the catholicity of the Gospel. The practice of ethnophyletism, despite the official condemnation of it as a heresy in 1872, continues to torment the Orthodox world. Many local Churches function as extensions of state diplomacy. Synods are convened and anathemas are managed with criteria of geopolitical expediency. Ecclesiological consistency is set aside. History preserves, certainly, also luminous exceptions. Churches that were martyred, clerics who denied political dictates, communities that kept the faith alive. The temptation, though, of identification with the national or the state element remained constantly present. The Holy and Great Synod of Crete (2016), whose tenth anniversary we celebrate this year, offered a crucial clarification. It is underlined in its text that the Church exceeds every cultural or national formation. Its unity is defined as a gift of the Holy Spirit, and not as a product of diplomatic manoeuvres. Its essence remains timely.[3] Every change in jurisdiction carries questions that surpass legal formality. They concern the profit, the loss and the fate of the faithful, who are moved administratively without their consent. Is the salvation of man promoted or the extension of a sphere of influence? The answer is usually avoided in the official texts. “For what shall a man be profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?” (Matthew 16:26). This question concerns equally persons and institutions. Through territories and prestige Churches can “gain the world”, losing the truth. Necessary is the distinction between the serving function and domination. Power in the Church is meant exclusively as a ministry of the people. When it is autonomised, it is cut off from its evangelical foundation. To the thought returns an image in the Gospel according to John, every time that the discussion about jurisdictions arrives at a dead end. On the eve of His Passion, the Lord takes a basin with water and begins to wash the feet of His disciples. An act of a slave, exceeding the schema of the Teacher. “Do you wash my feet?” (Gr. Σύ μου νίπτεις τοὺς πόδας;) asks Peter (John 13:6). And the Lord continues kneeling. This image constitutes the most radical ecclesiological text. It completely renegotiates power. It transforms it from a category of domination into a category of presence. The Church is called to incarnate this “otherwise” that Christ introduces in the logic of power. But what happened, in the meantime, with this image? The basin of the washstand was gradually replaced by the throne. A historical ascertainment that concerns all the Churches. The bishop, who in the ancient Church sat in the centre of the eucharistic community as an image of Christ, evolved into an administrative authority. The language also changed along with it. The pastoral surrendered its position to the legal, and love to competencies.

This point becomes crucial in order to approach the real stake of the jurisdictional changes. Whenever a local Church changes her jurisdictional status, at the level of official reality, the one who changes is the one having the responsibility for the ordinations and the blessings. But in the essential consideration of things, the central problem is the feeling of the faithful people that they possess a shepherd. We refer, in other words, to the community that finally finds an ecclesiastical hearth and family, in full contradistinction to that which remains in the absolute void, hovering among administrative claims that ignore it. The shepherd – a theological side that often, unfortunately, is faced completely arbitrarily by the institutions – constitutes primarily and mainly a relationship. This relationship, of shepherd and flock, contains a quality of presence, which cannot be imprinted in the dry canonical texts or in the synodal decisions. The biblical passage about the shepherd who knows his sheep and calls them, ‘He calls his own sheep by name’ (John 10:3), offers us a deeply existential description. It means, exactly, that every specific man, with his unrepeatable person and his personal pain, becomes known and unique, transcending the simple, anonymous number in the catalogues.

The question is posed, then, imperatively: what becomes of this relationship when the various ecclesiastical shapes change? How, truly, is the shepherd affected who built bonds of mutual trust, and how is the simple faithful affected who sees his ecclesiastical life being overturned completely unexpectedly? These questions torment the conscience, and their admission constitutes the necessary starting-point for the undertaking of whatever responsibility. We locate the deeper tragedy of the jurisdictional changes, certainly, in the immediate human consequences. It is the specific man who loses his shepherd or who finds himself suddenly before a new person imposed from above. The pastoral relationship possesses, besides, history, memory and vulnerability, unable to be transferred mechanically, in the manner of a digital file. So, the arbitrary facing of the fullness of the faithful as simple statistical magnitudes, which are automatically obliged to follow the new canonical situation each time, constitutes a peculiar form of pastoral barbarity.

Pastoral responsibility demands, in parallel, from the institution itself the creation of suitable preconditions for the flowering of these relationships. A fact that means that whatever jurisdictional changes occur must necessarily listen to and incorporate the very voice of the people. This participation constitutes a return to the authentic patristic tradition: to the primal principle, that is, that the people of God always possess theological boldness and the governing Church – exactly as a body – decides jointly with them.

Necessary, then, is the image of the sacred washbasin. The basin of the Lord constituted the par excellence symbol of an authority which freely chooses the martyrdom of the ministry. And this is exactly its specific difference from whatever secular domination. The sacred evangelical word: ‘Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant’ (Mark 10:43) constitutes the most dense and radical ecclesiology. Every time that the institution, forgetting this biblical ‘not so’, embraces the logic of authoritative imposition, it repeats a deeply essential fall. The return to the washbasin emerges as a spiritual and absolutely urgent demand. It concerns, indiscriminately, every member of the ecclesiastical body and especially the theologians, canonists, diplomats. Their own basin is the readiness to put forward the truth against whatever temporary interest. To find the strength to confess the ecclesiologically proper, recognising in the ‘other’ – the opponent until yesterday or the stranger – a primal brother.

A dominant truth in Orthodox theology, constituting at the same time a lived experience of centuries, remains the fact that the Church is defined primarily by her sacramental gathering, by the Eucharist herself. Even though the administrative structure, the sacred canons and the geographical borders of the territory clearly exist, the inner essence of the Church springs straight from the chalice of the Eucharist – a purely existential, communitarian but also eschatological act, which incarnates the deeper meaning of ecclesiastical life. Around exactly this sacred Table, any ethnophyletism and human borders cease entirely to have the slightest ontological power. Despite this, the Eucharist – even if it constitutes the par excellence symbol of unity and the prefiguration of the Kingdom – was instrumentalised many times inside history as a strict means of exclusion. The so-called ecclesiastical communion and the possible severing of it, became in the hands of men levers of political pressure, with the exclusion from the Divine Liturgy being used unfortunately as a weapon. The often arbitrary use of the anathema until now as a pure tool of authority, led inevitably to theologically paradoxical situations, even though historically frequent.

The case of Ukraine remains eminently instructive in this instance. Entire communities, with authentic and unceasing ecclesiastical life, which for decades were celebrating the Divine Liturgy with deep faith and reverence, were officially characterised as schismatic. The direct questioning of their mysteries and the absolute denial of their ecclesiastical hypostasis, trapped the fullness of the simple faithful in a boundless legal void. These men were sincerely seeking God himself beyond any jurisdictional legitimisations, and they were deprived for a series of years of sacramental communion with the broader Orthodoxy. It is, undeniably, a scandal, with the full and literal evangelical meaning of the word. When we set the Eucharist as the absolute criterion, this means practically that the Church is judged and evaluated on the basis of the quality of the communion that she herself actualises: from the personal contact of every man with his neighbour, of the respective bishop with his flock, of every Patriarchate with the totality of the faithful. At exactly this specific level it is demonstrably proven whether the ecclesiastical jurisdiction truly functions as a sacrificial ministry and whether the sacred canon authentically serves life, instead of suffocating and limiting it.

Another, but equally critical issue springs up: that of the youth. Young men are, indeed, crucially stricken by the endless ecclesiastical disputes and the wooden language of the canonical claims, which is often incomprehensible to them. Their inner need to meet a living God inside the bosoms of an affectionate community projects imperatively, since they seek something incomparably more essential than a sterile national ideology or a cold, superficial religiosity. Inevitably, they turn their back to the ecclesiastical becoming, questioning with characteristic sincerity which shepherd finally or which local Synod bends down and really speaks to their personal loneliness, their fear and their agonising search for meaning. With the passage of historical time, the danger of the Eucharist being transformed into a formal ceremony of ratification of secular authorities is intensely seen. On the contrary, in the bosoms of the ancient Church, this gathering constituted the moment of absolute equality, during which the rich and the poor, the free and the slave – as we would say today the Ukrainian and the Russian – were meeting fraternally around the same sacred Table. The Apostolic word describes this radical equality excellently: ‘There is neither Jew nor Gentile’ (Galatians 3:28) – the unique, perhaps, deeply founded theological antidote against the scourge of modern ethnophyletism.

This saving antidote still often remains inactive. The burning question is raised before us: how often, I wonder, is the mystery of the Eucharist celebrated as a sealing of a painful division, instead of functioning as the par excellence act of unity? And how many times is the eucharistic exclusion imposed strictly in the name of diplomatic pressures and ephemeral political expediencies, and not because of essential, dogmatic or theological reasons? The expected answer constantly requires the very agonising cry of the faithful people in Ukraine, who suddenly found themselves being instrumentalised as a pawn on a geopolitical chessboard completely foreign to their life. The sought answer, certainly, transcends the dry canonical texts by far – it is offered and lived only through the essential pastoral presence, unselfish love and the willing crucifixion of whatever individual rights for the sake of ecclesiastical unity. According, besides, to the unlying word of the Lord: ‘By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another’ (John 13:35). We thus approach the end of this theological reasoning – or, more correctly, that borderline point where dry human logic must retreat, conceding its place to the deeper ecclesiastical conscience. True changes are usually triggered by something incomparably deeper and more demanding than whatever logical arguments – exactly that which our sacred tradition condenses in the word: repentance. The concept of repentance, even though it is often degraded by modern man into a shallow and formal process, remains ontologically the most radical act for every person or institution. The sincere and brave admission of our historical errors constitutes, besides, a beginning of wisdom, and not at all an indication of weakness.

Inside Vilnius – a city which experientially knows the dynamic of the historical restart after long periods of totalitarian slavery – this truth assumes a particular existential weight. The return to the essential projects as a living and burning need, and not a simple, romantic nostalgia for some supposed and perhaps non-existent ‘golden century’. The militant Church has certainly always been called to struggle against the temptations of secular authority, of spiritual self-justification and of her dangerous identification with secular interests of every nature. And while the external form of the temptation changes in every historical period, its demonic essence is preserved intact and unaltered. 

The return to the essential imposes that we question ourselves with absolute sincerity about the very reason for the existence of the Church inside the world. Whom does she really serve and minister to, beyond the shining masks of the official declarations? When her pastoral orientation moves away from the specific, pained human person who thirsts and seeks the true God, then the ecclesiological failure becomes deepest, unable to be healed by any canon and by any Patriarchal Tome of Autocephaly. Whatever jurisdictional change acquires its true meaning exclusively inside this theanthrocentric framework. An absolute criterion for the change of ecclesiastical jurisdiction each time remains whether and to what extent it helps the faithful people to approach Christ in repentance, offering authentic spiritual healing and unity. The canonical framework is, safely, necessary, still functioning simply as a structural tool and as a necessary scaffolding, without ever being transformed into an end in itself. Because, as is known, the scaffolding supports and erects the building, but is never ontologically identified with it.

The modern history of Ukraine functions most clearly as a relentless mirror, with its painful schisms and its unmeasurable human tragedies, reflecting with terrifying clarity the accumulated pathogenies of the entire Orthodoxy. A hard reality, indeed, which we must bravely face eye to eye, if we desire to articulate a serious theological word for the future of the Church in the 21st century. This mirror offers the unique opportunity of a deep spiritual self-knowledge, which, despite the given pain that it generates, constitutes the absolutely necessary first step. A Church, besides, which – phobic and enclosed – avoids undertaking her diachronic responsibility and confessing her historical errors, is entirely unable to offer saving healing to the suffering world. The deeper theological message of the present meeting is also located at exactly this point: the uncreated hope. Christian hope transcends simplistic optimism or emotional naivety. It constitutes that demanding conviction that human history remains always open to grace, and that the Lord of glory never abandons His bride, the Church. The truth constantly finds its secret way, emerging wondrously from inside the mesh of our own human weaknesses and falls. 

The Orthodox Church of Ukraine now constitutes an unquestionable and absolutely living reality. Despite whatever institutional or structural imperfections inescapably accompany every human undertaking, we speak about a multitudinous community of faithful which agonisingly seeks its way towards freedom in Christ – a truth which we must honestly recognise. In parallel, the gaze of our ecclesiastical hope turns also to the painful rift between Constantinople and Moscow. Despite the historical weight and the seriousness of the canonical consequences, the very centuries-long ecclesiastical history teaches that even the deepest and gaping wounds are able, with time, to be led to their full and final healing. The coming of the Kingdom of God dynamically transcends whatever geographical restrictions and narrow jurisdictional land-registries of history exist. It is revealed and manifested as an empirical, living presence exactly there where sacrificial love transforms the ‘other’ – from stranger or competitor – into a genuine brother. The institutions and the sacred canons are called to function as humble servants in exactly this charismatic life. 

The modern experience of Vilnius constantly reminds us that ontological change remains possible. The Church becomes a bearer of a truth that transcends her, given that the incarnate Lord remains forever faithful to His promises, even when we men piteously fail. In its innermost essence, the problem of whatever jurisdictional change constitutes, in the end, a question for the very meaning of the Church inside the modern world. This uninterpreted meaning springs exclusively and only from the unalterable, historical presence of Christ, Who remains ‘the same yesterday and today and forever’ (Hebrews 13:8). In the person of the God-man is anchored every existent possibility for a future which deserves, theologically and historically, to be called authentically ecclesiastical.

Thank you.

__________

1. Paul Babie, “All Roads Lead to New Rome: The Canonical Origins and Status of the Orthodox and Greek Catholic Churches of Ukraine,” Ecclesiastical Law Journal 25/2 (2023): 211–236, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956618X23000066.

2. Tadeusz A. Olszański, “The Ecumenical Patriarchate Recognises the Independence of the Orthodox Metropolis of Kiev,” Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW), October 12, 2018, https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/analyses/2018-10-12/ecumenical-patriarchate-recognises-independence-orthodox-metropolis.

3. Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, “Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the Christian World” (Crete, 2016), official document approved by the Holy and Great Council.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church. Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the Christian World. Kolympari, Crete, 2016. URL: https://www.holycouncil.org/official-documents.

The Greek New Testament. 4th rev. ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft / United Bible Societies, 1994.

The Septuagint with Apocrypha. Edited by Lancelot C. L. Brenton. London: Samuel Bagster & Sons, 1851. Reprint, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1986.

Biblical References

Ezekiel 33:11. The Septuagint with Apocrypha. Edited by Lancelot C. L. Brenton. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1986.

Galatians 3:28. The Greek New Testament. 4th rev. ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft / United Bible Societies, 1994.

Hebrews 4:15. The Greek New Testament. 4th rev. ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft / United Bible Societies, 1994.

Hebrews 13:8. The Greek New Testament. 4th rev. ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft / United Bible Societies, 1994.

John 10:3. The Greek New Testament. 4th rev. ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft / United Bible Societies, 1994.

John 13:6. The Greek New Testament. 4th rev. ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft / United Bible Societies, 1994.

John 13:35. The Greek New Testament. 4th rev. ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft / United Bible Societies, 1994.

Mark 2:27. The Greek New Testament. 4th rev. ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft / United Bible Societies, 1994.

Mark 10:42–43. The Greek New Testament. 4th rev. ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft / United Bible Societies, 1994.

Matthew 5:9. The Greek New Testament. 4th rev. ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft / United Bible Societies, 1994.

Matthew 16:26. The Greek New Testament. 4th rev. ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft / United Bible Societies, 1994.

Secondary Sources

Babie, Paul. “All Roads Lead to New Rome: The Canonical Origins and Status of the Orthodox and Greek Catholic Churches of Ukraine.” Ecclesiastical Law Journal 25/2 (2023): 211–236. URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ecclesiastical-law-journal/article/all-roads-lead-to-new-rome-the-canonical-origins-and-status-of-the-orthodox-and-greek-catholic-churches-of-ukraine/53CD7BB0643EF8F815AFD0296D9B4B4C.

Olszański, Tadeusz A. “The Ecumenical Patriarchate Recognises the Independence of the Orthodox Metropolis of Kiev.” Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW), October 12, 2018. URL: https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/analyses/2018-10-12/ecumenical-patriarchate-recognises-independence-orthodox-metropolis.