The Grace of the Holy Spirit is in Unity, Purity of Faith and Piety

Immediately after the great Christian feast of Pentecost, we celebrate the Day of the Holy Spirit - the third person of the Holy Trinity. It is also the Church's last feast before the Feast of All Saints, which concludes the Easter cycle. The Divine Liturgy today is the glorification of the most holy and life-giving Spirit, one with God the Father and God the Son. The sacraments of the Church are inconceivable without the grace of the Holy Spirit, for they are performed by him alone. For this reason, the gift of Pentecost becomes the meaning and content of Christian life, in which love and concern for others are manifested. Faith transforms human life, and this is the greatest testimony to the truth of Christ's teaching.

In these challenging times of attachment to the material world, it is becoming increasingly difficult for Christians to preserve this precious gift of God's grace. Just beyond our borders, we are witnessing a terrible persecution of Orthodox Christians, comparable to that of the October Revolution or the early Christians.

"The persecution of the Church has never stopped," recalls Metropolitan Daniil of Vidin, one of the three candidates for Patriarch nominated by the Holy Synod, in a special interview for Radio Bulgaria. From the birth of the Saviour to the present day, the Holy Apostles and the Church of Christ have been persecuted.

The persecution that began with the birth of the Saviour continues to this day against the Holy Apostles and the Church of Christ. "It is important to understand and preserve what we have received," Metropolitan Daniil reminds us, stressing that faith is inseparable from piety and the preservation of its dogmatic purity.

In the midst of the many trials the Church has endured, we have the example of the Holy Fathers," notes Vratsa Metropolitan Daniil. "For example, during the era of iconoclasm, many emperors who had absolute power in the empire exiled patriarchs and anyone who dared to oppose them. Icons were burned, smashed and destroyed in churches. Churches and monasteries were converted into barracks.

In the early years after the Bolshevik Revolution, the persecution of the Church in the former Soviet Union was also terrible, it was maybe the most brutal and large-scale persecution in the whole history of the Church - the execution of priests, the destruction of hundreds and thousands of churches, and the attempt to replace the institution itself through the Renovation schism.

Today something similar is happening in Ukraine. Now this attempt at replacement is being carried out through the establishment of the so-called Orthodox Church of Ukraine by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in 2019, despite the existence of a universally recognized canonical church in Ukraine - the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, headed by Metropolitan Onufriy of Kyiv. This uncanonical and illegitimate act of Patriarch Bartholomew has led to an even greater division in Ukraine".

In practice, the priesthood of this structure faces problems of apostolic succession. Some have been ordained by civilians and therefore lack the succession of apostolic grace. In addition, individuals who were defrocked and excommunicated for legitimate canonical reasons have been illegitimately and without repentance restored to their positions," Metropolitan Daniil points out. "Nevertheless, Patriarch Bartholomew has tried to legitimise them by issuing the so-called Tomos, a document establishing this uncanonical structure.

"He signed and proclaimed two hitherto non-canonical structures, uniting them in the so-called Orthodox Church in Ukraine - OCU, and recognised the newly created body as the canonical Orthodox Church in Ukraine. We ask, however, what is the fate of the UOC - Ukrainian Orthodox Church which five years ago and still today is universally recognised by all local Orthodox Churches, with Metropolitan Onufriy as Primate?

Five years have passed and churches, some of them Greek-speaking, like the Albanian Church, or close to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, like the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Patriarchate of Antioch, do not recognise these structures. Patriarch Bartholomew was convinced that this would bring into the Church millions of Orthodox Christians deprived of communion with it. But instead of bringing peace, as he thought he would, he provoked an even more bitter schism in which literally the very people he proclaimed canonical began to persecute the canonical Church. Seizing temples, beating priests, killing - are these Christians? It is absurd, but the division is a fact".

According to Metropolitan Daniil, the division is not only in Ukraine but also among the other Orthodox churches. There are metropolitans who do not recognize the so-called Orthodox Church of Ukraine, but there are also those who do. Moreover, the Tomos states that the Orthodox Church in Ukraine recognizes the Ecumenical Patriarch as its head, just as all other Orthodox churches do. Yet, on this matter, Orthodox teaching is quite clear that the head of the Universal Church is Jesus Christ alone. "And precisely because the life of an Orthodox Christian is one of trials, we must adhere to sound doctrine," Metropolitan Daniil emphasizes. "These rules categorically forbid the primate of one church to interfere in the affairs of another autocephalous Orthodox church."

"And precisely because the life of an Orthodox Christian is a life of trials, we must hold on to sound doctrine," Metropolitan Daniel stresses, "These rules categorically forbid the primate of a foreign church to interfere in the affairs of another autocephalous Orthodox Church."

And here the question arises: where does our Church stand?

"We live in this world, we follow the developments, we have to defend the canonic and dogmatic truths of our faith and try to live piously" - answers Metropolitan Daniil.

Asked what the future Patriarch of Bulgaria should be like, he cited the example of the late Patriarch Maxim, whose patriarchal ministry passed through two difficult periods of great trials: socialism and the 1992 schism. "Despite all the difficulties, he managed to preserve the unity of the Church, not by force and banging on the table, but with tact, patience, courage and prudence," Metropolitan Daniil stressed, adding that this is how unity in the Church is achieved:

"If this unity is the personal conviction and sacrifice of each individual, then the Church is invincible. So the Patriarch must first of all be Orthodox, he must himself keep the sacrament of faith with a pure heart and inevitably respect his fellow believers. Then the Patriarch is the figure who must embody and seek this consent".

Photos: EPA/BGNES, BGNES, Facebook / Vidinska.mitropoliya

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Metropolitan Daniil of Vidin to Radio Bulgaria

The Grace of the Holy Spirit is in Unity, Purity of Faith and Piety

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