From the word spoken at Putna
on May 21 by Archimandrite Father Simeon (Symeon) Bruschweiller of
St. John the Baptist Monastery (Essex), a disciple of Father Sofronie
Sakharov:
 |
| Archimandrite Symeon with Mother Mariam(Zacca) and Father Touma(Bitar) in the Monastery of Saint John the Baptist. Douma. Lebanon. |
Almost
all of us are Westerners who found in the Orthodox Church the true faith and
the true life in God. Orthodoxy means "the correct faith", "the
correct Glorification" and this "correct faith" enlightened us
and lead us here today.
As I said, the
Church can be compared to a river flowing through centuries, but this river is
exposed to a lot of dangers. We could say that this river, this Church, can be
attacked either from the inside, or from the outside.
Today we celebrate another feast apart from Mid-Pentecost, the Feast of Saint Constantine and Saint Helen. Until Saint Constantine the Great, the Church was attacked from the outside by the Roman Empire. As you know, the early Christians were subjects of unmerciful persecutions. The greatness of Saint Constantine comes also from the fact that he was a Roman Emperor, that he stopped the persecutions against the Church and he even became a Christian. Since then, the Church stopped being attacked from the outside like before, but, as you know there were other outside attacks.
I want to
mention Saint Stephan the Great in the 15th century, who was a great
defender of the Christian Church. There have always been menaces to the
Orthodox Church, but there were always ways to survive, by the grace of God.
Putna is a
place where the Orthodox faith is protected and defended. Today, the menace
comes a bit differently, by the entering of wordly spirit in the church, also
called secularization. It is no longer an attack by violence or martyrization,
but by seduction and corruption of thinking. It's an ideology which is spreading
without being seen, without being noticed, but it affects us all. If we accept
this ideology of secularization, we will remain Christians only on the outside,
but we won't actually be Christians on the inside, neither in our life, nor in
our faith. This is why we must protect this treasure of our Orthodox Church. We
must pay attention and discern the danger of secularization on one hand and the
corrupt form of Christianity found at the other denominations on the other
hand.
All of us, the
members of the association, who are currently in a pilgrimage in Romania, are
people who discovered Orthodoxy, who discovered the treasure of Orthodoxy. We
have discovered that the Orthodox Church is the true Church, the true river
which flowed across the century, without any additions or removals and without
corruption. All of you who are present here should be profoundly attached to
this church, because against this Church of Christ, the gates of Hell will not
prevail. May God bless you all!
Reference:
http://forums.orthodoxchristianity.net/threads/elder-symeon.23228/