THE KYIV POST: UKRAINIAN AUTOCEPHALY – A VICTORY OR OPPORTUNITY? by Giacomo Sanfilippo
This marks Giacomo Sanfilippo’s third op-ed for the Kyiv Post. It appeared shortly after midnight Kyiv time on January 7. His articles at the Kyiv Post are archived here.
Patriarch Bartholomew hands Tomos to Metropolitan Epiphanius January 6, 2019
Every year on January 6 a paradoxical confluence occurs between the Orthodox Church’s two liturgical calendars. Most autocephalous and autonomous Orthodox Churches around the world celebrate today as Theophany, the culmination of the Nativity. Yet the Churches of Jerusalem, Russia, Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine observe today as Christmas Eve—the very beginning of the Nativity.
Whether the Church of Constantinople is seen to deliver the Tomos of Autocephaly to the Church of Ukraine on the day of Theophany, as in the eyes of the grantor, or on Christmas Eve, as in the eyes of the recipient, it seems hard to miss the perhaps providential significance that this historic event should coincide with the Church’s commemoration of the divine-human epiphany embodied in the birth and baptism of Jesus Christ.
The timing of the Tomos with the inaugural acts of the invisible God’s self-disclosure in visible human form invites the Primate, hierarchs, priests, deacons, monastics, theologians, and laity of Ukraine to contemplate two facts as their Church receives her long-awaited autocephaly as a gift of the Holy Spirit: first, the sole purpose of the Incarnation as that of drawing the triune Creator and His creation—both human and nonhuman—into an everlasting communion of love; and second, the sole purpose of the Church as that of manifesting, perpetuating, preaching, and especially living this all-embracing communion of love in every concrete time and place where she finds herself planted like a vine by divine grace. Read More
ORTHODOXY IN DIALOGUE 