The following brief report appeared on Pravmir on February 26, 2020. For additional context see the extensive Ukraine section in Orthodoxy in Dialogue’s Archives 2017-19 and Archives 2020; Putin Gets Red Carpet Treatment in Serbia, a Fulcrum Once More (The New York Times, January 2019); Serbian President Accuses Russia of Spy Plot Involving Army (The Guardian, November 2019); and “Financing” in Church of Saint Sava (Wikipedia). 

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow (L) and Patriarch Irinej of Serbia (R)

Patriarch Irinej of Serbia said that such great personalities like His Holiness Patriarch Kirill are needed now not only by the Russian Orthodox Church, but also by the entire Orthodox world, reports Foma.

“Thanks to the Lord that such personality appeared in his place in our time, when great and holy personalities are so essential for heading the Church,” said the Serbian Patriarch in a sermon at the church of the Metochion of the Russian Orthodox Church in Belgrade on February 2, 2020. Read More

Christ the Bridegroom

Behold the Bridegroom comes at midnight,

And blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching.

And again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless.

Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not be weighed down with sleep,

Lest you be given up to death and lest you be shut out of the Kingdom.

But rouse yourself crying: Holy, Holy, Holy art Thou, O our God!

Through the Theotokos, have mercy on us.

Read More

FEBRUARY 2020

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Orthodoxy in Dialogue Needs a New Computer!

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Anglicanism, Christian Unity, and Same-Sex Love: Responding to Catherine Sider Hamilton and Ephraim Radner

After Tradition: Choosing the Life of the Spirit over Lifeless Conformism

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Giacomo Sanfilippo’s Unholy Vendetta against Faithful Orthodox Priests and Teachers

We’re Back on Patreon! Read More

In the Orthodox Church, concelebrating hierarchy and clergy at the Divine Liturgy drink from the same Chalice. The laity are then communed from that Chalice with a single spoon placed into the mouth of each communicant, including newborn infants from the time they are baptized and chrismated.

The following pastoral message appeared on Basilica, the official news agency of the Patriarchate of Romania, on February 28, 2020. We share it with Orthodoxy in Dialogue’s readers for the purpose of information and fraternal discussion. It is the task of historians to examine the question of whether past epidemics and pandemics in Orthodox history have ever affected the manner in which we administer Holy Communion.

Patriarch Daniel of Romania

The Press office of the Romanian Patriarchate published a communiqué on February 27, 2020, in the context of excessive media coverage of the epidemic caused by Coronavirus (Covid–19) and following requests from some state institutions that the Church should take measures to prevent the spread of the virus and to reduce the population’s fear of this phenomenon.

For this reason, the communiqué addressed especially those who are too afraid of illness when they kiss the holy icons or when they take Communion from the same Holy Eucharistic Chalice, as the priest uses a collective spoon.

This attention given especially to those “whose faith is weak” (Romans 14: 1) has caused fear elsewhere, more precisely among clerics and believers who consider that an exceptional and temporary measure (economy) in favour of those more frightened and weaker in faith can be transformed into a new liturgical rule of receiving Holy Communion that applies to all believers.

In order to overcome polarization and polemics that weaken Orthodox unity, hasty judgments must be avoided, and we must firmly reaffirm the Orthodox belief that the Holy Eucharist is not and can never be a source of sickness and death, but a source of new life in Christ, of forgiveness of sins, for the healing of the soul and the body. Read More