To The Holy Clergy and Christonymos Laon
of our Holy Metropolis Kythira and Antikythira
«I ask for more time, but to correct the soul.»
(St. John Chrysostom H.P.E. 19, 398)
My dear brothers and fellow ministers,
My Christian brothers and sisters, my beloved children in the Lord.
Blessed, peaceful, creative in God, graceful and good-hearted in the new salvific year 2025.
«And the circumcision of Christ is a new year,
and the memory of the Saint, Hierarch Basil.
Our year has a good beginning, and Christ invites us,
to deny evil, to adorn ourselves with virtues.’
we are told the New Year's Eve church carols.
The late Holy Father of our Holy Orthodox Catholic Church, John Chrysostom, writing about the constant and unrelenting flow of time, which is precious, notes the following: «Don't you know, that we should regret time more than anything else? If you save money, you will be able to get it again. But if you lose time, you will hardly recover it. For little time is allotted to us in this life.» (S.E.C. 14, 86).
«Let no one despair, because he has spent his time so far and we have done nothing important. It is possible to do much in a short time that we did not do in the previous year.» (S.E.C. 22, 364).
«The days run and they pass. The years fill up. We have come a long way. The judgment of God is near us. Our life is in a hurry for the time of old age.». (S.E.C. 31, 474).
«I do not ask for this, the “happy birthday”, but I ask for the correction of my soul» (S.E.C. 19, 398).
After the wise words and quotations of St Chrysostom about the time of our life and for the better and more profitable use of it, let us also listen to the sweetest word of the newly sympathetic Saint Callienikos, Bishop of Edessa, the answer to a hot question of his time and of our troubled and confused age; «how shall we face the uncertainty of the new year»?;
«Simply by the certainty that God exists. And this God, the true God, is our own. Creator, Maker, Creator, our Father. A loving father. A father full of love, even to the point of sacrifice. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son (to die on the cross), that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ (John c, 16).
There is a God Ruler and Provider. He governs the world and provides for it. Our heavenly Father nourishes “the birds of the sky” and shall ensure that “the grass of the field, today and tomorrow, into the furnace.”, But much more for the man that was made. “in his image and likeness’. His incarnate Son has declared to us. “Take no thought, saying, ”What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we drink, or what shall we eat ... for behold your Father in heaven, that you have need of these things.'" (Matt. f’, 31 - 32).
The esoteric man thinks that only material forces rule the world and that, by chance, everything is alive and moving. There is a great Mind, the God of spirits and all flesh. “In him we live and move and are.”, As the Apostle Paul declared to the Athenians on the Supreme Court (Acts 8:28). Above circumstances, currents and persons there is the unchanging God. Therefore let us trust in the Almighty God» (Metropolitan Ierotheos of Nafpaktos «Saint Kallinikos, Metropolitan of Edessa» 1st Edition 2020, p. 197 - 198).
My dear brothers,
The great Hierarch Saint John Chrysostom, Ecumenical Master, spoke to us about the constant flow of time and the struggle to correct and grace our souls in time. And the new-appearing Saint of our Orthodox Church, Kallinikos Bishop of Edessa, also a renowned teacher of the Holy Gospel, taught us to face the uncertainty of the new year with the certainty that there is the true God, the Almighty Lord and our God, our hope and our support.
The struggle for the spiritual training and the correction of our souls in the new salvific year must be continuous and decisive. «The backward extending and the forward extending», According to the divine Apostle Paul, we daily set a new beginning of spiritual struggle, a new beginning of repentance. «Whenever you fall, rise and be saved.», says the Spirit of God. And the holy Fathers and ascetics of the desert had as their motto the «Pipp'epp'e’, you are suffering, get up, rise up, take up your spiritual powers and your spiritual struggle.
On the other hand, the manifold passions and slips of the struggling believer are faced with deep humility, long years of patience, fervent prayer and the firm resolve of sincere and lifelong repentance. Faith, Hope and Love, this sacred triptych is activated And leaning, according to St. Callisthenes, on Almighty God, we magnify ourselves by His divine grace and His infinite mercy.
We overcome the uncertainty of the new year, as the saint of Edessa Kallinikos told us, with the absolute certainty that there is God, the true God, the Creator and our loving Father, full of sacrificial love. We often mention and will recall again what causes and contributes to the spirit of uncertainty, instability and insecurity to prevail in the new year: The moral and spiritual decline. The perversion and alienation of the useful and Christian morals and the attempt to mutate Christian anthropology and physiology. The legalization of homosexual «marriage». The attempt to impose the «third sex» on our society, and even on school youth. Violence, crime and delinquency in the school and out-of-school environment and in society in general. wars, hostilities, disasters, bloodshed, persecution of Christians, deadly raids on sinful populations etc. etc. depict the present reality, in the north and the south, in Syria, the Middle East and the Holy Land, with the threat of the generalization of military conflicts in the form of the desirable third world war.
But the Lord God Almighty, the Lord God Almighty, «he who is the congregation of the universes in the divine kingdom and his divine and all-powerful council ruling the world», «the times and seasons in the same power», and «the ever-fuller of time», past, present and future. «In His hand is our life» - «for in Him we live and move and are».
With this Faith and firm conviction, let us welcome the new salvific year 2025, in which the celebration of the famous anniversary of the 1700th anniversary of the convening of the First Ecumenical Council in Nicaea, Bithynia (325 A.D.) will be commemorated.
Great and historic this Ecclesiastical Anniversary, as we emphasized in our Christmas Circular.
«The Holy and Ecumenical First Council, according to the great Canon Zonar, was convened in the reign of Constantine the Great, after the gathering at Nicaea of Bithynia of three hundred and eighteen holy Fathers, according to Arius, an elder of the Church in Alexandria. He blasphemed against the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, saying that he was not like unto the Lord and the Father, but a creature, and that he was not; whereupon the holy council sat down, and sat down with his followers. And he hath glorified the Son, and the true God, and the true God, and the Master, and the Lord, and the Maker of the created things; but not a work, neither a creature, nor a thing made in the likeness of the Father. This is called the first Council of Nicæa, numbered before the Ecumenical Councils...».
«.... The First Ecumenical Council established the rules for the celebration of Easter, in accordance with the ordinance which has been imposed and prevailing in all the Church ever since, according to which Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the full moon of the vernal equinox....’.
May the Most Merciful Lord and our God entitle us, in the new salvific year 2025, to celebrate spiritually, theologically and spectacularly, this glorious anniversary of the 1700th anniversary of the convening of the first Ecumenical Council, «next to her Holy Fathers» and «Repent not, as the Fathers did.». To literally absorb the messages and teachings, the canonical imperatives and the doctrinal terms of this Holy First Ecumenical Council. In this way, this ecclesiastical anniversary will indeed be holy and solemn and salutary, but also spiritually regenerative and regenerating for the eternal future of our Holy Orthodox Catholic Church.
Let us celebrate in a godly and holy manner this triple anniversary and feast. That the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Orthodox Church of the Orthodox Church be willingly and unanimously united with the local Autocephalous Orthodox Churches, excluding from the celebration of the unconverted, heterodox, malodox, heretics and schismatics. A common unprecedented and nebulous celebration with the «gathering» of the above heterodox and unsaved would not be spiritual and, according to God, joyful and joyful, but superficial, meaningless and superficial, for the creation of impressions only. Pan-Orthodox, therefore, is the request of the Christ-centered celebration of the local Orthodox Autocephalous Churches, in accordance with our long-standing Church Tradition and the canonical statutes. It is not for God's sake that the channel of communication and the planning between Constantinople and the Vatican is focused, as it is predicted, and that a more terrible schism in the armour of Christ will occur.
My dear brothers,
It will be useful at the beginning of the new year of salvation to have before our eyes what was pre-written by the Holy Fathers, both ancient and modern, in the present Encyclical. This year is, admittedly, crucial for Church cohesion and unity in the Holy Spirit. Let all of us, Bishops, Clergy, Monks, Monks and other Christians work and strive with orthodoxy and with an Orthodox ecclesiastical spirit, following and experiencing the Orthodox Ecclesiastical Tradition of 20 and more Christian centuries, for the unity of the Orthodox Faith and the Holy Spiritual Communion of our Holy Church of Christ.
But also for the unity and the life in the Holy Spirit and the spiritual solidarity of our Local Church, let us all take care and make the holy struggle. The Clergy on our spiritual ramparts, continuing our local ecclesiastical tradition. The local rulers, exercising their duties, but also respecting as Orthodox Christians the Mother Church and the sanctity of the Church and Monastery Sites and Buildings, which centuries ago were established and built for the Worship of God, as sacred and holy Buildings, «unimproved», «inalienable» and «out of transaction», according to the jurisprudence of the Supreme Courts, the Supreme Court and the Council of State. The property owned by the Municipality or the Home Committee has never been or will never be owned by the Church, even though, by law, the administration and management of the Church's Holy Shrines is improperly exercised by the Home Property until its dissolution, so that if this happens according to the P.D. And the People of God, if all the above is done «neatly and properly» will enjoy with peace and unanimity the Divine Worship and the blessing of God.
Let the local leadership (municipal and domestic) pay special attention to this. Remove the plaques with their titles, which were installed arbitrarily and illegally at the entrance of our Holy Shrines. Otherwise, they will be underused and exposed before our Christian People, the Pilgrims and the Panhellenic, since nowhere else in our Greek Orthodox Homeland is this unacceptable phenomenon observed. And, of course, this violation of the Holy Canons and arbitrariness will not remain uncontrolled.
Wishing from the bottom of my heart many happy, peaceful, joyful and blessed years and rich in life and spiritual goods to the flock of our Local Church and to the world at large, I hereby declare.
With paternal wishes and blessings,
The Metropolitan
†Seraphim of Kythera and Antikythera
H/S The present New Year's Circular to be read clearly during the Divine Liturgy of the Feast of the Circumcision of our Lord (1-1-2025).
