Met. Kallistos Comes to Town

Despite all the new-fallen snow, there was a big crowd at church last night for Met. Kallistos' Lecture, Athens and Jerusalem.

The event was sponsored by an organization whose purpose is to promote hellenism, so it was a scholarly lecture rather than His Eminence's usual, more spiritual fare.

It was still very good. It constituted an answer to those who, ironically, accuse Orthodoxy of having swallowed whole too much of pre-Christian Greek philosophy. Ironically, because usually our critics are the ones who turn out to have done that, and they don't realize it.

Maria snagged Demetrios the moment we got there, and marched him (with me close behind) up to two men in the front pew wearing RC clerical garb. "Here's the man who can answer all your questions," she said.

What they wanted to know was, who was that man in the icon painted on the back of the big chair up there?

Demetrios said, "That's where a Bishop sits when presiding over services, and the icon shows Christ, dressed as our Great High Priest. He is our true Bishop."

"And any bishop who sits on that throne isn't going to forget it!" I added.

They laughed, and one said, the other agreeing, "I wish our bishops knew that!"

"Well, if you know it," said Demetrios, "your bishops will soon learn it!"

More laughter.

Then they wanted to know what the open book meant, which Christ was holding open but, curiously, not reading.

I said, "That's the Bible. He's teaching us. He's excercising his episcopal teaching office."

I met these two clerics again at the reception after the lecture, and they turn out not to be Roman Catholics at all, but "Anglo-Catholics." And what's an Anglo-Catholic? I asked.

They're a group that broke away from the Episcopalians when the latter began ordaining women.

So I told them I, too, used to be an Episcopalian, and we compared notes for a while. I told them how my Episcopalian pastor had once commented to me: "Your trouble is that you have a love-hate relationship with the Church. You have no problem with God as your Father, but you are deeply ambivalent about the Church as your Mother." And how that was so true and so insigtful. I said I never resolved that issue until I became Orthodox, because Orthodoxy turned out to be everything I had always hoped the church would be but she never seemed to be. And I added that I hoped these two would find their way to Orthodoxy, as well. To my surprise, they both nodded and said, "We hope and pray the same. We want our entire church to become Orthodox."

So I said I'd join them in that prayer, and I'm sure they would be glad if you would join them, too.