Your Eminence Peter Cardinal Erdö, President of the Bishops Conference of the Roman Catholic Church in Hungary; venerable and beloved members of the Conference,
“Rejoice in the Lord, and be strengthened in the power of His might.”
During these days, when the Christian Church is entering Holy and Great Lent, a period of prayer, fasting and reflection in preparation for the supreme feast of the Lord’s Resurrection, we are moved by a special sense of joy at being among beloved brothers, such as you, and we address Your Eminence and all our brothers here a wholehearted greeting of honor and love. At the Phanar, during this “clean week,” as we Orthodox call the first week of Lent, we normally spend our time between the church and our cell, where we pray and reflect on the Church, the world and our fellow human beings, and especially about the unity of the Church and the welfare of the world. Nonetheless, the signing of an agreement between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the State of Hungary with regard to our Exarchate in this land, has this year obliged us to travel to Budapest, even while continuing to be present through unceasing spiritual prayer and ongoing fasting in our homeland.
The signing of the Agreement between us, on behalf of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and the Government of your nation, Hungary, surely constitutes an historical event for both sides, particularly in our contemporary times when values are in crisis. We have come here from our See, at the outset of this spiritual period, in order to perform a sacred task.
Dear brothers in Christ,
The Ecumenical Patriarchate, together with the entire Orthodox Church, continues to hold an official Theological Dialogue, “in spirit and truth,” with the Roman Catholic Church from 1980 to this day, alongside the other bilateral dialogues with other Churches and Confessions. In this regard, the Church of Constantinople always strives and endeavors to contribute to a cultivation of good and favorable relations, which are based on mutual respect and trust.
Today, more so than ever before, the Christian world needs dialogue and unity, which are demanded by the immense contemporary problems of our world, as His Excellency Victor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary so accurately highlighted in 2012 during his crucial address to the consultation on “Faith and the Christian Response to the Crisis” at St. Paul’s University in Spain, where he noted: “Europe, at least on the political level, feels a sense of shame for its spiritual roots. This is why the European Constitution unfortunately contains no reference to its Christian foundation.” Moreover, His Excellency rightly observes that the crisis, which plagues Europe today and threatens its unity, is the result of a process of its continuous spiritual decomposition, separation from its Christian tradition and the Church, and dissolution of the fundamental institutions of nation and family.
In this context of dialogical preparation for uniting what was formerly divided and lifting our differences in the Church, we find ourselves among you today, Your Eminence and beloved bishops, and assure you that we are especially moved and delighted for our forthcoming meeting with His Holiness Pope Francis, the Primate of the Roman Catholic Church, who already from the first year of his papal ministry has paved ways and created visions. We shall, therefore, meet together in the Holy Land of Jerusalem, where the mystery of the world’s creation occurred.
As you know, the meeting fifty years ago of the First-Bishops of Senior and New Rome, Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras, was a milestone and starting-point in relations between our two Churches. It sealed a silence of centuries and opened the road to communication and dialogue. Every dialogue that stems from goodwill in itself constitutes an act pleasing to God, irrespective of the final outcome.
Thus, our departure from Rome and Constantinople respectively and our encounter once again in Jerusalem will prove to be a message that we shall no longer speak in isolation, but we shall assemble together in prayer for the continuation of our effort to transcend difficulties, called by God and calling upon all to apply the Lord’s words: “He who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but he who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood” (John 7.18), as we learn from St. John, the disciple of love.
Such encounters truly constitute a great blessing, as well as an opportunity of course to reflect together on matters that concern our Churches and the wider world.
Your Eminence,
In this ecumenical effort and ministry of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, we also believe that the signing of the Agreement with the Hungarian Government, after its long period of atheism, comprises a step of reconnection for Hungary with its historical past, a step of return to its Christian origins as well as to the apostolic message and evangelical spirit, which were conveyed here for the first time by the saintly brothers, Cyril and Methodius.
In this endeavor for Hungary to return to the Christian roots of its life and civilization, we assure all of you that we shall collaborate with you, Your Eminence, through our representative here, His Eminence Metropolitan Arsenios of Austria and Exarch of Hungary and Central Europe, in a spirit of dialogue, mutual respect and shared understanding. We know that this is also what you believe and desire. We are convinced that the signing of the Agreement opens a new page in the relations between our two Churches and establishes the basis for broadening and cultivating these relations for the benefit and edification of the blessed people of Hungary, who in its own way seeks the truth, which in our Church is never an indefinite or abstract concept, but always the personal experience of the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, this truth is not acquired as an object of rational knowledge or sentimental experience, but rather as the fruit of communion with God through unceasing and unrelenting struggle for purification of the heart from passions, which is precisely the purpose of the period of Holy and Great Lent that commences today.
Furthermore, we Christians are obliged to unite our resources in order to protect our flock from the increasingly troubling persecutions and tragic waves of violence against Christians in various parts of our planet, especially in the Middle East, Africa and other place of the world. We would also like to take this opportunity to inform you about the concern and intense anxiety of the Ecumenical Patriarchate for the protection of Christians in the lands, where Christ’s feet first stepped, where the Apostles lived and early martyrs died – a concern that we shall also share with our fellow-Cyrenaean in this humanitarian struggle, Pope Francis, during our highly anticipated forthcoming meeting.
We are grateful for the joy of today’s assembly and wish you every good gift from above for success in your efforts for the benefit of your nation and the responsible work of the Roman Catholic Church in Hungary.
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