I’ve had people come to me too, who suggested: “All of us who believe in Christ should form one religion”.
I said to them: Now what you’re telling me is to take gold and copper – gold of so many carats quality – which they took so much trouble to purify, and then gather the metals and melt them into one mass. Is it right to mix them together again? Ask any goldsmith: “Should we mix inferior elements with gold?”
Well, the same trouble was taken to filter-clean the dogma. The Holy Fathers must have known something, when they forbade every association with a heretic. Nowadays they say: “We should all pray together – not only with a heretic, but also with a Buddhist and a fire-worshipper and a demon-worshipper. The Orthodox should also participate in these common prayers and conventions. It is a matter of presence.”
What do they mean by “presence”? They strive to solve everything with logic, in order to justify the unjustifiable. The “European spirit” is convinced that spiritual matters can also be made a part of the Common Market.
Some of the rather shallow Orthodox want to project “Missionary work”, so they convene meetings with the heterodox for the sake of being heard, and they think that this is the way to advertise Orthodoxy – by mingling in the same pot with cacodoxies. Then we have the hyper-zealots at the other extreme: they even blaspheme the Sacraments of the New-Calendarists etc., and they excessively scandalize those souls who are pious and have an orthodox sensitivity. The heterodox on the other hand usually attend meetings, they pose as know-it-alls, they take any good spiritual material that they find with the Orthodox, they take it to their own workshop, add their own colours and brand names and they present it as something original.
Today’s strange world is actually moved by such strange things, and it is eventually destroyed spiritually. But the Lord – when the time is right – will bring forth new Marks of Ephesus and the Gregories of Palamas, who will muster all of our scandalized brethren, who will confess the Orthodox faith, consolidate the Orthodox Tradition and give great joy to our Mother the Church.
If we were living Patristically, we would all be enjoying a spiritual health that would have been the envy of all the heterodox; it would have made them abandon their sick fallacies and render them saved, without any sermons. At present, they are not moved by our holy Patristic tradition, because they are waiting to see our Patristic continuation – our true kinship with our Saints.” -Elder Paisios
Right on the mark.