Closing Remarks of the Chairman at the Assembly of Bishops 10th Anniversary Meeting
Tuesday, October 05, 2021
Your Eminences and Graces,
My Beloved Brothers in the Lord,
As we now conclude our in-person meeting of the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the USA, allow me to express my heartfelt gratitude to you all – for your fraternal and Christ-like spirit, your hard work, and your dedication to this Assembly. What we are accomplishing in these meetings is as much a process, as it is an event. We are moving together, evolving together, working together, so that the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ becomes manifest in its purest form, as the Beloved Communion of Disciples of our Heavenly Master.
Each of us will return to the flocks entrusted to our care, and whom we symbolically wear close to our breasts in the sacred omophorion. We have much yet to realize, but these days together can propel us to new heights with the decisions that we have made.
Beloved Brothers in the Lord, our meetings have been marked by the hallmarks of our Orthodox Christian Faith: Dialogue and Conciliarity. We must hold on to these principles, for they are what make our synergies possible and successful.
Without dialogue, we are like, as the Lord warned, “the blind leading the blind.” [*] And without true conciliarity, our brotherhood can be threatened by agendas alien to the spirit of Christ.
But, I am thankful and happy today, because we are lacking in neither. We both listen and speak to one another in love. And we find the unity that comes from assembling as a council, as a synodia, which means, those who journey together.
Our Assembly closes, but our journey continues. May the Lord grant to all of us the will to “let brotherly love continue,”[†] as the chief characteristic of our spiritual enterprise.
As I said at the close of our meetings last year, it is up to us to bring the love of Christ to our every endeavor, so that our Faithful behold in us the love of God for each one of them.
I thank you all again, and ask for your prayers, even as I humbly offer to each of you my own.
May the Lord bless us all with His grace, His wisdom, and His infinite mercy.
Amen.
[*] Cf. Matthew 15:14.
[†] Hebrews 13:1.