Patriarch Irinej is proposing a meeting of Christian leaders in the year 2013 to mark the 1700 years since the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great signed the Edict of Milan to end persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. What is the significance of this and why would he do such a thing you might ask?
- The proposed meeting will be in Nis, Serbia, the birthplace of Constantine.
- The Pope along with other Christian leaders attending will have to participate on Serbian Orthodox terms.
- It provides the opportunity to show the entire world the contributions of Serbia and the Orthodox Church is to civilization. Although this is supposed to mark the day Christianity was no longer persecuted, it will also be a dark irony that Christianity is once again being persecuted. First it was the Serbs and Russians, and next will be the western Christians, ie the Catholics and Protestants as European civilization loses to mass immigration from the Islamic world.
We don't know if the Pope or other western religious leaders will even attend, but if they do, it acknowledges the significance of Constantine who over saw the first Church Councils, the Nicene Creed, and establishment of "Orthodoxy", from the Greek words: orthos ("right") + doxa ("opinion" or "praise") that only exists today in the form of the Orthodox Church.
If they don't attend, it shows the whole world what their true intentions are. The more you think about this, the more you will realize that this Patriarch is wise. It seems this time the trap is set for the Pope, not the other way around.
Similar arguments were made describing Patriarch Kirill as too "soft" when he was enthroned to the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate. Kirill made a historic visit to Ukraine last year and offered to reach out to the predominately Catholic western areas. A former governor from this region warned Kirill, "...this visit will be over my dead body." Kirill did not listen, and just before the Patriarch arrived, lightning struck this politician dead! Kirill was received by tens of thousands in the western part of Ukraine demonstrating the unity of the Orthodox Church. The pro-Western politician is no longer around to persecute any more Orthodox.
If any Serbs think this is a bad approach, then I urge them to start reading the "Prologue from Ohrid - Lives of the Saints" by St. Nikolaj Velimirovic and see how our Orthodox Saints dealt with these issues for the last two thousand years.
