ECCLESIOLOGY or CONFESSION OF FAITH of the Orthodox Christian Autonomous Mitropoly of Bergamo and Europe
ECCLESIOLOGY
or
CONFESSION OF FAITH
of the Orthodox Christian Autonomous Mitropoly of Bergamo and Europe
No.127/01st February 2015
The Church represents the body of our Saving Jesus Christ, God and the Person, The First Born from the Father and incarnated from the Pure Virgin and Mother of God. By her coming to the Earth, God person – Jesus Christ – established the Law of the Old Testament and initiated the New Law – The New Testament – since the preach from the Mountains of Happiness – the first appearance of the Saver[1] and until his Crucification and Resurrection.
The Church represents the boat for Saving the Human beingsThe entrance on the Boat and the elimination of the ancestral sin is the Sacrament of the Saint Christening; at the receipt of all Gifts of the Holy Spirit, is done when making the procedure with chrism – the unction with the Saint and Powerful Chrism – which attests the word of the Saver, which says: „In case someone shall not be born by water and Spirit, he shall not be able to enter in the kingdom of God” (Gospel Ioan III, 5). Since the descending of the Holy Spirit, when it has been implemented this Word spoken by the Saver and when the Saint Spirit appeared, (at the Pentecost) – the set up of the Christian Church – The Church has been:
– ONE, being the only saver, as the body of Jesus Christ, is the sole one, whose parts we are;
– SAINT, by the Apostolic Succession and the charisma reversing over the entire people, by the Saint Sacrament done by the Priests and bishops, charisma received in the day of the Pentecost by the Saint Apostles and transmitted by the Saint Sacrament of the Ordination from those to their disciples and from the Saint Parents until us, today and until the end of the world;
– Catholic, one and the same, for each country or region, unique in doctrine and Faith, maintaining the endowments presented by the Holy Spirit by the 7 Saint Ecumenic Synods, based on whose decisions is defined the pure Orthodoxy, alive and saving;
– Of apostles,having the same fundamental purpose, as in the period of the Saint Apostles, that is the apostleship imposed by the commandment of Jesus Christ, who said to his apprentices: „Go in the entire world and present the Gospel to all people” (Gospel Marcu XVI, 15). Hierarchs and priests of the Church have as purpose the diffusion of the Gospel message to all people from the entire world, indifferently of the language, color or of the geographical region.
The Church is defined by the communion, by the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, which is given to all for the same reason, all having the same faith, the same dogma, the same confession, everywhere, in the entire world, no matter where he is. It is a esoteric body, composed by all Christians, by this Eucharistic Saint Communion, and not a world organization, human, temporary, but it extends as period until the end of times; and as space, everywhere there is an orthodox Christian, which confesses the Real Faith and Church – the Eschatological Bride of the Son of God – Jesus Christ – God and Person.
The Church represents the flock of the right faith, successor of our Saver Jesus Christ believing in the Holy Trinity: in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the Trinity as one person and not separated, not created and eternal, omniscient and omnipotent, whose work is everywhere.
By the Apostles’s succession transmitted from generation to generation from the Saint Apostles until now, by the Holy Sacrament of the Ordination, that represents the Apostolic Continuity and the permanent work of the Holy Spirit in the Church. The Orthodox Christian Autonomous Mitropoly of Bergamo and Europe maintains the same Gift and Charisma, descended at the Saint day of the Pentecost – denominated by people also the Quadragesima – offering to the Christians the validity of the Saint Sacraments and the redemption in the day of the Individual Judgment and of the Advent.
The Church is Human, because its members are people submitted to errors, and by penitence and by confession, they arrive again at the purity from the Saint Christening day and by the actions of the Mother of God, of the Saint disciples, apostles, missionaries, hierarchs, saints, and martyrs, who took the christening of blood, sacrificed for the defense of Faith and for the Confession of God in the persecution times. At the same time, the Church is divine, because the work of the Saint Sacraments is from God,and not from person to person – the bishop or the priest being the one by which God sends the Gift of the Holy Spirit over his Christians. The church is at the same time militant and triumphant, without being any difference or separation, „and the doors of hell shall not conquer her” (Gospel Matei XVI, 18).
Ecumenism is considered to be an heresy, as the other heresies combated by the Saint Synods. In the writ essence, the dialogue is done visibly in the Gospel marvel, that tells us about the encounter of Christ with the Samaritan woman: „So she came to the building of Samaria, denominated Sihar, close to the place that Iacov gave to his son Iosif… 6. And there it has been the fountain of Iacov. But Jesus, being tired because of his journey, He sat near the fountain and it has been close to the hour six. 7. Then came a woman from Samaria to take water. Jesus told her: Give me to drink. 8. Because his apprentices went in the building, to buy food. 9. The Samaritan woman told him: How come that You, a Hebrew, ask me to give you to drink, if I am a Samaritan woman? Because Hebrews have nothing to do with Samaritans. 10. Jesus answered and told her: If I knew the gift of God and Who is the one that tells you: Give me to drink, you would have asked from him, and I would have given you alive water” (Gospel Ioan IV, 5-10). Also, the Saver send the Saint Apostles and all the missionaries, to present the Gospel message by words, or by written procedures, thing that needs dialogue with other persons from another confession. Our Church rejects the wrong doctrine that by ecumenism there have to be shared customs of other worships or religions (Galateni I, 8), the only dialogue being the one of learning them the Real Faith, non to take from their wrong doctrines.
Ecumenism is a heresy that imply the common faith with heretics, fact condemned by the Saint Apostles (Canons 10, 45 Apostolic), as well as by the other Canons of the Ecumenic Synods. Itself the Saint Wit says that the Church is the „pillar and the basement of Truth” (I Tim. 3, 15). Saint Fotie, Patriarch of Constantinopol clarifies this saying the following: „The best communion is the communion in faith and in the true world” while about „serving two sirs” we find the clarification in this paragraph: „…you cannot serve both God and Lucifer” (Gospel Matei VI, 24).
Ecumenism is anatematisit, being practiced by serving using „clerks” of other religions, sharing reciprocal experiences, the fundamental purpose being only the dialogue by which priests of the Truth faith learn them the Truth about heretics and not to divide their knowledges and to worship other Dogmas or to another God. Ecumenism heresy is forbidden as practice both for ministriation and for practices for „exchange of experiences” as the Saint Apostle Pavel teaches us: „And what kind of assent is between Jesus Christ and Veliar or what part has a Christian and a non Christian?”(2 Corinteni VI, 15).
Church doesn’t consider dogmas the Church traditions; Although, the Church adopted the Julian calendar in order to calculate the church year and of the Easter – which is a dogma -reason for which it is not allowed the recognition of the Gregorian as a „correct” measurement of time. The Orthodox Christian Autonomous Mitropoly of Bergamo and Europe maintains the Old Calendar drawn up by Saint Synod I Ecumenic from Niceea. Because the church has been malleable always, applying the principle of iconomy, we recognize as valid the Saint Sacraments done by the two bishops from Greece, Florina and Gherman de Zachintos, who opposed to the modification of the Church Calendar, but, for 10 years (1924 – 1934) served according to the „new style” and in the year 1935 adopted the new calendar of catholic provenience since the year 1982. The purpose of those bishops has been that of receiving a wrong reform, but, in time, to show to the people unprepared to return to the real tradition, the Right way, because human beings are confronted to the world crisis based on the first world war, crisis that already attract the attention of the entire world and the Christians didn’t know the notion of correct time and they weren’t conscious on the gravity of the Christian tradition denaturation by the modification of the calendar.
Modification of the calendar has been a wrong reform, because it contravenes to the „Sinodikon” signed by the Orthodox Parents in the year 1583, at the Synod reunited in Constantinopol; moreover, it also appeared a difference between the astral time and the terrestrial calendar, without canonic justification, because it never existed in the history of humanity to sun to raise once in a period of 13 days.
Actually, the Orthodox Christian Autonomous Mitropoly of Bergamo and Europe offers the possibility, also in these times, even if it passed almost a century since the calendar reform (1924), there have been obliged to listen the Canon of our Church, so that Christians and clerks that maintain the new style, during time, to be able to follow completely the parents’ saints Hrisostom and Gherman from Greece and not to be a difference of type or of procedure in the Church.
The Orthodox Church is the only divino-human institution that appears in time (at the Pentecost) and remains in time (until the end of the world). The Orthodox Christians leave the church in a canonic modality only when they die, because this institution exists only on earth, not in heaven, being anterior to the eternal life and to the kingdom of God; persons that abandon the church during their lifetime, are far away from the possibility to be retrieved, being denominated schismatic or heretical.
Orthodox church believes in the eternal life, in the eternal decision for the sole – not in the heresy of the Purgatory– decision received at the Special judgment and the eternal decision, received at the Advent – the Frightening judgmentwhen deceased people shall raise from the dead and shall go in front of the Real Judge – Jesus Christ – in order to answer for all facts that committed in this life, with their bodies, while their souls shall raise to the Haven of delights, in case of goods facts, or shall go for the punishment of hell, in case of bad facts!
Christians’ belief is that in case they shall make good facts, they shall inherit the eternal life, in the Kingdom of God, in the name of God, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, for always, now and for ever. Amen!
Metropolitan Dr.ONUFRIE POP, BERGAMO, Italy
[1] In the Saint Liturgy the Entrance with the Saint Gospel symbolizes the appearance for the preach of the Saver.
