Holy Transfiguration Greek Orthodox Monastery

Valedictory Address
By Panteleimon Dalianis
May 18, 2002

Your Eminence Archbishop Demetrios, Most Reverend Hierarchs, Reverend Clergy, Honorable guests, classmates, schoolmates, friends and family.

Christ is risen!!!
Xristos Anesti
Al Mesia Com
Xristos Voskresi
Xristo Amefofuka

Truly the Lord is risen!!!

As we come to the end of our journey here - which is, in reality, the beginning of our journey - it behooves us to look back and to look forward.

And as I look back at the time spent here at Holy Cross, I think of four things. First, I think of my own struggle and growth over these years. Indeed, I believe that for me, St. Isaac the Syrian does a very good job summing up my experience over the past four years in the following words. He says, "In truth, Lord, if we are not humbled, You do not cease to humble us."

No doubt, these years at Holy Cross have been a great lesson in humility - helping me to understand my own strengths and weaknesses.

Second, I think of the faculty and staff of our school and the lengths to which they have gone to help me grow and learn as a student here. I will not deny that there have been times when I have not agreed with what I have heard. But, nonetheless, I have always seen an openness to listen, and a willingness to dialogue, even on the most of issues.

Third, I think of my family, who has been infinitely supporting and loving in my efforts over the past four years.

And finally, and I would say most importantly, I think of my classmates and the friendships that have formed, that will, I pray and hope, deepen and mature in the years ahead. In fact, I suspect that, to a great degree, whatever it is we all do after leaving here, these friendships will help form the foundation of that work.

And for all of this I am thankful to God.

But that is not all. As I said just a moment ago, it behooves us to look back, but it also behooves us today to look forward.

And as I look forward - in the light of our history and where we stand today as the Church of Christ - I see a need for one thing above all else. I see a need for vigilance. That is to say a need for us - the future leaders of the Church - to be awake and on guard against what is false and always ready to defend the truth.

Allow me to demonstrate what I mean here through a couple of examples.

First of all, and maybe the most contemporary of my examples, is the issue of governance in the Church. How is the Church to be governed? - and specifically I am speaking of the Church in America.

There is a strong movement in the works today to move towards greater and greater independence for the Orthodox in America. Frankly, I believe that this movement is driven by motives that are not Orthodox. You see, the thinking upon which this movement is based is really secular. It looks at material achievements - such as Churches built, programs started, and money collected - and says that this is the measure of the Church.

But this is not the measure of the Church. There is really only one measure of the Church - and that is the number of saints it produces. Christ states very clearly in the gospel that a tree is known by its fruit. What is our fruit? What kind of fruit has Orthodoxy in America produced?

I must confess with a certain degree of sadness that I can easily count on one hand the number of indigenous saints this country has produced. And let me stress here that I'm not talking about saints who were born in Greece or Russia or the Middle East and them came over here as adults - like St. John Maximovitch, or St. Raphael of Brooklyn. I'm talking about saints that were born in this country, raised in this country, and sanctified in this country.

I firmly believe that what America needs most is not another parish, not another charitable organization, not another endowment, not even another seminarian. What this country needs is a saint.

And to those who believe that brick and mortar is the measure, I would simply ask, where are the saints that this brick and mortar has produced?

The second and final example of this need for vigilance that I would offer today concerns the growing trend towards ecumenism in our contemporary Christian world. Let me begin here by saying that I have no issue with dialogue. In fact without dialogue how is it possible to spread the true light of Orthodoxy to those around us?

My concern is not with dialogue in and of itself. My concern is with what I fear to be the thinking upon which much of today's ecumenical dialogue is founded.

You see, for the Orthodox Christian, their is only one goal in ecumenical dialogue, and that is to bring every man to Orthodox Christianity. The Fathers of the Church are quite clear in their expression of the fact that there is only One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. And that Church is the Orthodox Church. All other denominations have distorted and fallen away from this truth.

Yet in much of what I see and hear, I am given the impression that this is not the thinking that underpins modern-day ecumenism. It seems as though the thinking of modern-day ecumenism is that if we all gather together we can figure out what the truth is. As if the truth did not already exist in its entirety in the Orthodox Church.

I am no theologian, but from my very limited base of knowledge, I must confess that this is not my understanding of Orthodox ecumenism. And it is against this kind of watering down - this kind of misrepresentation of Orthodoxy that we must be vigilant.

Finally I wish to offer just one possible solution to the struggles about which I have just spoken. St. John Chrysostom talks about the Church as an eagle with two wings. He tells us that one wing is the parish, and the other - and herein lies the solution - is the monastery.

Monasticism is the ingredient of Orthodoxy that, up until very recently, has been sorely lacking in America. Indeed if St. John Chrysostom is right, I believe that the eagle of American Orthodoxy has been flying in circles for much of its history.

From time immemorial the monasteries have been the source of theology, and the guardians of the faith. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to think of a single father of the Church who was not either a monk, or at the very least a great benefactor of monasticism.

And here I will pose a question. Do you think that it is purely a coincidence that for the vast majority of Orthodoxy's time here in America there have been just about as few American monasteries as there have been American saints? I suggest to you that this is no coincidence. Indeed I suggest that as long as we hold back on and misunderstand monasticism in America, we hold back on sanctifying this country.

And to refrain from sanctifying this country is to refrain from being the Church. God forbid this ever happen!!!! May we - the next generation of leaders in the Church - prove to be that source of sanctification for this country which is so profoundly in need of it.

Xristos Anesti!!!

Printed with the permission of the author