Speaking to many Western
Christians I have been asked and I have been pushed to defend the fact that the
Orthodox Church is a Missionary Church, as are the Roman Catholic, the Anglican
and the Protestant Churches. It is apparent that Western Christianity seems,
and probably is, more missionary than the Eastern Church. However, this is understandable
since the Church in the West was facilitated by the Empires, such as the
British, or kingdoms, such as Spain and Portugal, who had the opportunity, the
power and the money to produce missionary work worldwide. On the other hand the
Eastern Church has been, for centuries, under persecution, foreign empires and
powers who have supressed its existence, making it thus impossible for
missionary work in for example the Third World; however it is a notion which
coexists with the Church. Nevertheless, this is constantly changing, where the
Orthodox Church is growing its missionary work, as seen through the works of
the Patriarchate of Alexandria and so on.
The Orthodox Church is Apostolic;
the Greek word αποστέλλω
points exactly the idea of being sent out, i.e. the missionary idea that is a
definitive characteristic of the faith. There are a number of paradigms
emphasising the existence of missionary work within the Orthodox World,
starting from the New Testament times with the activities of St. Paul among the
Gentiles, moving on to the medieval era with the development of a new alphabet
by Saints Cyril and Methodius to help evangelize the Slavic peoples, the
Russian monks who spread Christianity to Alaska, the missionary work of our
epoch, undertaken in Asia and Africa, following what St. Mark writes: “go into
all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature”(Mark, 16:15).
The Orthodox understanding of
mission is synonymous with the term “philanthropia”, following the second
commandment, i.e. “love your neighbour as yourself” (Matthew 22:39). Orthodoxy
through its mission, unlike many practices seen in the New World by Western
Christianity during past centuries, respects the freedom of the
human person, the distinctions on a cultural, linguistic and artistic level,
rejecting therefore the notion of conversion through force. Nevertheless, it is
also important to highlight that the Church’s mission is not only to be
practiced in the Third World, in non-Christian lands. It is crucial to identify
that even at home, even within the Church mission and philanthropia is crucial
in order to prosper and live a Christian life.
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