Once again, the real triumph of Orthodoxy

I am going to selectively quote some words written and posted by Fr Stephen on his blog Glory to God for All Things. You can read his entire post if you like, by clicking on this linked title, The Church at a Crossroads. I am not so much interested in the details of what he writes, nor do I gainsay them; they are just not what is important to me about Orthodoxy, particularly my Orthodoxy as I live it. Let me apologise, if I must, for being so individualistic in tone, but I think I am not the only follower of Jesus in the canonical Orthodox Church to whom the passages I am about to quote would be important—and not only important, but the reasons why I count myself an Orthodox Christian. These reasons amount to what I believe is the real triumph of Orthodoxy, as I have blogged before.

Here is what Fr Stephen writes...

Being Orthodox means living with words like “pillar and ground of truth.” Or singing gleefully in a liturgy, “We have seen the True Light, we have found the true faith.” In the wrong hands such words can be dangerous indeed. They are true enough, but such truth can be uttered well only as praise to the Living God, rarely as apologetics or as “war words” in our confused scene of Christianity. Uttered in “battle” (if the little dust-ups that occur hither and yon can be called such) these words take on the fearful character of “that by which we will be judged” (Matthew 12:36) …

We utter “Pillar and Ground of Truth,” etc. “in a sacred mystery.” Pulled out of its context (that is the living Church) and placed in argument, the phrase becomes words weakened by every other word we have ever spoken, and particularly the actions we have performed or failed to perform. Such phrases are no less true, but they were never meant as offensive weapons (except perhaps in spiritual warfare).

I would start, as an Orthodox boy, with the fact that everyone who is Orthodox has agreed to “deny himself, take up his cross and follow Christ.” The ecclesiology of the Orthodox Church, the Pillar and Ground of Truth, is found precisely in its weakness and is found there because God wants it that way. If salvation means loving my enemies like God loves His enemies, then I am far better served by my weakness than my excellence. If humility draws the Holy Spirit, then my weakness is far more useful than any excellence I may possess.

The Orthodox Church has perhaps the weakest ecclesiology of all, because it depends, moment by moment, on the love and forgiveness of each by all and of all by each. Either the Bishops of the Church love and forgive each other or the whole thing falls apart. “Brethren, let us love one another, that with one mind we may confess: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” These are the words that introduce the Creed each Sunday, and they are the words that are the bedrock of our ecclesiology [what we think the Church is] …

I rejoice because I don’t want anything other than to be conformed to the image of the crucified Christ.
Let everybody else be excellent if they need to be.
I need to die.

The Orthodox Church, as Fr Stephen points out elsewhere in his post, is not perfect in the way that humans judge perfection. It may not even be right on everything it believes, says and does. It's difficult to say this without being judged as a heretic or worse, but I'm not worried. I can depend on the forgiveness of God for my errors and sins in the first instance, and then, in the second, I can depend on the forgiveness of the brethren, from patriarchs who let themselves be called "his All-Holiness" right down to the average believer next to whom I stand in prayer and worship. All the presbyters and bishops who ever spoke the truth in my ears have said these same things, laying aside the pomp, glory, even the arrogance, which some who are Orthodox tend to flaunt and use as weapons or scorn against those who have not yet "seen the light."
(I thank you, beloved Adamantios.)

I am confident that true Orthodoxy, which has a single source, Only Christ, has triumphed, is triumphant now, and will always be triumphant, precisely because it is, as Fr Stephen writes, weak and humble, following its Lord to Golgotha, willing rather to suffer personal crucifixion and death than to hurt its neighbor in any way. This is the Orthodoxy I have joined myself to, and from which nothing can ever separate me.

"Where I am, there My servant will also be."
John 12:26