Patriarch John X on “Antiochian Unity: Its Dimensions and Exigencies”

20/6/14

Today we are announcing our general ecclesial conference, the Antiochian Conference which will be held here at the Monastery of Our Lady of Balamand on June 26-28. We are calling for this conference not only on acount of the need for our children to express their unity of faith, but also so that they can express their concern for the state of their nations and their readiness to play a fundamental and critical role in preparing their future, whether they reside here or in the diaspora.

For us, our Church, which is present in all the countries of the Arab region, is responsible alongside all the people of these lands for dignity of life and the proper conduct of public life.

This conference aims to study some of the issues that are at the forefront of the most important fields for highlighting the features of Antiochian unity. With the potential offered today by modern communications and rapid travel and in the context of the way situations in the Church are developing and demographic realities, our people need to feel the contents of this unity within their ecclesial and public life. They need to be active and interactive with these contents. It seems obvious to all who are following the pastoral situations of the faithful that the Church, in all her constituent parts, is called to take the essence of Orthodox thought and its exigencies beyond the theoretical propositions we all agree on and to bring it into the realm of practice, through plans that will be implemented in the dioceses in a spirit of unity and on the level of the Patriarchate as a whole in a spirit of mutual complementarity.

Through examining points of discussion with clear goals, the conference will strive to be a first step toward forming comprehensive ideas that will take the form of policies, workshops and plans that will be submitted to the Holy Synod in the hope that they will help to create a plan that will be built up, brick by brick, in view of a manifest Antiochian unity that is lived at all levels of the Church’s internal life and her witness in the world.

At this conference there will gather a wide range of faithful coming from all dioceses in the homeland and the diaspora. Naturally, each diocese will choose its own representatives.

The conference’s points of discussion will center on the following five topics: > Press here

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