Address of the Serbian Patriarch at the Synaxis of the Primates of Local Orthodox Churches in Geneva

January 2016

Your All-Holiness, highly esteemed and beloved President of this Sacred Gathering,Your Holinesses and Your Beatitudes, beloved Primates of local Orthodox Churches,Your Eminences and Your Graces brothers Hierarchs, gathered at this elevated Sacred Gathering,Very Reverend and Reverend Fathers (dear Brothers and Sisters).

We express our gratitude to God Who has made us worthy of abundant grace to be the participants of this Pan-Orthodox gathering here at the Ecumenical Patriarchate at Chambesy, that has as its aim a God-pleasing deed to define and unanimously prepare the Holy and Great Council of the Eastern Orthodox Church that has been prepared and expected for quite a long period of time.

We firmly believe and resolutely confess that our Church is One and unique, that it is Holy, Apostolic and that it has its foundation in the living patristic Tradition, that becomes manifest through conciliar deliberations, the image of which we reflect being gathered like this here, but whose seal will be the Holy and Great Council of the Eastern Orthodox Church

It is thanks to the grace and benevolence of the All-Holy Spirit that we have gathered here in brotherly love, following the example of our holy predecessors who have left us a bequest, starting with the first Apostolic council (Acts ch. 15), to deliberate with one another frankly and honestly about the most significant matters that pertain to the life of the Church – all of that in the spirit of the Holy Tradition of the Holy Orthodox Church, of the holy and great Church Fathers – our predecessors, and of the sacred canons of the Church of  Christ.

We assure you that we, the representatives of the local Serbian Church, are going to act wisely and soberly, investing all our efforts – both through prayer and through theological knowledge – so that this elevated Gathering could achieve full success, and so that, consequently, we could whole-heartedly and zealously profess Orthodoxy in face of each others and the heterodox, whereby everybody will recognize us as His disciples (John 13:35).

We are praying to the Lord, the Founder of the Church, that during the forthcoming days He may inspire us with the spirit of truth and love, and that His blessing may direct this Gathering of ours to be inspired by charity, which is the bond of perfectness (Col 3:14), to the glory and benefit of our God-loving Orthodox faithful. Amen.

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