At the Patriarchal Chorostasia of the Service for Ecumenical Peacemakers

Homily of His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch BARTHOLOMEW

Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral
Holy Metropolis of Atlanta
Atlanta, Georgia

October 29, 2009

* * *

Your Eminences Archbishop Demetrios of America and
Metropolitan Alexios of Atlanta,
Your Eminences and Graces,
Reverend Clergy of the Holy Metropolis of Atlanta,
Esteemed Ecumenical Representatives and Emissaries of Peace,
Beloved Children in the Lord,

We greet you with every Patriarchal and paternal blessing, and we rejoice in this gathering of the faithful, not only of the Orthodox Christians of the God-saved Metropolis of Atlanta, but as well of men and women who represent communities of faith from near and far.  We greet you as fellow ambassadors of the divine ministry of reconciliation.  For our part, we have undertaken this visit to your nation and to this region as part of our mission to enable the reconciliation of humanity and the world of creation, specifically for the renewal of the Mississippi River Basin.  For your part, you are gathered as ecumenical collaborators in the holy mission of peacemaking.   It is not by chance or fate that our journeys have crossed paths here, but rather by the Will of Almighty God, who holds all our times in His hands (Psalm 31:15).   May this same Lord bless our respective ministries of reconciliation in His eternal Kingdom, for the glory of His Name and for the well-being of His people.

It is, we emphasize, no coincidence that we meet in this place and at this hour, on the evening when the Orthodox Christian Church begins its commemoration of the Holy Apostle Cleopas.  Saint Cleopas was one of the Apostles of the Seventy commissioned by Christ (Luke 10:1, 17).  He was also one of the two disciples that the Lord met on the road to Emmaus after the Resurrection (Luke 24:18).  The experience of Saint Cleopas has great meaning for our encounter today.

Though they walked together many miles, Cleopas did not recognize his Master.  He was overcome by the turmoil within, by a sickness of heart.  Though he had two companions, at that moment Saint Cleopas was the loneliest man in the world, a man who knew no serenity, no peace.  Strife was the thought on his mind, and the report on his lips. Together with all Jerusalem he had witnessed great conflict, great injustice, great violence. Before his eyes Christ had suffered humiliation and disgrace, pain, torture and death. 

Perhaps, beloved brothers and sisters, you come to this evening with the heart of Saint Cleopas, a heart that breaks from pain.  “As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me,” says our Lord.  Perhaps you yourselves have witnessed the sufferings of Christ throughout the world in the lives of the least of His brethren.  You have beheld the poor trodden down into the dust; you have beheld the weak denied justice; you have beheld children in misery and in want.  You have sought peace for the least of Christ’s brethren and seen only strife, violence and suffering.

Perhaps like Saint Cleopas you wonder at how anyone could be ignorant of these dreadful events.  “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”  Which of us in our ministries of reconciliation does not at times marvel at the hardness of the human heart, at the powers of stony indifference and willful ignorance in our fellow man?  Who, in the face of oppression and strife, does not ask: “How can you not know?  How can you not share this concern?”

And so it was for the heart of holy Cleopas, in grief until that hour in which Christ revealed himself to the travelers.  And what was that blessed moment?  It was in the breaking of the bread that their eyes were opened.  It was in the act of worship, led by Christ Himself: as He pronounced the blessing, as He divided the portions, as He invited them to partake.  In that moment the veil fell away from the heart of Cleopas and his companion, and they knew that the Lord was with them.  In that brief moment of Eucharistic encounter, their sorrow turned to joy forevermore.

In that encounter they found strength to rise up and continue their journey; 

They found courage to declare the good news; 

They found for themselves the peace that passes all understanding, and this peace they carried as Apostles to the world.

For our Orthodox Christian theology, the gift of peace arrives first in our own hearts as we begin to understand the unfathomable purposes of God in the mystery of the Eucharist.  For this reason the Third Preconciliar Pan-Orthodox Conference exhorts us to answer the call of duty to be peacemakers, “to fight against disease, misfortune, fear. … Because, nourished by the body and blood of our Lord in the Holy Eucharist, we experience the need to share God’s gifts with our brothers and sisters, we have a better understanding of hunger and privation and fight for their abolition; because we expect a new earth and new heaven where absolute  justice will reign, we fight here and now for the rebirth  and renewal of the human being and society.”[1]

Our prayer, beloved in the Lord, is that you may also experience this life-changing joy in the Eucharistic encounter of the living Lord Jesus Christ; and in this joy that you may be renewed and re-energized in the faithful duty of Ecumenical Peacemaking that you undertake, both on this Feast of Saint Cleopas, and tomorrow, and forevermore.

May the Lord, who in this evening hour brought together our paths, guide and bless you in all your ways, that your journeys may ever bring you into the presence and knowledge of the Lord who is our perfect peace.  Amen.

[1] Quoted by the Rev. Dr. Emmanuel Clapsis in his unpublished article, “Peace and Peacemakingas an Interfaith and Ecumenical Vocation: An Orthodox View,” p. 12.  From Vlassios Phidas in his article: “Peace and Justice: Theological Foundations,” in Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation: Insights from Orthodoxy, edit. Gennadios Limouris (Geneva: World Council of Churches,1990), p.115.

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