In the light of the recent events that have taken place in the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, many Orthodox Churches have serious reservations over the aggressive Russian chauvinism, as well as over the dangerous choices of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Therefore, they maintain a position of equal distance between both parties. At the moment, this is considered to be the most reasonable attitude for the following reasons:
Firstly, in order to understand the whole issue in a general as well as in a patristic sense, we should remember the story of Righteous Noah, who is celebrated with all Christ’s Holy Forefathers. According to the Bible, Noah planted a vineyard after the Flood. He made, once, wine from this vineyard that he consumed and got drunk. In that state of insobriety, he took his clothes off and was ridiculed.
When his son Ham saw him at that situation, he started laughing and making fun of him while his two other sons, Shem and Japheth, have had a totally different reaction: they took a bed sheet and, walking backwards, so that they wouldn’t actually see their father naked, they covered him with the bed sheet. This is the reason why Noah cursed Ham and his descendants, who got punished in that way (Genesis, 10, 6-20).
Following the Ukrainian issue, the Churches of Russia are currently taunting the Ecumenical Patriarchate. It is true that, during the last decades, the Holy Head of the Orthodox Church “has got drunk” on the “delusive wine” of Ecumenism and of Worldliness and that, in this confusion, he uses the Holy Canons and the Gospel erratically. He cannot explain why he grants Autocephaly to the Church of Ukraine, but does not grant Autocephaly to the Orthodox Churches of America and Australia, why he does not cede the Dodecanese and Crete to the Autocephalous Church of Greece, and so on. Nor does he explain why Ethnophyletism is a heresy when it is practiced by Russia and it is not the case when it concerns Ukrainians. Those who are close to the Patriarch seem to act as if they were in a state of insobriety!!!
On the other hand, Russians, as Ham’s real spiritual descendants, taunt their “drunk” father, the Ecumenical Patriarch who created them. They taunt their spiritual father, who taught them Christianity, who gave them their written language and who, finally, declared them an Autocephalous Patriarchate. This is the reason why they will “put on cursing as a garment” according to the Psalm (109, 18). The Russian Church should consider the great impact that such a curse would have on Russian people. The disaster that is about to happen. And it must never forget the past experience the Russian people have had, when they submitted to totalitarian communism and suffered a lot after the Russian Church had tried to military occupy Mount Athos through cunning machinations against the Ecumenical Patriarchate!
The secular and ecclesiastical leaders of Russia should seriously take all this into account. More particularly, the loquacious Bishop Hilarion, as well as the allegedly man of prayer, Bishop Onuphrius, who think that by featuring the demographic supremacy of Russia, namely its millions of faithful people, and by forgetting that Jesus has chosen a “little flock” (Luke, 12, 32), they have the right to taunt the Ecumenical Patriarch and derogate him by just calling him “Patriarch of Constantinople”, or by using at all events any kind of offensive language when they refer to him…
If Moscow wants to be saved by the wrath of God, it should quietly take a back seat and try to cover the “temporary nakedness” of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of New Rome-Constantinople before it is too late. A word to the wise, Mr. Putin!