Beginning of Great Lent 2023
Archpastoral Message of His Beatitude Metropolitan Tikhon
February 27, 2023
To the Clergy, Monastics, and Faithful of the Orthodox Church in America,
My Beloved Children in the Lord,
In the reading from the prophecy of Isaiah on the first day of the fast, we hear a word of caution. Our annual observance of times and seasons, our gatherings to worship, are not, in and of themselves, pleasing unto God. “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? Who requires of you this trampling of my courts? Incense is an abomination to me. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates. Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen.” (See Is. 1:11–15.) Lest we set out to fast hypocritically, believing that our abstinence will win us God’s approval, the prophet reminds us that external religion is futile without moral reformation. The Lord calls upon his people to “learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow” (Is. 1:17).
But our sins, as numerous as the sands of the seashore, are not so easily corrected. We may seem to make progress toward one virtue, or triumph over one temptation. We may make some progress in serving our brethren and neighbors. But then we recognize further sins, perhaps sins we had never recognized before. There is no one good but God alone, as Our Lord himself declares (Mk. 10:18). Our fasting is useless without real change for the good, but real change for the good can seem to lie beyond our grasp. We are called to wash ourselves, to make ourselves clean, but we cannot do so (Is. 1:16). But the Lord, who loves us, who desires our salvation, who in love grants us freedom and desires our participation in his saving act, promises, through the prophet, what we cannot do: he will make us clean, provided we are “willing and obedient”:
Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land… I will turn my hand against you and will smelt away your dross as with lye and remove all your alloy. (Is. 1:18–19, 25)
Great Lent, then, is not a time to show how pious we are in our observance of the fast and attendance at services. Neither is it a time to prove our great virtue by imagining that we, on our own strength, can take the fast like a cudgel to our sins in an act of moral heroism. No; Great Lent is a time to humble ourselves, to present ourselves to God as “willing and obedient,” and to allow him to cleanse the scarlet and crimson stains of our sins.
“Cleansing” describes a process, and the process of cleansing our sins can be, at times, painful. In another Lenten lection, the prophet speaks of a Branch that will appear, “beautiful and glorious,” in the future (4:2). This Branch is Christ, and we hope, grafted onto his vine, to share in the splendor of his everlasting kingdom. But for now, we must endure the digging up of the vineyard (Is. 5:5–6). The hedge of our pride, the wall of our vainglory—all this must be torn up, burned, trampled down.
We strive to keep the fast, to attend services, to make our confession, to repent and change our deeds and minds and hearts. We strive to devote ourselves to the good and defense and liberation and well-being of our brethren, the “true fast” chosen by the Lord (Is. 58:6–7). But, even as we make our noble religious, spiritual, and social efforts, we are constantly confronted with all of our deep-rooted sinful habits: not just pride and vainglory, but ignorance, laziness, despondency, fear of the world, heedlessness, and more. If we are willing and obedient and truly desire God to use the fast to cleanse us, we will suffer—not because fasting is suffering, but because Lent, when faithfully kept, reveals many painful truths about ourselves.
Yet, even in the midst of this process of cleansing, we still find ourselves filled with the hope and joy of God coming into the world. On Monday of the Third Week, the reading from the prophecy of Isaiah is one we associate more usually with the Nativity season: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a light; those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shone. For unto us A Child is born; unto us a Son is given” (Is. 9:2, 6). But truly, that which began at Christmas continues throughout Lent. As our vices are uprooted, as our sins are cleansed, room is being made in our hearts, not for us, but for Jesus Christ. He came as a Child, and now he is growing. He is increasing as we decrease (Jn. 3:30). Just as cleansing is a process, so does Christ come to us gradually, as much as we can receive him. And, because he is the boundless God, the very Fountain of goodness, “of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end” (Is. 9:7). Thus, even in the most painful moments of ascetic struggle, repentance, and consciousness of our sinfulness, we are always full of hope, because the bountiful Lord always desires to give his gifts to us more fully.
We are also filled with hope because our cleansing is finite; we are headed towards an End. Yes, our purification lasts for a time—throughout this Lent, throughout this life, throughout our dying and passage to eternal life. But our purification, and the means of our purification, are bound to end. Just as God used Assyria to correct the Israelites of old, but then promised to “break the Assyrian in my land” (Is. 14:25), so God uses the time of our exile from paradise, the conditions of our mortality, to bring us to repentance and, we hope, to some measure of holiness. At the beginning of the fast, we leave the garden with our first parents; at the end of the fast, we return again with Christ. And this is the pattern of our life in this world. We are thrown into mortality because of sin, but the Lord uses our mortality to correct us, to turn our attention back toward him. And then mortality will have done its work, and it will be cast away. In the end, the Lord who is the End, who tramples down death by death, will defeat death, the last enemy (1 Cor. 15:26).
In order to overcome the consequences of our sin, Jesus Christ has taken on our nature; he is wounded to heal our wounds; he dies in order to put death to death. But his identification with us does not merely heal our nature; it also allows our greater identification with him. As the prophet Isaiah will announce on Holy Saturday, the Lord clothes us, unworthy though we be, in “the garments of salvation” and the “robes of righteousness” (Is. 61:10). These garments are not of our own making; they are the garb of his salvation and his righteousness. We are not only saved from sin and death; we are remade into the likeness of his goodness and his justice. “You shall be called by a new name which the mouth of the Lord will give. You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord… for the Lord delights in you” (Is. 62:2–4).
And so, as we enter into the mystery of the Lenten struggle, as we prepare to encounter the great mystery of the Lord’s Passion and Rising, let us be “willing and obedient,” making our efforts in good faith but relying on the Lord to cleanse us, fill us with hope, and lead us always closer to himself, who is the End for whom we are made, and who desires to fill us with good things, now and throughout eternity. To him be all glory, unto ages of ages.
Wishing you good strength during the forty days of the fast,
And asking each of your forgiveness for all of my many sins,
I remain,
Yours in Christ,
+TIKHON
Archbishop of Washington
Metropolitan of All America and Canada
Archpastoral Message of His Beatitude Metropolitan Tikhon
February 27, 2023
To the Clergy, Monastics, and Faithful of the Orthodox Church in America,
My Beloved Children in the Lord,
In the reading from the prophecy of Isaiah on the first day of the fast, we hear a word of caution. Our annual observance of times and seasons, our gatherings to worship, are not, in and of themselves, pleasing unto God. “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? Who requires of you this trampling of my courts? Incense is an abomination to me. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates. Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen.” (See Is. 1:11–15.) Lest we set out to fast hypocritically, believing that our abstinence will win us God’s approval, the prophet reminds us that external religion is futile without moral reformation. The Lord calls upon his people to “learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow” (Is. 1:17).
But our sins, as numerous as the sands of the seashore, are not so easily corrected. We may seem to make progress toward one virtue, or triumph over one temptation. We may make some progress in serving our brethren and neighbors. But then we recognize further sins, perhaps sins we had never recognized before. There is no one good but God alone, as Our Lord himself declares (Mk. 10:18). Our fasting is useless without real change for the good, but real change for the good can seem to lie beyond our grasp. We are called to wash ourselves, to make ourselves clean, but we cannot do so (Is. 1:16). But the Lord, who loves us, who desires our salvation, who in love grants us freedom and desires our participation in his saving act, promises, through the prophet, what we cannot do: he will make us clean, provided we are “willing and obedient”:
Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land… I will turn my hand against you and will smelt away your dross as with lye and remove all your alloy. (Is. 1:18–19, 25)
Great Lent, then, is not a time to show how pious we are in our observance of the fast and attendance at services. Neither is it a time to prove our great virtue by imagining that we, on our own strength, can take the fast like a cudgel to our sins in an act of moral heroism. No; Great Lent is a time to humble ourselves, to present ourselves to God as “willing and obedient,” and to allow him to cleanse the scarlet and crimson stains of our sins.
“Cleansing” describes a process, and the process of cleansing our sins can be, at times, painful. In another Lenten lection, the prophet speaks of a Branch that will appear, “beautiful and glorious,” in the future (4:2). This Branch is Christ, and we hope, grafted onto his vine, to share in the splendor of his everlasting kingdom. But for now, we must endure the digging up of the vineyard (Is. 5:5–6). The hedge of our pride, the wall of our vainglory—all this must be torn up, burned, trampled down.
We strive to keep the fast, to attend services, to make our confession, to repent and change our deeds and minds and hearts. We strive to devote ourselves to the good and defense and liberation and well-being of our brethren, the “true fast” chosen by the Lord (Is. 58:6–7). But, even as we make our noble religious, spiritual, and social efforts, we are constantly confronted with all of our deep-rooted sinful habits: not just pride and vainglory, but ignorance, laziness, despondency, fear of the world, heedlessness, and more. If we are willing and obedient and truly desire God to use the fast to cleanse us, we will suffer—not because fasting is suffering, but because Lent, when faithfully kept, reveals many painful truths about ourselves.
Yet, even in the midst of this process of cleansing, we still find ourselves filled with the hope and joy of God coming into the world. On Monday of the Third Week, the reading from the prophecy of Isaiah is one we associate more usually with the Nativity season: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a light; those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shone. For unto us A Child is born; unto us a Son is given” (Is. 9:2, 6). But truly, that which began at Christmas continues throughout Lent. As our vices are uprooted, as our sins are cleansed, room is being made in our hearts, not for us, but for Jesus Christ. He came as a Child, and now he is growing. He is increasing as we decrease (Jn. 3:30). Just as cleansing is a process, so does Christ come to us gradually, as much as we can receive him. And, because he is the boundless God, the very Fountain of goodness, “of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end” (Is. 9:7). Thus, even in the most painful moments of ascetic struggle, repentance, and consciousness of our sinfulness, we are always full of hope, because the bountiful Lord always desires to give his gifts to us more fully.
We are also filled with hope because our cleansing is finite; we are headed towards an End. Yes, our purification lasts for a time—throughout this Lent, throughout this life, throughout our dying and passage to eternal life. But our purification, and the means of our purification, are bound to end. Just as God used Assyria to correct the Israelites of old, but then promised to “break the Assyrian in my land” (Is. 14:25), so God uses the time of our exile from paradise, the conditions of our mortality, to bring us to repentance and, we hope, to some measure of holiness. At the beginning of the fast, we leave the garden with our first parents; at the end of the fast, we return again with Christ. And this is the pattern of our life in this world. We are thrown into mortality because of sin, but the Lord uses our mortality to correct us, to turn our attention back toward him. And then mortality will have done its work, and it will be cast away. In the end, the Lord who is the End, who tramples down death by death, will defeat death, the last enemy (1 Cor. 15:26).
In order to overcome the consequences of our sin, Jesus Christ has taken on our nature; he is wounded to heal our wounds; he dies in order to put death to death. But his identification with us does not merely heal our nature; it also allows our greater identification with him. As the prophet Isaiah will announce on Holy Saturday, the Lord clothes us, unworthy though we be, in “the garments of salvation” and the “robes of righteousness” (Is. 61:10). These garments are not of our own making; they are the garb of his salvation and his righteousness. We are not only saved from sin and death; we are remade into the likeness of his goodness and his justice. “You shall be called by a new name which the mouth of the Lord will give. You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord… for the Lord delights in you” (Is. 62:2–4).
And so, as we enter into the mystery of the Lenten struggle, as we prepare to encounter the great mystery of the Lord’s Passion and Rising, let us be “willing and obedient,” making our efforts in good faith but relying on the Lord to cleanse us, fill us with hope, and lead us always closer to himself, who is the End for whom we are made, and who desires to fill us with good things, now and throughout eternity. To him be all glory, unto ages of ages.
Wishing you good strength during the forty days of the fast,
And asking each of your forgiveness for all of my many sins,
I remain,
Yours in Christ,
+TIKHON
Archbishop of Washington
Metropolitan of All America and Canada
NATIVITY MESSAGE OF HIS BEATITUDE METROPOLITAN TIKHON 2 0 2 2
To the Clergy, Monastics, and Faithful of the Orthodox Church in America, My Beloved Children in the Lord,
Christ is born! Glorify him!
‘But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, “Rise, take the Child and his Mother, and go to the land of Israel…”’ (Mt. 2:19-20) The protagonist, so to speak, for the first two chapters of St. Matthew’s Gospel is the humble and silent man whom we call the Righteous Joseph the Betrothed.
Joseph is called ‘just,’ that is, he walked according to the commandments of God (Mt. 1:19). And, according to the scriptures, in keeping the commandments, a man may learn true knowledge. As the Psalmist says, ‘Teach me good judgment and knowledge: for I have believed thy commandments’ (Ps. 118:66).
We find that this is exceptionally true in the case of St. Joseph. So just, so righteous, was he, that he was worthy to be taught and led by an angel. In an event that is sometimes called the annunciation to St. Joseph, an angel comes to the righteous man in his moment of doubt concerning the pregnancy of his betrothed, telling him not fear.
And this exhortation not to be afraid is no mere formality, for the next words of the angel disclose a dread and fearful task. The angel asks Joseph to serve the most holy Theotokos and Ever-virgin Mary in place of an earthly husband (‘take Mary your wife’), and to minister to the Lord Jesus Christ in the place of an earthly father (‘you shall call his name Jesus’).
This alone—the command to serve as a foster father to the God of all and as a guardian for the Mother of the Light—would be fearful enough. But soon St. Joseph and the holy Mother and Child for whom he is obliged to care are beset by extraordinary circumstances: a murder plot, an escape to a distant land, and a sojourn in that foreign country. We can only assume that, in Egypt, among strangers, away from home and property, the responsibility to provide for his supposed wife and son weighed very heavily upon this righteous man.
But again, the words of an angel, and this time these are words of relief and joy: ‘Go the land of Israel.’ Return home to your kin; return home to your property; return home to your people and your customs and your land.
The first time an angel visited the righteous Joseph, he brought a dread order from the Almighty, an order that would have to be carried out under the most trying of circumstances. The second time an angel came, he brought a welcome reprieve.
But in both cases, the just man Joseph was equally obedient to the divine will. When he was commanded to care for Mother and Child, he took up the task without hesitation, no matter what difficulties ensued. And when he was told to return to Israel, he went just as readily.
The same paradoxical way that St. Joseph protected and cared for the omnipotent Master who holds all creation in the palm of his hand, God has given to us, Orthodox Christians, a special charge of sacred stewardship. God needs nothing from us, and yet he delights in allowing us to cooperate with him in the work of preaching the Gospel and sanctifying the world.
We might say that, just like the Righteous Joseph the Betrothed, we are, by divine grace, charged with caring for the newborn Christ. For what is the Church but Christ’s Body, growing in this world in wisdom and stature until it reaches the measure of the stature of the fullness in the age to come (Lk. 2:52, Eph. 4:13)? And we all share a responsibility, according to our station in life, to care for the Church through prayer, financial support, sacramental participation, and sharing and teaching the faith.
And then, on another level, we are each charged to care for Christ in our life, in our own heart. St. Paul wrote to the Galatians that he was in travail until Christ be formed in them (Gal. 4:19). Each of us is called to reveal Christ in our life, to become a saint, to become Christ by grace. Through baptism and the Eucharist we have all received Jesus Christ within ourselves, as it were as a newborn Child. By prayer, careful practice of the virtues, attentiveness to our thoughts, and the cultivation of authentic love for God and man, we allow Christ to grow in us, until, we pray, it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us (Gal. 2:20).
Today, celebrating the Nativity of the Savior in the flesh, may we all take St. Joseph as our example as we seek to foster Christ in the Church and in our own hearts. Let us practice the commandments, discern the will of God, and do his will, even when the circumstances are difficult.
Truly, this world is an Egypt, and caring for Christ and his Church as St. Joseph did always involves obstacles and challenges. But if we sojourn with the Christ-child in Egypt, faithfully attending to him in our lives and our communities, we can be assured that we, like St. Joseph, will one day hear those welcome words: ‘Go to the land of Israel’—that is, come, ye righteous, and enter the heavenly mansions the Father has prepared for you from before all ages (Mt. 25:34).
By caring for our infant Savior and Lord in this way, we show our willingness to cooperate with the grace of God, God who so desired to have us as his fellow-workers, his brethren, and his friends that he deigned to be born in a cave and laid in a manger, on a cold night ‘while gentle silence enveloped all things, and night in its swift course was now half gone’ (Wis. 18:14). To him, our newborn God and Lord, be all glory, honor, and adoration, together with his eternal Father and his most holy, good, and life- giving Spirit.
With the blessing of the newborn Messiah, who is Lord and God before the ages, I remain sincerely yours in Christ,
+TIKHON Archbishop of Washington, Metropolitan of All America and Canada
To the Clergy, Monastics, and Faithful of the Orthodox Church in America, My Beloved Children in the Lord,
Christ is born! Glorify him!
‘But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, “Rise, take the Child and his Mother, and go to the land of Israel…”’ (Mt. 2:19-20) The protagonist, so to speak, for the first two chapters of St. Matthew’s Gospel is the humble and silent man whom we call the Righteous Joseph the Betrothed.
Joseph is called ‘just,’ that is, he walked according to the commandments of God (Mt. 1:19). And, according to the scriptures, in keeping the commandments, a man may learn true knowledge. As the Psalmist says, ‘Teach me good judgment and knowledge: for I have believed thy commandments’ (Ps. 118:66).
We find that this is exceptionally true in the case of St. Joseph. So just, so righteous, was he, that he was worthy to be taught and led by an angel. In an event that is sometimes called the annunciation to St. Joseph, an angel comes to the righteous man in his moment of doubt concerning the pregnancy of his betrothed, telling him not fear.
And this exhortation not to be afraid is no mere formality, for the next words of the angel disclose a dread and fearful task. The angel asks Joseph to serve the most holy Theotokos and Ever-virgin Mary in place of an earthly husband (‘take Mary your wife’), and to minister to the Lord Jesus Christ in the place of an earthly father (‘you shall call his name Jesus’).
This alone—the command to serve as a foster father to the God of all and as a guardian for the Mother of the Light—would be fearful enough. But soon St. Joseph and the holy Mother and Child for whom he is obliged to care are beset by extraordinary circumstances: a murder plot, an escape to a distant land, and a sojourn in that foreign country. We can only assume that, in Egypt, among strangers, away from home and property, the responsibility to provide for his supposed wife and son weighed very heavily upon this righteous man.
But again, the words of an angel, and this time these are words of relief and joy: ‘Go the land of Israel.’ Return home to your kin; return home to your property; return home to your people and your customs and your land.
The first time an angel visited the righteous Joseph, he brought a dread order from the Almighty, an order that would have to be carried out under the most trying of circumstances. The second time an angel came, he brought a welcome reprieve.
But in both cases, the just man Joseph was equally obedient to the divine will. When he was commanded to care for Mother and Child, he took up the task without hesitation, no matter what difficulties ensued. And when he was told to return to Israel, he went just as readily.
The same paradoxical way that St. Joseph protected and cared for the omnipotent Master who holds all creation in the palm of his hand, God has given to us, Orthodox Christians, a special charge of sacred stewardship. God needs nothing from us, and yet he delights in allowing us to cooperate with him in the work of preaching the Gospel and sanctifying the world.
We might say that, just like the Righteous Joseph the Betrothed, we are, by divine grace, charged with caring for the newborn Christ. For what is the Church but Christ’s Body, growing in this world in wisdom and stature until it reaches the measure of the stature of the fullness in the age to come (Lk. 2:52, Eph. 4:13)? And we all share a responsibility, according to our station in life, to care for the Church through prayer, financial support, sacramental participation, and sharing and teaching the faith.
And then, on another level, we are each charged to care for Christ in our life, in our own heart. St. Paul wrote to the Galatians that he was in travail until Christ be formed in them (Gal. 4:19). Each of us is called to reveal Christ in our life, to become a saint, to become Christ by grace. Through baptism and the Eucharist we have all received Jesus Christ within ourselves, as it were as a newborn Child. By prayer, careful practice of the virtues, attentiveness to our thoughts, and the cultivation of authentic love for God and man, we allow Christ to grow in us, until, we pray, it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us (Gal. 2:20).
Today, celebrating the Nativity of the Savior in the flesh, may we all take St. Joseph as our example as we seek to foster Christ in the Church and in our own hearts. Let us practice the commandments, discern the will of God, and do his will, even when the circumstances are difficult.
Truly, this world is an Egypt, and caring for Christ and his Church as St. Joseph did always involves obstacles and challenges. But if we sojourn with the Christ-child in Egypt, faithfully attending to him in our lives and our communities, we can be assured that we, like St. Joseph, will one day hear those welcome words: ‘Go to the land of Israel’—that is, come, ye righteous, and enter the heavenly mansions the Father has prepared for you from before all ages (Mt. 25:34).
By caring for our infant Savior and Lord in this way, we show our willingness to cooperate with the grace of God, God who so desired to have us as his fellow-workers, his brethren, and his friends that he deigned to be born in a cave and laid in a manger, on a cold night ‘while gentle silence enveloped all things, and night in its swift course was now half gone’ (Wis. 18:14). To him, our newborn God and Lord, be all glory, honor, and adoration, together with his eternal Father and his most holy, good, and life- giving Spirit.
With the blessing of the newborn Messiah, who is Lord and God before the ages, I remain sincerely yours in Christ,
+TIKHON Archbishop of Washington, Metropolitan of All America and Canada
The Beginning of the Ecclesiastical New Year 2022
To the clergy, monastics, and faithful of the Orthodox Church in America,
Dear beloved children in the Lord,
Today marks the beginning of the new ecclesiastical year and is a day we have, in recent times, set aside to pray for God’s creation, remember our place within it, and look towards its care.
As the scientific community vocally sounds the alarm on the human impact on worldwide ecology, we are increasingly aware of the climate crisis facing us. We are now, in the last few decades, coming to fully understand the power humanity has to harm the natural world.
We know from the Scriptures that God has given mankind dominion “over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth” (Gen. 1:28). Now it seems that this dominion, misdirected, has been extended so that we also have a measure of control to shape even the climate on God’s earth on which we live. The worldwide consensus grows day by day that mankind has misused its stewardship of the earth and that the consequences of such mismanagement are increasingly more serious.
We must take these alarms seriously. The climate crisis is predicted to drastically harm the lives of future generations, especially in the third world, where many regions are expected to become inhospitable, leading to famine. Our Lord tells us that all the Law and the Prophets depend on the two great commandments: the love of God and the love of our neighbor (cf. Matt. 22:38-40). Thus, care for our climate and ecosystem is not merely a material problem, it is also a spiritual problem. It is of critical concern to face this spiritual challenge presented by the climate crisis.
Likewise, it is spiritually harmful to thoughtlessly consume the natural world around us; it is an abuse of God’s gift. As the Psalmist declares, “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein” (Ps 23:1). This world is God’s creation declared to be good (cf. Gen. 1). We are merely stewards, never owners, and we have a responsibility to exercise moderation, to care for the earth, and to do what is in our power to stop its exploitation and destruction.
This means that, even if there were no environmental alarms being sounded, our calling to care for the environment remains. We remember that at the creation of the world, “the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there He put the man whom He had formed … and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it” (Gen. 2:8, 15). It was in this garden that Adam and Eve, the first human beings, received their vocations as caretakers of paradise.
Thus, care for the natural world, the climate, and ecosystem is for us a quiet echo of the first calling of man given by our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ before we wore “garments of skin” (Gen. 3:21) and the pollution of sin spread. It is a reminder of our pilgrimage towards our true home in the Kingdom of God, the heavenly Eden, where there is “the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit… and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations” (Rev. 22:1-2).
I encourage all to take up this ancient vocation of man and begin by individually finding practical ways to become good stewards of the world in which we find ourselves. Aspire to “live quietly” as the Apostle Paul instructs (cf. 1 Thess. 4:11) and reject the ravenous consumerism which devours our hearts as it devours everything else. Reduce your carbon footprint and avoid waste whenever possible. Plant trees and gardens, to not only help the environment but to remind you that during our time on earth we are “aliens and exiles” (1 Pet. 2:11) traveling towards paradise and the gardens of the age to come.
I urge our institutions, dioceses, monasteries, and parishes: take the lead in your respective areas, whether organizing large efforts to become more ecologically responsible, reducing carbon footprints, or taking climate concerns into account when planning. From diocesan initiatives to beautifying parish properties and gardens to the prayer of individuals at home, we all have our vocations in caring for the world which God has given us.
It is my sincere hope that in coming years and decades the Orthodox Church in America will become a leader in North America of good ecological stewardship; and that, for the outside world, we will be held up as examples of responsible, humble living, as befits followers of the gospel.
Let us always give thanks to Him Who “bestowest upon us earthly good things” and “Who hast given us a pledge of the promised kingdom through the good things already bestowed upon us” (Sixth Prayer of Vespers). May God bless our efforts as we strive to become ever better stewards of His many gifts.
I remain sincerely yours in Christ,
+Tikhon
Archbishop of Washington
Metropolitan of All America and Canada
