Dear subdeacon Vladimir,
Today, on this great feast of the triumph of Orthodoxy, the Church resoundingly confesses the truth of the Incarnation of God the Word. Within this venerable and historic Patriarchal Church of the Holy Glorious Great-Martyr George in the Phanar, the Sunday of Orthodoxy is by no means confined to a picturesque or dry commemorative remembrance of the restoration of the holy icons, nor does it constitute a simple aesthetic event, but rather it constitutes the foundational anthropological and dogmatic proposition that matter itself becomes henceforth capable of containing the uncreated grace, that the human person is sanctified in its entirety and that history does not constitute the closed and inescapable space of condemnation. Matter is deified. The entire creation is sanctified. For this reason, especially on this day we lift once again our hearts to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, fervently praying for the prevalence of peace into our deeply troubled world, which is tragically afflicted by war, conflict, violence and bloodshed. May the Prince of Peace hearken to our prayer, strengthen those who strive for the restoration of peace and have mercy on us all!
This deposit of the Incarnation, indelibly stained with the testimony of the confessors and the sacrifice of the martyrs of the faith, the Mother Church of Constantinople has preserved inviolate for centuries now, bearing upon her shoulders the heavy cross of responsibility for the stability and welfare of the Churches of God.
A living reflection of those ancient struggles for the spiritual freedom of the person, we discern today in the persons and the ministry of the clergy of our newly-established Exarchate in Lithuania. The brethren who stand before our Modesty bring the pulse, the anguish but also the hope of a place that knew harsh conquests, maps violently redrawn and identities forcibly imposed. The founding of the Patriarchal Exarchate surpasses the narrow limits of a formal juridical protocol. It constitutes an act of spiritual emancipation. The Holy Great Church of Christ does not forget her flock. The Orthodox people of the Baltic lands, refusing to identify canonicity with subjugation and the instrumentalization of faith by secular empires, found again in the Ecumenical Patriarchate their true spiritual heart, a paternal home which remains wide open, ready to offer the freedom of life in Christ far from ethnophyletism.
To this holy altar, within the sacred atmosphere of the resurrectional expectation, you are approaching today, beloved candidate, to be clothed with Divine grace. You are the first to receive the degree of the Deacon for the Exarchate of Lithuania, offering literally your entire existence as a precious first-fruit of a new and hope-bearing ecclesiastical nursery in those northern geographical latitudes. The grace of the All-Holy Spirit, this life-originating bestower who constitutes the whole institution of the Church, we invoke today, in order that it may render you an instrument of divine good-pleasure and a humble servant of the people of God.
Being a Deacon does not constitute an individual achievement. It is absolute «kenosis». You are called emphatically to minister in a world deeply fragmented, becoming yourself a waymarker pointing towards the Kingdom of Heaven, a visible expression of the Church that embraces mankind in its innermost borderline conditions. We bestow today upon your future course an absolutely concrete example through the giving of a name, so that these lofty truths may not remain abstract theological concepts. The Mother Church of Constantinople attributes to you with emotion the name of the Holy Hieromartyr Platon, the first Estonian Bishop of Riga and Vicar of Tallinn.
Platon was not simply an administrator, but a martyr of truth. Paulus Kulbusch, coming from a family which discovered the true wealth of Orthodoxy in the middle of the 19th century, dedicated decades of his life to the ardent pastoral care of the community in Saint Petersburg, building literally magnificent churches and forming souls, before accepting to shoulder the most grievous cross of the episcopate at a dramatic historical moment, when the October Revolution had already begun to plunge the Russian land into the dense darkness of atheism. Bearing the unshakeable courage of the great early-Christian confessors, Saint Platon confronted face to face the absolute absurdity of worldly violence, that which strives arrogantly to extinguish entirely the image of the Triune God from the human person. Refusing uncompromisingly to identify himself with the gloomy lie of the Bolsheviks and defending resolutely the sacred right of an entire people to an independent and free state existence, he was arrested, harshly tortured and fearlessly refused to sign the prefabricated protocols of the rigged interrogations. Faith does not capitulate. The martyrdom is consummated. On the 14th of January 1919, Platon was mercilessly led before the firing squad in the city of Tartu together with other Orthodox priests and Lutheran pastors, sealing indelibly through the flow of his blood the common Christian witness against the totalitarian denial and extirpation of faith. Father Platon, you assume from this moment upon your shoulders the sacred deposit of this heroic sacrifice, which our Ecumenical Patriarchate recognized and officially ratified through the canonization of our holy hieromartyr Platon in the year 2000.
The sacred struggle for the establishment of the Church in the contemporary society of Lithuania may not be accompanied today by martyrdom of blood, yet it is characterized undeniably by a continuous martyrdom of conscience against those who persistently desire to treat Orthodoxy as a convenient “geopolitical” appendage, erasing entirely the freedom of the person. The darkness attacks. The light resists. You are called to stand beside every afflicted human being, far from vain boastfulness and secularized arrogance, approaching the neighbor with the genuine spirit of the good Samaritan, conveying thus the true, sacrificial ethos of Orthodox Christianity. You are obliged to preserve unextinguished in north-eastern Europe this life-giving flame of the venerable Centre of Orthodoxy, which, traversing centuries of cruciform course, guarantees ceaselessly the ecclesiastical unity and the truth in Christ. Your presence in the Exarchate, journeying harmoniously together with your co-celebrants, proves the very unbroken and ecumenical function of the one ecclesial body. Fear not the cross. Enter today into the joy of your Lord, having ever as your invincible protector Saint Platon the Hieromartyr, and may the Paraclete, Who perpetually replenishes what is lacking, dwell richly within you, revealing you as a true worker of the Gospel throughout all the years of your life.
And now draw near, subdeacon Vladimir-Platon!
Ordination Speech of Deacon Plato Konichshev to the Diaconate
Your All-Holiness, Your Eminences, Your Excellencies, beloved Fathers and brothers in Christ,
On this radiant and holy day of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, I stand before you with profound gratitude and reverence. Your All-Holiness, I thank you from the depths of my heart for the extraordinary grace bestowed upon me today through my ordination to the Holy Diaconate.
It is an undeserved and awe-inspiring gift of God, granted through your paternal hands. For my wife and me, this is truly a dream come true. I receive it with humility, conscious of my unworthiness, and with firm resolve to serve faithfully at the Holy Altar, in obedience to Christ and His Holy Church.
Allow me also to say, Your All-Holiness, that in Lithuania we deeply feel your fatherly care and protection. We do not experience ourselves as a distant community in the North, but as living members of the family of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. When your encyclicals and patriarchal letters are read in our parishes, they are received personally — as the loving guidance of a father addressing his children. They console us, teach us, and strengthen us.
And now, this ordination of mine here, at the very heart of our Patriarchate, is yet another visible sign of your pastoral concern and love for our community. It strengthens our hope and confirms that the Mother Church walks with us.
We await with great spiritual anticipation your forthcoming visit to Lithuania in June. That visit will be for us a moment of grace and historic joy — a blessing for our clergy and faithful alike.
Your All-Holiness, thank you once more from the bottom of my heart for this sacred trust. Please pray for me and my family, that I may serve worthily, faithfully, and humbly.
And I also would like to wish you happy birthday and many, many years.
Εἰς πολλά έτη, Δέσποτα!
Φωτό: Νίκος Παπαχρήστου