Dear Father Demetrios,

CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST!

Just a note to remind you that we haven’t yet received the display concerning our monastery, and also the unsold books—we really need the latter, as we are running short of almost all of our books now and won’t be able to reprint them for a while.

The impression I got from your last letter was that we should have refused to print the material Metropolitan Philaret sent us on Archimandrite Tavrion. I disagree—if we go that way we will begin to separate ourselves from our own bishops, our fathers and guides in the faith. I truly believe that they know what they are talking about and that we should listen to them. I have heard several of our priests speaking as though the recent “Decision” of the Synod on the Elder Tavrion controversy can be simply ignored (just as the earlier decision on Deacon Lev’s errors on life after death can be ignored)—and this seems to me the beginning of the spiritual suicide of some of our clergy.

Now Fr. Lev is gone (and to a jurisdiction that is really considered graceless by our bishops!), and Fr. Gleb Jensen too—already fighting each other in different jurisdictions. The schism of which many of us have been warning is already real, and where will it stop? How tragic and unnecessary! Fr. Gleb accuses our bishops of changing their position and betraying the faith—but if he would have been in closer contact with the real heart of our Church in past years, he would know that none of us have changed in our attitude towards Moscow or other basic church issues. He and others read statements of our bishops, and statements in The Orthodox Word, in past years and read into them their own extreme opinions; and now when it becomes clear that none of us ever held these extreme opinions, we are accused of betrayal. This is “Alice in Wonderland” Orthodoxy! How tragic that some are now leading their flocks (albeit still very small flocks) out of communion with the only people who can still teach them what Orthodoxy is and help them to wake up from their fantasies of a “super-correct” Orthodoxy that exists nowhere in the world.

Please pray for these people, and where possible let them know that they are “off.” Try to save those who will try to make the leap next. I am in contact with Fr. George Macris and still hope he can see the way things really are.

Please pray for us all.

With love in Christ,
Unworthy Hieromonk Seraphim