Beloved Brother in Christ, Your Eminence
Archbishop Spyridon of America,
Your Eminence and brother Cardinal Keeler,
Blessed Christians,

We bring you the greeting, the blessing, and the love of the Mother Church of world-wide Orthodoxy, the Apostolic Throne of the First-Called Andrew, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.   We have come to America and to this wonderful city of Baltimore, to celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.  Earlier today our Modesty was pleased to celebrate a doxology of thanksgiving in the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation.

Now, we are pleased to find ourselves in the Mother Church of Roman Catholicism in America, the beautifully adorned Basilica of the Assumption of the All-Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary.  We have come to you  that we may share in spiritual fellowship as brethren, all of us bearing the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.  We want that our words may resound not only in the voice that the ears can hear, but in a fellowship of spirit speaking to spirit.  For true fellowship is spiritual only if it becomes a communion of the innermost reality of human persons, even to the point where our blood runs in one vein.

Before we open our heart, we must open our minds to a mystery and understand that our present spiritual situation is not as yet perfected in a common faith.  Our desire for unity reveals that there is a great hunger for spirituality in our world today.  People have an urgent and God-given desire for transcendent meaning, a God-given thirst for authenticity and wholeness.

As we approach the close of this century, we are confronted both by the legacy of our past and the promise of the future, a new opportunity for spiritual growth.  Entering the third millennium of Christianity, the shadows of secular materialism shroud the landscape of faith. The allure of surfaces, illusions and appearances (cf. Jn 7:24), obscures the truth of the profound mystery of the human person.  There are many today who take the surface for the truth and worship mere images.  Such images are never spiritually satisfying and are easily exhausted.

The word “spirituality” is unknown in the language of Scripture and Tradition. It has become a vague term of mere convenience.  It is now used to separate the faithful from those outside the Church. It has become confused with the proliferation of secular therapies in the jargon of popular psychology.

While recognizing the value and insights of secular psychology and the contemporary culture of therapy, we affirm that these disciplines are nonetheless incomplete, reductive, and in some cases, antithetical to the healing traditions of the Church.

While recognizing the aspirations for truth that are in many religious traditions, we reject the modern tendency toward  religious syncretism. A lack of discernment relativizes faith and compromises the uniqueness and originality of Orthodox spirituality and of Jesus Christ Himself, through Whom alone we have genuine access to the Father (Jn 14:6).

Orthodox spirituality does not exist in a vacuum.  It presupposes Orthodox doctrine and Orthodox ecclesiology and the variety within her many ethnic traditions.  It is intimately bound up with the sacramental and liturgical life of the Church.  Any attempt to practice it apart from active participation in that life is to cut it off from its living and life-giving roots.

Orthodox spirituality is liturgical, sacramental and eucharistic.  Outside the experience of the Liturgy, it is impossible to understand the spirituality of the Orthodox Church. Holy men and women are those persons who have discovered the meaning of  their life as liturgical beings, as ecclesial persons.

It must also be stressed that Orthodox spirituality is by nature  ascetic and monastic.  Dying to the  world, the monastic person lives for Christ and for others.  Unless we become dead to the world, and to the things in the world (1 Jn 2:15), how shall we live the “life that is hidden in Christ” (Col 3:3).   Have we not been buried with Him through Baptism and die daily for the sake of God?  It is difficult to accept that one must “lose his life in order to save it” (Mt 10:39).   We must die to this world, so that we may live in God, as St. Symeon the New Theologian says, “If you do not want to die, that means you are already dead” (Catechetical Discourse).

If we fully embrace the true spiritual life, out of love for the Lord, we shall be full of joy and gladness.  As a hymn of our Church says: “For those in the desert, life is blessed, they take flight with wings by their divine love.” 

Orthodox spiritual praxis seeks to bring the fallen image of man back to its glorious prototype, to interiorize the life of Christ to the point that we can attain “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4:13). Only then may we proclaim together with the Apostle, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20).  This transformation in Christ certainly includes the notion of a moral and ethical imitatio Christi, but it goes beyond the external  to the ontological — it is a change in the whole human being: heart, mind, body, soul and spirit.  It is the mystery of the Resurrection which enters deep into the darkness of our dead nature and raises us up from within, breaking down the gates of Hell.

Genuine spirituality, an honest spiritual life, a life in the Holy Spirit, ought to be lived by everyone — clergy, lay people, monastics.   And if we progress in it, we shall find ourselves raised higher and higher.   Should the Lord find us transformed by the performance of His commandments, at the moment when we depart for Jerusalem on high, He will surely grant unto the workers of His vineyard the wages of their labors.  For the Lord abundantly rewards the laborers of the eleventh hour, as He does the disciples of the first rank.

As you know, many people who seek after spirituality are ultimately deceived and led astray, even into perilous situations.  All Christians have a responsibility to their brothers and sisters.  We who strive to live a spiritual life, a life in the Holy Spirit,  must reach out to all our brethren, and lead them by the hand. We must lead them back  to the well-springs of spirituality.
“Behold, now is the acceptable time, behold, now is the day of salvation” (I Cor. 6:2).  The Lord knocks at the door of our soul and waits for our answer.  Let us open up to Him, that He may enter in, and partake of the banquet of faith with us, and abide in us.  He is our most beloved friend.  Life with Him is the perfection of the human person.  For with Him, the Holy Spirit is always present and the Father ever existent.  The life in Christ, by the Holy Spirit, is life within the grace of the Holy Trinity, eternal blessedness unto the ages.

May this blessedness be with you all by His divine grace and infinite mercy.  Amen.