Patriarchs of Jerusalem and Moscow Form a New Alliance
Today Orthodox Times (https://orthodoxtimes.com/patriarch-of-jerusalem-calls-a-primates-assembly/) has published interesting details concerning the celebration for the feast of the Holy Angels and Archangels (08/21 Nov.), especially the announcement by the Patriarch of Jerusalem Theophilos III concerning an initiative to host the Orthodox Primates in Jordan to discuss the issue of unity of the World Orthodox Churches.
Theophilos of Jerusalem has been in Moscow and concelebrated with patriarch Kirill in the morning, a particular liturgy because they didn’t observe the rite prescribed for the patriarchal liturgies, when they were supposed to commemorate all the patriarchs and autocephalous metropolitans in communion with them, but they simply commemorated each other mentioning a general “and all the patriarchs and metropolitans” without naming the diptychs in the ritual order.
There’s also a video recording the event: https://orthodoxtimes.com/the-moment-theophilos-and-kirill-commemorate-each-other-instead-of-the-diptychs-video/
What we can understand from today’s news is that there is a real unexpected alignment between two important figures of the World Orthodoxy, surely a consequence of the Alexandrian patriarch’s choice: Theodoros II of Alexandria has indeed preferred to follow Bartholomew of Istanbul in his pernicious and dangerous decision of recognizing Epifanij of Kiev as chief hierarch of a new created structure, the Church of Ukraine. The orthodox World is still waiting for an official, united and sure decision by the totality of Churches. The ethnophyletism of the Phanar and the Greeks on one side, the pseudo-imperial vision on the other hand, both are disturbing orthodoxy and confusing the consciences of simple souls. We can see how the words of st. John Maximovich spoken in 1938 are still true:
“However, the actual spiritual might and even the actual boundaries of authority by far do not correspond to such a self-aggrandizement of Constantinople. The moral authority of the Patriarchs of Constantinople has likewise fallen very low in view of their extreme instability in ecclesiastical matters.The Phanar […] having lost its significance as a pillar of truth and having itself become a source of division, and at the same time being possessed by an exorbitant love of power—represents a pitiful spectacle which recalls the worst periods in the history of the See of Constantinople.” [Orthodox Word, vol. 8, no. 4 (45), July-August 1972, pp. 166-168, 174-175.]
And we can also understand and feel confirmed in the choice taken by our holy Fathers of the last century, a choice of defense, a choice of persevering in the Faith and into the real canonical law left by the Apostles and their successors, the resistance against the disorder and disharmony of the nontraditional innovations.