DECR chairman congratulates His Beatitude Metropolitan Rastislav of the Czech Lands and Slovakia on the anniversary of his enthronement

Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, sent the following letter of congratulation to His Beatitude Metropolitan Rastislav of the Czech Lands and Slovakia on the anniversary of his enthronement:

Your Beatitude:

Please accept my cordial congratulations on the anniversary of your ascension to the Metropolitan throne of the Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia.

From your early life you have followed our Lord Jesus Christ and devoted yourself to theology and charity while remembering that ‘religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world’ (Jas 1:27).

You have been successfully growing in the holy faith of the Fathers, and this has made you an example ‘in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity’ (1 Tim 4:12) for the believers. Soon after your election to the see of Prešov, the Local Council of the Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia placed a heavy cross of the primatial ministry on you so that your spiritual gifts could serve the people of God in the land where Ss Cyril and Methodius Equal-to-the-Apostles preached, and you are their successor.

On this solemn day I join prayers offered up by your God-loving flock and wish Your Beatitude peace, good health and the inexhaustible God’s help for many good years.

With reverential love in the Lord,

+Hilarion

Metropolitan of Volokolamsk

Chairman

Department for External Church Relations

Moscow Patriarchate