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On January 14, 2021, the Feast of the Circumcision of the Lord and the commemoration day of St. Basil the Great, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s department for external church relations, rector of Ss Cyril and Methodius Institute for Post-Graduate Studies, celebrated the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil the Great at the church of Martyrs and Confessors Michael the Prince of Chernigov and His Boyar Theodore – the Miracle-Workers, which is a part of the Patriarchal Chernigov Representation, the buildings of which host the Ss Cyril and Methodius Institute for Post-Graduate Studies (SMI).

That day marked the 19th anniversary of the episcopal consecration of Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk. The archpastor was assisted by Archpriest Timofey Fetisov, rector of the Donskoy Theological Seminary, who is working for doctor’s degree at the SMI, and the representation clergy.

During the Prayer of Fervent Supplication, petitions were voiced about the threat of the spreading coronavirus infection.

After that Metropolitan Hilarion lifted up the prayer read during the spread of an evil epidemic. He also said a prayer for the repose of the soul of the late honorary Patriarchal Exarch of All Belarus, Metropolitan Filaret (Vakhromeyev).

After the service Metropolitan Hilarion was greeted by the SMI pro-rector for training, Hieromonk Pavel (Cherkasov). On behalf of all the SMI staff and students he congratulated the SMI rector on the day of his episcopal consecration, saying in particular:

“Dear Vladyka, we can speak much about the very diverse facets of your ministry, but I will dwell first of all on your academic service. You have written very many studies very valuable for theological scholarship but the most important thing that can be singled out in your academic service are your academic works and interpretations on Holy Scriptures.

It is really the core of your ministry as a hierarch, archpastor but also a scholar, a theologian. This is precisely the ministry that inspires us – lecturers, staff members and theological students – to study Holy Scriptures in the same profound and thorough way. It is not just academic work fitting a scholar but also interpretation right for both the wise and the simple. We are inspired by this approach and motivated by it when we read your works. We are especially grateful for this and hope that you will keep enlightening us by your works on Holy Scriptures so bottomless and immensurable that they can be studied endlessly.

We ask your prayers for all the teachers and students here, for all the staff workers. We promise to give you a diligent assistance in your ministry. We wish you many good years of life!”

Then congratulations to Metropolitan Hilarion were extended by Archpriest Timofey Fetisov, rector of the Donskoy Theological Seminary, who is working for doctor’s degree at the SMI:

“Your Eminence, dear Vladyka, by God’s omnibenevolent providence I first met you exactly thirty your ago. At that time, you, still a young lecturer, learned Hieromonk, generously nourished us, students of the Moscow Seminary, with the vital nectar of treasures of patristic wisdom, and today, invested in a high rank, you guide a complicated area of church life, preserving and developing fraternal relations between Local Orthodox Churches, defending the canonical sovereignty of our Church, asserting the integrity of the world Orthodoxy on the very foundation of the patristic Tradition of which you are a living bearer and profound expert.

From my student’s years I have invariably kept in my heart the warm love for you, Your Eminence, as the head of the Ss Cyril and Methodius Institute for Post-Graduate Studies, who fulfils a difficult task giving many and many students an opportunity for coming in touch with the unique and vital experience of theological knowledge.

Once again, I thank you from my heart for the joy of being with you today and I wish you the inexhaustible mercy of the Lord Who has given you many talents for fulfilling the task of important archpastoral ministry. May your efforts be filled with Divine grace and marked with brilliant achievements.

We wish you, dear Vladyka, sound health and well-being for many years”.

Then Metropolitan Hilarion addressed himself to the faithful with a homily:

“Dear Fathers, Dear Brothers and Sisters, I greet you all upon the feast of the Circumcision of the Lord and the commemoration day of St. Basil the Great the Archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia.

Thank you for your congratulations. The time we are experiencing today is a difficult one for all of us. And certainly it is not a time to festivities and mass activities, but for prayer and concentration.

The commemoration day of St. Basil the Great, which we are making today, reminds us of what kind of person a hierarch must be and how he is called to carry out his church ministry.

Basil the Great was not an armchair scholar. He was not one of those who, in the silence of one’s cell, would study and explore Holy Scripture surrounded by writings of other authors and would put down his thoughts forgetting about what is going around. He spent his short, only 49 years-long life in the thick of church life. He was an archbishop of one of the largest cities in the Roman Empire. He struggled with the Arian heresy in a new modification it received in his time, namely, in the version given by Eunomius who asserted that a human being could not come to the knowledge of God by his own mind.

Refuting this and other heresies that emerged in his time or had emerged in the past, St. Basil wrote his own theological works. He has left us a priceless legacy that we study to this day. But literary works did not hindered him from being an archbishop, from guiding his enormous metropolis, from cooperating with other hierarchs with many inclined to accept the Arian heresy and from making them change their minds with the help of scriptural words and from struggling for the Church all his life.

St. Basil the Great has left us another priceless fruit of his creative work – a text of the Divine Liturgy. The Liturgy of St. Basil the Great is celebrated only ten times a year because it contains long prayers. The Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom is celebrated much more often because it is much shorter. But it is the Liturgies of Basil the Great that tell us about the economy of salvation, which began since the creation of the world and the human being and continued through the granting of the true faith to the God-chosen people and reached its acme in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Liturgies of John Chrysostom speak of the same but in a much shorter way.

St. Basil the Great compiled the order of the Divine Liturgy on the basis of Holy Scriptures and, primarily, the letters of St. Paul. And, celebrating this Liturgy, we pronounce the words directing our mind to the very core of the Orthodox faith.

Today, very many people associate themselves with Orthodoxy in this or that way. Some claim to be Orthodox but do not come to the Church. Others do not claim to be Orthodox and criticize the Church. In an absolute majority of cases, people come to know about the Church only that which lies on the very surface.

But if we looked at an immense sea and saw all kinds of rubbish drifting at its shore, we would say, ‘A sea is the water with all kinds of rubbish floating on at its surface, such as milk packets, beеr bottles, chips packets. This is what the sea is’. A sea can be seen from its shore without entering it or dipping into it or crossing it.

But those who love and know the sea understand that what splashes near the shore does not belong to the sea. It is products of people’s life activity, which litters everything around them – the sea and the earth and the air and their own homes and their environment.

But the see that has been created by God is, first of all, endless; secondly, bottomless and saturated with useful substances; living in it are very diverse maritime animals and fishes; and corals shine in it with with unearthly light. There is no human who could explore the bottomless depth of this sea with his human mind.

The Orthodox faith is, to a certain extent, ‘an ocean’ boundless and bottomless, and there is not a single human life long enough to explore and get to know all its depths. And the most interesting and important thing in the Orthodox faith is not what splashes on the surface but what is found in the depth.

Like specialists who explore seas and oceans, flora and fauna, who put on heavy aqualungs and plunge in the depth to see what goes on there, to admire the beauty of God’s creation, there are those in the Orthodox faith, too, who are interested not in what ‘splashes’ on its surface but explore its depths. They study theology and foundations of the Orthodox faith and formulate for their contemporaries the fundamental church dogmata; they study and explain Holy Scriptures. And among such persons was St. Basil the Great whose memory we celebrate today.

Therefore, my dear ones, let us not be confused by what happens on the surface of our ‘sea’ but let us try to plunge in its depth to come to the knowledge of the Orthodox faith from within. Let us spiritually imbue ourselves with the faith feeding our hearts and souls with it. And in our earthly journey may the Lord help us to come in touch with the depth of the Divine wisdom, Divine mysteries, to be enlightened with the Divine light which penetrates the whole universe. Amen.

I congratulate all of you on the feast. May the Lord preserve you all”.

DECR Communication Service