I write to you, my father, openly and publicly. Behold, the old things have passed away. The old has passed away, which you did not make and which we did not make, but everything you made will be made manifest. No one makes his own pains and asks for them; did Christ make His pains? Did He not say: Father, take this cup away from me? Shall we repeat the question of Saint Nectarios: what is my fault that they should do all this to me? We will receive the answer of Jesus Himself: and what is my fault that they should crucify me? The fault of Christ is that He loved, and I believe that His love would heal everyone, but it was unable to, and even He, the teacher of us all, failed in several places, especially in His own homeland.
Of all that happened I remember that sweeping wave, but it is nothing but populism that walks with the current, crying out at one time “Hosanna” and at another “Crucify him.” Whoever counts on populism will be drowned by it one day. Christ did not count on populism, and therefore He did not appear to the gloaters and did not come down from the cross; He was not concerned to reveal His power, but His truth. Therefore after He rose He appeared in secret to a small number of people. And what happened is not what matters now; what matters is what was made manifest of the event — that you are more meaningful, that you have crossed over. This means that you have been transfigured, and what was transfigured in you is sufficient for us; and the mystery was accomplished in silence.
What concerns me only today is what history will not write — and how will it write it if we do not tell it — what has been carved upon hearts and embodied in life. This is my experience with you. For more than ten years I have known you as a father, and I obeyed you as Christian literature says. I remember how I used to begin each morning by calling you to say: here I am praying, and I used to pray “O God of my father.” Through you I was bound to the Teacher (Jesus) at that time; you used to stand between me and Christ, and it was only a short time before I advanced to the episcopate, and so you became a bishop for us and a lord for our sake. Your lordship was not as is customary, but was service, and you remained a father — nay, you became more, a brother. In you was embodied the saying of the Baptist: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” So there was no longer anyone between me and Christ; my father became beside me after having been before me. I used to look upon Jesus through your face, until your face withdrew completely and the face of Jesus shone upon me, and you showed that God the Father is the true Father, and you withdrew, and so I began to cry out “O my God.”
The father raises his sons that they may soar, and when they have flown, he releases them to soar in the expanse of God; then they fly together and soar as brothers together. We are the brothers of our father; you transferred us from your fatherhood to the fatherhood of God the Father. For filial obedience ceases when the son becomes a father, and it comes to an end, that he may listen to the voice of God without a mediator. You made of each one of us a new father. Simply, you were a sincere, faithful father — faithful over our souls, our goals, and our lives — and you were sincere to the very end. I knew you as a father and experienced you as a brother of the heavenly Father.
I fear to speak more and boast of what is in you, lest the saying of Saint John Climacus overtake me. So it suffices me to mention that experience with you; for nothing of the old things that have now passed away concerns me. History is witness to all of them and to their details, and history does not show favor to the face of any man; like God, it fears no one. Did not history record for us the events of two thousand years ago with their details? We read them in the history of the Church, and the metropolitans have a large share in history; nay, history even recounts for us the dialogue between Socrates and his wife Xanthippe before his death. So there is no fear that the details will be lost, for “there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed,” as the Lord Jesus said. We will leave history to do justice to the past and to your work; and if I do you justice, it will be said: this is his son. And we entrust the rest to the memory of God. As for the coming new things, it will also record them, and they are the making of our hands.
We are the brothers of Elijah and his sons.