By Monk Moses the Athonite
On the Second Sunday of Great Lent, our Church celebrates the memory of the great Saint Gregory Palamas. He is celebrated normally on November 14, but because he was a champion and defender of Orthodoxy, he is also solemnly honored after the Sunday of Orthodoxy. The holy and saint-bearing Thessaloniki is particularly associated with Saint Gregory, because he was its brilliant archbishop. He is considered, along with the Great Martyr Demetrios, as a co-patron of the city.
We will not refer to his well-known biographical details, his illustrious lineage, his many good studies, his unblemished ethos, his years of monasticism on Mount Athos, his struggles for Orthodoxy, but we will instead focus on his work in Thessaloniki.
Saint Gregory, after about five years from his election, finally managed to ascend to his archepiscopal throne, due to the well-known strong political and ecclesiastical disputes, in which passion and fanaticism were not absent at all. So the Saint ascended to his throne in the summer of 1355.
He remained archbishop until the 14th of November 1359 when he reposed in peace. He was 63 years old. Many years of ascetic feats, fatigue, adventures, illnesses did not break him, but matured and beautified him. The last years of his archbishopric were undisturbed, fruitful and efficient. He was a man with rare spiritual and pastoral qualifications. Despite his illness, he officiated and preached incessantly. His discourses hide the wealth of his knowledge, both empirical and the experiences of his inner beauty. He was a deep, full, clear, wise, and clear theologian, a radiant preacher of grace and light. A great hierophant of words - unpretentious, attractive, and charismatic.
He wrote and spoke out of great necessity and not to demonstrate his knowledge to the many. According to Professor Panagiotis Chrestou, "His discourses had many characteristics of Byzantine preaching. It is fast flowing, dynamic, improvised, and full of repetitions, but it is at the same time non-flowery and natural." It is worth noting that Panagiotis Chrestou was a great Patrologist and Palamist, to whom we owe much for the publication of the works of the Saint.
Saint Gregory Palamas from the pulpits of Thessaloniki scourged social injustices, the plunderings of the rich and other errors, but above all he presented the Orthodox ethos, the salvation of man through Christ, personal diligent self-mortification and the harvesting of virtue. He speaks insistently about the possible perfection of man and his encounter with God, who is accessible, a father and a friend.
Palamas' success, if we may say so, lies in his great education but also in his always humble disposition. Knowledge did not give him arrogance and conceit as is common. Asceticism did not harden him but sanctified him. Prayer beautified him spiritually. Mount Athos sanctified him and loved him. He was a true Hagiorite. He felt comfortable on Mount Athos and could live this for the rest of his life, chasing, fighting, grasping for God on the Athonite slopes, caves, ravines, huts and monasteries. The pleas of the Fathers brought him out of Mount Athos. Obeying the Church, he defended the dogmas in Constantinople and his beloved Thessaloniki.
Saint Gregory stood as a breakwater for the foaming waves of the heretics Barlaam, Greogry Akindynos and Nikephoros Gregoras. If we had not had Saint Gregory Palamas, at the very least we would be Uniates today. That is why the Latins do not like Saint Gregory at all.
Thessaloniki rightly boasts of its co-patron, whose archdiocese may have been small, but his teaching was great, far-reaching and timeless. Today such sermons cannot be heard. Should we always stay in the shallow, cheap and topical? Am I wrong? Should we always stay in moralistic banal and unprepared sermons?
Source: From the book Festal Letters From Mount Athos, Neapolis 2012. Translation by John Sanidopoulos.
