On February 15, 2024, at a meal at the end of the Divine Liturgy in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia shared his thoughts on the importance of Church Tradition and the role of the modern episcopate in the life of society, Patriarchy.ru reports.
"Assessing what has happened over the past decades in the life of our Church, we can undoubtedly testify that this is a great feat of our entire Orthodox people, our clergy, and our episcopate. I remember when I was teaching patrology, one of the students of the academy asked me: "Tradition" means transmission from generation to generation, but does this concept have any limitations? I answered: there are. Tradition does not mean the transmission of garbage, tradition is the transmission of values and nothing more," said His Holiness Patriarch Kirill.
"Succession in the secular sense often implies the succession of power, political systems, ideology, but in the perspective of eternity all this is garbage, it comes and goes. What, in the first place, ensures the transmission of values in the life of the people? Some will say: culture. Wrong! Culture is subject to enormous influences. The older generation remembers well: the culture of the proletariat, bourgeois culture - that is, there is no absolute criterion in the sphere of culture. But what passes on The Church, what is included in the Holy Tradition, are the enduring values that form the human personality and preserve, I am not afraid of these words, the vitality of human civilization," His Holiness noted.
"Some people think that we are busy with something distracting: we pray, we sing akathistos, and life is booming nearby, so many important things need to be done. So, addressing you, my dear Vladyks, I want to say: we are engaged in the most important thing. The most important thing! - continued the Patriarch. - Technologies can change, cultural values are subject to erosion depending on human tastes, but the fact that we pass on spiritual, divine values from generation to generation, the fact that the Church is the mechanism for the transmission of these values, imposes a tremendous responsibility on us.
"And every bishop today has a tremendous responsibility. If he does not break away from what he was used to when he was a priest, hieromonk, hegumen, if he does not look at his ministry from a completely different perspective, from a different height, his ministry will be very weak, he will not be able to influence people. I am convinced that the current generation of the episcopate is clearly aware of this. I thank the bishops who are working today - working wonderfully, organizing church life, working with young people, with children, with the church. by our intellectuals, coming into real contact with society. All this forms a new, positive image of the Church in the eyes of those people who have always been far from the Church. But we should not rest on our laurels - there is still much to be done and much to be improved in our Church life, but in a reasonable way, relying on our tradition and at the same time being open to all the problems that exist in the world and really concern people," said the Primate of the Russian Church.
"And this presupposes a good knowledge of the problems of society. When we say: a bishop should be closer to the people - what does this mean? First of all, he must know what ordinary people live. This means that it is necessary to meet, communicate, talk, hear people's voices, analyze all this and form his pastoral attitude to pressing problems. And I would like to wish all of us, the laborers of Christ's vineyard, the ability to see our faults, our weaknesses, to correct them and to strive to implement everything that is contained in our oath of office," concluded His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia.
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