SAN FRANCISCO: MAY 7, 2006

Greeting to the Council From Mount Athos

To His Eminence, the Very Most Reverend Laurus, Metropolitan of Eastern America and Canada, and to the Delegates to the IV All-Diaspora Council:

Your Eminence, Dear in the Lord Vladykas, Fathers and Brethren!

Christ is Risen!

At a meeting of the Holy Kinot held under the chairmanship of the Protos of Holy Mt. Athos on April 18, a letter from Archbishop Kirill of San Francisco and Western America was read; it asked for prayers that God’s will be accomplished at the coming historic All-Diaspora Council.
As it is a sorrowful fact that the monasteries of Mt. Athos do not share Eucharistic communion with the Russian Church Abroad, the Holy Kinot found it necessary to direct that the representatives of the Russian Monastery of Mt. Athos relay its position to the delegates of your Most-Respected Assembly.

The representatives of all of the Athonite monasteries unanimously rejoice in the fact that our brethren are ready to accomplish God’s will with respect to the Holy Russian Church and to heal the division that is quite contrary to God’s Truth and Christ’s commandments. In the final days of His earthly life, Incarnate Love – the God-Man Jesus Christ implored His Heavenly Father on behalf of His disciples and all those who believed on Him: “that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in me and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us… that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them and I in them.” (John 17:21, 26)

And now, when all of the reasons for division, including the secular ones, are past, we hope and believe that our Orthodox compatriots in the Church Abroad will acquire canonical status as part of the Local Russian Church, and that we might finally become communicants from one single Chalice of Christ.

We raise up our humble prayers, together with the fervent prayers of all of the Fathers of the Holy Mountain, the Earthly Province of the Mother of God, that the Divine Grace of Christ descend upon all of the representatives of the All-Diaspora Council.

Archimandrite Jeremiah
Abbot of the Russian St. Panteleimon Monastery on Holy Mt. Athos