One God. One Faith. One Church.
I was born Coptic Orthodox in Egypt. I practice as Greek Orthodox in America. I have received Christ in both, and I tell you plainly: it is the same faith, and the same Christ, and we have no right to stay divided.
Sam Metry
“Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 18:3
A child does not interrogate his father about the nature of his fatherhood before he runs to him. He knows him, and he trusts him.
For sixteen centuries two families of Orthodox Christians who love the same Christ, keep the same fasts, honor the same Mother of God and guard the same Apostolic faith have stayed apart over the words chosen to describe how God became man, a mystery no words on earth can contain.
Meanwhile the Lord who commanded us to become as children said something else that nobody quotes at these arguments:
“If therefore you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.”
Matthew 5:23-24
Two Churches approach two altars every Sunday, each knowing the other has something against it. Sixteen hundred years, and neither has left the gift and gone first to be reconciled.
One God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one essence, undivided. Both Churches confess Him in the same Creed, word for word, without addition. Matthew 28:19; John 10:30; 2 Corinthians 13:14.
One Faith: One Lord, one faith, one baptism (Ephesians 4:5). The same Christ, perfect God and perfect man. Two vocabularies, one confession. St Cyril of Alexandria is a saint in both Churches.
One Church: One Body, one Bread, one Cup (1 Corinthians 10:17). St Ignatius, writing around AD 107, knew only one altar in one place. So did the whole Church for four hundred years.
It Is Possible To Do Everything Right And Still Be Shut Out
This is the most uncomfortable thing the Lord teaches, and He teaches it again and again. Read the list of people He warned:
- Five virgins who were invited, awake, waiting, carrying lamps, and had no oil. "I do not know you." Matthew 25:1-13.
- An elder brother who never once disobeyed his father, and could not bring himself to go into the feast. Luke 15:25-32.
- A rich man who is never accused of a single crime: he simply did not notice the beggar at his own gate. Luke 16:19-31.
- A man who came to the wedding and got through the door, and was thrown out for what he was wearing. Matthew 22:11-14.
- A Pharisee who fasted twice a week and tithed everything he owned, and went home not justified. Luke 18:9-14.
- Goats on the left hand, condemned for nothing they did, only for what they failed to do. Matthew 25:41-46.
- People who prophesied and cast out devils in His name, and heard: "I never knew you." Matthew 7:21-23.
Not one of these is an unbeliever. Not one is an atheist or a pagan. Every single one is religious. Every single one is inside.
And so are we: fasting, praying, venerating, receiving, and refusing the Cup to a brother who confesses the same Christ.
The Division Was Never About Christ
In AD 451, at Chalcedon, one family confessed Christ “in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.” The other confessed, with St Cyril of Alexandria, “one incarnate nature of God the Word.”
Both rejected any splitting of Christ into two. Both rejected any swallowing up of His humanity. Both insisted He is perfect God and perfect man, one Christ. The Greek word physis carried one weight in Alexandria and another in Constantinople, and the crack that opened was forced wide by imperial politics, a deposed patriarch, mutual anathemas, conquest, and fifteen centuries of not speaking.
In the twentieth century, official theological commissions of both families examined the question at length and concluded together that both hold the same faith in Christ in different formulas. The theologians have already agreed. What is missing is a body of believers who actually want it.
So We Are Calling A Fast
When Nineveh was under judgment, the whole city fasted, from the king to the cattle, and God relented (Jonah 3:5-10). When Israel was in danger, the prophet said: blow the trumpet, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the people (Joel 2:12-17). When Esther faced death she said: fast for me, three days (Esther 4:16). When Ezra needed protection he proclaimed a fast (Ezra 8:21-23). When the church at Antioch was choosing, they ministered and fasted (Acts 13:2-3).
And when the disciples could not cast out a spirit, the Lord said: “This kind can come out by nothing but by prayer and fasting” (Mark 9:29).
The division of the Church is that kind.
Not a conference. Not a committee. A fast: kept the way the first Church fasted, on the days the first Church fasted, by believers of both families at the same time, begging God for mercy on His torn Body.
Go And Make Disciples Of All Nations
“Go therefore, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
Matthew 28:19
That was the last thing He said before He ascended. It is the standing order of the Church, and neither of our families is obeying it.
We guard the faith beautifully. We hand it down inside our own families, in our own languages, to people who were already born into it. We do not carry it outward.
And we are doing this in America: a country made of every nation on earth, with freedom of religion still standing. The nations He told us to go to have come to us. We have been given the easiest version of the Great Commission in Christian history, and we are not taking it.
These two failures are one failure. He said the world would believe when we are one (John 17:21). A divided Church cannot preach unity to anybody.
Stand With The One Faith
Take the Pledge. It costs nothing but honesty, and it binds you to pray daily, to fast with us, and to refuse to speak with contempt of the other tradition.