Courtesy as a church ethostranslated
The Metropolitan of Thessaloniki Philotheos A person's sleep always invites us to see his life differently. To distinguish the essential from the casual, the face from the public image, that which really was from that which the circumstances once showed more.
In the case of my blessed predecessor, Metropolitan of Thessaloniki Mr. Anthim (+13.3.2025) - who, on this day, was celebrating his patron Saint Anthim, bishop of Nicomodeia - the personal experience of our coexistence allows me to keep particularly one of his characteristics: kindness.
Politeness, of course, in the church tradition is not a matter of good manners. It is primarily the fruit of spiritual cultivation. It is the respect towards the face of the other, even when he disagrees, controls or is unjust. It is, after all, an expression of love.
St. Gregory the Theologian, in his famous 14th Discourse, On Poverty, enumerating the virtues that manifest the Christian ethos, characteristically writes: "Long-suffering is good"; and as a supreme example he points to Christ, who not only did not return the violence of the persecutors His, but he also healed the hearing of the one who had been hurt.
