St Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary - Events Symposium on Orthodox Mission Keynote Address Highlights

This evening I face a difficult and possibly thankless responsibility. I am supposed to introduce His Beatitude Archbishop Anastasios. Usually someone introducing a speaker is expected to review his life, publications and noteworthy achievements. But in the case of Archbishop Anastasios this is hardly necessary. You in this audience already know about his remarkable accomplishments – establishing a mission journal and a mission center in Greece, working as a missionary in Africa and founding a seminary there, writing many books and articles as a professor of missiology in Athens, serving in ecumenical circles, especially in the WCC’s Commission on World Mission and Evangelism, and of course presiding over the resurrection of Orthodox Church in Albania. Perhaps you have had a chance to view the video introduction to his life. Perhaps you have read Jim Forest’s beautiful little book, The Resurrection of the Church in Albania (WCC, Geneva, n.d.), which devotes a chapter to His Beatitude. In any case, I am sure that you will want to read His Beatitude’s book Facing the World: Orthodox Christian Essays on Global Concerns, which will be available from SVS Press in June – and you may even want to consider helping to underwrite its publication. At this point, very possibly you are simply impatient to hear Archbishop Anastasios speak. But I do want to say a just few more words about this remarkable man.

You know the scope of his career. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Archbishop Anastasios has done the work of ten men. That in itself would be something – the work of ten is at least more than the work of one. But what is remarkable is not just what Archbishop Anastasios himself has done but also the impact he has made by doing it. What he has done has inspired hundreds – no, thousands and tens of thousands - of men and women around the world, and they in turn have gone on to do things that, without his example, they would never have dreamed of doing. Through his labors, he has brought forth fruit not just ten-fold, but a hundred-fold, a thousand-fold.

I remember back in the 1960s talking especially with Fr. John Meyendorff, a friend of the archbishop’s from the early days of Syndesmos, the international Orthodox youth organization. Fr. John, Fr. Alexander Schmemann and many others appreciated all that the then-Mr.Yannoulatos was writing about mission in Porefthendes, the mission journal he had founded; and I believe this helped spur our own rediscovery of the importance of mission in the history of Orthodoxy in America. But what I remember most vividly was Fr. John’s excitement - his amazement - when Mr. Yannoulatos was ordained a priest and then actually went as a missionary to Africa. Archbishop Anastasios inspired not just by talking mission, writing mission. He inspired above all by doing mission. He showed that mission was not just a colorful part of our past. It really works in our world today, if only we let God’s will be done.

With admiration, therefore, for what Archbishop Anastasios has done, and with gratitude for the inspiration that he has given us, we are overjoyed to welcome him this evening. And at this time, by virtue of the authority vested in the Board of Trustees and the Faculty of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary by the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York, the degree of Doctor of Divinity honoris causa is bestowed upon His Beatitude Anastasios, Archbishop of Tirana and All Albania.