The Saints as a Shared Heritage between East and West

I just finished reading John Anthony McGuckin’s The Eastern Orthodox Church: A New History. Rather than a traditional chronological history, McGuckin offers reflections on the nature of the Orthodox Church through particular figures and events of history. As a professor at Oxford and publishing the volume with Yale University Press, the book was clearly meant to help a Western audience understood the Orthodox Church more deeply. It is very conscious of differences between East and West, sometimes making helpful distinctions but, at others, repeating oversimplified prejudices.

Something that changes the dynamics of East-West ecclesial relations, for better and worse, is the existence of Eastern Churches, with distinct liturgical rites, in the Catholic Church. The Orthodox, as McGuckin’s book indicates, are incensed at Catholic attempts to reunite the Eastern churches. These Eastern Churches, however, have opened the door to many distinct practices that diversify the Catholic Church both liturgically and theologically.

The saints, in particular, present the greatest shared spiritual treasury between the Churches. Although the saints of the early Church are shared by all apostolic churches, when particular groups of Eastern Christians sought union with the Catholic Church, they brought not only their unique liturgy, writings, and governance with them; they also brought their own saints who had lived apart from visible unity with the Catholic Church.

The major branches of the Christian tradition are the Latin, Greek (the various Byzantine rites of Eastern Europe and the Melkites), Syriac (both Western [Maronite, Jacobite] and Eastern [Assyrian, Chaldean, Syro-Malabar, Syro-Malankara] branches), Armenian, and Alexandrian (Coptic, Ethiopian, Ge’ez). All of these groups have distinct liturgical rites and their own canon of saints. It is harder to find a martyrology for the Far Eastern Churches, but even focusing on Byzantine saints points to an astonishing reality that the Catholic Church can accept divergent traditions, even those critical of the Latin West. For instance, two of the most stringent anti-Latin figures in McGuckin’s history – the Patriarch Photius (810-93) and Gregory Palamas (1296-1359) – are celebrated in the Byzantine rite of the Catholic Church.

Photius, who was the occasion for a schism between East and West, although he did die in union with the Pope, was not canonized/glorified by the Greek Orthodox Church until 1847. Gregory of Palamas, who wrote polemically about the filioque (like Photius), as well as advancing distinct theological positions on divine energies and hesychastic prayer, was canonized in 1368, and so would have been established in the liturgical calendar before the reunion of the Byzantine Churches There are other examples who lived after the reunion, who are celebrated in the Eastern rites, such as Basil the Holy Fool (1469-1557), St. Vladimir of Kiev (958-1015) and his grandmother Olga (d. 969), and the Emperor Constantine.

Pope Francis recently raised up the first Doctor of the Church who did not live in union with the Catholic Church, the Armenian saint, St. Gregory of Narek. He is also in the updated martyrology, entering into Catholic worship through the Armenian Catholic Rite, who also brought their own saints into the Church with them. As I mentioned before, the Armenian Church did not accept the Council of Chalcedon, raising questions about Narek’s own theology (although Michael Papazian’s work should shed light on this topic). With more research into the non-Chalcedonian and non-Ephesian churches, I am sure more examples like this could be cited.

Overall, I think more attention should be given to fullness of the Catholic tradition represented by all of its Churches and rites. It is too tempting to focus only on the Latin Rite, since it is by far the largest, but it is not correct to equate the Catholic tradition solely with this rite. Although the Orthodox Church views the Eastern “uniate” Churches as an obstacle to union, these Churches give witness to the rich diversity of the tradition, proving that to be Catholic is not simply to accept Western practices and theology. Within this diversity, the shared veneration of saints leads us toward stronger unity, together recognizing and imitating their holiness.

Update: The revised 1956 Version of Butler’s Lives of the Saints contains numerous Orthodox Saints revered by Eastern Catholics. Here are some pertinent excerpts:

• Introducing St. Sergius Radozneh (d. 1392), it explains: “When in 1940 the Holy See authorized a liturgical calendar for the use of the few Russian Catholics it included, among other Slav modifications of the Byzantine calendar, the feasts of some thirty Russian saints, twenty-one of whom had not previously figured in any calendar in use today among Catholics. These last all lived after the trouble between Rome and Constantinople in 1054. Their adnlission to Catholic recognition is a further example of the Holy See’s practical judgement that the separation of the Eastern Orthodox Church \vas not fully consummated till long after the excommunication of the patriarch Cerularius of Constantinople in that year, and in any case the consummation became complete in different places at different times. The choice of these saints, as Father Cyril Korolevsky has remarked (in Eastern Churches Quarterly, July 1946, p. 394), “based upon impartial judgement, does not exclude the possibility of still other Russian saints being admitted when more progress has been made in the study of Slav hagiography.” According to Father Korolevsky this has no connexion, whether direct or indirect, with canonization. “When a dissident Eastern church [or part thereof] comes into the Catholic Church she brings into it all her rites and all her liturgy; so also her menology or liturgical calendar. Only what is directly or indirectly against faith is excluded-but this does not prevent the need for there being wellchosen critical standards for the moral, historical and hagiographical aspects, so that the inclusion or exclusion of certain saints in a Catholic calendar can be decided upon, and so that the position of others can be submitted to fresh examination in accordance with developments in hagiographical studies.” This of course is true. Nevertheless, from the point of view of the Church’s present practice, it would canonically seem to be a case either of equivalent (“equipollent”) canonization or of confirmation of cultus.”
• Noting that the schism was not cemented in his life, it speaks of the great Serbian saint, Sava: “In fact, St Sava Prosvtitely (d. 1237), “the Enlightener,” figures in several Latin calendars and his feast is also kept in the Catholic Byzantine diocese of Krizevtsy in Croatia.”
• There are a number of Armenian saints in the work. Two saints, both named Nersus, one surnamed Lampronasti (d. 1189) and the other Klaietsi (d. 1173), worked for reunion both with the Orthodox and Catholics. Here is the description of St. Nerses Klaietsi, who served as Katholikos of the Armenians, and is revered in the Armenian Orthodox and Catholic traditions: “NERSES, called . . . the Gracious, because of the beauty of his character and his writings, was born at Hromkla in Cilicia, his mother being of the family of Gregory the Enlightener. He was educated by his uncle, the Katholikos Gregory II, who favoured the reunion of his church with Rome, and by a great Armenian doctor, Stephen Manuk. Nerses was ordained by his elder brother, the Katholikos Gregory III. This Gregory, whom both Catholic and dissident Armenians venerate as a saint, seems to have been in communion with the prelates of the Western crusaders; and when in 1166 Nerses succeeded his brother as katholikos (the fourth of his name), he maintained this union, which, however, was not formally confirmed until the coronation of King Leo II at Tarsus in 1198. Nerses, moreover, worked for the reconciliation of the Orthodox Greeks; and writing to the Emperor Manuel Comnenos he refers to the pope as ‘the first of all the archbishops and successor of the apostle Peter.’ He is the most famous writer of the twelfth-century Armenian renaissance, both in prose and verse; he wrote a book of short prayers for every hour of the day, poems on religious and historical subjects, and liturgical hymns, in one of which the Roman church is apostrophized as ‘immovably built on the rock of Kephas, invincible by the gates of Hell, and seal of the guardian of the gates of Heaven.’ St Nerses died on August 13, 1173, but his feast is kept on the 3rd, and he is named in the great intercession of the Armenian Mass both by Catholics and dissidents.”