It is a grave sin to accuse and mock the Ministers of our Church.

 

During the long period of seventy years that I lived in this blessed place, Mount Athos, I saw many punishments because of this sin. I even read, in a manuscript, in the library of our Monastery, the following relevant narration:

"In one village, an elderly priest, while good and very loving, fell into the passion of drunkenness. When he left the Church, he was carried away by his passion in the various cafes. There, after 2-3 glasses of alcohol, he lost himself, he was dizzy, but sensing his position he got up and staggered and took the road home.

On this street, however, the priest's brother had a shop. So, when he saw him pass in such a state, he would go out to the door of his shop and not out of regret, but rather out of sensitivity, he would touch him from behind with his right hand (he would smudge him as we say)...

After some time, it happened that this impressionable brother of the priest died. When, three years later, they opened his grave for the recovery of the bones of the deceased, they found his right hand intact.

Then, on the advice of the other priest chaplain, they took the intact hand and placed it in the narthex of the Church, so that his fellow villagers could forgive him for any injustices common to those engaged in trade.

But again, after another year of burial, the hand was found intact.

Then, according to Theia Neussi, another merchant who had his shop opposite the shop of the deceased, reported to the vicar the fact of the old priest's daily shouting and mockery by his brother. That good priest understood what was the reason why the right hand of the deceased remained intact and immediately called his elderly fellow minister and urged him to perform Trisagion and read over the intact hand the forgiveness prayer! Indeed, as soon as this was done, immediately the fleshy parts of the intact hand dissolved and the bones were left bare!"

In other words, condemnation and comments against priests are often a graver sin than slurs and are punished more severely. Know that when you make fun of a clergyman, these mockeries do not go to the priestly man, but go to the priesthood of the priest, and therefore it is like addressing these words to our Lord! This is because the gift of the priesthood is a loan that Christ gives to the clergyman, in order to create conditions of salvation for man!

Elder Gabriel Dionysiatis (1886-1983)