“Mission” has always meant, at least in the Christian connotations of that term, not only the effort to convert someone to true faith, but also the spiritual disposition of the missionary: his active charity and his self-giving to the “object” of his missionary task.
From St. Paul to Bishop Nicholas of Japan there has been no mission without self-identification of the missionary with those to whom God has sent him, without a sacrifice of his personal attachments and his natural values. Mutatis mutandis the same must be said, it seems to me, about the Orthodox mission in the West, and more particularly, about the mission of Orthodox theology.
This mission is impossible without some degree of love for the West and for the many authentically Christian values of its culture. Yet, we very often confuse the Universal Truth of the Church with a naive “superiority complex,” with arrogance and self-righteousness, with a childish certitude that everyone ought to share our own enthusiasm about the “splendors of Byzantium,” our “ancient and colorful rites,” and the forms of our Church architecture.
It is sad and shocking to hear the West globally condemned and to see a condescending attitude towards the “poor Westerners” on the part of young people who, more often than not, have not read Shakespeare and Cervantes, have never heard about St. Francis of Assisi or listened to Bach.
It is sad to realize that there is no greater obstacle to the understanding and acceptance of Orthodoxy than the provincialism, the human pride and the self-righteousness of the Orthodox themselves, their almost complete lack of humility and self-criticism. Yet, Truth always makes humble, and pride in all its forms and expressions is always alien to Truth and is always a sin.
