Page 207 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

F R O M C O N S TA N T I N O P L E T O R U S S I A : F R O M M O T H E R C H U R C H T O S I S T E R C H U R C H
that linked the Church in Rus’ to Constantinople—especially
through the appointment of the metropolitan—unity was pre-
served in a context where political power was divided. Even
in moments of crisis, the intervention of the Ecumenical Pa-
triarchate restored ecclesial unity, showing that the Daughter
Church owed much to the Mother for the safeguarding of her
cohesion.
Yet this relationship was never one-sided. The gift did not
remain without return. The Daughter Church responded with
her own offering. First, with a remarkable faithfulness to the
dogmatic teaching and liturgical tradition that she had re-
ceived, preserving them with such care that even conflicts
arose over fidelity to the inherited forms.
Second, she preserved for centuries the living presence of
Orthodoxy on a universal scale, maintaining and embodying
the consciousness of a unified Orthodoxy—a kind of “Ortho-
dox oikoumene”—which had been inherited from Byzantium
and continued to live within the Russian soul.
Third, she offered a great contribution to the spread and
renewal of Orthodoxy: through mission among non-Chris-
tian peoples, through witness in the modern Western world,
and through a theological renewal that rediscovered the depth
of the patristic tradition and made it speak again to contem-
porary humanity.
Thus, the relationship between Mother and Daughter be-
came a true exchange—giving and receiving within the one
life of the Church. When the time came and unity had ma-
tured to such a degree that there was no longer danger of divi-
sion, the Daughter Church was fully emancipated, becoming
an autocephalous Church and a Patriarchate of her own. In
this way, the Daughter became a Sister Church, and remains
so to this day.
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