A Word from the Patriarch-elect

29 January 2009, 14:10

Christian shouldn't look gloomy – the newly elected Patriarch speaking about Orthodox fashion and smiles

Moscow, January 29, Interfax – A believer can't look and feel gloomy, Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, the newly elected by the Russian Church Local Council Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, used to say at his meetings with youth.

"A bishop mustn't smile," that's a deeply erroneous idea of a model Christian. Believer's outlook is characterized with tranquility and wisdom and faith gives him inner joy," Metropolitan Kirill said at the Orthodox Youth Congress 2001.

According to the Metropolitan quoted by the Komsomolskaya Pravda on Thursday Christianity is "eternal joy, it is not a false hundred-dollar smile, but everlasting joy about the Lord and peace of God." "A believer in Christ has no reason to sprinkle ashes on the head," the Metropolitan said to his young interlocutors.

Cloths in black-grey-brown color grade characteristic for some believers, gloomy faces without a hint of smile "have nothing to do with Orthodoxy, with sightlines, with dignity and modesty," being in fact "a travesty of Church, a vicious taste," the newly elected Patriarch believes.

"When we preach folk, museum, costumed Orthodoxy, we make signals to the society and people that our faith is supposed to bear no relation to recent life. While the place of Orthodoxy is in the streamline of life and in the inner abode of our feelings," Metropolitan Kirill said.