This Sunday is called the “Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy” (Orthodoxy – right worship and glorifying of God) over all heresies; which are wrong opinions of demonic inspiration in collaboration with the pride and self-opinion of some Christians (even patriarchs, popes, synods, priests, monks or believers) who have distorted and altered the meaning of the Faith as revealed by God through His prophets and miracles and especially through the coming into the world of His Son, Jesus Christ, the God-Man and the Holy Spirit who founded His Church. The purpose of God’s revelations are for man to understand where he comes from, where he is going, what he must believe in, and what he must do to save his soul. The moment that the correct meanings revealed by God change, then man begins to walk in the wrong direction, which no longer leads him to the salvation of the soul but to his perdition.

The human mind is infested with passions, blindness, lack of clarity and correct perception of things of this life and especially of the spiritual life. Man becomes mentally ill because of misconceptions about life and the world, which do not come from divine revelation, or which come from a poorly transmitted or altered revelation. Heresy is blasphemy against God. 

Many ask the legitimate question, how do we know that the divine revelation is kept in the Orthodox Church?

God revealed the way to Him from the first peoples, to Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the 12 Patriarchs of the Hebrews. God then revealed Himself to Moses in the unburnt bush in the wilderness of Sinai, the bush that was burning but was never consumed by the flames. And these divine revelations always had messages in contradiction with the “gods of the Gentiles” (called demons by the psalmist David). These are called false gods and idols, from whom the people of Israel were protected by distinct separation from all that was not revealed by God. 

The Old Testament is full of divine revelations that confirm the New Testament. The New Testament naturally confirms the Church and is confirmed by the Church and teachings of the Holy Fathers, who have the same enlightenment as the Prophets and the Apostles. The Church of Christ, that is the Holy Spirit in the Church, used and continues to use this method as in the Old Testament to separate the idolaters and those with heretical opinions from the Church so as not to infect the whole body of the Church with false beliefs. The Saints used anathemas to cut off heresies and those who teach them from the Body of the Church; it is an alarm signal that they are outside divine revelation and salvation, and must return to the Truth.

The anathema is the greatest proof of God’s love for those caught in heresy because it gives them a warning. It is like the nervous system of the human body, using pain as an alarm signal. The word ANATHEMA does not mean a curse but means “outside the borders of the Truth, of the Church.” The proclamation of anathemas by the clergy and believers that warns of these heresies, acts as a cure of this disease of the mind, and re-establishes strength in the Orthodox soul. It also awakens the conscience of the heretics to their heresy and prompts a return to the Church. The Holy Apostle Paul calls heresy “turning of the Truth of God into a lie.” Anathema is neither hatred, nor curse, nor insult or contempt, nor slander, but it is God’s medicine for fallen humanity for the sin of changing the revealed Truth. Anathema means that those ideas and persons are outside the boundaries of the Church. Anathema has a pedagogical role for Orthodox Christians to clearly demarcate between the revealed divine Truth and the falsehood of human ideas called heresies or human opinions not based on revelation.

1. To Arius, the first fighter against God: Anathema!
2. To Wulfila the semi-Arian, to Nestorius, to Macedonius – who say that the Holy Trinity suffered – and to Valentine: Anathema!
3. To Peter the Fuller and fool, who said: “Holy Immortal, Who was crucified for us”: Anathema!
4. To Paul of Samosata and to Theodotion: Anathema!
5. To Peter the Paltry, the heretic, who was surnamed Lycopetrus, to the evil-minded Eutychius and Sabellios: Anathema!
6. To Jacob the Armenian, to Dioscorus of Alexandria and to Severus, Sergius, Paul and Pyrrhus, together with Sergius, the disciple of Lycopetrus: Anathema!
7. To the Origenists and to those along with them: Anathema!
8. To the fallen and the anti-canonical patriarchs denying the Fourth Ecumenical Council, Karekin II of Armenia, Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria the Coptic Patriarch, Abune Mathias of Ethiopia, Ignatius Aphrem II of Antioch of the Syriac-Jacobites, Baselios Marthoma Mathews III of the Malankara Indians, who mistakenly call themselves “orthodox” and those who are in communion with them: Anathema!
9. To those who deny the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Holy Ecumenical Councils, monophysites, monothelites and monoenergists: Anathema!
10. To the Eutychianites, Jacobites and Artzivurites: Anathema!
11. To the dreadful assembly against the venerable icons: Anathema!
12. To those who deny the Holy Seventh Ecumenical Council, to those who do not worship our Lord Jesus Christ represented in the icon according to His human nature: Anathema!
13. To Barlaam of Calabria, Gregory Akyndinos, Prochoros of Kidonis, Nikiphoros Grigoras, Giorgios Lapithis and their successors: Anathema!
14. To those who teach the neo-Barlaamite heresy, saying that the Grace of God is created, instead of uncreated: Anathema!
15. To the blasphemer of Christ, Francis of Assisi with all the false “saints” of the papists: Anathema!
16. To the baseless heresiarch Pope Francis I of old Rome, who has fallen according to the Canons, and to those who are in communion with him: Anathema!
17. To those who teach that the Orthodox Church is a “sister Church” of the Roman Catholic congregation and other heresies: Anathema!
18. To Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwigli, Henry VIII – the ungodly king, and to those assembled together with them and to all the Protestant groups: Anathema!
19. To the heresiarch of the religious congregation of Anglicanism, Justin Welby, and to those who are in communion with him: Anathema!
20. To those who deny and defame the Mother of God and the Trinity One in essence and undivided: rabbis of Judaism, Islamists and members of the “Watchtower” society of the pseudo Jehovah’s Witnesses: Anathema!
21. To those who defame the sacraments of the Church: the Baptists, Adventists, Methodists and Pentecostals and to all the groups of non-denominational congregations: Anathema!
22. To those who affirm that Baptism and Chrismation have equal status in the economy of the Church, and that the heretics who have been “received” by Chrismation do not need to be baptised in the Orthodox Church by triple immersion, promoting through this the baptismal heresy that recognises heretical “baptism”: Anathema!
23. To those who preach and teach the pan-heresy of inter-Christian and inter-religious ecumenism: Anathema!
24. To those who preach and teach the post-Patristic and post-canonical heresy, saying that the teachings of the Holy Fathers are obsolete: Anathema!
25. To those who deny the Eighth and Ninth Ecumenical Councils, from the time of Saint Photios the Great and Saint Gregory Palamas, to the Papal-Filioquists: Anathema!
26. To the so-called “World Council of Churches” (of heresies) which teaches that each Protestant branch is part of the Church of Christ and to those who take part in common prayers in the blasphemy and transgression of the Canons, the so-called “Week of Prayer for Christian unity” in January, who consider the heretics as “brothers in Christ”: Anathema!
27. To the Toronto Statement (1950), to the Agreements of Balamand (1993) and Chambesy (1994) in which the anti-Chalcedonians were falsely recognized as Orthodox, and to the declarations from Porto Alegre (1997) and Busan (2013): Anathema!
28. To those who teach that the Church includes all confessions that have departed from Her as “incomplete churches” and to those who say that there are Holy Sacraments, saving Grace and holiness outside the Orthodox Church, the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic: Anathema!
29. To the ethno-phyletists who place their nation, family, tribe, or clan above the Church of Christ: Anathema!
30. To the parasynagogue which is deceptively named “The Army of the Lord” and to their oath which blasphemes Holy Baptism, denying the fact that this is the washing of regeneration and considering it ineffective for salvation: Anathema!
31. To those who teach that the Ecumenical Patriarch is “primus sine paribus”, that is the first without equals: Anathema!
32. To the heretical texts of the ecumenist pseudo-synod of Crete in June 2016, called “The Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church” and to those who accept them and put them into practice, the texts which:
    • Enshrine the so-called “restoration of Christian unity” and the historical name of churches for heretics;
    • Enshrine the Constitution of the so-called “World Council of Churches” as a basis for dialogue with heretics – dogmatic minimalism;
    • Enshrine the Toronto Declaration, which states that there are members of the Church outside the walls of the Orthodox Church and that the Church of Christ is more inclusive than each and every member “church” of the so-called “World Council of Churches”;
    • Enshrine mixed-marriages (with heretics) through false economia;
    • Enshrine John Zizioulas’ concept about the “human person”: Anathema!
33. To those who claim that not participating in the ecumenical movement creates a stumbling block to the Gospel of Christ, through lack of mutual understanding and cooperation with heretics: Anathema!
34. To those who deny the truth that the Church of Christ is One and Unique, just as Christ the Head of the Church is One and Unique, having One Body which is the Orthodox Church: Anathema!
35. To the Protestant theory of “the invisible Church as the Mystical Body of Christ”, where visible unity is achieved through cooperation and dialogue, forming the idea that the Orthodox Church and heterodox congregations are in the same House but have divisions between them: Anathema!
36. To those who do not believe that only the Orthodox Church is the Church of Christ: Anathema!
37. To the co-mingling of the Local Orthodox Churches with heterodox groups into a so-called “fellowship of churches that accept our Lord Jesus Christ as their God and Saviour”, and to the idea that by this, the Orthodox would give a common witness with these groups: Anathema!
38. To those who affirm that the Church of Christ is in construction, “Christ gathering His children together to build His Church”, where the children are the Orthodox together with the heterodox groups: Anathema!
39. To the Theosophists, Mormons, Freemasons, Rosicrucians, Scientologists, Gnostics, Esoterics, Neo-Marxists and to those who mix the Orthodox teaching with pseudo-scientific theories and pagan teachings: Anathema!
40. To the Sergianists and to all those who are obedient to the secular state and the political powers to the detriment of the obedience to Christ and His Church: Anathema!
41. To the so-called Christian yoga, bio-energy, homeopathy, crystal therapy, therapeutic radiesthesia, reiki therapy, acupuncture, neo-shamanism, practices and objects related to classical shamanism and witchcraft wrapped in science (crystals, healing metals, Torser – the star of bioenergetic medicine, anti-WiFi/4G/5G charms): Anathema!
42. To the theistic evolutionary theory that states that the world and man are continuously evolving since the primordial state of creation, and denying the existence of a complete and unchanged human nature throughout time, thereby negating the purpose of the Incarnation of Christ by which He fully assumed human nature and opened up the possibility of salvation to the whole human race: Anathema!
43. To the heresy of papal primacy and to any other form of papism or semi-papism introduced into the Orthodox synodal collegiality system (which has its origin in the way the Apostles gathered fraternally in the Synod of Jerusalem), a heresy proliferated today especially by the Patriarchate of Constantinople: Anathema!
44. To the heretical theology of “Primus sine paribus” as expressed in the anti-canonical “Tomos of Autocephaly” granted by the Patriarchate of Constantinople to the schismatic Ukrainian construct of Epiphany Dumenko and his pseudo-synod: Anathema! To the Tomos of Autocephaly: Anathema! To Epiphany Dumenko and his pseudo-synod: Anathema!
45. To the 1991 Synodal decisions of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch which accepted inter-communion and concelebration with members of the so-called Syriac Orthodox Church, who being Miaphysite heretics are followers of the heresy of Severus, condemned by the 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th Ecumenical Councils: Anathema!
46. To the “Canonical Resources and Policies for the Reception of the Heterodox” Document of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of the British Isles and Ireland which contains:
    • The reduction of the Orthodox meaning of the term “salvation” from the meaning of “acquiring eternal life in the Kingdom of God” to that of “spiritual health”;
    • The notion of the ubiquity of the Grace of Salvation outside the Orthodox Church, with the intention of introducing the false idea that there is salvation outside the One and Unique Body of Christ (a heresy condemned by the Synod of Carthage in 258);
    • The redefinition of the terms ‘economia’ and ‘akribeia’ contrary to their well-established meanings according to the Holy Fathers and the Holy Canons;
    • The introduction of a new so-called canon which stipulates the excommunication of lay persons and the deposition of clergymen who receive a so-called corrective baptism (that is those who are baptised Orthodox after having been received into the Church in a false manner by Chrismation); 
    • The recognition of “baptism” outside the Orthodox Church on the condition that it was performed “in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, with water by a church that professes a trinitarian faith”: Anathema!
47. To the heretical teachings of Father Professor Dumitru Staniloae (teachings on ecclesiology such as the heresy of incomplete churches): Anathema!
48. To the sorcerer and theosophist Arsenie Boca: Anathema!
49. To Bartholomew I, Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch and to those who follow his heretical teachings: Anathema!
50. To all heretics: Anathema!