“The time is right for a critical reassessment of the healing mystery, the healing power of penance in its fullest sense,” Bishop Findikyan said, addressing a masked audience at the University Church. The sacrament of penance is more than a periodic attempt to “make ourselves right before God,” he said.

“The Armenian Church’s explicit understanding of penance as a return from sorrow resonates with a sort of hopeful expectation that is in very short supply in these COVID times.” 

The annual Economos lecture series has featured a variety of speakers, including archbishops, reverends, and professors. Last year, Fordham welcomed His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America to the Rose Hill campus. Bishop Findikyan is the first Armenian lecturer in the series. 

In his speech “Returning to Normalcy and the Sacrament of Penance,” Bishop Findikyan analyzed the three key parts of this title—normalcy, sacraments, and penance—through the lens of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Over the past 21 months, people across the world have yearned for normalcy, said the bishop. But the pandemic has also given us the opportunity to reconsider what normalcy means.

“No one denies the pain, grief, death, and economic uncertainty, political polarization, and other afflictions that COVID has wrought. Yet … We would do well to question the instinctive assumption that pre-COVID, everything was jolly and that the challenge of our age is to return to that previous condition,” said Bishop Findikyan. 

A large problem with our pre-pandemic lifestyle is “lust for contentment sought apart from God,” said the bishop. He compared this with the biblical story of Adam and Eve, who surrendered to their desire to eat fruit from a forbidden tree. They gained great knowledge, but lost their innocence. 

“The normalcy that many of us desire nowadays is actually the illusion of good food, of delight to the eyes, of desire, and of wisdom. Consciously or unconsciously, I fear that many of us are looking for personal fulfillment apart from God … The pursuit of such a normal is sinful in the fullest, proper sense of the word, and that path is naked,” said Bishop Findikyan. “The only true path toward those blessed ideals is to be found in Jesus Christ, by means of the mystery of penance.” 

We are taught that penance is one of the seven sacraments, said the bishop, but the sacraments are more than a finite number of ceremonies. 

“Our incorporation as the body of Christ occurs in every sacramental encounter, in every liturgical celebration,” said Bishop Findikyan. “And so with every one of those celebrations, those sacraments, when we dedicate ourselves to the Church’s liturgical life, we gradually come to an evermore intimate knowledge of God.” 

The role of sacramental penance in the pandemic is important, said the bishop—and it should be much more than a “periodic” spiritual encounter. 

“Repentance, penance, is that life-giving reconciling action by which we sinners regularly and continuously turn away from grief and come back to God,” said Bishop Findikyan. “Penance should not be an exceptional, occasional intervention, but a continuous journey of realigning one’s thoughts, actions, and commitment to Jesus Christ … It should be as regular and intrinsic to our spiritual lives as breathing is to one’s physical life.” 

Bishop Findikyan described true penance as the “living, throbbing heart of Christian faith and life”—something that is lacking in many parts of American Christianity today. 

“The sacrament of penance itself is the norm and the normal to which we aspire,” said Bishop Findikyan, “and to which we really should return, breath by breath, moment by moment.” 

Bishop Findikyan is the first Armenian Church Primate to have been born in the U.S. The Texas-born bishop once studied chemical engineering, but he followed his spiritual calling to the priesthood and was ordained a priest in 1997. He is now a professor of liturgical studies at St. Nersess Armenian Seminary in Armonk, New York. He has lectured worldwide and served as the general editor of the Divine Liturgy pew book, a model for similar books in other churches and jurisdictions. He earned a master’s degree in musicology from the City University of New York and a doctorate degree in liturgy from the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome.

This year, in partnership with the Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center, the Orthodox Christian Studies Center has launched a new Postdoctoral Fellowship in Armenian Christian Studies. The recipient of the two-year fellowship will also serve as director of the Zohrab Information Center, housed by the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America Eastern Diocese.

The Economos Orthodoxy in America Lecture series has explored how the Orthodox tradition intersects with the American religious experience since its first lecture in 2004. Funding for the lecture is made possible by a landmark endowment from Christ and Anastasia Economos and a generous grant from the Nicholas J. and Anna K. Bouras Foundation, Inc. The lecture series is hosted by Fordham’s Orthodox Christian Studies Center. 

A full recording of the lecture is below:

Speaking from the pulpit of the University Church on the Rose Hill campus, the archbishop traced the history of the Orthodox Christian and Catholic churches’ recent rapprochement and drew upon it for lessons for moving forward.

“Today, more than ever, we need to think not only about our differences, but how we can anticipate our churches being reunited through a rediscovered experience of communion,” Archbishop Elpidophoros said in a lecture that was broadcast live via Zoom and archived on YouTube. The event was part of the Economos Orthodoxy in America Lecture series, which was renamed this fall in gratitude for Christ and Anastasia Economos’ generous support of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center.

“[It is] a communion,” the archbishop said, “based on mutual recognition, a common confession of faith, the acceptance of diversity, liturgical sharing, synodality and conciliarity, mission and evangelization, subsidiarity, renewal and rebirth, and finally, the role of the papacy.”

The archbishop, who in May 2019 was elected the eighth archbishop of America since the establishment of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in 1922, touched on many of the issues that the two churches have been engaged in since Pope John Paul II’s 1999 visit to Romania on the invitation of Patriach Teoctist of the Romanian Orthodox Church.

That dialogue has proceeded in fits and starts, he said, but it is in and of itself a gift from God.

“The transformation of the dialogue of charity into the dialogue of truth, that is to say, the shift from gestures of rediscovered fraternity to an exchange of theological programs, marks the fruitful maturation and growing confidence to tackle the heart of our divisions,” he said.

Thorny issues include reconciling the different ways Orthodox Christians and Catholics speak about the origins of the Holy Spirit, the possibility of celebrating Easter on the same date, and whether non-Orthodox spouses who marry Orthodox Christians should be allowed to receive communion.

Unfortunately, he said, it is getting harder, not easier, to resolve the conflicts that revolve around these issues. The movement behind unity, he said, is facing an identity crisis, in part because culture wars and geopolitical developments are influencing the conversations between Catholics and the Orthodox churches, and Orthodox Churches have been unable to speak with one voice. The future of Orthodox-Catholic relations depends on the condition of inter-Orthodox relations, he said.

Nonetheless, he maintained hope.

“I am convinced that the future and mission of Roman Catholic and Orthodox relations here in the United States is to continue bear witness to God’s presence in the world, faithful to the spirit of Jerusalem, that we receive as a legacy,” he said.

Reflecting on the Economos’ recent gift, Christ Economos said the center’s mission to advance awareness and knowledge of Orthodox Christianity in modern public discourse is near and dear to their hearts.

“At these most difficult times in our world, the need is great for understanding and respect in all dialogue, and as we heard tonight, reconciliation, which is the most important of all,” he said, in remarks following the archbishop.
“The center, through lectures, such as this one, as well as scholarly publications, student initiatives, and Public Orthodoxy, the online blog, creates many opportunities for such important dialogues to unfold and advance.”