A EULOGY FOR PATRIARCH FILARET, FRIEND OF THE UKRAINIAN CHURCH IN THE DIASPORA

The Orthodox Archdiocese of America’s Official Eulogy for the Late, Thrice-Blessed Patriarch, +++Filaret of Kyiv and All Rus-Ukraine

A Memorial Declaration of the Orthodox Archdiocese of America and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in East Asia

Glory to Christ! Glory Forever! 

“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.” (Psalm 116:15)

With Christian sorrow tempered by the hope of the Resurrection, we commend to the mercy of Almighty God His Holiness Filaret, Patriarch of Kyiv and All Rus-Ukraine, whose repose marks the passing of one of the last hierarchs formed in the great upheavals that reshaped Orthodoxy in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, leaving an indelible impression on us and our Holy Church.

The Patriarch’s life belonged to that generation of bishops who endured persecution, witnessed the fall of militant atheism, and then struggled to restore ecclesiastical life amid the new dangers of nationalism, jurisdictional rivalry, and political war.

In such times, few bishops escape controversy. But the Church does not remember her departed first as controversies. She remembers them as souls and remembers their contributions, regardless of their imperfections. 

And so we begin where the Church always begins: With prayer and remembrance, and gratefulness for sacrifice and love. 

Our Ecclesial Relationship to Patriarch Filaret

For the Orthodox Archdiocese of America and our missionary jurisdictions, Patriarch Filaret was not merely a distant historical figure. Our own ecclesial memory, as articulated in our Canonical Charter of Ecclesial Continuity, Identity, and Orientation, recognizes our historical descent through the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox succession and our filial ecclesial orientation toward the Kyivan Patriarchate as a polestar of our Church in the Diaspora. 

This relationship was never one of jurisdictional submission, nor of political convenience, but of ecclesial memory, apostolic continuity, and deep spiritual gratitude.

As our Charter states, this orientation reflects not claims of authority, but fidelity of historical conscience.

We recognized in the Kyivan Patriarchate not a political project, but the life-giving stream within the long and often persecuted history of Ukrainian Orthodoxy striving to preserve apostolic life amid extraordinary disruption.

Patriarch Filaret stood within this important and irreducible history. And for this reason, we remember him not as a partisan symbol, but as part of the living memory of the Church from which our own succession historically descends.

The Historical Context of His Life

The story of Patriarch Filaret belongs to the longer narrative of Ukrainian ecclesiastical survival:

The First Resurrection of Ukrainian ecclesial independence in 1921.

The canonical recognition reflected in the 1924 Patriarchal Tomos.

The Second Resurrection during the wartime restoration of episcopal succession.

The long night of Soviet suppression.

The Third Resurrection following independence.

These events form not merely political history, but ecclesiastical memory.

They reveal a Church repeatedly attempting to preserve apostolic continuity under pressure few modern Christians can easily imagine, a pressure that, unfortunately, has only continued in these recent years. 

Patriarch Filaret became one of the final figures connecting these eras in an unbroken chain. 

Whether praised or criticized, he cannot be removed from this story, and even his fiercest detractors cannot besmirch his long history of faithfulness and “holy stubbornness” (as he himself called it), committed to the true process of Orthodox canonicity against the Caesaropapism and ethnophyletism that currently divide the large patriarchates into warring tribes. 

The Larger Canonical Questions His Life Exposed

From our perspective, his life revealed something deeper than Ukrainian jurisdictional debates. It revealed the unfinished crisis of modern Orthodox governance.

As we have consistently stated, the Ukrainian situation demonstrates the consequences of a weakened conciliar model of Church life. When conciliar balance weakens, stronger patriarchates inevitably begin to behave in ways resembling centralized authority structures historically foreign to Orthodox ecclesiology.

In this environment, Filaret became a controversial but unavoidable figure. His life forces Orthodoxy to confront uncomfortable questions:

How are local Churches protected from political pressure?

How are disputes resolved without domination?

How does conciliar equality function in a post-imperial world?

These questions remain unresolved, and they are escalating now in an apocalyptic war, brother against brother, where the very meaning of Orthodoxy is changed to serve state interests that manifest the spirit of antichrist, rather than the true love, truth, equality, mutuality and personalism of the Holy Trinity. 

Our Refusal to Participate in Ecclesiastical Condemnation

Throughout these disputes, our Archdiocese refused to participate in the spirit of condemnation that has increasingly characterized Orthodox discourse. We did not deny sacramental reality based on recognition based on convenient politics. We did not presume to judge the eternal destiny of bishops who had, unfortunately, anathematized one another out of pride and striving. We did not accept the reduction of ecclesiology to administrative legitimacy.

Instead we maintained the older Orthodox instinct:

To pray for all.

For Bartholomew.

For Kyrill.

For Filaret.

Because the Church survives not through exclusion, but through grace. We are not to deny salvation to anyone, but to pray that all would be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. 

The Tragedy of War Surrounding His Final Years

Patriarch Filaret’s final years were overshadowed by the great tragedy of our time: the horrific war in Ukraine. Reports claim that millions have perished. There is no end in sight. The Lord is openly mocked as new indulgences are offered, old tribalism stoked, and people mistake killing in the name of their temporal government as working for the Kingdom of God. 

As our Presiding Metropolitan has rightly declared, this conflict represents a profound wound in the Body of Christ: Orthodox Christians killing Orthodox Christians, nations divided, churches destroyed, and families shattered. No canonical argument can justify such suffering. No jurisdictional dispute can sanctify fratricidal war.

In remembering Patriarch Filaret, we cannot separate his memory from the suffering of the Ukrainian people. The suffering in which we all partake. 

And so our prayer today is not only for him. It is for peace. For Ukraine. For Russia. For the Ecumenical Patriarchate. For the healing of the Orthodox world, which, while claiming absolute fidelity to Apostolic Truth in Christ, still struggles with a deep wounded tendency toward bitterness, harshness, un-forgiveness, and the use of that which is consecrated and holy as a shield for fallen, unholy, desecrating secular interests, conflating state power for the blessing of God. 

The Only Judgment That Now Matters

All debates about Patriarch Filaret now fall silent before a greater reality. He now stands before Christ. The same Christ before whom every bishop, priest, deacon and lay person must someday answer. The same Christ before the world will one day tremble, as every knee bows and tongue confesses that He is Lord. This is the Christ before whom every Christian must give account. Here there are no patriarchates. Only souls.

And so we entrust Patriarch Filaret to the mercy of the One Judge who alone knows the intentions of every heart.

What We Choose to Remember

We remember a bishop who lived through persecution. We remember a patriarch who bore controversy. We remember a man who believed he was defending his Church, and whose life was spent in trying to live out the canonicity and equality that should be at the heart of our Orthodox synodality. We remember a Christian now entrusted to God. And we remember that history is never the final judge of a soul. Christ is.

His Lesson for the Future

If his life teaches us anything, it is that Orthodoxy must rediscover the ancient balance of:

Conciliar equality

Mutual submission

Pastoral realism

Canonical humility

Without this restoration, jurisdictional rivalry will continue to wound the Church’s witness and divide the Church indefinitely. If his life contributes to that realization, then his place in history will be significant indeed.

Our Final Prayer

And so we say what Christians have said for centuries when a bishop falls asleep:

May Christ forgive what was done in weakness.

May God accept what was done in faith.

May the Church be healed of her divisions.

May Ukraine know peace.

May the Orthodox rediscover unity, equality, and conciliarity.

May Patriarch Filaret’s memory be eternal. May he rest in the light of Christ’s Face. May he be granted peace, rest, and rise again in the blessed resurrection! May his legacy shine as the stars in the firmament, and may the Ukrainian Church and the Ukrainian Patriarchate never die. 

Final Collect

O Lord Jesus Christ, the Chief Shepherd of Thy Church and the Prince of Peace, who hast appointed pastors to guide Thy flock through the trials of history: Receive Thy servant Filaret into Thy mercy. Forgive his sins, remember his labors, and grant him rest among the faithful hierarchs who have finished their course. Bring peace to Ukraine, healing to Thy divided Church, and reconciliation among all faithful Orthodox peoples. Deliver us from pride, from rivalry, and from the misuse of Thy holy canons, and restore among us the spirit of conciliar love known to the Fathers; for Thou art our peace and our salvation, and unto Thee we give glory, with Thy Father and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Memory Eternal! Memory Eternal! Memory Eternal!