He was one of the most important figures in Orthodoxy because he radiated “modern holiness” through his personal aura and profound cultivation. Word to Blessed Metropolitan Callisto Vare (1934-2022) Diocles, the great theologian, teacher and writer, whose funeral will take place tomorrow, Thursday, September 1, at 12 noon, at the cemetery in Oxford, UK. “Without exaggeration, we can say that he single-handedly created a pro-Orthodox movement in Oxford, which attracted hundreds of Britons who decided to change their faith. At this university – mainly at Pembroke College – he taught for many years and was the leader of the Greek Orthodox community of the Holy Trinity there, ”says Thanos Veremis in the column.

Callistos Ware was indeed a special occasion. He was raised as an Anglican. At the age of 17, he accidentally walked into the London Russian Orthodox Church on a Saturday evening, where an all-night vigil was being held. Then he realized that the church is “heaven on earth.” It was an experience that made him change his life. He was received into the Orthodox Church in 1958. In 1966 he was ordained a priest and ordained a monk, spending long periods in various monasteries, including the Monastery of St. John the Theologian on Patmos. It was named Kallistos in honor of Saint Kallistos Xanthopoulos. That same year, he became a lecturer at Oxford University, teaching Oriental Orthodox Studies, a position he held for 35 years until his retirement in 2001. In addition to spiritual and writing activities, he was a very beloved priest, visiting hospitals and homes, actually serving his faith. He was the first Briton to be ordained a bishop of the Orthodox Church after the Great Schism of the 11th century, when he became titular bishop of the diocese of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1982. Those to whom he was a teacher describe him as a rare combination of asceticism and learning: his writings touched the heart. With the help of books such as The Orthodox Way, Because I Love, How to Enter the Heart, The Power of the Name, he was able to decipher and interpret ideas that are difficult for modern Westerners to grasp. Here is an example of his writings: “Faith in God is not at all the same as the logical certainty that we achieve in Euclidean geometry. God is not the result of a reasoning process, a solution to a mathematical problem. To believe in God does not mean that we accept the possibility of his existence because it has been “proved” to us by some theoretical argument, but it means to trust the One we know and love. Faith is not the assumption that something can be true, but the certainty that someone is.”