The Chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, congratulated the Primate of the Orthodox Church in America, His Beatitude Metropolitan Tikhon of All America and Canada, on his 55th birthday. The congratulatory message reads:
Your Beatitude!
On your 55th birthday, I cordially congratulate you on this significant date.
From your youth you sought God with all your heart and found true knowledge of God in the Orthodox Church. Your attraction to monastic solitude led you to renounce the world. Fulfilling the church obediences entrusted to you, you labored much in the field of theological scholarship and religious education. The Lord ordained you to be a shepherd of His rational sheep. Humbly fulfilling this ministry, you responded to the call of Christ the Chief Shepherd and became like the apostles of Christ, receiving the grace of episcopal ministry as a true gift of God (2 Tim. 1:6).
Raised upon the lofty candlestand of ministry as Primate of the Orthodox Church in America, you carry out this high ministry in tireless prayers and labors, that the Lord may add to the Church such as should be saved (Acts 2:47). Through the efforts of Your Beatitude, church communities and churches have multiplied, and the Orthodox Church in America has become the fastest-growing Orthodox jurisdiction on the North American continent.
I prayerfully wish Your Beatitude fruitful ministry for the good of Holy Orthodoxy, the unfailing help of God in your primatial labors, spiritual joy, strength of soul and body, good health and abundant spiritual blessings from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Many and blessed years to you!
With respectful love in the Lord