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NEWS
FROM THE DIOCESES |
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Protopriest
Roman Lukianov
Address of Rev. Roman Lukianov at the Round Table of the
From December 8th until December 12th, in Nyack, NY, an Expanded
Pastoral Conference took place. Clergymen of the Russian Orthodox
Church Outside of Russia from around the world attended. There were
approximately 160 priests and 10 archpastors, headed by Metropolitan
Laurus at the head. Also there were three representatives of the
Moscow Patriarchate who gave reports. I was given 8 minutes to speak
on the topic of my impressions of the Church in Russia. I offer
my report in a slightly extended version, since everything I prepared
would have taken about 12 minutes. I have been always interested in events in Russia. When our parishioners traveled to Russia, I would ask them to bring me church newspapers and magazines. We made four pilgrimages: in 1991, 1995, 1999, and 2001. We visited churches in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Valaam, Solovki, Pskov, Novgorod, the Borodino battlefield; we went on a pilgrimage on a boat from Moscow to the Ural Mountains with stops at many historical cities. We visited the relics of St. Sergei of Radonezh, St. Serafim of Sarov, St. Alexander Svirsky, St. Serafim Vyritsk, St. Varlaam of Hutynsk and many others. In 2001, we went to Ekaterinburg, to the Ganin’s Pit, Alapaevsk and saw the relics of St. Simeon Verkhotursky. We spoke extensively with church people and priests everywhere. We met bishops and attended Patriarchal services. Below I will write about some of my impressions concerning the reestablishment of communication between the Church Abroad and Moscow Patriarchate.
2. Veneration of the New Martyrs. During our pilgrimages, we could
see how the veneration of New Martyrs grew. In every church we saw
either our Bostonian or Jordanville icon of the Holy New Martyrs,
or icons of the Royal Martyrs. Fr. Alexander Shargunov compiled
five books, Miracles of the Royal Martyrs. Our Boston icon of the
Russian New Martyrs became the prototype for the official icon of
the Holy Russian New Martyrs during their veneration in the church
of Christ the Savior in the year 2000. In Solovki and in many other
places, veneration crosses are raised in memory of the New Martyrs.
A church is built now on the Butovo ground near Moscow where more
than 60,000 people were shot and are buried, among them thousands
of priests. On the day of commemoration of those martyrs, hundreds
of priests and thousands of faithful gather for a memorial service.
St. Tikhon’s Institute in Moscow is publishing a multi-volume collection
of biographies of these New Martyrs. All this is happening ten years
after the fall of the Soviet power, while here, abroad, the Royal
Family was only glorified sixty years later!
3. The Patristic Way of the Russian Church. In the year 1991, during
our first pilgrimage to Russia, a number of priests and lay people
asked me whether I had read Bulgakov, Berdyaev, and other Parisian
theologians. My reply that I have not read them was very surprising
to them, so I had to explain that religious literature from Paris
consists of discussions on Orthodoxy, while we prefer to read holy
patristic literature that is published by Holy Trinity Monastery
in Jordanville. When we first visited St. Sergius Lavra, their librarian
asked us send a bow to Metropolitan Laurus for helping restore the
library at the Lavra, made possible by Holy Trinity monastery, which
sent them their publications. Holy Trinity monastery sent thousands
if not tens of thousands of books to Russia, and through this helped
the Church of Russia restore the Holy Patristic content of church
life. The veneration of St. John of Shanghai is ubiquitous; his
"Life" and articles are printed and reprinted. Everyone
in Russia admires the articles and books of Fr. Seraphim Rose. People
became excited when they learned that we were personally acquainted.
Fr. Seraphim Rose, who retold the holy patristic truths in modern
language, did a great deal for the restoration of holy patristic
Orthodoxy in Russia. I have heard that he is locally glorified in
some places. The Law of God by the other Fr. Seraphim (Slobodskoy)
is sold in all church bookstalls, even in provinces, and it is made
the basis of an entrance exam into seminary. On the other hand,
I have read that in one of the dioceses, an archpastor ordered that
the books of Schmemann and Meyendorf be burned, and quite recently
a Romanian man, a doctor of theology, told me that Orthodox thinkers
in Romania are very critical of Schmemann's Òtheology.Ó Thus, glory
be to God, the Church of Russia, embarking on the path of freedom,
has not been seduced either by the Parisian Russians or by American
modernists, but continues on its holy patristic way. The Greeks
who wanted to summon the Eighth Ecumenical Council for the ÒrenovationÓ
of the Orthodox Church, are now afraid of the Russian Church, because
the latter, being larger than all the Orthodox Local Churches combined,
will not allow any such ÒrenovationÓ of Orthodoxy, whereas the supporters
of ÒrenovationÓ risk being placed with the heretics.
4. The Restoration of Churches. While traveling in Russia and visiting
renovated or newly built churches, one marvels: where do all those
icon-painters, architects, church choir conductors, chanters, and
other masters of church art come from? Despite seventy years of
the persecution and annihilation of the Russian people, the national
genius did not die, and now, led by the Holy Spirit, it finds its
expression in the opening of thousands of churches, hundreds of
monasteries, in renovation and myrrh-flowing of thousands of icons,
in conversion to Christ of millions of people who grew up in atheism!
Where else has any of that happened? Truly, the church in Russia
is Heaven on earth, the House of the Most Holy Theotokos.
5. In Conclusion. I would like to retell one conversation which
took place in the church of Christ the Savior immediately upon its
consecration. A delegate of the Greek Seminary in Boston, a Greek
priest, after the consecration of the church, entered into a conversation
with a Russian priest. The Greek priest praised the church, praised
the solemnity of service, but complained on its length and on the
absence of pews on which people could sit. The Russian priest replied:
ÒThey kept us sitting in prisons for seventy years. Now we stand
erect and we'll continue to stand!Ó
6. The Lives of the Saints--Our Contemporaries. Great books are
being published in Russia now--the biographical data of confessors
of the twentieth century. I dare say: these are the Lives of the
Saints of our times. Lately we read Beautiful Pascha, the life of
three monks in Optina and their murder by a satanist. In Thy Name,
the life of a deacon from the town of Kurgany in Ural who spent
ten years in a concentration camp in Magadan and who became a priest
upon his return. The episodes when he was saved by God’s power are
absolutely unimaginable. Paternal Cross is the biography of a village
priest on the eve of revolution and afterwards; Notes of an Old
Woman is by a pre-revolutionary female doctor who became a nun in
Shamordino and who was exiled near Arkhangelsk. She provides information
about the last whereabouts of the Optina elder Nikon and his invaluable
teachings. The Lives of the elder Amfilochiy of Pochaev; Serafim
Vyritsky; lives of the Moscow elder, Presbyter Alexei Mechev and
his son Sergius who was executed in 1941. Paschal Memory is the
story of a priest from Diveevo, Vladimir Shikin, who literally burned
out for the three years of his priestly service. These are only
the books which we have read, but there are so many books still
waiting on the shelves written about our contemporaries, confessors
of the twentieth century! These books should be read along with
the Lives of the Saints, for they are the saints of our times.
7. The Catacomb Church. The years of 1941 and 1942 were to see the
total extermination of all forms of religion in the Soviet Union.
According to historical data, by the beginning of war on the territory
of the USSR in 1939, there remained only 600 (according to other
data, 150) open churches. The war started on the feast day of All
Saints of Russia. By the end of 1941, 25% of the population of the
USSR was under the German occupation. Everywhere on the occupied
territory, churches began to open, for the Germans did not object
to this. Altogether on the occupied territories, up to 3,500 churches
were opened (according to other data, the number was up to 10,000).
Priests emerged from the Òunderground.Ó Thus, it could be said that
the Catacomb Church came out from hiding.
In 1943, after the defeat of the Germans in Stalingrad, the Soviet
army steadily began to move west. At the end of 1943, Stalin called
Metropolitan Sergius to the Kremlin and, having immediately returned
12 surviving bishops from the concentration camps, commanded them
to choose a Patriarch. Stalin needed an obedient administrative
apparatus for governing the thousands of parishes on the territory
that was being liberated, as well as supervision over them. Simultaneously,
Stalin permitted the opening of a series of spiritual academies
and allowed the reopening of churches on the entire territory of
the Soviet Union. Metropolitan Sergius was a good proxy for this.
This propaganda measure led many catacomb people to return from
hiding and to the opening of many churches. In the 1950’s, the territory
of the USSR had already up to 20,000 churches. Not all, however,
entrusted themselves to the Soviet power and left the catacombs.
In about 1960, I read in the magazine Ogonyok a report about how
police smashed a secret enclave of Tikhon church-followers. Several
years later a navy sailor fled to Canada from a Soviet boat. He
said that during his stay in the Far East he participated in the
brigade of Young Communist Leaguers who were attacking secret communities
of faithful and beating them. The sight of one young woman who meekly
accepted the beating shook him so much that he began to think about
what was happening, and after a while, escaped to the West. For
this he paid with his life: he was found in a motel, allegedly having
committed suicide. This was the time of arguments between Professor
Andreyev and Fr. Adrian about whether the Catacomb church existed
at all. The article in Ogonyok and the information of the sailor
confirmed that the Catacomb Church still existed in the sixties.
I remember Metropolitan Vitaly saying that every Russian priest
who secretly performs a marriage or baptism, in essence, acts as
a priest of Catacomb church. During our pilgrimage in 1991, we became
acquainted with a Moscow priest, a doctor of geology, a member of
the Academy of Sciences who at the same time was secretly a priest.
With the blessing of the Most Reverend Patriarch, he ceased hiding
his priesthood only when he retired. By the 1990’s, a clear division
between Catacomb Church and Moscow Patriarchate no longer existed:
the former members of the Catacomb Church had biologically died,
while the priests of Moscow Patriarchate became more and more audacious
in carrying out their priestly duties in opposition to the Soviet
laws. In this way, by 1990, the border between the Catacomb and
Patriarchal Churches was practically erased, whereas the reestablishment
of the Catacomb Church in our day, when the Church in Russia is
free, is an anomaly.
Protopriest Roman Lukianov |
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