Martyrs of Russia
June 4th, 2008 ~ Orthodox perspectiveYou know, it’s not always the readings of 3rd- and 4th-century saints’ lives and martyrdoms that stir my stony heart. Consider today’s reading from “Daily Lives” about Archbishop Andronicus of Perm, martyred under communism:
During the communist takeover of Russia, Andronicus publicly criticized both the separation of Church and state and the communist doctrine. When he instructed his archdeacon to anathematize the communists, Andronicus was arrested, shot , and buried by the roadside. His assistant Bishop Theophanes was arrested and drowned in the Kama River. When the Moscow church assembly heard of these executions, they sent a commission to investigate. When Bishop Basil and his group completed their findings, they boarded a return train to Moscow, but en route Red soldiers attached, killed them all, and threw the bodies from the train. They were buried by villagers, and pilgrims would go and venerate their graves. Hearing this, the communists dug up the bodies and burned them.
The suffering caused by the communists may never really be fully understood. I find it hard to comprehend how a regime could take aim against the Holy Russian Orthodox Church and be so merciless in its persecution.
But it did my heart good that in the course of my daily Bible readings, I happened to be reading the raising of Lazarus in the Gospel. Like Lazarus, the Russian Church rose up again. Destroyed churches and cathedrals have been rebuilt while those who ordered their demolition rot away. One day even these rebuilt structures will fade away, just as Lazarus was destined to die again. But the sacrifice of so many courageous saints like Archbishop Andronicus won’t be forgotten — their memory will be eternally with God.
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June 4th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Amen!
June 4th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Thank you for this Grace. I also find the stories of the martyrs (from any century) to be quite encouraging.
June 10th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Hi Grace,
My son is a Mormon missionary in Russia right now serving in a town called Jaroslavl. He loves the people he meets, though few return the favor. I understand your bent towards Mormonism in general [Red Pen Nicene Creed blog], but I thought you might enjoy this comment from my son:
“First off, I really feel like I should tell you just how grateful I am to be here. I was thinking about it, and if I had never come here to Russia, never had the chance to come to love these people, there is just a part of me that wouldn’t have come around. If I had never met any of these wonderful, beautiful, inspiring children of God… what would I do? Life just isn’t worth living without them. It’s like I’ve given away so much of my heart here (but at the same time, not nearly enough), and when there shouldn’t be any left to give I find out that there is more there than there ever was in the first place! I love Russia. I love these people. I love my Lord and my God, because he knew before I did that I would feel this way, and in his mercy he sent me here.”
Believe me, when my wife and I sent our son to Russia, we were completely aware of the sacrifices of the Russian martyrs, and we pray daily that our son will be protected by angels as he serves. But if not, he has found a heart full of love. Is it not in the New Testament where reads “If you do not have love, then you have nothing.” I am grateful for my faith in Christ as taught to me by the Holy Spirit as a member of the Mormon faith. I am grateful to know that “God is Love” and that “Love is Good.” I am grateful my son has learned this lesson about a people so far from his home, and despite overwhelming differences in faith, culture and history.
May God bless each of us in our daily walk. And may God bless your efforts for whatever purpose he has for your life.
BTW: For your future reference and Nicene Creed comparisons, the official doctrine of the LDS church can be found on LDS.org or Mormon.org web sites. Those who leave the church frequently provide interesting perspectives, but the official line of the church is now published on those web sites.
June 10th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Thomm:
Praise God that your son got a chance to experience this kind of epiphany! I have never been to Russia, but I have heard many others express this opinion of the people. I thank God that the Holy Russian Orthodox Church can finally rise again after the terrible persecution it endured under communism. It’s a lovely testament to the tenacity of the human spirit that the Russian people have come home to the church that they suffered and died for. If your son is there to see it first-hand, then he is seeing something truly wonderful.
About the Red Pen thing: I’m glad that LDS.org has the Mormon beliefs up for everyone to see — that’s a good thing. But you sort of missed the point of the post, as did the other Mormon commenters. My statement from the beginning was (and is) that there is ONE true creed of true Christians everywhere — Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox. It is the Nicene Creed. That is the precise statement of what all Christians have believed and affirmed since the 4th century as their statement of faith. I’m glad if the Mormon Church is ready to state what it truly believes, but quite simply, if they have a statement of faith that isn’t the Nicene Creed, then they are placing themselves squarely outside of Christianity and any other discussion is just a game of semantics.
I’m glad that you love your church. I love mine as well. But just as you wouldn’t want the main branch of the church of LDS associated with the polygamous sect of the LDS that has been in the news lately, I wouldn’t want to blur the line of what it means to be truly Christian.
June 18th, 2008 at 9:43 am
This is interesting to me - thank you for posting it.
A year ago I visited a local Orthodox parish just after Pascha. The (convert) priest of this parish had taught his tiny mission congregation to say “Christ is Risen - indeed he is risen” in Klingon (at which I was horrified and upon hearing it then decided that this would likely be my first and last visit to this parish).
His rationale for doing this was that learning this Christian greeting in Klingon was just as relevant for modern Americans as learning it in Slavonic - a dead language from a century gone by.
If I’d have been quicker on my feet I’d have asked how many Christian Klingon martyrs he knew of.
It might be that Joe-Average midwestern convert Orthodox knows little of church slavonic, but this doesn’t mean that the memories of those Russian martyrs should not be honored. The OCA (the jurisdiction to which this parish belongs) owes those martyrs a great debt.
So does this priest, whether or not he chooses to acknowledge it.
June 18th, 2008 at 11:57 am
-c
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I am speechless. If I tried to come up with something appropriate it wouldn’t be in English and it certainly wouldn’t be in Klingon.
Well, with a heavy sigh, I’ll consider that just the same as a prophet is not without honor except in his own country, it’s difficult to see real greatness when it is from your own recent history on your own soil. Americans certainly get ribbed a lot for blowing our own horn (globally speaking), and maybe we are bad about that. But to err in the opposite direction doesn’t make any sense to me either.
Russia seems like a VERY strange country sometimes. A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, as the man said.