Thank you, I found the defiant reply by Barbara Larin on facebook.
I would observe that it reveals her mental instability. Obviously her Synod has the right to "tell her how to dress" - at least her Bishop did while she was still a nun of the Rocor-MP.
Looks like she was keeping this switchover to OCU in reserve just waiting for the moment when she would be defrocked by Rocor.
She defensively insists that her vocation is from God not from men. But what is the Orthodox Church - and especially, monasticism - all ABOUT ? Obedience, humility...
She writes pugnaciously "What I wear or do not wear is dictated by common sense as it is in the case of any adult living in the free world. I don’t consult a bishop across the ocean about it, because I am not mentally impaired."
I'm not too sure about THAT !
The picture in lay attire she posted captures her internal cauldron angrily churning away
To anyone wondering, I am fine. I am Sister Vassa, a ryassofor nun in the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
For the last two years, the ROCOR hierarchy has attempted to silence me on the issues connected to Patriarch Kirill’s vocal and even heretical support of the criminal Russian aggression against Ukrainians. And his jurisdiction’s uncanonical defrocking of clerics for “disobedience” to his anti-Christian agenda and teaching on “Holy War.” Now the ROCOR has issued a decree (that was sent to me in Russian, using the old, pre-revolutionary Russian orthography, which is the only not-Soviet aspect of the decree) that is meant to unmake-me a nun and to tell me how to dress. For some reason it has been posted on the ROCOR website, perhaps to assure the Kremlin that the ROCOR has nothing to do with me anymore.
As one who has studied Orthodox Canon Law for decades (it made up a third of my doctoral exam at the University of Munich’s Institute of Orthodox Theology), and was for years a member of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Interconciliar Presence Commission for Canon Law (and its Commission for Liturgy and Church Art), I could not be silent about the church-canonical and liturgical propagation of the MP’s ideology within our church-communion. This includes the manipulation of church-canons to force clergy into “obedience” to Putin’s and Patriarch Kirill’s agenda, and the use of liturgical prayer and symbolism to justify and promote the killing of innocent people. I never signed up for that. I took no vows either to defend it, or to represent it, to be “obedient” to it, or to cover it up by sharing in the silence of the ROCOR hierarchy about it.
My vocation, which is from God and not from men, is that of a nun living and working (and even tonsured into the ryassofor-status, which does not involve the taking of any vows) outside any monastery, in “the world.” I have been living and working in “the world” for 27 of the 34 years of my monastic life. What I wear or do not wear is dictated by common sense as it is in the case of any adult living in the free world. I don’t consult a bishop across the ocean about it, because I am not mentally impaired.
Today I thank God for my vocation, and for His people whom I am privileged to serve in the small ways that I do, mostly online, and who continue entirely to support through crowd-funding our little online mission of Coffee with Sister Vassa, which was never supported by the ROCOR in any way. God bless us all, at this time of robust growth in faith, in our Lord Jesus Christ and our Father in heaven, Who does not abandon His Church by the abundant grace of His Spirit. Thank You, God, for all of it.
Below I post a few photos of me, one in my habit today and one not in my habit (on the bus on my way to Kyiv last week). It’s me, Sister Vassa, who I am in both photos. Nobody changes that, not any clothing nor any decree, - and certainly not the uncanonical, shameful one issued recently by a ROCOR hierarchy that has lost its way. Christ is risen, dear friends!
