VERTOGRAD
Orthodox Journal
Newsletter No. 21, Wednesday, May 18, 2005. 4:20 P.M.
IN THIS ISSUE:
--Pascha in the Free Russian Church
--Avoiding Participation in the Great Victory Services. Sermon of the V. -Rev. Archpriest Fr. Michael Ardov
PASCHA IN THE FREE RUSSIAN CHURCH
(Vertograd)
Suzdal
On Pascha, May 1, Divine services were held in three Churches of the ROAC in Suzdal. According to local tradition, they began at one in the morning, since at the end of March in Russia traditionally daylight savings time occurred. Clocks were brought one hour forward. In The Tsar Constantine cathedral Bright Matins and Divine Liturgy were performed by Metropolitan Valentine of Suzdal and Vladimir, First Hierarchy of the ROAC, concelebrating with Archbishops Theodore of Borisov and Otradnoe and Seraphim and Sukhumi and Abkhazia. In the Church of the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, the divine services were headed by Bishop Irinarch of Tula and Bryansk, and in the temple of the Saints Cosmas and Damian by Hegumen Trofim.
In the evening the first day of Easter into the synodal house arrived the Sunday school students to congratulate Vladika on the "feast of feasts".
The First Hierarch headed services Bright Tuesday, May 3, in honor of on occasion of the parish feast day of the Synodal temple of the Iveron icon of the Mother of God. The Temple, in which is stored the wonder-working copy of the Montreal icon, retained the smell of the holy Myron which was prepared here a week earlier. During the day of celebration wonder-working to the icon of the Mother of God of the Life Giving Spring, May 6, a Hierarchical divine liturgy was held in Uspensky Church of Suzdal, not far from the Kremlin. As per the regulations, daily during Bright Week, processions were held around the Cathedral.
Suzdal Region
Solemn Easter divine services took place also in the temples of the ROAC which are located in the villages surrounding Suzdal, St Basil the Great in the Borisov region (rector Archpriest Arkady Makovetskiy), Birth of St. John the Forerunner Parish in Pavlovskoe (rector - Hieromonk Simon), St Simeon Stylite in Omutskoe (rector Hegumen Theofan), St. Alexander Nevsky in Vesi (rector - Archpriest Andronik Miracle), Archangel Michael Parish in Khonekh, Ivanovsk (rector Archimandrite Efim (Karakozov)), the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God Parish in the Krapive (Priest Valery).
Tver region
Bishop Ambrose, with the blessings of the First Hierarch of ROAC, headed Easter divine service in the temple St. John of San–Francisco in the village of Rashkino (Kuvshinovskeyeo region of Tver), the rector of which is Priest Vladimir Abolentsev. Metropolitan Valentine sent Vladika Ambrose to this temple for Pascha, in order to spiritually strengthen the clergy and parishioners, experiencing persecution from the MP. On passion Week Vl. Ambrose served in the Joy of All Who Sorrow Church in the Trestne village, where the rector is Hieromonk Sergius (Mironov). As it described by Bishop Amvrosiy to Vertograd, " in the composition of Trestnensk community there are several young people; the local administration expresses its sympathy to the parish and the rector, who met with the Bishop of the ROAC. In the present time of divine service is passed to the former public building, the community house of pre-revolutionary building is also transmitted to the parish. The active community of Fr. Sergius experiences especially rigid persecutions from the MP, which previously had abandoned its creation of a parish in "hopeless" Trestne. According to Bishop Ambrose, numerous temples remain which the MP feels are "unnecessary".
Otradnoe (Krasnodar region)
About 150 people arrived to the Paschal service in the Kazan temple of the Cossack village of Otradnoe (Krasnodar region), where the rector, Archpriest Nikolai Khirinyy serves as the dean of the Kuban ROAC parishes. In this church the second ranking member of the Hierarchal Synod is located, the administrator for the Free Russian Church, Archbishop Theodore of Borisovosk and Otradnensk. According to local custom, the procession was held three times around the block before the beginning of divine services in the Church.
Moscow
Almost 100 people were gathered to the Paschal services in the Tsar Martyr Nicholas and All New Martyrs of Russia temple of ROAC at Golovinsky cemetery. Bright Matins and liturgy in this temple were performed by the Dean of the Moscow Region of the Suzdal Diocese of ROAC, Archpriest Mikhail Ardov, Hieromonk Arkady (Ilyushin) and Deacon Aleksy Sokolov. During the liturgy the gospel in Greek was read by Fr. Arkady, and in Latin by Fr. Mikhail. Those being praying noted the reverential atmosphere that reigned in the temple this Pascha, the absence of drunk visitors and random idlers. Practically all who prayed in temple took communion themselves on this luminiferous night of holy Christ's Resurrection. On bright Monday, 2 May, after the liturgy a procession was held around the temple on Golovinsky cemetery with singing of the Paschal canon and the reading of the gospel on all four sides of the temple.
Saint Petersburg
Easter divine services in the St. Petersburg temple of ROAC into the name of the New Martyr Elizabeth were performed by Hegumen Gregory (Lourie) and Hieromonk Daniel, which was helped by 7 readers and altar servers, robed in stikhari. Two choirs sung antiphonally. As in recent years, the paschal sermon of St Gregory the Theologian was read after divine services. A general meal for all parishioners was arranged after the service.
AVOIDING PARTICIPATION IN THE GREAT VICTORY SERVICES
Sermon of the V. Rev. Archpriest Fr. Michael Ardov,
Thomas Sunday, May 8th, 2005, Moscow, Russia
Christians should not get involved in politics. Christians, especially in our sad time in history, should stand far away from any such thing and from all political matters.
However, we occupy time and space in the real world and, therefore, we have a certain obligation to the Orthodox Church. This obligation consists in evaluating what goes on in the world from a moral point of view.
With the passing of the centuries, it is absolutely incumbent upon us to make a moral assessment, a Christian assessment, of what is happening in the world, especially now when practically the whole world has fallen away from the Church and one can now say that we are living in the post-Christian era.
This is something that the Church has done almost from its inception. We know that our Lord Jesus Christ reprimanded the Jewish high priests and Pharisees for their immorality. The greatest of the Prophets, St. John the Forerunner, reprimanded the impious King Herod for his adulterous union with his sister-in-law. Both our Lord Jesus Christ and St. John the Forerunner paid for this with their lives. The Pharisees gave our Lord Jesus Christ over to be crucified, and Herod, at the urging of his mistress and her daughter, commanded that St. John the Forerunner's head should be cut off. There has never been a time that wanted for Christian ascetics and martyrs who feared not to call the powerful of this world to task for their immorality. St. John Chrysostom accused the empress, and as a result he was sent into exile where, for all practical purposes, he died a martyr's death. We also know of such instances in Russia. Let us bring Metropolitan Philip to mind, who accused Ivan the Terrible, and also paid for it with his life.
But we, of course, are all very far from being confessors or martyrs. We also cannot fail to mention the New-Martyrs of Russia, who exposed the lie that is Bolshevism and exposed the Sergianists, Metropolitan Sergius and his cohorts, who defected to the Bolsheviks, those butchers, and criminals, in order to serve them, and for this also, many of them paid with their lives. We who have survived to the present time, of course, do not dare to equate ourselves to such holy people, but nevertheless, for a Christian, the obligation to speak out about the immorality that we see in the contemporary world remains.
And although the character of today's feast is such that it is not altogether fitting for me to speak about the things that I feel I must, I, nevertheless, consider it my pastoral duty to address you with a special word.
We heard in the reading of the Synaxarion for this day how the Apostle Thomas came to be convinced of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. However, let me now switch to a different topic.
In our country at present, our leaders are celebrating what they call "Great Victory Day" with extraordinary splendor, and with extreme, I would even say, pomposity and vulgarity. If we examine this event that they are celebrating so excessively from not even so much a Christian point of view as a rational one, then we will see that this celebration is disgraceful. First of all, let us begin with the word "victory." Who was victorious over whom, and at what price? And what were the consequences of this so-called "victory?" And we will see that one tyrant defeated another tyrant. Stalin, the murderer of millions, (and of his own countrymen at that!), defeated another, demented, German, tyrant--Hitler--who was, of course, much less intelligent and clever than Stalin was. And as a result, half of Europe, the eastern half, fell under the domination of the Bolsheviks. And also as a result of this "victory," our own nation remained under the dominance of these same cruel, immoral and godless leaders for many more decades. The price of this "victory" was disproportionately high because Stalin and his henchmen couldn't have cared less for the people. Just as at the beginning of the war they wasted an incalculable number of soldiers, for example, during the defense of Moscow, so also at the end of the war, in order to be the first to enter Berlin, General Zhukov, at Stalin's orders, sacrificed something close to two hundred thousand men of the Soviet military.
But this is only one side of the story. The other side is that to call this holiday a "Great Victory" and to celebrate it with pomp and circumstance, is something that was only begun rather recently. It has only been since the time of "Comrade" Brezhnev that this holiday began to be celebrated. Stalin never considered this day to be anything special, and he never thought that there was any great victory. What he wanted, was to take over all of Europe and make a world-wide revolution, but he failed; all he got was half of Europe. And now we see the last surviving veterans, to whom they show a little bit of recognition, they give them a little something to eat, do a little interview with them, and entertain them a little bit. But even this attention is something new. I am already a rather elderly person. I remember quite well the years right after the war, 1945, 1946, and how Moscow was literally flooded with cripples; soldiers who were missing arms and legs, returning from the war, and then, suddenly, they all disappeared. Only later did I learn that they were all picked up and packed off to die on the island of Valaam, in order not to spoil the view in the capital. There was no monastery there then. You can just imagine for yourselves the conditions that they had to endure there while living out their last days. They were so poor, and were reduced to begging in order to survive. This is how they were treated, just so that the capital should not be spoiled by their presence! This I remember quite well. Besides this, as we all know, because of Stalin and his military leaders, an enormous number of Soviet citizens were taken out of the country as prisoners. The government immediately disowned them; they were immediately branded traitors. And the consequences of this were that when they, for some reason or another, came back to our country, most of them were whisked off to Stalin's labor camps. This is how they treated the veterans then. In general, if we want to talk about their version of the history of this "Great Victory," it's all one lie after another, or else there's complete silence about what happened. For example, we all know, (and the historians know this too), Moscow was not defended by Zhukov at all; it was defended by General Vlasov, before he was taken captive and went over to the opposing side. But no one says a word about this! Again, in May of 1945, Prague was liberated from the Germans by Gen. Vlasov and his Russian forces. But you won't read about that anywhere today, and you won't hear anyone even talking about it, because all that the Bolsheviks and their progeny, the so-called Democrats, are saying now about the "Great Victory," bears witness to the fact that the Communists are still in power. They have just had a face lift and have rearranged things so that it is easier to steal now. But in essence, their way of thinking hasn't changed at all. And no more than two days ago, President Putin, in Europe, proclaimed loudly that it is impossible to compare Hitler to Stalin, because Stalin, although he was also a tyrant, and considered by many to be a criminal, was never a Fascist! Here again is a deliberate lie. Hitler was never a Fascist, and could not have been. There was no Fascist party in Germany. The Fascists were in Italy. In Germany, there were the National-Socialists. But in order not to soil the holy name of "socialism" in the minds of the people, the Communists, naturally, started calling the Germans "Fascists," and this name has stuck, although for an educated person, to speak this way is just plain silly.
I could say much more in this vein. I could talk about how "Comrade" Stalin, to an enormous degree, is responsible for having started the war, which appropriately, of course, should not be called the "Great Patriotic War," but World War II. He is the one who raised Hitler. He is the one who helped the Germans build an army. Their pilots trained here. Their planes were built here, etc. And he is the one who sicced Hitler on the western countries. His intention then was to stab him in the back and grab all of Europe. However, as it turns out, it didn't happen this way, and being unprepared for armed conflict, the Soviet Union at first suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Germans. This is what really happened.
But I don't want to talk to you anymore about this. I only want to tell you that we all belong to the Church of Christ. We shouldn't get involved in any political matters. Having said that, I should tell you that I, in no way, mean to insult those of our veterans who are still with us. My own father and grandfather were both at the front. They were men of integrity and went there out of necessity and out of a sense of duty. But that the truth continues to be hidden, and that Brezhnev's fairy tales concerning these terrible events continue on, these are very, very bad signs.
There are those among us, and there are some also in the Moscow Patriarchate, who say that our country must repent. But repentance is a very exalted state. It is attainable only by Christians; conscious Christians. The repentance that they are so pointlessly talking about must be accompanied by a certain recognition of what really happened. If our government really wanted to cleanse itself from its Communist filth and restore Russia's nationalism and spirituality, then, first of all, this is what it should do: it should shoot 200 full length television movies about all of the crimes of the Soviet authorities, starting with the firing squads in 1918, the Kronstadt mutiny, the quelling of the uprising in Tambov, the removal of the Kulaks, oh, and by the way, they should tell the truth about the war, not to mention 1937 and all of those horrors. If people could see that, and all of that could be shown, then maybe someone might really come to repentance.
For us, the most important thing, I repeat, is not to get involved with any of this. We can't stop it. No one will hear our voice; no one even wants to. The television and radio stations are now under the control of the government, and they are bound and determined to toot their own horns about the "Great Victory." One can only imagine how much money has already been poured into all of the disgraceful decorations around the city, and on all the foreign guests, instead of helping those who are truly poor, the orphans, or some old retirees.
And so, may the Lord preserve us from ever taking part with them in their celebrations; under any circumstances. We have our own Christian holy days, we have our own Christian celebrations, we have our own Christian commemorations, such as holy Pascha which we are celebrating now, together with all of its accompanying feasts. These are, precisely, ours. And may God help us to remain within the bosom of the True Church till our last breaths leave us. Amen.
(Translated by Hegumen Andrew (Maklakov))
(C) Vertograd, 2004--2005. http://www.vertograd.blogspot.com/
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