THE ORTHODOX WORD
A Bimonthly Periodical OF THE BROTHERHOOD OF SAINT HERMAN OF ALASKA
Established with the blessing of His Eminence the late John (Maximovitch), Archbishop of Western America and San Francisco, Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia PLATINA, CALIFORNIA 96076
1973, Vol. 9, no. 6 (53)
November - December
CONTENTS
211 Lord, What Shall I Do? (From the words of St. Herman of Alaska)
217 Orthodoxy in Action by Archbishop John Maximovitch
220 The St. Herman Pilgrimage to Holy Trinity Monastery
223 The Typicon of the Orthodox Church's Divine Services
224 The Scroll: Six Chapters on Mental Prayer (Chapter Five) by Elder Paisius Velichkovsky
230 The Life and Ascetic Labor of Elder Paisius Velichkovsky Part Six: Further Labors in the Monastery of Dragomirna
238 Orthodox Bibliography
246 The Call of St. Herman
247 The Orthodox Word 1973 Index
COVER: The Synod Icon of St. Herman of Alaska, at the Cathedral of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia in New York City; painted by Hegoumen Alypy of Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, New York.
MICROFILM copies of all back issues and of individual articles are available from Xerox University Micronims, 300 N. Zeeb Rd., Ann Arbor, MI, 48106
Copyright 1973 by The Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood.
Published bimonthly by The Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood.
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...Lord, What Shall I Do?
The Prophet Elijah said, I have been very jealous for the Lord of Hosts; for the children of Israel have forsaken Thy covenant, thrown down Thine altars, and slain Thy prophets with the sword.
III Kings 19:10
AND WHAT can one say of today?
1. The whole of Russia is inundated with blood, and the same fate awaits America!
2. The Orthodox Russian people, dispersed by God Himself over the whole world in order to testify of the One True Faith – are paralyzed before the advance of world-wide evil and remain inactive.
3. The Orthodox hierarchs of the other Churches turn coldly away from the cries for help which come from crucified Russia and occupy themselves with deeds which are clearly destructive of Holy Orthodoxy!
4. The Soviet hierarchs loudly deny before the whole world the persecution against the faithful in Russia, cooperating with the persecutors, who were anathematized by the last lawful Patriarch, Tikhon.
5. Every kind of sectarian, Uniate, and all those who distort the Divinely-revealed teaching of the Orthodox Church greatly prosper in their intensified propaganda both here and in Russia!
6. Converts to Holy Orthodoxy, whose hearts God Himself touches, after becoming full members of the Church, so often reject the suffering of heart that comes with growth in true Orthodoxy and seek a path that can be harmonized with their self-love; and few of them prosper or even survive spiritually.
And I sit away the precious time, the immense opportunities, and the freedom given to me by God and, seeing all this, I do not even shed tears!
SO THE APOSTLE PAUL asked (Acts 22:10), when the Lord in miraculous fashion called him to serve in His field. And the Lord showed him!
The Lord calls everyone to labor in His grace-filled field, which has long since become yellow unto harvest. In the life of every man, sooner or later, there is a single critically important moment, when the Lord clearly calls his soul and waits for the soul, wounded by His love, once and forever, by its own will, to give itself up entirely to Christ.
This decision, as to whether you are with Christ or have renounced Him, is the most important decision in the life of every man. This decision constitutes the basic attitude in one's spiritual life and is called determination or commitment.
Having made the step of determination, which has in itself an enormous power and inspiration, a spiritual energy, a man dies to the world which lies in evil and becomes Christ's. By this also there is opened to him a new real life, a life filled with unutterable joy, with a spiritual enjoyment unknown to the world, for the sake of which it is worth while to sell everything, to give everything away, and of which there will be no end, for this is the life in Christ and for Christ!
Orthodox Christian! Now you are called upon to make this step of determination! Do it before it is too late!
The soil of this continent of America on which we now find ourselves has been sanctified by the footsteps and deeds of its first enlightener, the Apostle of America who came from Holy Russia, the meek missionary Herman, Wonderworker of Alaska.
Here he labored planting and nourishing the first sprouts of Holy Orthodoxy. Here, having attained sanctity in the Lord, he died a blessed death in the fragrance of his wonderworking relics. Here also he is the Guardian Angel of the Orthodox Christians who dwell on this continent. To him first of all is it fitting to direct our fervent appeal of prayer. Leading his life as a conscious Orthodox Christian and seeing clearly through the spirit of his times (that is, the reforms of Peter and the French Revolution, which are the fundamental causes of our own disordered times), he taught, and to this day he teaches how to become and how to be an active Orthodox Christian, while at the same time being under the cannon-fire of the spirit of the time of apostasy.
His zeal according to God is extended to us also, his distant followers, and it can cover us with his inspired protection, if we will take to ourselves his own words, as the Lord's answer to our sincere and repentant entreaty: Lord, what shall I do?
ARISE AND GO! (Acts 22:10)
Such was the answer the Lord gave to the Apostle Paul! So also should you arise from your traitorous sleep of sloth and stony insensibility, and with your whole soul strive to make your own the following basic attitudes, in the words of St. Herman himself:
I. MAKE THE STEP OF DETERMINATION!
"What do you love most and best of all, and what would you desire for your happiness? Is it not true that from all your various desires one may draw one conclusion? Each one of us desires that which he considers to be best and most worthy of love. And what could be better, higher above everything, more worthy of love, more surpassing all else than God Himself, Jesus Christ, Who created the heavens and adorned everything, gave life to all, supports all, nourishes all, loves all, Who is Love itself – more splendid than all mankind!
"Should we not above everything else love God, more than everything else desire Him and seek Him? I, a sinner, for more than forty years have been learning how to love God, and I cannot say that I love Him completely! How should we love God? If we love someone, we constantly remember him, strive to please him day and night. Our heart and mind are occupied by the object of our love. Do you love God in this way? Do you turn to Him often? Do you remember Him always? Do you always pray to Him and do His will, His holy commandments?
"For our good, for our happiness, let us at least make ourselves a vow: that from this day, from this hour, from this minute, we shall strive to love God above all and do His commandments!"
II. HAVE A CONSCIOUS FAITH!
"A true Christian is made by faith and love toward Christ. Our sins do not in the least hinder a Christian, according to the word of the Saviour Himself. He deigned to say: I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance; joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine righteous persons. Likewise, concerning the harlot who touched His feet, He deigned to say to the Pharisee Simon that to one who has much love a great debt is forgiven, but from one who has no love even a small debt will be exacted. By these reflections a Christian should lead himself into hope and joy and should pay no heed whatever to an inflicted despair. Here there is needed the shield of faith." (Which in our time is (1) knowledge of and love for the Orthodox Divine services, tradition, history, and (2) a fuller understanding of the spiritual side of contemporary heresies and sects, ecumenism, the charismatic movement, communism, and of what is happening now in the Soviet Union and in the whole world. This is the shield of faith.)
III. WAGE CEASELESS WARFARE!
"We are not tossed about on the waves of the sea, but we suffer and wander about in the midst of a deceptive and much-disturbed world. Although we do not have the grace which the Holy Apostles had, nevertheless our warfare is against the same fleshless powers and authorities, against the powers of the darkness of this world, against the spirits of wickedness under heaven, which strive to intercept all the pilgrims and travellers to the homeland and keep them from entering therein. According to the Holy Apostle Peter, our adversary the devil, as a roaring lion walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.
"Sin, for one who loves God, is nothing but an arrow from the enemy in battle."
IV. HAVE ALWAYS BEFORE YOU THE PURPOSE OF LIFE!
"The true Christian is a warrior making his way through the regiments of the invisible enemy to his heavenly homeland."
"The vain desires of this world remove a man from his heavenly homeland. Love for them and habit clothe our soul in a hideous garment. This is called by the Apostle the outward man. We, pilgrims in the journey of this earthly life, calling on God for help, must put off that hideousness and be clothed in new desires, a new love of the future age [the acquisition of the Holy Spirit], and through this to know whether we are near or far from the heavenly homeland.1 But it is not possible to do this quickly; one must follow the example of sick people, who, desiring dear health, do not cease to seek out means for healing themselves."
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1 St. John of Kronstadt advised for this reason that one should keep a spiritual diary; this helped him very much in acquiring a habit for spiritual life.
V. BE A MISSIONARY OF TRUE ORTHODOXY!
"Oh, how enraptured I was in spirit! Finding myself between fair weather and foul, between joy and tedium, between sufficiency and insufficiency, satiety and hunger, warmth and coldness, in all my sorrows I find something that cheers me, when I hear conversations between the brethren about their preaching, and about their dividing up various regions among themselves for this purpose."
Glory to the decrees of merciful God! By His unutterable Providence He has shown me now something new, which I had never seen while living in Kodiak for a long time. Just now after Pascha a young woman who did not know me and had never seen me, came to me and heard about the Incarnation of the Son of God and concerning eternal life, and she became so inflamed with love for Jesus Christ that she does not in the least wish to leave me. Looking at this with great astonishment, I remember the words of the Saviour, Thou hast bid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Seeing her, there are already other volunteers; and there are also many young men."
"But those who have departed from the true Orthodox Church are not on the right path!"
These are the authentic words of a Saint! With fervent prayer they can inspire your soul on the path of confession and missionary labor. which is what our much-suffering Holy Russia expects from the sons and daughters of the Orthodox Church. May God be our help! Arise and go! saith the Lord (Acts 22:10).
Enter upon the right path! Be also a disciple of St. Herman.
ORTHODOXY IN ACTION.
Holy Hierarch John Maximovitch in 1934
IN THE LIFE of every man faith inevitably precedes and conditions every activity, every manifestation of human life. Without faith in the importance and necessity of any task, nothing is done by man. But how often we do not take account of the correctness of our faith in the task which we have undertaken. From this come the lack of clarity, the indefiniteness and weakness that are to be felt in all spheres of life among us Orthodox Christians. In our time among Orthodox Christians, who are called to strive towards the Kingdom of God which is not of this world, this carelessness with regard to the foundations of faith in our everyday activity is a disaster, and a disaster that is handed down to the generations that follow. This is why Orthodoxy in action is disappearing from our midst.
So that the Orthodox Russian people might pay heed to the necessity of a conscious attitude toward faith in our life, a great Saint of our Diaspora, Archbishop John of blessed memory, when he was in Europe founded in 1959 a Society called "Orthodox Action," whose purpose is explained below in his sermon at the opening of this Society. This sermon, together with his concluding sermon, has an immense significance for a clear understanding of the activity of Orthodox Christians in our time. For those whose Orthodoxy is a conscious one, this sermon resounds like an appeal spoken with Apostolic power, like an alarm bell calling to Holy Orthodoxy not in words, but in action.
Faith without works is dead.
James 2:26
THE SERMON OF ARCHBISHOP JOHN MAXIMOVITCH AT THE OPENING OF THE SOCIETY "ORTHODOX ACTION"
ORTHODOX ACTION has as its purpose to cooperate in the bringing of Orthodox principles into life. Public life at the present time proceeds not in Christian paths. Christianity, expressed in pure form in Orthodoxy, gives both everything necessary for the salvation of man's soul, and guiding principles for the solution of all questions of public life.
Departing from Orthodox paths, public life is inevitably in an abnormal, diseased condition. Almost everyone feels a decline in the condition of the whole world. Everywhere there are uncertainty, suspicion, and powerlessness. Men speak of peace, but there is no peace and everyone prepares for war. They strive to establish prosperity in life for everyone, but life becomes ever more tense and difficult. They seek new ways of life, and they will never find them, because they do not exist.
Christianity reveals the meaning of life to all peoples and for all times, and therefore only in it can one find answers to all the manifestations and questions of life.
This eternal truth concerning life is kept by the Church of Christ, and men must learn from Her, must be able to understand Her Wisdom, and only on this path will mankind find repose and healing.
Public life has departed from these paths. It seeks healing in scientific discoveries or by cultivating strength and health. But never have there been so many ill in soul as now, because by its nature the soul of man, ever the same, seeks another life the life of the Church, the life of Grace; while public life does everything precisely so as not to give to the soul of man what it needs.
Even those who call themselves Orthodox Christians heed little the voice of the Church, understand it poorly, and are almost totally unable to find guidance for the searching out of the path of a Christian public and governmental life.
The general condition is so alarming that we hear the voices of contemporary thinkers saying that mankind, being torn away from the eternal source of life, becomes less and less adequate and its existence becomes more and more purposeless, and that the end of the world draws near. We do not know the times and days, but whether they are near or not, there always stands before humanity the same meaning and path of life, both private and public. If for the salvation of the world there is required the rebirth of Orthodox Russia, then for the rebirth of the latter there is necessary the formation of an Orthodox public life which evaluates all questions and manifestations of life and decides them from the point of view of the Orthodox world-view.
The purpose of ORTHODOX ACTION is to strive towards this. It should call to the spiritual and moral rebirth of society. It should disseminate the truths of Orthodoxy not as an abstract dogma, but as adapted to the given circumstances, and show how to resolve all the questions of personal, public and governmental life on the basis of Orthodox principles.
The Church awaits such an Orthodox public activity.
In the Orthodox understanding the Church is composed not only of the hierarchy and clergy, but also of the whole believing Orthodox people. Thus, their coming together in unity, partaking of Christ in the Holy Mysteries, is the Church, the Body of Christ.
The hierarchs and clergy are the leaders of the Church's life, but laymen also must take an active part in it and have a responsibility for the life of the Church.
The history of the Church tells us how much laymen served the Church in the epoch of the Arian distortion of Orthodoxy, and during the time of Iconoclasm, and how in the southwest of Russia the Orthodox brotherhoods stood up for Orthodoxy against heterodox compulsion and influence. The aim which lies before ORTHODOX ACTION is not an easy one.
A current foreign to the Church's spirit has taken hold of Russian society. In it there are anti-Church tendencies of an atheist character, but most frequently of all there are manifestations of non-churchliness, religious indifference, and sometimes stony insensibility. Finally, many do not hear the word of God and therefore do not know it, and they live in an environment which is hostile or profoundly foreign to Orthodoxy without in the least knowing it.
Such is the unconsoling situation and environment in which one must act. The Church calls all participants in ORTHODOX ACTION to be co-laborers with Christ. Beginning such a work, they must clearly understand and remember that for the rebirth of Orthodox Russia there must be the creation of an Orthodox public life.
AT THE CONCLUSION OF THE MEETING ARCHBISHOP JOHN GAVE THE FOLLOWING SERMON:
We have spent two days, being one in soul, striving to serve for the good of the Church and at the same time of our homeland. There has been a renewal in attitudes, thoughts, and words, and now for many the question arises: what to do further? The answer to this is given by the life of the Apostle Bartholomew and the Apostle Titus of the Seventy, whose memory we celebrate today (August 25). The grace of God having touched their souls, they did not begin to await instructions and officially-approved plans of activity: rather, they preserved in their hearts what they had come to know, and their deeds and life issued forth from and were guided by the grace which they had received from the Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostles, and they strove to inform concerning it and to transmit it to other men.
One must preserve in the heart the attitude in which we have lived for these two days, live by it and by the thoughts which arise within this attitude, transmitting them to everyone with whom we have contact.
We live in a time which is critical for the Orthodox Church. In many respects the Church has come near to the life of the Church in the first centuries of Christianity. In our homeland there are the same and even crueler persecutions, and here the Russian Church is just as alone as the Christians were alone then in the pagan world. But let not our loneliness oppress anyone: each one must acknowledge himself to be a son of the great Russian Homeland, of the great, even if fallen, Russian people. This awareness should not be lost on a foreign soil, nor even in the slightest weakened.
But the chief point in our devotion to great ideas is not to consider ourselves great, but to conduct our life and work humbly, remembering that from ourselves we offer primarily everything sinful, and the best that we can offer is born in repentance and humility.
How great is the power of such humble service we see in the life of the holy Metropolitan Peter of Moscow. After the Tatar invasion he began a new life for Christian Russia. Everywhere there were traces of the Tatar devastation, and St. Peter humbly built a purely Russian work upon the foundation laid down by the holy Prince Vladimir.
May the example of this service be a banner for all workers of ORTHODOX ACTION. May the Lord bless its activity on this path, and may the Most Holy Mother of God and the Saints who have shone forth on the Russian Land help it, together with all the Saints of God.
St. Herman Youth Pilgrimage
TO HOLY TRINITY MONASTERY, JORDANVILLE, N.Y.
DECEMBER, 1973
IN THE SNOW-BOUND golden-domed Holy Trinity Monastery the Orthodox youth, as once the "St. Vladimir Youth" of the 1950's, gathered now for a St. Herman Pilgrimage with the aim of worthily venerating St. Herman and, through preparation for and reception of the Holy Mysteries of Christ, becoming spiritually renewed. The desire of the longtime spiritual director of Orthodox youth, Archbishop Averky, Abbot of the Monastery, was fulfilled: young people arrived in great numbers despite a snowstorm and icy roads, and together with the young clergy, graduates of Holy Trinity Seminary, made up a youthful force of some 200 souls – and there truly was a triumph of Orthodoxy!
The Pilgrimage began on Sunday, December 10/23, when Bishop Laurus of Manhattan served the Divine Liturgy, at which Archbishop Averky gave a sermon; and in the evening in the Seminary hall Archbishop Averky introduced a graduate of the Seminary, now a monk in the St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, who gave a talk which began thus:
REJOICE ALWAYS IN THE LORD!
The Orthodox soul should always be filled with joy in the Lord, for our God is the God of the living, Who has promised to be with two or three gathered together in His name. And here for the sake of his faithful slave, St. Herman, the Orthodox youth has gathered in such great numbers in the Monastery of the heavenly abbot St. Job of Pochaev, and both of these Saints are invisibly present. [Here everyone rose and sang the magnifications to the Saints as a prayerful greeting to them.] Thus we have gathered in the assembly of our Lord, His Most Holy Mother, the Angels and Saints, whose many holy relics are treasured in this sacred Monastery, who hear us and are ready to help us, provided that we have come here as weak and humble pilgrims to draw strength from this Divine spring and not as self-righteous modern men making a "retreat" from the reality of our sinful selves into a high-minded, abstract "spirituality." Holy places like this can change lives. Contact with them can instil sobriety, give peace of mind, reveal the Orthodox world-view, and thus show the meaning of life. [Here the speaker gave as an example how his own life was changed in this Monastery, then how he made a step of determination and was inspired by St. Herman, through whose prayers, together with those of the holy Hierarch John Maximovitch, the St. Herman Missionary Brotherhood was founded.] And there are many such holy monasteries still in the free world and America where a sincere pilgrim can be spiritually reborn.
In our much-suffering Russia, however, such holy places not only do not freely exist, but the mere realization of the need for them is ruthlessly wiped out, thus increasing the tragic and painful suffering of Russia today which nothing earthly can assuage. Typical of this suffering Russia is the moving phenomenon of Sergei Kourdakov [see page 238. After the story of this Russian youth was briefly related, all the assembly solemnly sang "Memory Eternal" for the repose of the soul of God's slave Sergei.]
But here in free America are we, the Orthodox youth, training ourselves to draw from the spring of undiluted Orthodoxy? Against us the spirit of this world acts powerfully on all sides, and we do not oppose it. We do not live as conscious Orthodox Christians, drawing strength to combat evil from the grace-filled church life and Divine services. Young people are greatly disturbed; they are weak and they are not given systematic help in a way they can understand. Why? Because it has become accepted among us to feed the body and educate the mind, but not to educate the soul and form the heart in the Patristic understanding of Orthodoxy. We do not know the laws of spiritual life, and we do not even suspect their existence and their indispensability. If these things are given, it is something haphazard, lost amidst the disguised worldliness which everywhere submerges a true Orthodox understanding and activity. Hence we are spiritually illiterate, crude, passive, extinguished before we know it. We are withering away and becoming those dead ones of whom the Saviour said: Let the dead bury their dead. And this is at a time when we are given freedom and the opportunity to act. For we, although unworthy, have been given the gift of Truth itself-Holy Orthodoxy! What shall we do?
From the lips of St. Herman himself can be drawn a practical answer which will serve as the foundation for a good start – to begin within oneself [see page 211] by making a resolve to grow consciously in the life of the Church. A guide for this growth is the Orthodox Calendar of feasts, fasts, daily readings of Scripture, the daily Saints who should be fervently invoked, the wondrous yet uncanonized righteous ones for whose repose one should pray and who wait for zealous living Orthodox souls to work God's miracles through them. Here every pilgrim was presented a St. Herman Calendar for 1974 as a help to living a Christian life not in words but in action.
The next day, after the Divine Liturgy served by Hieromonk Ioannikios and a sermon delivered by Father George Larin, both graduates of the Seminary, a new set of young future pastors (present seminarians) spoke on the question: "How does our Orthodoxy manifest itself?" Christopher Byrchell talked on the difficulties that a convert faces, Vladimir Dartilevich on surviving as an Orthodox Christian in today's secular world, Vladimir Derugin on fasting, and Riasophore Monk Alexy on the spiritual needs of the youth today. All spoke to the point, animatedly and very inspiringly, and all the pilgrims were extremely uplifted. By this time the bells began to ring announcing the arrival of Metropolitan Philaret, and all went to greet him in the church, returning to the Seminary hall for his talk on the Mysteries of Repentance and Holy Communion as a preparation for the partaking of the Holy Mysteries the next day.
The Vigil service followed. "The Monastery All-night Vigil!" wrote one pilgrim. "One has to attend such a service himself in order to imagine it!" The seminarians and young pilgrims sang, with two choirs, the full traditional service according to the Typicon, giving fitting glory to God's Saint.
On St. Herman's feast day itself, December 12/25, Metropolitan Philaret served the Divine Liturgy together with Bishop Laurus and the monastic and young clergy in great multitude, during which a recent graduate of the Seminary, Andrei Papkov, was ordained deacon. All the pilgrims received Holy Communion. Metropolitan Philaret in his sermon called the youth to become committed, idealistic clergy, for which the Church has a crying need. During the trapeza there was read for the first time the newly-discovered account of St. Herman's desert-dwelling childhood, after which all gathered again in the Seminary hall, where Bishop Laurus lovingly bade farewell and blessed every pilgrim with an icon of St. Herman. The pilgrims on departing could be heard to say: "How exceptional it all was really a moving experience for the soul!" "Yes," wrote one pilgrim, "truly the soul was moved and was enkindled with the spark of Divine grace."
The Pilgrimage above all vividly demonstrated what a great thirst the young people have for genuine Orthodoxy and how well they are capable of distinguishing it from the pseudo-Orthodoxy that is so prevalent today, and of responding enthusiastically to it. May the seed sown on such fertile and eager ground bear abundant fruit for the harvest of our Lord Jesus Christ!
The TYPICON of the Orthodox Church's Divine Services
INSPIRATION OF TRUE ORTHODOX PIETY
Standing in the Temple of Thy glory, we think we are standing in heaven.
VERSE OF MATINS
AT WHAT SHALL WE MARVEL the most, O Orthodox Christians, when we stand in our Orthodox temples and worship God in the way He Himself has instructed us to worship Him? – At the astounding beauty and glory of the Divine services which overwhelmed the emissaries of the holy Russian Prince Vladimir a thousand years ago, so that they did not know whether they were on earth or in heaven? At the astonishing variety and complexity of the services, which can be compared only to the abundance and diversity of nature itself, being like it a reflection of the abundance of the Divine Creator? Or at the wondrous order that prevails in the midst of all this variety, and which makes of Orthodox worship a harmonious whole capable of raising the soul into single-minded devotion to God?
How unfortunate it is, then, that so few Orthodox Christians enter fully into the meaning and spirit of the Divine services which, according to the idea of the Holy Fathers who created them under Divine inspiration, are supposed to be a daily source of inspiration for believers, preserving and fanning into a great flame of love that spark which brought them to the saving Orthodox Faith. How few know and love the Typicon which sets forth the principles of the order of the Divine services and which, if it is understood properly, is capable of helping to put our own hearts in order, of orienting them toward the Sunrise from on High Who is the object of the Church's worship!
And how doubly unfortunate it is that there are those who presume to call themselves Orthodox and yet, looking upon the sad state of Orthodox worship in many places today, find the fault for this to lie, not in the lukewarm believers who do not wish to live by the ideal of the Typicon, but rather in the Typicon itself, which must, according to them, be "revised" and brought "up-to-date." One of the most clever of these "revisionists," Father Alexander Schmemann, has recently written "A Letter to my Bishop,"1 Metropolitan Ireney of the American Metropolia, complaining that the latter wishes to return the Metropolia to the standard of the "pre-revolutionary Russian Church," to "the standard service books... of the Russian Orthodox Church." In one respect one can sympathize with Fr. Schmemann's objection: for it is evident that his bishop does not have in mind any true return to fervent and meaningful participation in Divine services, but only a very minimal preservation of the general order of services in the Slavonic service books, as an answer to the disorderly innovationism which is now apparently widely practiced in the Metropolia. Fr. Schmemann believes that the situation in the Metropolia is too desperate to be saved by a return to outward order. He finds that the Metropolia's "financial bankruptcy only reveals and reflects its spiritual state a state of apathy and demoralization,... of abysmal ignorance of the very foundations of our faith," and that "our Church is sick – liturgically and spiritually" – a shocking statement which certainly cannot be made concerning the Church of Christ, but which may indeed be applicable to an ecclesiastical body such as the Metropolia which for long has been travelling a path far from true Orthodoxy.
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1 Printed in St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly, 1973, no. 3, pp. 221-238.
The plea of Metropolitan Ireney is to salvage at least some parts of the liturgical practice of the Russian Church: a few verses when the Typicon calls for a whole psalm, one canon at Sunday Matins instead of the three or four appointed, etc. To this Fr. Schmemann correctly replies that this is not the standard of the Typicon and that, in any case, the Metropolia's people do not find even this minimum meaningful. Therefore, he believes, the Typicon must be revised in the light of our knowledge of its historical development, of other traditions, and the like. In a word, the services must be made somehow palatable to spiritually bankrupt people! Fr. Schmemann takes a bad situation and makes it worse, advocating the establishment of a new typicon, a lower standard-which the next generation of the Metropolia will undoubtedly likewise find "unmeaningful" and too demanding!
Enough has been said for us to learn a lesson from the self-admitted spiritual bankruptcy of the Metropolia. It was worldliness, indifference, and abysmal ignorance that produced the Metropolia's bankruptcy; and we who would be Orthodox zealots, whether in the Russian Church Outside of Russia or in her sister zealot Churches, must realize that these same attitudes can cause us also to become lukewarm in our faith, or to lose the grace of God entirely.
Let us understand clearly, then, to begin with, that neither the people of the Metropolia nor its would-be reformer, Fr. Schmemann, understand at all what the Typicon of the Church's Divine services is and what is its function. A thorough historical investigation of the Church's Typicon will not at all lead us to become "revisionists" of it, but on the contrary, will only fill us with wonder at its coherence, profundity, and meaningfulness. Indeed, one of the chief works of scholarship on the Typicon, that of Professor Skaballanovich,1 which Fr. Schmemann himself cites as extremely valuable, comes to exactly these conclusions, and his work only convinces one of the great wisdom of the Holy Fathers who compiled the Typicon. The mistake of the people of the Metropolia lies in its ignorance of and indifference to the Church's inspiring Typicon; the mistake of Fr. Alexander Schmemann lies in his looking at the Typicon in a purely legalistic and academic manner, as though it were merely a system of arbitrary rules and prescriptions which must be blindly obeyed or cleverly avoided, rather in the spirit of a contemporary Code of Motor Vehicles.
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1 Michael Skaballanovich, Commentary on the Typicon (in Russian), Kiev, 1913, 2 vol.
Such is not the case at all! But in order to see the significance of the Typicon one must know what it is. The Typicon is, literally, a book of rubrics for the conduct of the Divine services and the harmonious joining of the different cycles which make up the Church's life: the daily cycle, the eight-week cycle of the Eight Tones, the fixed cycle of Feasts and Saints' days, the movable cycles of Great Lent and Pascha; but in its significance the Typicon is much more than this. The Typicon is, as its title might be translated, a "book of examples," and its intent is actually, as Professor Skaballanovich has well noted, "to sketch the high ideal of the Divine services, an ideal which by its beauty might evoke a constant involuntary striving to bring it into realization, something that is perhaps not always possible in full measure, as is the case also in the realization of every ideal, the following of every exalted example. In essence such is the nature of the whole law of Christ, which is unrealizable perfectly in all its heavenly exaltation, but which by its Divine grandeur inspires an irresistible attraction on the part of mankind to bring it into realization, and which thereby gives life to the world" (Commentary on the Typicon, vol. 2, p. 2).
The full title of this important book is: "The Typicon, or the Depiction of the Ecclesiastical Rite of the Holy Lavra of our Holy and God-bearing Father Sabbas in Jerusalem. The same rite is followed also in the other venerable monasteries in Jerusalem, and similarly in the other holy churches of God." The Typicon, that is to say, is the standard of the services of the Monastery of St. Sabbas in Jerusalem, which was subsequently taken as the standard of the services in other monasteries, and then in the whole Orthodox Church. It is precisely the monastic services which are taken as the standard of the Church's life of worship, because monasticism itself most clearly expresses the ideal toward which the whole believing Church strives. The condition of monasticism at any given time is ordinarily one of the best indicators of the spiritual condition of the whole Church, or of any Local Church; and similarly, the degree to which the local parishes in the world strive toward the ideal of the monastic services is the best indicator of the condition of the Divine worship which is conducted in them.
The Typicon of the Divine services is an ideal; and therefore let no pastor or believer make the mistake of thinking that he has already done "enough" if in his parish "all the people sing" (which is indeed prescribed by the Typicon, as we shall see), or there are services on the eves of Sundays and feast days. The battle being waged today by the world against the faithful is constant and relentless, and it is of an intensity unparalled in the whole history of the Church. In America it is evident that daily newspapers, radio and television, public schools, supermarkets, fashions-virtually everything that exerts any kind of influence upon the mind or taste is directly or indirectly involved in destroying the Orthodox world view, in making true Orthodoxy seem "fanatical," "out of step with the times," and in persuading Orthodox Christians to give up their high ideal of making Orthodoxy permeate the whole of their life in order to "get along" better in the world and "fit in" with other confessions and world views.
Against this unrelenting attack the Orthodox Christian must wage a constant, conscious battle, or else he simply will not remain Orthodox, and most certainly his children will be lost. The "Orthodox" jurisdictions of America (the Metropolia being actually in better condition than most of the others!) should be a sufficient lesson of what will happen to people who do not wage a constant battle to preserve their Orthodoxy, but rather accept it as a matter of course, assuming that one is somehow automatically Orthodox just because he is called by this name. How different is the judgment of Christ our Saviour! Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men (Matt. 5:13).
The Holy Fathers who compiled the Typicon had precisely in mind this battle to preserve oneself in the grace of a Christian life, and we shall see what an effective weapon for this battle is contained in the Divine services, which, contrary to popular belief, are most practical and applicable in our own situation today.
Starting in 1974 in The Orthodox Word, practical information will be given on the Church's Divine services – on the reading and singing of the Psalms of David and the singing of the traditional Russian chant in English based on the best tradition of Russian Orthodox practice.1 Leading Orthodox hierarchs of our century have called the faithful to return to the true tradition of the Orthodox services according to the Typicon, and we shall quote the inspiring words and examples of such zealots of the Divine services as the New-martyr Archbishop Arsenius of Novgorod, the Blessed Archbishop John Maximovitch, and the present Abbot of Holy Trinity Monastery at Jordanville, New York, Archbishop Averky of Syracuse.
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1 Much work has been done on Greek Orthodox chant in English at Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Boston.
The words of these zealot-hierarchs, and a knowledge of the true tradition of the Divine services, will surely persuade us that we, the last Christians, are far from the normal life of Orthodox piety; how much, therefore, we must struggle in order to get back to that normal life! But how inspiring is the path to it! We shall see that the Divine services are not only a treasure-house of the Church's dogma and spiritual instruction, but even more a school of piety which teaches us not only how to think, but even how to feel about our life and the path of salvation. The full use of this basic source of piety is an essential part of the zealot movement of true Orthodoxy in our own day.
May the knowledge of the ancient tradition of the Divine services awaken Orthodox zealots today ever to strive toward the ideal which the Church's Typicon holds out to them: to stand in God's Temple, in fear and trembling and great joy, and worship Him in the way the Divinely-inspired Fathers have instructed us to do!
The SCROLL
CONTAINING
SIX CHAPTERS ON MENTAL PRAYER By Our Father of Blessed Memory, ELDER PAISIUS VELICHKOVSKY
CHAPTER FIVE
THE CHARACTER AND EFFECT OF THIS SACRED PRAYER OF JESUS
HAVING PLACED as a firm and unwavering foundation of this divine Prayer such a preparation, that is, divine obedience, it is now time to show from the teaching of the Holy Fathers what this sacred Prayer is, and its character and effect. And this is in order that he who desires to be instructed in this spiritual work might see to what a great and unutterable advancement in all virtues it leads the ascetic, and that therefore he must desire with great fervor and divine zeal to cling to the all-holy doing of this mental prayer.
St. John of the Ladder, in his 28th Step, on Prayer, says in the beginning: "Prayer, in its character, is the communion and union of man with God; and in its effect it is the confirmation of peace, reconciliation with God, the mother and again the daughter of tears, the cleansing of sins, a bridge which leads through temptations, a wall against afflictions, the annihilation of battles, an angelic doing, the food of all the fleshless ones, future joy, limitless doing, the source of virtues, the cause of gifts, invisible advancement, food of the soul, enlightenment of the mind, an axe against despair, the proof of hope, the ceasing of sorrow, wealth of monks, the treasury of those who keep silence, the lessening of anger, the mirror of advancement, the manifestation of peace, the uncovering of one's condition, the herald of future things, the sign of glory. Prayer, for one who truly prays, is a judgment seat, and judgment, and the throne of the Lord's judgment, before the future Judgment."
St. Gregory the Sinaite, in his 113th Chapter, says: "Prayer in beginners is like a fire of joy which comes forth from the heart; while in the perfect, it is like an active light giving forth fragrance. Or again: prayer is the preaching of the Apostles, the action of faith, or rather, unmediated faith, the confirmation of things hoped for, active love, Angelic movement, the strength of the fleshless ones, their work and joy, the good tidings of God, the confirmation of the heart, the hope of salvation, the sign of sanctification, the formation of sanctity, the knowledge of God, the manifestation of baptism, the purification of the font, the betrothal of the Holy Spirit, the rejoicing of Jesus, the joy of the soul, the mercy of God, the sign of reconciliation, the seal of Christ, the ray of the mental sun, the morning star of the heart, the confirmation of Christianity, the manifestation of divine reconciliation, the grace of God, the wisdom of God, or rather, the beginning of self-knowledge, a divine manifestation, the work of monks, the dwelling of those who keep silence, or rather the cause of silence, a sign of Angelic dwelling."
And the blessed Macarius the Great says: "The head of every good striving and the pinnacle of all corrections is to persevere in prayer, by which we may ever obtain, through entreaty of God, all the other virtues as well. By prayer those who are worthy partake of the sanctity of God and spiritual activity and the union of the mind with the Lord in unutterable love. He who constantly forces himself to endure in prayer is roused by spiritual love to divine fervor and flaming desire towards God, and he receives, according to his measure, the grace of spiritual, sanctifying perfection" (Homily 40, Ch. 2).
St. Hesychius the Presbyter of Jerusalem says: "Let the guarding of the mind be fittingly and properly called light-bearing and lightning-bearing and light-flashing and fire-bearing. For it surpasses, to speak the truth, all the numberless multitude of bodily virtues. Wherefore this virtue should be called by the most honorable names by reason of the brilliant light which is born of it. By coming to love it sinners, worthless ones, vile and irrational ones, senseless ones and unrighteous ones can become righteous, useful, pure, holy and wise through Christ Jesus. And not only this, but they may also behold divine mysteries and theologize. And having become beholders, they cross over to this most pure and endless light and they touch it with unutterable contacts, and they live and abide with Him. Since they have tasted that the Lord is good (Ps. 33:8), so there is manifestly fulfilled in such chief angels the word of David: Surely the righteous shall confess Thy Name and the upright shall dwell before Thy Face (Ps. 139:14). In truth, these alone truly call upon and confess God, with whom they ever love to converse, loving Him" (Second Century, Chapter 71).
And St. Simeon, Archbishop of Thessalonica, says of this sacred prayer: "This divine Prayer, this invocation of our Saviour: 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me,' is at the same time a prayer, and an entreaty, and a confession of faith, and a giver of the Holy Spirit, and a bestower of divine gifts, and a purification of the heart, and the banishment of demons, and the dwelling of Jesus Christ, and a source of spiritual thoughts and divine reflections, and deliverance from sins, and healing of souls and bodies, and a giver of divine enlightenment, and a source of divine mercy, and a granter of divine revelations and mysteries to the humble, and salvation itself; because it is the bearing of the saving Name of our God. It is the calling upon us of the very Name of Jesus Christ the Son of God" (Chapter 296).
So also do other divine Fathers, writing about this sacred Prayer, by their teaching filled with divine wisdom, declare concerning its action, concerning the unutterable benefit which comes from it, and concerning the advancement through it in the divine gifts of the Holy Spirit.
And who, seeing that this sacred Prayer leads the ascetic to such a heavenly treasury of various virtues, will not be enkindled with divine zeal for the constant doing of the Prayer, so as to keep always in the soul and heart the Allsweet Jesus, remembering in oneself constantly His most dear Name, and thus to be filled with fire for His unutterable love? Only he will not do this who, applying himself to worldly thoughts, has bound himself by the fetters of bodily cares, which lead many astray and take them away from the Kingdom of God which is within us. He only will not be fervent to touch on the mental doing of mental prayer who in very deed and practice has not tasted in the throat of his soul the unutterable divine sweetness of this most profitable doing, and does not know what hidden spiritual profit it has within itself. But those who desire to be joined in love with the Most Sweet Jesus, having spit upon all the beauties of this world, all enjoyments and bodily repose itself, will desire to have nothing else in this life but only to exercise themselves constantly in the paradisaical doing of this Prayer.
The Life and Ascetic Labor of Our Father, Elder Paisius, Archimandrite of the Holy Moldavian Monasteries of Niamets and Sekoul. Part Six
FURTHER LABORS OF BLESSED PAISIUS IN THE MOLDAVIAN MONASTERY OF DRAGOMIRNA
51. THE ELDER'S INSTRUCTION OF THE BRETHREN FROM THE PATRISTIC BOOKS
THUS LABORING day and night with the brethren of the Moldavian tongue, the above-mentioned Macarius and Hilarion the Didascalos and others who knew the Greek language, our Father labored in the translation into the Moldavian and Slavonic languages of the Patristic and theological books; and when all the brethren gathered together from the obediences outside the monastery in wintertime, and the fast of the Nativity of Christ had come, he began to give instruction to the assembled brethren from these translated books, beginning with the first week of the fast and continuing until Lazarus Saturday. Every day except Sundays and feast days, all the brethren gathered in the evening in the refectory, and, the lamps being lighted, our Father came and sat down in his usual place and read either the book of St. Basil the Great on fasting. or St. John of the Ladder or Abba Dorotheus, or St. Theodore the Studite, or St. Simeon the New Theologian, or some other of the God-bearing Fathers. One evening the instruction would be in the Slavonic language, and the next evening in Moldavian; and when there was instruction in one language. then the brethren of the other language would be reading Compline. The Elder, making his instruction, would immediately make a commentary, bringing forth testimony from the Holy Scripture of both the Testaments and the teaching of the God-bearing Fathers, and speaking in this way:
"Brethren and Fathers, it befits us to watch over ourselves with contrite heart, as the divine Fathers say. For St. John of the Ladder says, in the Seventh Step, that whatever kind of great life we might lead, if we do not acquire a heart that is pained, then this life is hypocritical and vain. And St. Gregory the Sinaite says: Pain of heart, and humility, and the labor of obedience according to the strength of each with uprightness of heart give knowledge ot how to perform the work of truth. And again the same Saint says: 'Every doing of body or soul which does not have in it labor of the heart never brings forth any fruit for those who perform it, for the Kingdom of God is taken by force, and those who force themselves take it, saith the Lord. For inasmuch as some have worked or are working for many years without pain, and do not strive with warm fervor of heart to perform labors of repentance, they are empty of purity and are not partakers of the Holy Spirit.' And again: 'For many, perhaps, labor, as they think, but it is in carelessness and slothfulness and weakness, and they have no fruits whatsoever. For proceeding without pain, from despondency they become involved in useless cares and become darkened.' And St. Simeon the New Theologian, in the Greek book, Part 2, Homily 8, says: 'Wherefore I say that those who do not imitate the Passion of Christ by means of repentance and tears, humility, and obedience and patience, and above all by poverty and suffering of evil, reproach and mockery, are also not partakers of His shameful death, nor are they participants of His spiritual resurrection here, nor do they receive the grace of the Holy Spirit. And for the sake of what other works shall we be glorified together with Him? For the divine Paul says: If we suffer with Him, likewise shall we be glorified with Him, but if we are ashamed to begin to imitate His sufferings which He endured for us, and there dwells in us that which does not wish to suffer this, which is the earthly wisdom of the flesh, then it is clear that neither shall we be partakers of His glory. And without repentance and tears, as we have said, there has never been, nor will there ever be, either of these in ourselves or in any others.' And in the same book, Homily 32: 'Nor is it indicated in the Divine Scriptures that there is such a one who can be cleansed from passions without tears and constant compunction; nor that anyone from among men has ever been holy or received the Holy Spirit or beheld God, or known Him dwelling within him, or received Him at all when He has come to dwell in his heart, unless repentance and compunction have preceded this. For it is because of this, according to the measure of one's tears, sorrow, and repentance that the Divine Fire produces compunction.' And again he says: 'See to it, lest you be deprived of having Christ within yourself, and lest you depart from this life with empty hands, and then you will weep and lament.' "
52. PREMONITION CONCERNING THE DESOLATION OF THE COMMON LIFE BY LOVE OF POSSESSIONS.
ALL OF THIS our Father said with tears to the brethren out of the Holy Fathers, exhorting them to force themselves with burning fervor to fulfill the commandments of Christ. For all his teaching, his pain and his concern were established on this foundation, that all in common with their whole heart and soul should keep the commandments of God, lest this time given by God for repentance be spent in negligence and they remain fruitless. At the end of the instruction he would always add also a certain moral instruction concerning the correction of stumblings which had occurred among the brethren; for he greatly feared, more than the other passions, the corruption and fall of the young, and the fierce passions of love of silver, or rather, love of gold, and love of material possessions, the root of all evils, according to the Divine Scripture (I Tim. 6:10), and almost at every one of his instructions he would cite Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11). For he foresaw truly, and was greatly pained over it, that if this fierce passion of love of possessions should enter like a thief into his community, and if it should become beloved by its zealots – then it would immediately destroy the common life from its very foundation; and this, indeed, subsequently occurred. (For openly and brazenly to call things "yours' and "mine," and to have them, and for each to take care for and feed himself – is not this the utter destruction of the common life where all are of one soul?) Wherefore, for a long time, while yet in the monasteries of Dragomirna and Sekoul, forewarning the brethren, he accused them indirectly, and pointing out the path of fulfilling the commandments of Christ, he often exhorted them with tears, saying:
"Brethren, if you will constantly compel yourselves to read the patristic books, and by being instructed by what is in them you will always correct yourselves and enkindle yourselves, in accordance with him who said: My heart grew hot within me, and in my meditation a fire shall flame out (Ps. 38:4), and will force yourselves to pray fervently every day with tears before God and fulfill His holy commandments – then warm fervor and zeal will be given you by Christ God. And let no one say that it is impossible to weep every day; for he who says this says that it is also impossible to repent every day. And such ones turn upside down the very commandment of the Lord, as the divine Simeon the New Theologian says.
"But before all this you must come to the Lord with unhesitatingly firm faith and warm love and, in the words of the Lord, renounce this world completely and all the beautiful and sweet things which are in it, and your own will and understanding, and be poor in spirit and body. And thus by the grace of Christ, holy zeal will be kindled in perfect souls; and with time and growth in this work, there will be given in proportion to the work tears, lamentation, and a certain small hope to comfort the soul, and likewise a hunger and thirst for righteousness, that is, a flaming zeal, so as to be directed in all His commandments, in humility, in patience, in mercy and love toward all, and above all toward the unfortunate or soul, to the sick and suffering and aged: which are the fruits of the Spirit, according to the divine Apostle; and so as to bear the infirmity of one's neighbor and lay down one's life for one's brother and endure the temptations which occur, that is, offences, mockeries, reproaches, bitter wounds, and to forgive each other with the whole soul every offence and wound, and to love one's enemies, to bless those who slander you, and do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who do evil to you: which are the highest commandments of Christ; and besides all this, to endure manfully, with thanksgiving, the various bodily trials that come: infirmity, sickness, wounds, the fierce and bitter temporal suffering for the sake of the eternal salvation of one's soul. And thus you will attain to a perfect manhood, in the measure of the spiritual stature of the fullness of Christ (Eph. 4:13).
"And if you will remain thus forcing yourselves, this community will stand as long as the Lord wills. But if you depart from heeding and reading the Patristic books, you will fall away from the peace and love of Christ, that is, from the fulfilling of Christ's commandments, and there will enter into your midst rebellion, tumult, and disorder, disturbance of soul, wavering and hopelessness, murmuring against and judgment of each other; and because of the increase of these, the love of many will grow cold, or rather that of almost all; and if such will be, this community will soon be dissolved, first in soul, and with time in body also."
53. THE GIFTS OF THE ELDER IN RULING, AND HIS FATHERLY CONCERN FOR THE BRETHREN.
FOREWARNING with tears everyone, little and great, for a long time, as has been said, by these and many similar words, our Father exhorted them, entreating them to keep firmly with all their soul to a life of quiet, peace, and love, according to the commandments of Christ. And such a gift he had, that with his words he could raise up the most dejected one to zeal and comfort the sorrowing one. And if he could not bring peace by words to one who was highly disturbed and sorrowing in soul, then, persuading him, with tears he would exhort him and comfort him, saying that the Lord rejoices over his repentance, and he would encourage him to have firm faith in the mercy of Christ. And another one he would comfort in need by giving abundantly what was needed. But where it was necessary, he would accuse, forbid, entreat, cut off, be longsuffering, and after doing much of this, one who remained unhealed he would send away. Only one who was hardened, self-willed, and corrupt, would he interdict with the threat of God's wrath, as has been briefly stated above; and to such a one he would manifest himself as a kind of severe and angry judge, until he was humbled and repented; and then he would comfort him, chastising and instructing him unto correction with love and tears. And none went away from him unhealed.
Concerning his anger, he himself told one spiritual brother who had asked him privately: "As for the fact that I reproach you with anger – may the Lord grant you also to have such anger. It is needful for me to be against the inclination of each of you, and therefore to show myself before some as having anger, which by the grace of Christ I never have; while before others I must weep, so that by both ways I may benefit you, according to the Apostle, by the right hand and the left; but may I never serve the passion of anger." Similarly, in his moral instruction, giving us a loving boldness toward him, he would often speak thus: "O brethren, I do not wish that anyone fear me as some kind of terrible despot, but rather that you love me as a father, even as I also love you in the Lord as my spiritual children."
The decree of this spiritual shepherd, and the order in his community were such: that every spiritual father inform him of every brother whom he could not himself reconcile, and concerning the reason for his disturbance. The reasons why sorrows occurred, the brethren being human, were these: talking back to each other, reproaches and affronts, and similar things. And when any brother would enter the Elder's cell in sorrow, our Father would understand what was wrong and, quickly giving him a blessing and forestalling him, would himself begin to talk to him without stopping, not allowing the brother to speak; and by his most sweet and consoling words he would lead his mind far away out of his sorrow. While talking he would judge concerning that brother's understanding and obedience by observing his face and manner. To those with much understanding he would usually cite some exalted saying, and likewise its interpretation by the God-bearing Fathers; and to this he would add something yet higher and would so astonish and comfort him in soul that he 'would consider all this world, its glory, joy, and sorrow, as a vile thing and a dream, because of his spiritual joy.
But to a simpler brother he would cite some wondrous words either from the crafts or from his holy obedience, and would exalt his mind out of its sorrow into these words, and again console him to such an extent that he would reproach himself and the sorrow for which he had come, because of the spiritual jov of the Elder's words; likewise, the brother would penetrate within himself, and seeing his soul filled with spiritual peace and joy, and remembering henceforth nothing of the previous disturbance and sorrow, which would have disappeared as smoke before the wind, he would take a blessing and depart rejoicing, giving thanks to God.
O the divine wisdom and love of this blessed Father! He would summon a brother not in order to reproach or upbraid him or forbid him, but to console him and to give him peace in heart and soul. And how can I express his sweet speech? Every day we all were prepared to stand before him without fail, that we might take sweet enjoyment of beholding his radiant face and his sweet words. Wherefore also all the brethren, little and great, were in profound peace and spiritual love and joy. And never was his door closed before the ninth hour; some came for bodily needs, and others for needs of the soul. With some he would weep and would comfort them, while with others he would rejoice as if he had never had any kind of sorrow. The Elder's state of soul was like that of an innocent boy, and in truth he was a dispassionate and holy man. For I never saw him grieving over anything material, even if it should happen that something great should be lost. He only grieved when he saw a brother transgressing in something the commandment of God, especially if it were voluntarily; and he would lay down his own life for a single least commandment of the Lord, and he would say: "Let everything we have be destroyed, let our whole work perish also; only let us keep God's commandments and, for their sake, our souls."
Often our Father would tell us this also: "When I see my spiritual children laboring and forcing themselves to keep God's commandments, and cutting off their own will, and not believing their own understanding, and walking in the fear of God, and going through holy obedience with humility, I have such unutterable joy in my soul that I should desire to have no greater joy in the Kingdom of Heaven. But if I see certain ones being negligent of God's commandments and holding to their own will, and believing their own understanding, and walking without the fear of God, and disdaining holy obedience, possessed by laziness out of self-will and pleasing oneself, and murmuring – then such sorrow embraces my soul as could be no greater even in hell, until I see them truly repenting."
54. SPIRITUAL ADVANCEMENT OF THE BRETHREN.
BOTH FROM THE instruction of their Father, and from reading the writings of the God-bearing Fathers, the brethren began to be kindled and to advance in the love of God, and in the patience of Jesus Christ, even if not all to the same degree, for this is not possible. But some of them, who were the largest number, prospered in great love of God and neighbor, and mortified to the end their own will and understanding by means of obedience and humility, considering them to be dust and dirt to them, and themselves to be the footstool of all the brethren, and even more, the most wretched of all creatures. Ceaselessly did they reproach themselves before God in the secret place of their heart, and they endured insults, dishonor, reproaches and affronts and every kind of temptation with great joy and mighty thanksgiving to God; and they ever desired these things, reckoning them to be the grace of God.
Others, again not a small number, after falling would get up, that is, after sinning would immediately repent, and would endure these reproaches, insults, temptations, even if with difficulty and bitterness, but would force themselves with all their soul to overtake the first ones and would for this ceaselessly pray to God fervently and with tears.
Yet others, not many, were weak and infirm of soul, like children, being unable as yet to take solid food, that is, to endure reproaches and insults, needing still for their upbringing the milk of mercy, love of mankind and condescension to their infirmities, until they should come into the spiritual stature of patience. Solely by a good will and constant self-reproach, filling up their lack many times over and forcing themselves beyond their strength to endure reproaches and insults and leave off their own will, they poured out great labor and sweat for this like blood before God, and entreated God ceaselessly that He might help them. Such ones, even if they are infirm, nevertheless are considered before God to be those who take the Kingdom of Heaven by violence.
And so everyone, even if not all to the same degree, as was said, forced themselves to keep the commandments of Christ our God, and the teachings of the God-bearing Fathers. For, says St. Isaac, the secret doing of the commandments heals the strength of the soul, and this doing is not simple and not just as it might happen; for it is written that without the shedding of blood there is no remission.
The blessed Elder rejoiced, seeing his spiritual children laboring so fervently, and he gave thanks to God and glorified Him with tears. And he entreated Him to strengthen them also for greater labor by His grace, and ceaselessly instructing us, he raised us up to greater fervor, saying: "Children, do not grow despondent in trading. For now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation, says the Apostle" (II Cor. 6:2). And one could see at that time in the monastery of Dragomirna the monastic life as a new miracle, or a God-planted earthly paradise. For men were full of life, and for the sake of the love of God had cut off their own will and with all their will and all their feeling were dead to this world, that is, they were as if blind, deaf and dumb. But how can I express precisely what they did in secret, even in part? – their contrition of heart, I say, and profound humility, their fear of God and reverence, their heedfulness and silence of thoughts, and their prayer ever moving in the heart, burning with unutterable love for Christ God and their neighbor; for many of them, not only alone in their cell, but also in church and together with others on obedience, and in spiritual converse, ceaselessly shed tears, which declare the fruit of the Spirit, which is their faith, meekness, and heartfelt love toward the Lord. Wherefore St. Isaac beautifully says: "Beloved of the Lord is the assembly of the humble, which is as the assembly of the Seraphim."
But in the midst of this our peaceful dwelling in the monastery of Dragomirna, there came a sorrow to our blessed Elder and the whole community: for his first friend, one with him in soul, Bessarion, by God's allowance, departed unto the Lord; and our Father and the whole community wept bitterly ever him. And the Elder ordained that his memory be kept every year, that is, that the memorial service be celebrated with everyone present, and a bright table be laid out for the whole community, which was done even until the death of the Elder.
Such was that reverent community, filled with sanctity, in the monastery of Dragomirna, in which our Father, by many labors and tears, restored the ancient monastic order, in oneness of soul. Having brought together many souls in oneness of soul and mind, by God's Providence, and having bound them together with the love of God and the humility of Christ, he offered himself first of all as an example to all in everything, and he established the common life with everything as in the common life of the Holy Fathers. And we forced ourselves, as much as we could in our infirmity, to follow and imitate them and keep their order and rules in this poor time, so worthy of tears and lamentation.
Next issue: VII. The Letters of Elder Paisius from Dragomirna, on the Monastic Life.
Orthodox Bibliography
THE PERSECUTOR, by Sergei Kourdakov. Fleming H. Revell Company, Old Tappan, New Jersey (07675), 1973. 254 pp. $5.95.
SERGEI KOURDAKOV.
AT THE VERY TIME when the brave voice of Alexander Solzhenitsyn is resounding in the Free World with its loud accusation of Soviet tyranny and inhumanity, another representative of the conscience of the enslaved Russian people has been revealed in the midst of the Free World itself. In personal life and in position the two are almost opposites. Alexander Solzhenitsyn is a giant of world literature and a leader within the USSR of the opposition to Soviet tyranny, having experienced its cruelest forms himself in prison camps for many years; while Sergei Kourdakov was only a "typical Soviet boy" who, until the last year of his life, had before him a brilliant future in the Communist Party and the Secret Police of the USSR, Solzhenitsyn's persecutors. Both of them have made extremely important revelations to the Free World of "real life" in the Soviet Union, even though what Solzhenitsyn has said was already known in general to those who have taken the trouble to be informed about Soviet life. Today Solzhenitsyn remains as a challenge to the ability of the Soviet tyranny to liquidate, without too much adverse publicity, an obvious "enemy of the people" who is at the same time world-famous, and more important, he is a living proof of the inability of the most thorough despotism known in world history to eliminate the human conscience, that seemingly fragile spark in man through which God speaks to him. Yet Sergei Kourdakov, both in his life and in his all-too-mysterious death in a California mountain resort at the age of 21, for all his primitiveness and simplicity, has more to say to us about the nature of Soviet reality, the inextinguishability of conscience, the future of Holy Russia, and the fate of the Free World itself.
The Persecutor is the autobiography of a "typical Soviet boy" who was born after the Second World War (1951), and a mere summary of its contents is extremely revealing of Soviet life today. His father was a Soviet army officer, Communist activist, and loyal Stalinist who was liquidated by Khrushchev soon after his rise to power; his mother died of grief some months after her husband's "disappearance." For two years Sergei lived with friends who took him in, and then from the age of six he lived in various "Children's Homes" of the Soviet paradise; in this book he has given us the first complete picture from within of the life of these Homes, and indeed our first real picture of a child's life in the contemporary Soviet Union. Here we learn of the hardness and cruelty and total indifference of the Home authorities, of the absolute hatred that exists between them and the children, of the utter barbarism in which the children are raised, leading them to form their own "government" where the strongest boy reigns as "king" with his "lieutenants" over the mass of "slaves," and makine possible the formation of marauding packs of older boys who terrorize a whole town with impunity. Here Sergei learned, after one boy died of starvation because Khrushchev's insane rascination with American corn, which does not grow well in Russia, had caused a famine, that "life is the survival of the fittest. It is a jungle. The strong will live. The tough will make it. The weak will lose or die" (p. 65). Using this principle, he himself becomes 'king.'
The purpose of the Children's Homes, where many of the inmates are not orphans at all but the children of religious believers forcibly removed from their parents, is, as Kourdakov says, "to serve as factories turning out tomorrow's Communists" (p. 59). A growing child is surrounded by the slogans of Communist propaganda. "These slogans were in all of the children's homes where I ever lived. We could hardly turn around without seeing them. They were in the dormitories and rooms, the dining hall and washrooms, posted on outside walls, hanging on fences and anything else that would support them. Images like We will defeat American Imperialism were burned into my mind, until they became a part of me" (p. 59). The children became members of various Communist organizations according to their age. The youngest children are Octobrianiks and learn chiefly of "Grandfather Lenin," whose picture is everywhere. In the fourth grade, indoctrination becomes more intensive in the "Young Pioneers." "But one thing stayed the same: almost every morning, the teacher started the class by saying, 'Good morning, children. How are you today? Remember, there is no God.' They must sure be afraid we'll learn of God, whatever God is" (p. 60).
The oldest children became members of the Communist Youth (Komsomol), and it was in this organization, at the age of 15, that Sergei found his first belief and commitment in life, in Communism, and began his training to become a Communist leader. His friends, however, crippled by their Soviet upbringing, were incapable of such idealism, and many of them by the age of 15 or 16 had already entered the underworld of crime, narcotics, and prostitution, and several of them were soon imprisoned or executed. Sergei himself at 16 became a narcotics courier, with the possibility of rising high in the vast criminal network that is directed from Moscow – such a career being considered by the Soviet youth of his circle as a reasonable alternative to rising high in the Communist Party. After being stabbed in the back, almost to death, in a dark alley, Sergei decided he preferred a Communist career, and he resolved to become a naval officer.
On his way to the naval academy in Leningrad, Sergei stopped in Moscow, and his "religious" feeling for Communism reached a pinnacle when he beheld the embalmed body of Lenin. "He was the founder of my 'religion,' which had given me something to believe in for the first time in my life. He taught cquality, brotherhood, and the strong helping the weak. I bowed my head and prayed to him. Yes, it was a prayer. I cannot describe it in any other way. I prayed, 'Help me, Father Lenin, in my life. Give me the guidance and direction I need. Help me to have the understanding to follow your teachings. Remove obstacles and danger from my pathway and from life. Heed me and guide me. Help me, Father Lenin.' I lifted my head, looked a few minutes more at the remains of Lenin, and left. Somehow I felt stronger and more able to face what was ahead of me" (p. 89).
In 1968 Sergei was assigned to the naval academy at Petropavlovsk on the Soviet Pacific coast north of Japan. On the way his Communist idealism was challenged when he met a disillusioned former police officer from the new city of Norilsk in the far North, who informs him that this "fabled masterpiece of far-north technology," as Sergei had learned of it in his textbooks, was actually built on slave labor at the cost of tens of thousands of lives. But Sergei puts this disturbing thought out of his mind and looks toward building the future of Communism.
In the naval academy Sergei's excellent record as a Communist Youth leader earns him the leadership of the whole Communist Youth at the academy, 1200 men. This duty he discharges conscientiously and well, and thereby he begins to understand better the inner workings of Soviet life, where Communist politics comes first before everything, including technical skill; 60% of the time of the cadets is devoted to learning Communism. He is told he has a great future. "The party was my 'family.' I was now part of something I could believe in, belong to, and give my life for... This was one of my proudest moments! I felt in perfect harmony with the world" (р. 110).
After less than a year at the naval academy he is approached by the GPU or Soviet Secret Police and offered the position of head of a "special police group" in Petropavlovsk, composed of some twenty of the toughest cadets. At first their assignment is to break up drunken brawls and receive experience in "changing faces," brutally beating up the worst kind of criminals. Then they are told that there are worse and more dangerous criminals than these in the Soviet Union: the religious believers. The GPU officer tells the men: "Murderers kill a few people and are caught. But these Believers kill the soul and the spirit of our Soviet people and spread their poisonous beliefs to many, many thousands. In the past two years in our country, this problem of religious Believers has become a far greater one. Instead of dying out and ceasing their struggles against our state, they have spread their poison throughout our coun try... Finally now, our party has to take action. A special-action order to fight the religiozniki came from the top in Moscow. You boys are part of that action program" (p. 125). Sergei and his men are convinced. "Never before had we realized the great threat that religious Believers were to our way of life. But now we knew. And we were hearing of a dynamic-action program that was being established in defense of our country. It convinced us of the vitality and vigor of the Communist party" (p. 125). Their assignment, at fantastic pay, is to break up underground religious meetings and "change the faces" of the believers, beating them to a pulp, and to confiscate all religious literature.
In some 20 months Sergei led 150 raids on such underground meetings (the book does not specify which of the meetings are of Orthodox Christians, and which of Protestants). The believers never resist, and the men beat them with increasing brutality (described in some detail in the book), killing a number of them. They receive nothing but praise from Communist headquarters in Moscow, which directs the nationwide campaign of persecution, the only condition being that these raids not become publicly known.
Another aspect of the Soviet Government's vigilance "in defence of the country" is revealed to Sergei in the mountain-climbing trips which he and his friends undertake in their spare time. Hiking to places off-limits to civilians, he sees at different times 30 concentration camps in this small area of the USSR alone; they are all new and completely equipped with everything, including guards and dogs – but without prisoners. The GPU officer tells him: "We have enemies in this country, you know, and we have to be ready for them" (p. 180).
The pinnacle of Sergei's Communist career was reached on the night of April 22, 1970, at a great Party convention of all Kamchatka Province marking the 100th anniversary of Lenin's birth. At this convention Sergei was honored and praised on Soviet television by Comrade Orlov, the chief local Communist and one of the leading 200 Communist officials of the Soviet Union, as "the Number-One Communist Youth of Kamchatka Province" in whom "you see the future of the party and our country." Sergei relates, "what a proud moment it was for me the proudest moment of my life" (p. 184).
However, later that night, at the banquet that followed, Sergei's youthful enthusiasm for Communism was destroyed once and for all. Stumbling across the sumptuous private banquet room of the top Party leaders, he was astonished at what he saw. "Here were the great Communist leaders of Kamchatka Province, drunk. Several had passed out cold, their heads lying flat on the table. Three lay with their faces in their plates of food... Another lay stretched out full length on the top of the table. His arms and feet were in the serving trays full of food... One man had become sick and had vomited over his clothes. The whole scene was incredibly and utterly disgusting" (p. 185).
But something even more incredible was to follow. Orlov began a drunken monologue, in which "he cursed Stalin drunkenly, then went on to curse others. 'And not only Stalin, but who is this Brezhnev? He's a toadeater, a lickspittle backslapper'." Orlov concludes his foul-mouthed tirade: "Communism is the worst curse that has ever come to man!" (p. 186). The mere overhearing of such words in Soviet Russia is tantamount to a death sentence, and Sergei was saved only because everyone present was dead drunk.
Sergei's idealism died that night, and he resolved to get to the top by the same path all the Soviet leaders had used: cynicism and ruthlessness.
But one night Sergei reads a few pages of one of the handwritten Gospels he has confiscated, containing the Saviour's words according to St. Luke on forgiving those who do you wrong. Sergei's heart is wounded, and from then on these words haunt him. His conscience is awakened. "Something deep within me, some tiny ember of humanity, was still alive somewhere inside me. The life I was leading was not the life that I had wanted to lead. Beating old women was not the kind of life I had dreamed of long ago in my early childhood" (p. 219). On his final raid, in October, 1970, as he is attacking an old woman, Sergei hears her praying, "God, forgive this young man," and enraged, he raises his hand to club her to death – when suddenly his hand is held back by an invisible power. Terrified, he runs. weeping hysterically, and he finally resolves to leave the nightmare of the Soviet Union. At last, in September, 1971, being radioman on a Soviet ship off the Pacific coast of Canada, he leaps overboard and, after swimming for many hours through incredibly stormy seas, lands on the coast of British Columbia.
After some uncertainty, owing to the new Canadian policy of friendship with the Soviet Union, Sergei is granted asylum. The final chapter tells briefly of his "conversion," described in rather Protestant terms, after which he begins to speak at public gatherings and on television, in Canada and the United States, telling the story of the Communist persecution of religion and his participation in it.
In Canada he became aware that he was being followed, and one day in Toronto he was accosted by three men, one of whom said in flawless Russian: "If you know what is good for you, Kourdakov, you will keep silent and say nothing more. If you open your mouth, you will have a 'final accident'" (p. 250). Sergei realized that "Moscow still was reaching out to me," and told his friends, much as Solzhenitsyn has told the world about himself, that if anything should happen to him it "would have all the appearances of an accident" (p. 254). On January 1, 1973. he was shot and killed with his own gun in a mountain resort near Los Angeles. Because of the mysterious circumstances under which his death occurred, a Congressional investigation was demanded, and the body was sent to Washington, D.C. On March 1, 1973, the investigating committee declared the death to be an "accident," and even though this verdict was greeted with unbelier by many, for American authorities the Kourdakov case is closed.
___
The book itself says nothing whatever about Sergei Kourdakov's relation to Orthodox Christianity or his contacts with Orthodox Russians. To complete this review, we shall give here information which has been supplied by Orthodox Russians who knew him in Canada and the United States.
Even before Sergei received asylum in Canada, Orthodox Russians in Canada rushed to his aid, and a number of Orthodox parishes presented petitions to the Canadian Government in support of his plea for asylum. Once this plea had been granted, Sergei spent his first period of freedom with Orthodox people in several Canadian cities, becoming acquainted with the Russian colonies there. On his namesday, September 25 October 8, 1971, he was present at the moleben to St. Sergius in a parish church of the Russian Church Outside of Russia, and he related to parishioners that his mother, just before she died, had left him a small paper icon of St. Panteleimon the Great Martyr and had given as her testament to him always to keep this icon. Incredible as it may seem – but how revealing of the hidden life of the Soviet Union! this icon accompanied Sergei for his whole life and was in the waterproof packet with his documents with which he arrived on the Canadian shore. He told a Russian woman in Washington, D.C., that his mother had baptized him and that Orthodox faith had always existed somehow deep within him.
Soon, however, he began making friends in different circles, and he began to visit the meetings of Russian Baptists. This caused a Russian priest who knew him to write him a serious letter, warning him against becoming too involved with Protestants: "Remember that our homeland was built not by Bap. tists, but by Orthodox Christians... You should first of all learn the faith of your forefathers."
Nonetheless, Sergei continued his contacts with Protestant circles, and soon he was travelling and giving talks under the auspices of the organization "Underground Evangelism," which sends Bibles into the countries behind the Iron Curtain and makes known in the West the persecution that exists there. He found no Orthodox outlet for his great energy and dedication, and so he took the best opportunity he could find for telling the truth about religious persecution in the Soviet Union. One may regret that he did not learn more of his own Orthodox Faith before choosing the platform on which he spoke to the Free World; but in his own conscience he remained faithful to the words he spoke to a Russian girl with whom he was quite close: "I will never betray Orthodoxy."
In the last weeks of his life, Sergei wrote to a Russian friend in Canada that he was unhappy in California and was again being followed, and that he hoped to come to Canada for Orthodox Christmas. A person who saw his body states that he was shot in the back of the neck. The Orthodox funeral service was sung over his body in the parish church of the Russian Church Outside of Russia in Washington, D.C., and he was buried in the Orthodox cemetery in that city beside a descendent of the great Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin.
For Orthodox Russians, the story of Sergei Kourdakov is a sad one, for it is a story of opportunity unfulfilled and apparently, at the present time, unfulfillable. The Russian priest who perhaps knew him best has written: "The fate of Sergei causes me sad reflections. It has long been noted that those who flee the Soviet Union find a place for themselves only with difficulty, and often they are isolated from the rest of the emigration. The psychology of people from the Soviet Union is in many respects different; even after their break with Communism they cannot understand us, the earlier emigrants... In the case of Kourdakov we see how difficult it is to find a common tongue with people from the Soviet Union. The sectarians, being more primitive and outward, have more influence on them. This shows that our Church must pay attention to this purely missionary problem and do something about it. We must find some means of approach to people from the Soviet Union, especially the youth.
This is an enormous and pressing problem of today which our Church must face if we do not want to lose all influence on people from the Soviet Union." Perhaps Sergei's real place was as an officer in an Orthodox Russian liberation army, which in our lukewarm times does not exist.
The same priest writes: "Sergei Kourdakov, to be sure, is a martyr. He was a victim of the whole atheist Soviet order, which from his childhood corrupted his soul but did not succeed in destroying it. Of such ones it is said in the Gospel: Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do, and: Whosoever shall confess Me before men, him shall the Son of Man also confess before the Angels of God (Luke 12:4, 8). In his short life Sergei achieved what others achieve only in a long lifetime."
Yet it was chiefly in the English language that this new martyr of the Communist Yoke spoke of the Christ he had found, and testified against the Soviet antichrist. And therefore we must ask: what is his significance for us in the Free World who, for all our sympathy, cannot even imagine what it is to live in the Soviet nightmare?
We need not deceive ourselves that his words, or Solzhenitsyn's, will so influence "world opinion" that action will be taken to liberate enslaved Russia. It was the rotten, "liberal" West that produced Communism in the first place and then forced it upon Russia as its greatest experiment in the abolition of Christianity (which is being abolished in the West more gently, but perhaps more effectively); and that same "liberal" West is not now about to undo its own work before it is finished.
Russians who knew him well-as no non-Russian could know his truly Russian soul – say that Sergei Kourdakov was not happy in his brief year of freedom. The reason for this is not to be found only in the fact that he could not find a place for himself in freedom, whether among Russians or Americans. If one listens carefully to the widely-distributed tape-recording (cassette) of one of Sergei's talks (in haiting but effective English), one cannot fail to notice a certain tone of desperation in his words. He is greeted enthusiastically, with applause, and his talk is punctuated by signs of agreement by the audience. But behind the merely outward agreement and sympathy, one senses that he is not being understood, and that he already knows he will not be understood. "My heart was like a rock. It was a big stone. I remember one night I hit some man reading the Bible; and he said, 'No, don't do this,' and I hit his face, and after from his nose was blood in my hand. And I came to a discotheque with a friend of mine in this group; and I didn't wash my hands! I thought: it's all right, it's blood, it's all right, it's OK. And I drink and I eat – and I didn't wash my hands! It's terrible! I grew up under that beautiful idea where everybody is the same, and I didn't wash my hands from blood!" How many in complacent, overfed America can understand this cry of a soul that has truly sufiered? How many can even imagine the reality of a system wherein a normal boy is praised and advanced because he has on his hands the blood of believers in God? How many even faintly realize how easy it will be for the same thing to happen here? Sergei continues his warning to free America: "You don't understand, and it's terrible! We can lose our chance. America is the last chance!"
What Sergei went through in his brief life is too much to communicate; it is perhaps more than he himself understood. His whole message is his life; it is directed to Orthodox zealots, who know the Faith that made Russia once Holy, and see the presence of the "mystery of iniquity" in the world today, which works not only in those who persecute the faith, but also in those whose "Christianity" does not accord with God's revelation, Holy Orthodoxy. In the future Orthodox Russia, God willing, there will be many Sergei Kourdakovs aflame with love for the true Orthodoxy which will then come out of the catacombs and which, born in confession and inconceivable suffering, will surely be of a quality quite different from the weak Orthodoxy of the Diaspora, where it is not only Russians who have used their freedom poorly!
And what of the free West? It is surely significant that the voice of Sergei Kourdakov, as of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, is being heard now in the West, with a message clearer than at any other time in the nearly six decades of Communist terror in Russia. It is also clear that, for the West as a whole, it is too late. This message is addressed to individuals who can still awake from their sleep of ignorance and sloth and see that there is only one battle being waged in the world today: that between Christ and Antichrist! Above all for Orthodox believers in America is this message clear:
Orthodox Christians! Prepare now all the spiritual baggage you can assemble. The age of the catacombs, sooner than you expect, is coming at last to America!
THE CALL OF ST. HERMAN
TO YOUNG ORTHODOX ZEALOTS
Jesus said: As you go, preach, saying: The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.
Matthew 10:7
SAINT HERMAN came from Holy Russia to America to acquire the Kingdom of Heaven and help others on the same path. While still inhabiting the fallen earth, he already was dwelling in the Kingdom of Heaven, shining forth with that primal beauty of Adam which is Orthodox sanctity. After his repose he continues to shine brilliantly unto the end of this age. But this shining can reflect and shine forth in no other way than through living human souls which themselves are striving for the light of Orthodoxy. Thus, St. Herman needs zealots of Orthodoxy, like himself, in order to manifest the power of his sanctity and to ignite that Divine Fire of which our Lord spoke: I am come to send fire on the earth, and what will I, but that it be kindled? (Luke 12:49).
St. Herman is the patron of the young. He spent much time instructing children and youth, and after his repose, which occurred in the midst solely of young people, his miracles again have been chiefly worked upon the young. Thus the Orthodox youth is called to a holy mission of which our Church is in great need: to be YOUNG ORTHODOX ZEALOTS OF ST. HERMAN.
Orthodox young people of today! You face many serious difficulties as you try to be conscious Orthodox Christians, but the situation is not at all hopeless. You must seek those of like mind, gather together in the name of the Lord for mutual encouragement under the protection of St. Herman, and grow in spiritual life. Learn how to humbly adapt yourself to the un-worldly wisdom of the Holy Fathers, into which the wisdom of this world does not penetrate! Gather into your heart the treasures of Orthodox spiritual life, that right path to the Kingdom of Heaven – while there is still time!
MAKE THE STEP OF DETERMINATION!
HAVE A CONSCIOUS FAITH!
CONDUCT CONSTANT UNSEEN WARFARE!
HAVE ALWAYS BEFORE YOU THE PURPOSE OF LIFE!
BE A ZEALOT MISSIONARY OF TRUE ORTHODOX;;!
BE A DISCIPLE OF SAINT HERMAN!
The Orthodox Word No. 53
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