The cry of the new martyrs

The True Christian is a warrior fighting his way through the regiments of the unseen
enemy to bis heavenly homeland.
—St. Herman of Alaska

LIFE ON EARTH is given to man in order to acquire the Holy Spirit. To do this one must learn also to distinguish the worship of the true Spirit of God from the counterfeit spirit, the spirit of this world whose prince is satan, the enemy of God. The whole earthly happiness of man consists in conscious growth in the knowledge and practice of the law of Christian spiritual life which, according to Bishop Theophanes the Recluse, is a realm into which the wisdom of this world does not penetrate. Christian life must be wholly devoted to "walking in the Spirit" (Gal. 5:16). For some, this may be a long, patient process up to old age and a blameless Christian death; but the martyrs have acquired their heavenly crowns in a brief moment when death found them with a sober heart entirely directed to God, confessing Christ even unto torture and death. For Christ has said, What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? (Mark 8:36.)

The first martyrs for Christ were the 14,000 Innocents, the children born at the time of Christ’s Nativity whose death was the immediate result of the hatred of the Prince of this world for the Divine Infant. Even without knowing it, these children were witnesses of Christ, and all the martyrs who have followed them, even until now, are the same victims of satan’s malice, and at the same time a sacrifice pleasing to God.

Today, as even worldly philosophers and historians have begun to admit, mankind has reached a dead-end, and the events of these times are unparalleled in all world history, as if pointing to the end of history itself. These terrible times began in earnest in 1917 with the taking away of that which restraineth the coming of Antichrist (II Thes. 2:7) — that is, the lawful Christian authority which was especially incarnated in the Emperors of Byzantium and Russia. At this time, again, the attack of the anti-Christian power took first the form of the slaughter of the Royal Innocents, the children of the Tsar who were martyred with their father, even as earlier the very first of Russia’s New Martyrs had been a simple-hearted pastor who was killed on the very eve of the feast of the 14,000 Innocents (Dec. 28, 1904), in front of his own children. Indeed, the innocent children who have been victims of the Soviet Yoke cannot be counted; there have even been special concentration camps in the USSR solely for children, as if to prove the satanic maliciousness of the Soviet system. For Orthodox Christians these are not "coincidences," but profound lessons: we Orthodox Christians of these last times must stand in Christ’s Truth in utter simplicity and childlikeness, not trusting our own wisdom in order to reply to the wise inquisitors of this evil world, for the Holy Spirit shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say (Luke 12:12).

Russian history in the 20th century has given the world something of incalculable value: Saints who have endured and triumphed over the greatest experiment in anti-theism, warfare against God, in the history of the world — the New Confessors and Martyrs of Russia. They have proved that for the human soul there are no higher values than: (1) FAITH in the purity of the Orthodoxy of Christ’s Church, (2) HOPE in everlasting life after death, and (3) the all-conquering power of LOVE both for men here on earth and for God in heaven. They have been tested in every conceivable trial and temptation and have withstood, being refined even as pure gold in the furnace, fit for the heavenly kingdom.

The New Martyrs of Russia fall into two periods: the period before and the period after 1927, the year of the infamous "Declaration" of Metr. Sergius. The album of portraits of the New Martyrs in this issue (a few out of millions!) is divided in this way, into two parts.

First, there were the martyrs who were made by the first wave of the Revolution, when the servants of satan were probing to see how they might snatch the very essence of Orthodoxy from the people’s hearts: they accused the faithful of "politics" and persecuted them ostensibly for this and not for their "religion"; they robbed the Church under the pretext of helping the victims of famine (a famine which was artificially created by the Soviets themselves); they instigated churchmen of weak conscience to "renovate" the Church (the "Living Church"). But these probings all failed. Millions lost their lives, churches were pillaged and destroyed, the holy things of Russia were desecrated — but the heart of the Church remained untouched, and the faithful stood as one man behind their Patriarch, the holy hieromartyr Tikhon.

Then, the Soviets having failed to gain their end, they sought a Judas to betray the Church from within by a kiss: a hierarch who would be "Orthodox," who would "violate neither dogmas nor canons," who would draw to himself the whole Church people and stand at their head — solely in order "to blow the Church up from within," as Metr. Cyril of Kazan has expressed it, by making the Church the servant of atheists who were conducting warfare against God. After many attempts, the Soviets finally found such a Judas in Metr. Sergius, whose "Declaration" in 1927 bound the Church to the atheist State and destroyed its power to confess the Truth. Then indeed did the winnowing of the chaff and the wheat begin in the Russian Church. Those who accepted the "Declaration" fell into a subtle trap from which it is scarcely possible to escape, sinning against the very dogma of the Church by identifying the Church with the church organization, binding the Church of Him Who is Truth to the Soviet lie. Thus they perpetrated a schism in the Russian Church, for the True Church of Christ cannot be so bound. The heroes of this second period of martyrdom are those who rightly distinguished between True Orthodoxy and its "outwardly correct" counterfeit, the Sergianist church organization, which is so brazen as to deny the very existence of the New Martyrs of Russia; they are greater than the confessors and martyrs of the first period of the Communist Yoke, for the temptation was greater.

This battle is still being waged today in Russia. On a "secular" level this battle has been described by A. Solzhenitsyn as "not living by lies" — but few are they who are capable of discerning the very subtle lie upon which the Sergianist church organization (the "Moscow Patriarchate") rests. To the lovers of this world, living in the Truth is an impossible Utopia or else something totally incomprehensible; after all, almost the whole of public life both in the USSR and in the free world is based upon lies of varying degrees, and it is not only the Sergianist church organization that is eaten through with them. The voice of the confessors against Sergianism is not for Russia alone; thanks to the Russian Diaspora the Cry of the New Martyrs can now be heard everywhere, and the opportunity to understand and live True Orthodoxy has become universal. The New Martyrs are the intercessors of all who stand in True Orthodoxy, wherever they may be or whatever the nature of their struggle against the counterfeit Christianity and counterfeit Orthodoxy of our times.

WE, ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS TODAY, ARE PERISHING! We need the New Martyrs to call us to authentic spiritual life. They touch in us something so deep and elemental that our souls and minds, made shallow by modern "enlightenment," can scarcely grasp it; and yet we know it.

Let us join their army in the march to eternal bliss, making the resolve to stand for the Truth even unto the death of the body. This stand, if only we knew it, contains the secret to the deepest happiness possible on earth, because it is natural for the soul created by God.

Let us listen to the cry of the New Martyrs! Let us hear their clarion call and follow their beacon and become, in the words of St. Herman:

TRUE CHRISTIANS: WARRIORS FIGHTING OUR WAY THROUGH THE REGIMENTS OF THE UNSEEN ENEMY TO OUR HEAVENLY HOMELAND. Amen.

 
Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev

MARTYRED JANUARY 25, 1918

AS THE HOLY PRINCE VIrdimir baptized Russia in Kiev, so also did this new Vladimir in Kiev (in the Caves Lavra) put a beginning to Russia's new baptism in the blood of martyrdom. When the Patriarch and the Fathers of the All-Russian Council, then meeting in Moscow, heard the news of his brutal murder, they sang "Eternal Memory" for him and established the day of his martyrdom as the day of commemoration for him and all the New Martyrs, thus placing an official beginning for the veneration of Russia's New Martyrs.

 
Child Proto-New-Martyr Alexis Crown Prince of Holy Russia

MARTYRED JULY 4, 1918

THIS HOLY INNOCENT was born just seventy years ago in answer to the fervent prayer of the Royal Family at the canonization of St. Seraphim; Blessed Pasha of Sarov prophesied to the Tsar that the much-desired heir to the Throne would be born. He suffered all his life and died a pure child, becoming a patron saint of children. To this day he is deeply revered in the Catacomb Church of Russia as an intercessor for the whole of the suffering Russian land.

 
Priest Proto-Martyr Vladimir Troepolsky

SLAIN ON THE EVE OF THE 14,000 INNOCENTS, DEC, 28, 1904

FOR HIS FEARLESS apostolic preaching of pure Orthodoxy against the revolutionaries and the Protestant sect of Stundites, who worked together. he was stabbed to death in his home before the eyes of his wife and children after being warned to stop his flaming sermons. At his funeral these prophetic words were uttered: "We believe that the blood of this pastor-martyr will not only not lessen the strength of the Church, but on the contrary, will be a seed from which will grow forth hosts of equally fear- less pastor-martyrs, ready to receive a martyr's crown for the work of Christ."

 
Bishop Barnabas of Tobolsk

MARTYRED IN PRISON IN 1919

RISING TO THE RANK of bishop from among the simple people, having been a gardener by profession, the young Bishop Barnabas proved to be an unwavering apostle in Siberia and a promoter of the canonization of St. John of Tobolsk, who was working many miracles then and even appeared to Bishop Barnabas from another world, asking for his canonization at a cru- cial time for Russia, which was then at war with enemies both foreign and domestic on the eve of the Revolution. It was by the personal initiative of Tsar Nicholas II that St. John was glorified in 1916, while otherwise he would have remained forgotten, as are hundreds of other holy men and women of recent centuries. In prison before his death Bishop Barnabas gave encouragement to his fellow prisoners, until he himself was shot.

 
Bishop Isidore of Balakhnin

Vicar of Nizhni Novgorod

MARTYRED BY IMPALEMENT IN SAMARA IN 1919

THE SON of a renowned ascetic and holy man, Fr. Alexis Kolokolov, and a spiritual man himself, he was in contact with the best spiritual circles in Petersburg. Being banished for some reason to Valaam in 1912, he learned there by revelation of the future sufferings of Russia, covered with blood; he shared this revelation with several bishops who were there, and they wept together in this knowledge and later all were martyred.

 
Bishop Simon of Ufa

MARTYRED JULY 6, 1921

FATHER S. SHLEYEV in the world, he was a chief leader and inspirer of the movement of reunion of the Old Believers to Orthodoxy at the turn of the century, which was supported by Tsar Nicholas II and actively promoted by the later Metropolitans Anthony Khrapovitsky and Anastassy, leading to a genuine revival of the ancient traditions of Orthodoxy and the restoration of the veneration of St. Anna of Kashin, and culminating in the All-Russian Conference of 1912-at which the Tsarevich Alexis appeared in ancient imperial regalia which proclaimed the principles of ancient tra- dition for all of Russia. After the Revolution he was a missionary bishop in the Old Believer territory of Ufa, where he was shot in his apartments by someone instigated by the Revolutionary spirit.

 
Archpriest Alexis Stavrovsky

SHOT IN OCTOBER, 1918

HEAD CHAPLAIN of the Russian Army and Navy, he was revered throughout Russia. Arrested in 1918 at the age of 84, he was placed in a row with other prisoners, every tenth one of whom was to be executed, according to a whim of the Soviets. Next to him was a young priest, and to him the lot of death fell. Fr. Alexis turned to him and said: "I am old, and in life

I received everything. Go with God; I will take your place." And thus he received his martyr's crown, dying for his brother.

 
The Holy Patriarch Tikhon

MARTYRED ON MARCH 25, 1925

ELECTED to the restored Patriarchal Throne at the beginning of the most agonizing period of Russian history, he became the true Father of the believing Russian people, anathematizing the Communists and all who would ever cooperate with them, and remaining to this day a symbol of the lost free- dom and manliness of the Russian Orthodox people. The True-Orthodox Church still calls itself the "Tikhonite" Church after this sole authentic Patriarch of 20th-century Russian Orthodoxy.