1. THE PAST OF ORTHODOXY
IN AMERICA
2. WHAT IS ORTHODOXY?
3. SOME PITFALLS
4. EXAMPLES OF TRUE
CHRISTIANITY
5. OUR TALENT OF FREEDOM
1. THE
PAST OF ORTHODOXY IN AMERICA
We have gathered here today to venerate St. Herman,
first saint of the American land, first Orthodox missionary to America,
bringer of Orthodox Christianity to the New World. This feast gives us
an opportunity to look at the Orthodoxy he brought: what has happened
to it since his time, where it stands in this country today, what are
the hopes for it -- and for us, who are today's Orthodox Christians --
in the years ahead, nearly two hundred years after the seeds of the
true faith were planted here.
The Past of Orthodoxy
in America
I will say only a few words about the past of
Orthodoxy in America, in order to concentrate chiefly on what faces us
today.
The Beginning and Early
Success
First of all, of course, there was the mission of
St. Herman himself, with the seven other missionaries who came with him
from Valaam and Konevits Monasteries in the north of Russia in 1794. It
is really astonishing what an Orthodox foundation these missionaries
laid in Alaska, considering how few they were and what obstacles they
faced. One of these eight, Fr. Ioasaph, was consecrated bishop in order
to increase the work in America, but he was lost at sea on the return
voyage before he could even begin his work. There were few priests in
the early years, St. Herman himself wasn't a priest, and the Russian
officials in Alaska were not very cooperative -- but in those years
thousands of natives were baptized, and their descendants remain
Orthodox today; and with St. Herman's labors as a monk, preacher, and
carer of orphans, America saw for the first time a living example of
the traditional Orthodox piety and spiritual life which made Holy
Russia. This is something very important for our Orthodoxy today --
this example of true Orthodox Christianity in practice.
The next great Orthodox missionary in America was
the holy hierarch Innocent of Alaska, who first as priest and then as
bishop gave a classic example of Orthodox missionary activity,
translating the Gospel into the local languages, caring for the bodies
as well as the souls of the flock of his vast missionary territory. In
his last years, when he became Metropolitan of Moscow, he supported
missionary labors in other places also.
With the sale of Alaska to the American government
in 1867, the mission territory changed somewhat: the Russian government
continued to send support to Alaska, but the seat of the Diocese now
became San Francisco, and for the first time an English-language
mission was undertaken. The outstanding missionary at the beginning of
this century in San Francisco was Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich, a
Serb by birth who died in Yugoslavia in 1940, whose books on Orthodox
faith and practice in English are still in print. Bishop Tikhon (the
future Patriarch of Moscow) also greatly encouraged the
English-language mission, and under him and the other Russian bishops
there were missions also for other national groups -- Syrians, Serbs,
etc.
First Troubles
However, even at this time the beginnings of
weaknesses could be noted. America is a vast land; the Russians and
other Orthodox settlers were widely scattered; priests were thinly
spread; and perhaps most important of all, there were no otherworldly
saints like St. Herman to plant the seeds of holiness deep in the
American soil. Further, the English-speaking American people were not
simple like the natives of Alaska, and they already practiced some form
of Christian faith.
For all of these reasons we can see the beginning,
even before the Russian Revolution, of the terrible disease we see in
the Orthodox jurisdictions in America today; the disease of
worldliness. Outwardly, the Orthodox clergy began to look like the
non-Orthodox clergy around them; inwardly, the concern was mainly to
provide priests for the widely-scattered ethnic flock, without
deepening their Orthodoxy by providing English texts of the classic
Orthodox books or reaching out to tell the non-Orthodox who might
listen that there is a true Christianity that is undreamed of in the
West, the fullness of Holy Orthodoxy.
The Revolution of 1917 in Russia struck a deadly
blow to the Orthodox mission: support from Russia was cut off, the
oneness of the Church fell apart into national jurisdictions, and the
clergy were left pretty much to themselves. The worldliness of American
life was left free to put its stamp on the Orthodox mission, and there
was not much strength to oppose it. When Archbishop Vitaly (later of
Jordanville) came to America in the 1930's to become ruling bishop, he
saw that Orthodoxy in America, if left to itself, would simply turn
into an "Eastern-rite Protestantism" - that is, it would retain some of
the externals of Orthodoxy, but inwardly would be scarcely different
from the worldly Protestantism which is the predominant religion of
America.
Opposing the Worldliness
The second wave of Russian emigration after World
War 2, including the transfer to Jordanville of Archbishop Vitaly's
whole monastic community which he had established in Czechoslovakia --
was the first major influence acting against the worldliness which has
been engulfing America in the 20th century. But its influence has been
mostly restricted to our Russian Church Outside of Russia -- the other
jurisdictions in America for the most part have continued their worldly
path, and this is the chief reason for the widening difference between
us and them.
One has only to go into a church of one of the
modernist Orthodox jurisdictions in this country to see some of the
results of this worldly spirit: pews, often organs, streamlined and
sometimes dramatized services, various modern gimmicks for making
money; and very often the chief emphasis is placed on ethnic rather
than spiritual values -- including the newest ethnic emphasis,
Americanism.
The churches of our Russian Church Outside of Russia
are usually quite different, with no pews or organs, and a more
old-worldly kind of piety; and there has been a noticeable revival of
traditional church iconography and other church arts. The traditional
Orthodox influence is visible even in such external things as the way
our clergy dress and the beards which almost all of our clergy have.
Just a few decades ago almost no Orthodox clergy in America had beards
or wore ryassas on the street; and while this is something outward, it
is still a reflection of a traditional mentality which has had many
inward, spiritual results also. A few of the more conservative priests
in other jurisdictions have now begun to return to more traditional
Orthodox ways, but if so, it is largely under the influence of our
Church, and a number of these priests have told us that they look to
our Russian Church Outside of Russia as a standard and inspiration of
genuine Orthodoxy.
However, the object of this talk is to go a little
deeper than these externals and to see where our Orthodoxy is today in
America, and especially what we ourselves can do to make ourselves more
fervent, more Orthodox, more in the spirit of St. Herman, who for all
time has set the "tone" for Orthodoxy in America.
To do this, we must first of all recognize the chief
enemy facing us: it is, of course, the devil, who wants to knock us off
the path of salvation; and the chief means he uses in our times to do
this is the spirit of worldliness. This is what has weakened and
watered down Orthodoxy in America -- and not just in the other
jurisdictions. The spirit of worldliness is in the air we breathe, and
we cannot escape it. You cannot watch television, you cannot go to a
supermarket, you cannot walk in the streets of any city in America --
without being bombarded by this spirit. In supermarkets and other large
stores they even play lighthearted, senseless music in order to catch
you in this spirit and make sure that you don't think or feel in an
otherworldly way. Our Church and everyone in it is attacked by this
spirit, and we can't escape it by isolating ourselves in a ghetto or in
a small town; the outside influences can be lessened, perhaps, in such
ways, but if we are not fighting an inward spiritual battle against
worldliness, we will still be conquered by it without fail. And so the
chief question regarding the future of our Orthodoxy in America -- and
in the whole world, for that matter -- is: how do we remain orthodox
and develop our orthodoxy against the spirit of worldliness that
attacks us on all sides?
In order to answer this question we have to ask
first another question that might be a little surprising: what is
Orthodoxy? But this question is basic; if we aren't sure just what
Orthodoxy is, we won't know what we're trying to preserve and develop
against the spirit of worldliness. And so let us ask this question:
2. WHAT IS ORTHODOXY?
Right is Not Enough
We can define Orthodoxy in no better way than in the
words of the great 18th-century Russian Father, St. Tikhon of Zadonsk
-- a Saint whose fervent spirit is needed very much today by Orthodox
Christians. We should read him more and practice what he teaches. St.
Tikhon calls Orthodoxy "the true Christianity," and he wrote a whole
book under this title. But "true Christianity" does not mean just
having the right opinions about Christianity -- this is not enough to
save one's soul.
St. Tikhon in his book, in the chapter on "The
Gospel and Faith," says: "If someone should say that true faith is the
correct holding and confession of correct dogmas, he would be telling
the truth, for a believer absolutely needs the Orthodox holding and
confession of dogmas. But this knowledge and confession by itself does
not make a man a faithful and true Christian. The keeping and
confession of Orthodox dogmas is always to be found in true faith in
Christ, but the true faith of Christ is not always to be found in the
confession of Orthodoxy... The knowledge of correct dogmas is in the
mind, and it is often fruitless, arrogant, and proud... The true faith
in Christ is in the heart, and it is fruitful, humble, patient, loving,
merciful, compassionate, hungering and thirsting for righteousness; it
withdraws from worldly lusts and clings to God alone, strives and seeks
always for what is heavenly and eternal, struggles against every sin,
and constantly seeks and begs help from God for this." And he then
quotes Blessed Augustine, who teaches: "The faith of a Christian is
with love; faith without love is that of the devil" ("True
Christianity," ch. 287, p. 469). St. James in his Epistle tells us that
"the demons also believe and tremble" (James 3:19).
St. Tikhon, therefore, gives us a start in
understanding what Orthodoxy is: it is something first of all of the
heart, not just the mind, something living and warm, not abstract and
cold, some thing that is learned and practiced in life, not just in
school.
To Be Different
A person who takes Orthodoxy seriously and begins to
really work on understanding it with his heart and changing himself --
has at least a little of a quality we might call the fragrance of true
Christianity; he is different from people who live by nothing higher
than the world. St. Macarius the Great, the 4th-century Egyptian desert
father, teaches in his Homilies that "Christians have their own world,
their own way of life, their own understanding and word and activity;
far different from theirs are the way of life and understanding and
word and activity of the people of this world. Christians are one
thing, and lovers of the world quite another. Inasmuch as the mind and
understanding of Christians is constantly occupied with reflection on
the heavenly, they behold eternal good things by communion and
participation in the Holy Spirit... Christians have a different world
... a different way of thinking from all other men" (Homily V, 1:20).
Later I'll try to say a word on how Orthodox Christians should be
absorbing this different world and way of thinking. Orthodoxy, the true
Christianity, is not just another set of beliefs; it is a whole way of
life that makes us different people, and it is directly bound up with
how much heavenly and eternal things are present in our life.
An Orthodox person who is not different can be worse
off than the non-Orthodox. There is nothing sadder than the spectacle
of Orthodox Christians, who possess a treasure that cannot be valued by
any earthly measure, something which many are seeking and do not find
in today's world -- nothing is sadder than Orthodox Christians who do
not value and do not use this treasure.
An Example for the
Orthodox
I'd like to tell you a little about a group of
Protestants who live not too far from our monastery in northern
California. In some ways I think they are actually an example for us,
in other ways a warning, and perhaps most of all an indication of the
responsibility and opportunity we Orthodox Christians have because we
have been given the true Christianity.
These Protestants have a simple and warm Christian
faith without much of the sectarian narrowness that characterizes many
Protestant groups. They don't believe, like some Protestants, that they
are "saved" and don't need to do any more; they believe in the idea of
spiritual struggle and training the soul. They force themselves to
forgive each other and not to hold grudges. They take in bums and
hippies off the streets and have a special farm for rehabilitating them
and teaching them a sense of responsibility. In other words, they take
Christianity seriously as the most important thing in life; it's not
the fullness of Christianity that we Orthodox have, but it's good as
far as it goes, and these people are warm, loving people who obviously
love Christ. In this way they are an example of what we should be, only
more so.
Whether they attain salvation by their practice of
Christianity is for God to judge, for some of their views and actions
are far from the true Christianity of Orthodoxy handed down to us from
Christ and His Apostles; but at least an awareness of their existence
should help us to be aware of what we already have. Some of our
Orthodox young people -- for whatever reason, they don't realize what
treasure their Orthodox faith contains -- are joining such Protestant
groups; and some of our uninformed young people go much farther from
Orthodoxy -- one of the 900 victims of Jonestown a year ago was a Greek
Orthodox girl, the daughter of an Orthodox priest.
A Matter of Life and
Death
I'm telling you about these Protestants both as a
warning of how Orthodox young people can lose the treasure they already
have if they haven't been made aware enough of it, and more
importantly, as a means of defining a little better the true
Christianity we have and these Protestants don't have. Some of our
Orthodox young people are converted to groups like this, but it works
the other way around also -- some of these Protestants are being
converted to Orthodoxy. And why not? If we have the true Christianity,
there should be something in our midst that someone who sincerely loves
the truth will see and want.
We've baptized several people from this Protestant
group in our monastery; they are drawn to Orthodoxy by the grace and
the sacraments whose presence they feel in Orthodoxy, but which are
absent in their group. And once they become Orthodox, they find their
Protestant experience, which seemed so real to them at the time, to be
quite shallow and superficial. Their leaders give very practical
teachings based on the Gospel, but after a while the teachings are
exhausted and they repeat themselves. Coming to Orthodoxy, these
converts find a wealth of teaching that is inexhaustible and leads them
into a depth of Christian experience that is totally beyond even the
best of non-Orthodox Christians. We who are already Orthodox have this
treasure and this depth right in front of us, and we must use it more
fully than we usually do; it is a matter of spiritual life and death
both for ourselves and for those around us who can be awakened to the
truth of Orthodoxy.
Just this last week I crossed the whole of America
by train -- a vast land, with many different kinds of landscapes and
settlements. And I thought of St. Seraphim's vision of the vast Russian
land, with the smoke of the prayers of believers going up like incense
to God. Perhaps someone will say to me: "Oh, you talk like a convert!
America is America. It's full of Protestants and unbelievers, and the
Orthodox will always be a little minority of people who stick to
themselves and have no influence on the rest of America." Well, I'm not
saying that we Orthodox will "convert America" -- that's a little too
ambitious for us. However, St. Herman himself did have such a dream. He
wrote a letter after participating in the first "missionary conference"
on American soil, when that small band of missionaries divided up the
vast land of Alaska and argued over who would get the most land to
cover. St. Herman, hearing this, says that he was so exalted in soul
that he thought he was present when the Apostles themselves were
dividing up the world for the preaching of the Gospel.
We don't have to have such exalted ideas in order to
see that the prayers of believers could be going up to God in America.
What if we who are Orthodox Christians began to realize who we are? --
to take our Christianity seriously, to live as though we actually were
in contact with the true Christianity? We would begin to be different,
others around us would begin to be interested in why we are different,
and we would begin to realize that we have the answers to their
spiritual questions.
We Have to Sow More
On this same train trip across the country I had
what could he called missionary encounters. Of course, I wasn't passing
out tracts in the aisles; but just sitting there in my ~ryassa~ with a
cross and my beard, I attracted attention. Some of it wasn't fruitful,
but was typical of how we Orthodox are often regarded in America: one
small boy thought I was "Santa Claus," and a woman pointed me out as
"Ayatollah!" I also had several encounters with people who should have
been Orthodox: one woman who was married to a Greek man; a man who was
married to a Greek woman, but neither of them Orthodox because the
woman's grandmother had become a Lutheran for social reasons -- here it
was obvious how worldliness had taken its toll of yet another Orthodox
family in America.
But there were some fruitful encounters, too. To
several people I was able to speak about Orthodoxy (which they had
never heard of) and hand out some copies of "The Orthodox Word". One of
these people had a story that should move our Orthodox hearts.
For most of the day that I was crossing vast Wyoming
-- full of nothing but frozen, barren land and a few antelope herds --
I was talking to an intense young man who was searching for the truth
after finding out that the "charismatic" movement is not from God.
After becoming disillusioned with American religion -- the Methodists,
Roman Catholics, Baptists, and various Protestant evangelists -- as a
last resort he is learning Russian in order to go to Russia and find
out what he'll be told by people who are suffering for their faith.
"Maybe that will be real," he said, as opposed to the religious
hypocrisy he sees everywhere. He asked me eagerly about many things,
from doctrines to customs to moral teachings, and then read the chapter
on the charismatic movement in our book, "Orthodoxy and the Religion of
the Future" -- which he said put into words what he felt (based on his
own experience) but didn't have the teaching to express. Here is where
Orthodoxy, the true Christianity, can literally save someone who
otherwise might fall into despair from the inadequacy of the
Christianity of the West. Here again a seed was sown; perhaps Wyoming
won't become Orthodox, but a few souls there might.
All this is by way of explaining that Orthodoxy, in
St. Tikhon's definition, is the true Christianity, and it was never
more needed than today. We must realize what a treasure we have, and
make it active in us. This need not mean going door to door like
Jehovah's Witnesses, or preaching in the streets. The outward
expression of our faith will come naturally once we have begun to go
inward, finding out what this treasure is and letting ourselves be
truly changed by it.
Recently an Orthodox person of some sensitivity and
depth told me: "Orthodoxy is the truth, but it's too difficult for men
today, so I seldom speak of it." There is a kernel of truth in this
statement. Orthodoxy IS difficult compared to the Western
denominations; but still -- anyone who is capable of wanting a
demanding faith is capable of accepting Orthodoxy. We have to sow more,
so there will be more to reap. But first of all we have to go inward
and make the true Christianity of Orthodoxy a living part of ourselves.
Going Deeper Into
Orthodoxy
How do we do this? To some extent, anyone who is
close to Church and tries to keep the Orthodox discipline, knows the
answer to this question: you attend church services, keep the faith,
receive Holy Communion, read Orthodox books. But it is possible to do
all this almost mechanically, without going deeper into Orthodoxy.
Make an Effort
Therefore, first of all we must not merely attend
services and keep the outward form of Orthodoxy -- we must be aware of
what we are doing. If you've ever talked to an earnest Protestant or
unbeliever who really wants to know what you believe and why you behave
the way you do, you will understand how important this awareness is.
You can literally save the soul of someone like that if you can begin,
even in a little way, to open up to him the depths of Orthodox
Christianity. Why do you make the sign of the Cross? Why do you pray to
saints? Why do you stand up in church, or make prostrations during
Lent? Why are you always singing "Lord, have mercy"? What is Holy
Communion? Why do you confess your sins to a priest? Especially today,
when we are surrounded by people who don't know the truth but some of
whom are really thirsting for it -- we can't just do these things out
of habit; we must be able, as the Apostle Peter says, to give an
account of what we believe and do to those outside the Church. There
are many ways to become educated in Orthodox Christianity -- ask your
parish priest, read books, obtain a copy of some of the Church's
services and begin to enter more deeply into their meaning.
Further, we must be not just aware of what our
Church teaches and does -- we must be trying to saturate ourselves in
it. St. Seraphim, in his spiritual instructions, says that the
Christian must be "swimming in the law of the Lord" -- and this doesn't
mean just making the Church a little part of one's life; it means going
deeper and doing more. Of course, we start a little at a time. If you
have been going to church just on Sundays, you can begin to go to the
Vigil on Saturday night, and to feast-day services. If you've been
trying to keep the fast of Great Lent, you can begin to go to more of
the very moving services of Lent -- the Liturgy of the Presanctified
Gifts, the Canon of St. Andrew of Crete, the Praises of the Mother of
God.
Written for You
And another very important thing: You should be
reading spiritual books. St. John Chrysostom goes so far as to say that
a Christian who doesn't read spiritual books can't be saved. Why?
Because the world, whose spirit we absorb unconsciously many hours a
day, is so strong that we will almost automatically follow its ways
unless we are consciously filling our minds and hearts with Christian
impressions.
Innumerable books exist for this purpose, both in
Russian and English: first of all the Holy Scriptures and Orthodox
commentaries on them. Then the Lives of Saints and recent ascetics; "My
Life in Christ" by St. John of Kronstadt; "Unseen Warfare" by St.
Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain and Bishop Theophan the Recluse; the
Spiritual Instructions of St. Abba Dorotheos; the Homilies of St.
Macarius the Great; the Orthodox service books, several of which are
now in English; the "Lausaic History" and the Lives and Sayings of the
Desert Fathers, which are just as fresh now as when uttered 1500 years
ago; Lives of Russia's New Martyrs; Archbishop Andrew's "The One Thing
Needful." The Monastery bookstore here can sell you these and many
other books. If you have a spark of Christian fervor in you, you will
be surprised how much your soul will be refreshed by reading books like
these; they will give you a taste of that otherworldliness without
which the Christian soul withers and dies, especially in our worldly
times.
Help in Struggle
And of course, a central part of this going deeper
into Orthodoxy are the Church's medicines of confession and Holy
Communion, which you should participate in as fully as possible,
according to the counsel of your spiritual father. Then there are the
daily opportunities for expressing Christian love -- giving alms,
visiting the sick, helping those in need. All of these means, if one's
heart is in them, are what help to make the Christian different from
the world, because they lift his eyes above this passing world to the
heavenly Kingdom which is our goal as Christians. These are the
positive means of going deeper into Orthodoxy. There are, of course,
negative things you will have to fight against as well. Once you become
aware that there is an unseen warfare going on, that our Christianity
is constantly being attacked by our unseen enemies, especially through
the spirit of worldliness, you will begin to see also the negative
things in your life that have to be changed. But with a firm
understanding of the positive, inspiring side of Christian life, this
struggle against negative faults and habits becomes much easier. Part
of our awareness of what Orthodoxy is involves knowing that this world
is largely the domain of the devil, the prince of this world, who acts
on our souls and hearts chiefly by the love of this passing world. But
if we are struggling in an Orthodox way, we are receiving the grace of
God which is the only thing that can raise us above this world that
lies in evil.
3. SOME PITFALLS
Now I'd like to say a word about a few of the
pitfalls into which one can fall once one has begun to take up the path
of fervent Orthodox Christianity. One might think, hearing about our
faith; that all one has to do is to become on fire with zeal for it,
and then one can enter the Heavenly Kingdom. But it so happens that we
have an enemy -- the devil -- and as soon as we become fervent, the
enemy comes and begins to fight. I'll speak here of three of the ways
in which he attacks, and this will also help us to define a little more
precisely what is the true Christianity of Orthodoxy.
Missing the Basics
The first pitfall occurs when one begins to read Orthodox books, is
inspired by them, but does not apply their principles properly to one's
own life. Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov, one of the great Russian
Fathers of the 19th century -- a beacon light for modern times,
together with his contemporary, Bishop Theophan the Recluse -- wrote a
special book, called in English "The Arena," for the monastics of the
last times -- our times -- where he gives advice which all Orthodox
strugglers of our times should heed. In this book he warns beginners on
the monastic path not to become so exalted by some inspiring writings
of the Holy Fathers or even by the Lives of Saints, that one forms "an
impossible dream of a perfect life vividly and alluringly in his
imagination" and ceases to do the humble Christian tasks right in front
of him (ch. 10).
This is a basic pitfall. One can think about living
in the desert, while right in front of one there may be an excellent
opportunity to practice Christianity -- someone may be in trouble, and
with our high ideas we may not even think of helping him. Or, with
these same high ideas in our mind, we may begin to criticize others and
be lacking in the basic Christian love without which all our high ideas
are empty. Through experience we must learn how to apply the writings
of the Holy Fathers and the Scripture itself to our own level and
circumstances.
Our spiritual life is not something bookish or that
follows formulas. Everything we learn has to become part of our life
and something natural to us. We can be reading about hesychasm and the
Jesus Prayer, for example, and begin to say it ourselves -- and still
be blind to our own passions and unresponsive to a person in need right
in front of us, not seeing that this is a test of our Christianity that
comes at a more basic level than saying the Jesus Prayer. We have to
read Orthodox books that are on our level -- the ones I mentioned above
are more for beginners -- and we have to read them very humbly,
realizing the nature of our times when worldly influences are present
everywhere and affect our thinking even when we aren't aware of it, and
never dreaming that we are on any level but that of raw beginners.
The Disease of
Correctness
Bound up with this is a disease of today's Orthodox
Christians which can be deadly: the "correctness disease." In a way
this is a natural temptation to anyone who has just awakened to
Christian faith and to spiritual life -- the more one finds out about
Christian doctrine and practice, the more one discovers how many
"mistakes" one has been making up to now, and one's natural desire is
to be "correct." This is praiseworthy, although in the beginning one is
probably going to be too artificially "strict" and make many new
mistakes out of pride (to which we are constantly blind). If you are
critical of others, self-confident about your own correctness, eager to
quote canons to prove someone else is wrong, constantly "knowing
better" than others -- you have the germs of the "correctness disease."
These are signs of immaturity in spiritual life, and often one outgrows
them if one is living a normal spiritual life.
But especially in our days, the spirit of
worldliness is so strong, and there is obviously so much wrong in our
church life -- that there is a strong temptation to make "correctness"
a way of life, to get stuck in it. And this is not only a disease of
converts; one of the best bishops of the Old Calendar Greeks, Bishop
Cyprian of Sts. Cyprian and Justina Monastery near Athens, has written
that this spirit of "correctness" has already done untold damage to
Orthodoxy in Greece, causing fights and schisms one after the other.
Sometimes one's zeal for "Orthodoxy" (in quotes) can be so excessive
that it produces a situation similar to that which caused an old
Russian woman to remark of an enthusiastic American convert "Well, he's
certainly Orthodox all right -- but is he a Christian?"
To be "Orthodox but not Christian" is a state that
has a particular name in Christian language: it means to be a Pharisee,
to be so bogged down in the letter of the Church's laws that one loses
the spirit that gives them life, the spirit of true Christianity. In
saying this my aim is not to be critical or to point to anyone in
particular -- we all suffer from this -- but only to point out a
pitfall which can cause one to fail to take advantage of the riches
which the Orthodox Church provides for our salvation, even in these
evil times.
Even when it is not fanatical, this spirit of
"correctness" for its own sake turns out to be fruitless. As an
example, I can tell you of a very good friend of ours, one of the
zealot fathers of Mt. Athos. He is a "moderate" zealot, in that he
recognizes the grace of New Calendar sacraments, accepts the blessings
of priests of our Church, and the like; but he is absolutely strict
when it comes to applying the basic Zealot principle, not to have
communion not only with bishops whose teaching departs from Orthodox
truth, such as the Patriarch of Constantinople, and not only with
anyone who has communion with him, but with anyone who has communion
with anyone who in any remote way has communion with him. Such "purity"
is so difficult to attain in our days (our whole Russian Church Abroad,
for example, is "tainted" in his eyes by some measure of communion with
the other Orthodox Churches) that he is in communion with only his own
priest and ten other monks in his group on the Holy Mountain; all of
the rest of the Orthodox Church is not "pure."
Perhaps there are only ten or twelve people left in
the world who are perfectly "strict" and "pure" in their Orthodoxy --
this I really don't know; but it simply cannot be that there are really
only ten or twelve Orthodox Christians left in the world with whom one
can have true oneness of faith, expressed in common communion. I think
that you can see that there is some kind of spiritual dead-end here;
even if we had to believe such a narrow view of Orthodoxy according to
the letter, our believing Christian heart would rebel against it. We
cannot really live by such strictness; we must somehow be less
"correct" and closer to the heart of Orthodox Christianity.
In smaller ways, too, we can get carried away with
"correctness':' we can like well-done Byzantine icons (which is a good
thing), but we go too far if we are disdainful of the more modern style
icons which are still in many of our churches. The same goes for church
singing, architecture, the following of correct rules of fasting, of
kneeling in church, etc. While striving to be as correct as we can, we
must also remember that these things belong to the outward side of our
Orthodox faith, and they are good only if they are used in the right
spirit of the true Christianity St. Tikhon talks about. Vladimir
Soloviev, in his Short Story of Antichrist, ingeniously suggests that
Antichrist, in order to attract Orthodox conservatives, will open a
museum of all Christian antiquities. Perhaps the very images of
Antichrist himself (Apoc. 13:14) will be in good Byzantine style --
this should be a sobering thought for us.
"Charismatic" Deception
The third pitfall I'll just mention, because it
doesn't seem to be a problem in our Church. This is the "charismatic"
movement which imagines it is acquiring the Holy Spirit by various
Protestant techniques. This movement is filled with such an obvious
spirit of inflated self-esteem and has so many of the characteristics
of what Orthodox writers describe as spiritual deception (prelest) that
I won't dwell on it here. The true Orthodox spirit is something very
different.
4. EXAMPLES OF TRUE CHRISTIANITY
After mentioning these pitfalls I'd like to
get back to the subject and mention some final ways we have in our
Russian Church Outside of Russia today of increasing our awareness of
Orthodoxy and helping us to value it more and use it better.
Our Orthodox faith comes down to us through
tradition. This means it isn't something we just read about or
rediscover through books -- it is something passed on from father to
son, from one generation to the next, which we see being practiced
around us by our fathers and brothers in the faith. If we are in living
contact with these people who are passing down the tradition,
"correctness" will not be such a temptation for us; we will be "hooked
up" with the tradition. This doesn't mean we must believe every opinion
we hear from seemingly pious people -- we have the writings of the Holy
Fathers and the whole tradition of the Church to guide us if there are
doubts or perplexities.
Some of those who pass on the Orthodox Faith have a
special message for us. I'd like to mention here just three of those
who have something to say to us: two of them died in the last few
years, and some of you here knew them; another is still alive. All
three are bound up with Russia which is now undergoing the terrible
trial of atheist rule, and that also has something to say to us.
Archbishop Andrew of
Novo-Diveyevo
The first of these men is Archbishop Andrew of
Novo-Diveyevo, who died last year after a long and full life in the
Church. He was just setting out in life when the Russian Revolution
broke out, and he had to rethink his whole goal in life under the
changed circumstances. What is life for, and what is worth doing in
life if all the normal foundations of life can be so suddenly
overthrown? Having known the warmth of Orthodoxy in childhood, he
sought for it as an adult at first in vain, until he discovered that he
himself had to go deeper and suffer for what he needed. He read
Dostoyevsky, which deepened his view on life; he fell in with a
non-Orthodox Christian group, which had fervor but couldn't satisfy his
Orthodox soul. He found a priest who opened up to him the meaning
behind the Church's services and customs. He read the Holy Fathers, and
came hack to life from his earlier despair. And then he found the
elders of Optina: Nectarius, who taught him what true godliness or
piety is -- to keep everything of God's in honor; and the Elder
Anatole, who gave him St. Tikhon's book "On True Christianity" and told
him to live by it.
Wherever he was -- in Russia, Germany, or America --
he strove to establish an atmosphere of Christian warmth where other
seekers could find the peace he had found. He saw that most of our
Christian life is outward and cold, and he strove always to awaken the
true inward life and warmth of Orthodoxy when it is deeply understood
and practiced. He hated the "hothouse" Christianity of those who
"enjoy" being Orthodox but don't live a life of struggling and
deepening their Christianity. We converts can easily fall for this
"hothouse" Orthodoxy, too. We can live close to a church, have English
services, a good priest, go frequently to church and receive the
Sacraments, be in the "correct" jurisdiction -- and still be cold,
unfeeling, arrogant and proud, as St. Tikhon has said. In this way we
will not grow because we don't have the sense of urgency and struggle
that Vladika Andrew talked about. Once, when he only suspected that one
of his spiritual children was growing comfortable in his Orthodoxy, he
took him by the shoulders and literally shook him and told him: "Don't
you be a hypocrite!"
You can read further about Archbishop Andrew and his
Orthodox philosophy of life in a booklet published several years ago:
"The Restoration of the Orthodox Way of Life." From Vladika Andrew we
can learn that Orthodoxy is a matter of life and death, that it
requires intense awareness and struggle, that it can't be "comfortable"
unless it is fake.
Professor I.M. Andreyev
The second man I'd like to mention lived for many
years right here in Jordanville. He was a philosopher -- I.M. Andreyev.
He belonged at first to the liberal intelligentsia, and only gradually,
in the first decade of the Revolution, did he come back to Orthodoxy,
where he found the whole philosophy of life which the Western schools
could not give. His pilgrimages to Sarov, Diveyevo, and other
monasteries in Russia just before they were closed, deepened and made
real his new-found faith. Then came his years of standing in the truth
when he sided with the Catacomb Church in the terrible years of the
1920's and '30's.
He was a refined and philosophical thinker, but most
of all he had an Orthodox heart, and he grieved most of all at seeing
how few Orthodox people seem to care deeply for God and their faith and
their fellow men. In his article "Weep," after describing how a young
mother in New York City brutally killed her infant son, he addresses
the Orthodox people: "All for one and one for all are guilty... Let
each one think of himself... What were you doing on that evening when
this unbelievable but authentic evil deed was performed? Perhaps it was
your sin, your immoral deed, your malice, which turned out to be the
last little drop which caused the vessel of evil to overflow. This is
the way we must reflect, if we are Christians... Weep, brothers and
sisters! Do not be ashamed of these tears... Let your tears be a fount
of a different energy, an energy of good that fights against the energy
of evil... Let these tears also awaken many of the indifferent."
Andreyev's burning concern shows us that we must
have a deeply-feeling heart, or else we are not Christians. [On his
life and philosophy, see "The Orthodox Word," 1971, no. 74.]
Father Dimitry Dudko
Finally, I'd like to mention one man who is alive
today in Soviet Russia -- Father Dimitry Dudko. He was born already
after the Revolution, and came to Christ in the late Soviet period
through the sufferings of living under the atheist rule and spending
81/2 years in prison camp. His words in recent years speak with
extraordinary power for us Orthodox Christians outside of Russia. One
might disagree with him on a few theoretical points, but his heart is
so right, so Orthodox. In Fr. Dimitry is the same concern and feeling
that Andreyev found largely lacking in the West; the same intensity and
struggle Vladika Andrew preached. Once, when someone asked him at his
question and answer sessions several years ago after the All-night
Vigil, recorded in his book, "Our Hope" -- Isn't Christianity in the
West better off, being in freedom? -- he replied: No. There they have
spirituality with comfort, and you can't expect much from that; here in
Russia we have martyrs and suffering, and from that can come
resurrection and new life.
Actually, if you take seriously what Orthodox
teachers like Archbishop Andrew, Andreyev, and Father Dimitry are
saying, you can come to think there isn't much hope for us -- we're too
soft, too unaware, too shallow, too outward. Well, it's good to think
like that -- it might make us begin to wake up and struggle. Let the
words of these fervent souls be a warning for us.
5. OUR TALENT OF FREEDOM
We are in a privileged position of peace and
freedom, and this is dangerous for us. We can sit in the midst of our
Orthodox treasures, the treasures that give salvation that no one else
has -- and be satisfied with our situation and so be totally fruitless.
If we have difficulty in being Orthodox -- then let us rejoice, for
that means we must struggle, and there is hope that we won't wither and
die spiritually.
Orthodoxy -- Here and
Now
Often we have the wrong idea about our situation. We
think: "If only I could go somewhere else, change my situation, and the
like, my problems would be solved"; but usually this is not right at
all. We must start right now, wherever we are. If it is difficult, that
is all the better -- it means we have to fight for our Christianity;
and if you have to fight and struggle, you become more aware.
But there are also opportunities in our privileged
position, and we should use them.
First of all, perhaps many of you don't know that
there are many contacts now between people in Russia and people
outside. We can become informed of what is going on there. Read Fr.
Dimitry Dudko's books, or his little newspaper. There are also Western
sources which give fresh information on what is happening to Orthodox
Christians in Russia -- Fr. Victor Potapov's "Orthodox Monitor, the
Keston News Service, "Aid to the Russian Church," and so forth. Find
out about these suffering people and pray for them. Do you know about
Nun Valeria, arrested and placed in a psychiatric hospital for selling
belts with the Ninetieth Psalm embroidered on them? About Father George
Calciu in Romania, now in prison for his Christian sermons? About
Alexander Ogorodnikov, imprisoned for holding a Christian discussion
group? About Vladimir Osipov, the Russian patriot and samizdat
publisher? About Fr. Gleb Yakunin, Fr. Vasily Romanchuk, Sergei
Yermolaev, Igor Ogurtsov -- the list is long. We have to start praying
for these people who are suffering for their faith.
And we can help them: we have their prison addresses
and can send them letters. Even if they don't receive them, the prison
officials do, and the treatment of prisoners with "friends abroad"
noticeably improves. Through "Orthodox Action" you can send literature
in regular envelopes. There are even ways of getting books through. You
can write to Fr. Dimitry Dudko -- some letters get through, and and he
even replies. Everyone can do something, and every bit helps. In the
West we've grown too passive -- now is the time when we can express our
care and concern.
When Fool's Paradise is
Lost
Perhaps even more, we can learn from the suffering
people of Russia and other Communist countries. I don't want to
frighten you, but we'd better face the fact that what they're suffering
now, or something similar, is probably coming here, and soon. We're
living in the last times, Antichrist is close, and what happens in
Russia and other countries like it is the normal experience for our
times. Here in the West we're living in a fool's paradise which can and
probably will soon be lost. Let's start to prepare -- not by storing
food or such outward things that some are already doing in America, but
with the inward preparation of Orthodox Christians.
Have you ever asked yourself, for example, the
question how you will survive if you are placed in prison or
concentration camp, and especially in the punishment cells of solitary
confinement? How are you going to survive? You will go crazy in a very
short time if your mind has nothing to occupy itself with. What will
you have in your mind? If you are filled with worldly impressions and
have nothing spiritual in your mind; if you are just living from day to
day without thinking seriously about Christianity and the Church,
without becoming aware of what Orthodoxy is, and you are placed in a
situation like solitary confinement where there is nothing to do,
nowhere to go, no movies to see, just staying in one spot facing four
walls -- you will scarcely survive.
The Romanian Protestant pastor, Richard Wurmbrand,
has a tape devoted to this subject which is very interesting. In a
crisis situation like that, when all our books and outward props are
taken away, we can depend on nothing except what we've acquired within
ourselves. He says that all the Bible verses he knew didn't help him
much; abstract knowledge of dogmas didn't help much -- what is
important is what you have in your soul. You must have Christ in your
soul. If He is there, then we Orthodox Christians have a whole program
which we could use in prison. We can remember the Orthodox Calendar --
which saints and feasts are commemorated when. We don't have to know
the whole Calendar, but from our daily life in the Church we will
remember the milestones of the Church year; whatever we have stored up
in our hearts and minds will come back to us. Whatever prayers and
hymns we know by heart will help us, we will have to sing them every
day. You will have to have people to pray for.
The world-wide dispersion of our Russian Church
Abroad is ideal for this. You can go over the whole globe in your mind,
one country or continent at a time, and pray for those you know, even
if you can't think of their names -- bishops and abbesses, parishes and
priests both Russian and missionary, the monasteries in the Holy Land,
prisoners in Russia and Romania and other lands under the atheist yoke,
the missions in Uganda and elsewhere in Africa where it is very
difficult, the monks of Mt. Athos, the suffering Old Calendarists of
Greece. The more of these you are aware of and praying for now, the
better it will be for you when you have to suffer yourself, the more
you will have to take with you into prison.
As Andreyev says, it is "one for all and all for
one" -- we are involved in practicing our Christianity in a world that
has become atheist, whether or not open persecution is going on.
Resolve
Every Christian has a talent from God, and He will
ask what we have done with what He gave us. In Soviet Russia and other
Communist countries, there is the talent of suffering for Christ and
being faithful in the midst of trials. In the free world, the talent
given most of us is the talent of freedom: we have been given the
freedom to practice our faith and the opportunity through our abundance
of Orthodox texts to become fully aware of it and deepen it within
ourselves. But this Orthodoxy must be the true Christianity that St.
Tikhon describes -- the Orthodoxy not of the mind but of the heart.
This kind of Orthodoxy cannot be acquired overnight; it requires
suffering, experience, testing. But first of all it requires resolve.
If each one of us puts this resolve in his heart, if we take our
Christian Faith seriously and resolve to be faithful to it, there can
be a literal resurrection of true Christianity in our midst, something
that Fr. Dimitry Dudko and others mention as beginning to happen in
Russia.
Let me end with the words of St. Herman, whose feast
we are celebrating -- he also was one of those concerned ones who made
full use of the opportunities given them. In the famous incident when
he asked the officers of a ship what they loved most of all, and then
put them to shame by telling them that only God is worth loving so
much, he ended his instruction with these words, which you will find on
some icons of St. Herman: "From this day, from this hour, from this
minute, let us love God above all." A very simple thing -- which is
exactly what we all must do. May God give us the strength for it, by
the prayers of His great Saint, Herman of Alaska. Amen.