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.
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