Sobor In Russia
Sunday, 22 October 1989
In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
I have just returned from our yearly meeting of the Episcopal Council in Russia. A Council of the Church is not an administrative event; it is a moment when from all corners of the earth people come bringing their faith, bringing a longing for God and for justice on earth of their own people, bringing all the problems of the earth and the problems of the Church. And at a Council things are looked at in the light of the Gospel and of God, and all a Council aims at doing is to express in action, in structure, in proclamation what the Lord Jesus Christ has commanded us to be and commanded us to do on earth: to be His witnesses, witnesses that are prepared to proclaim His word in all its integrity, to stand in judgement before Christ's word and their own proclamation of it, who are prepared to learn from one another (and (?) how to be a Christian and how to reveal the Gospel to those who do not know it, not in words, even words of power and wisdom, but in the integrity of a life worthy of Christ’s own life, Christ's own death.
But the culminating point of the Sobor this year was the canonisation of two Patriarchs. The Council was gathered together on the occasion of the 400 anniversary of the establishment of the Patriarcate in Russia; that happened in 1589 in the presence and the blessing of the Patriarch of Constantinople Jeremias the 2nd. Then there was a long gap, more that 200 years when Peter the Great having abolished the Patriarcate, no Patriarch was elected, and it is on the eve of the Russian Revolution, not as a result of it but in a tragic and glorious coincidence that Patriarch Tikhon was elected.
Two Patriarchs were canonised this year; the first Patriarch and Patriarch Tikhon – Job and Tikhon. It's an event that has touched the very heart of Russian Christianity more than in one way. I will say nothing about Patriarch Job. But Patriarch Tikhon stood on the threeshold of the new and tragic world that was bursting into Russian history, crushing all that had been and claiming to build a society that would be just, and true to men. He was a man of the old times, no longer a young man when he was elected; having occupied several Sees in Russia itself, he had been the first orthodox bishop in North America, and he is still remembered there as the founder of Orthodoxy.
It was the hand of God that made him Patriarch; everyone expected other men, more brilliant, more prominent, more impressive to be elected; but the election was done in two steps: three candidates were proposed by the Council of 1918, and then one name was drawn from an urn. And against the expectation of many, it was Tikhon that was chosen by God. A man of the old society, of the old world, he was confronted with a situation hitherto unheard of, a situation of which no one could have foreseen, either the birth, brutal, cruel, or the further development. And he had to read the signs of time; he had to read in the historical situation for which nothing in the past gave him any indication, what were the ways of God, the place of a Christian, and the place of the Church. He (served, searched, or...) and found the road which was the Royal path of Christ, and the Royal path of the Church: the path of martyrdom, the path of the witnesses.
In his person it is not only him that was now canonised; all the martyrs of Russia, all those who gave their lives for God, for the Gospel, for the Church and for a true, enlightened care of men were represented by him. In our next Council we intend to canonise John of Kronstadt, the first martyr of the Revolution Vladimir of Kiev, Veniamin of Leningrad, Seraphim of Leningrad and others. And in a further Council to proclaim the martyrs of all these years.
A canonisation adds nothing to the glory of the Saints; it happens when a Church is mature to understand what they were, what their testimony was when the Church, that is all believers, have understood so deeply the ways of God (?) by them, that they are prepared to follow them faithfully along the same path, which is always the path to Calvary, but beyond it the path to the Resurrection.
St Vladimir saintliness was recognised 200 years and more after his death; the saintliness of Boris and Gleb was recognised at once because they were more understandable, and they were received as a message at once by a martyr Church. And now the time has come when, according to the word of the Gospel, what was whispered in rooms, in houses, will be proclaimed from the house tops: the glory of those who lived and died in loyalty and faithfulness to the true, worthy image of man, and in loyalty and true faithfulness to the God, Who in Himself through His Incarnation revealed the greatness and the holiness of man.
It's a great day for us – not only in Russia, but to all those who are seeking to understand the path of God in history, to understand what we are called to be. Tikhon proclaimed to us that what is Cesar's must be given to his, what is God’s must remain God's own. And he made it quite clear, in his teaching as well as in his life, that it is the t o t a l man that is God's because it is in man that is imprinted the image of God: the body, the mind, the service, the death if necessary of everyone in the service of man, and adoration, worship and total, ultimate loyalty to God; but not a distant God – a God Who had become man to save, had become man to be one of us, and to reach us how we can be worthy of our h u m a n calling.
May his prayers be with us always, and may gradually all of us grow to that measure of faithfulness, of humble greatness which he has revealed to us. Amen!