Sermon on events in Russia

25 August 1991

In the Name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.

Tragic days, have occurred in our tragic Land. And it is not perhaps in vain that Patriarch Alexis, on the morning when the tragedy began, celebrating in the Ouspensky Sobor, in the Cathedral of the Assumption in the Kremlin, attracted the attention of those who were with him to the fact that the tragedy had begun on the day of the Transfiguration.

The day of the Transfiguration, as we see it in the Gospel was both a promise of tragedy and a promise of a glorious and final beginning. I said ‘a promise', because Moses and Elijah spoke to the Lord Jesus Christ of His crucifixion; but His crucifixion had been undertaken by Him willingly, in a act of total dedication and of crucified love for His creation. Victory was already there because love is stronger than death, stronger than evil, stronger than all things when it is prepared to lay down its life for one's neighbour, for w h o e v e r needs it. But also the /cosmic/ Transfiguration revealed to us in a vision Christ in His humanity full of Divine Glory, shining with His eternal glory.

And so began the Russian tragedy of the last weeks; but more than this: the Apostles who had seen the glory were now called to go down, down into the plain; where they were to meet with the suffering and the tragedy, the darkness of a life deprived of grace... And so it happened also; the Transfiguration was a call to Crucifixion and a promise of victory but a promise of victory to those who together with Christ would accept to live and to die for the salvation of others.

We will pray in a moment in a moleben thanking God that six days had been sufficient to wipe out the most horrible, dread expectations; but we will pray also that He may give to all and each, to all people of good will a purity of heart that will allow them to renounce hatred, to reject strife, to overcome jealousy, to let go of all those things that destroy, and enter into the ways of the Lord.

After this I will celebrate a panikhida for all those who have lost their lives in civil strife; not only for the three young men who were buried yesterday and (?) service our Patriarch celebrated; but also those; who, in connection with their struggle for life, for freedom have perished in the Baltic states, in Georgia, in Moldavia, in Ukraine, in Armenia – wherever it happened, that God may receive their souls and give them that peace which He alone can give, as we will have prayed that God may give His peace, that peace which the world cannot give to those who are still alive and called to build a new life in a tragic country. Amen.