[ad_1]
Congratulations to all with the feast1 of the Holy Fathers of the Kiev Caves! Let’s take a stroll again by historical past, to the cradle of the Russian Church, the place it appears the destiny of Holy Rus’ as soon as once more rests gently inside the partitions of that portion of the Mom of God, whereas nice maelstroms of heresy and riots encompass her.
Picture: korners.kiev.ua
Quite than trying so as to add to the litany of fantastic publications on the feast day, and retell the identical superb tales, let’s have a look and mirror on some tales and features of the Lavra which can be hardly ever advised within the English language.
Given the tragic invasion of our beloved Ukrainian Orthodox lands by the Constantinople Patriarchate, and the shameful and open assist for Nazism among the many godless pseudo-Orthodox schismatics, we’ll study the repeating historical past in relation to present occasions. In any case, to grasp the place we’re, and what’s occurring at present, you could return to the start…
A Story of Bygone Years
This story is over one thousand years previous. Kiev—The Mom of Rus’ Cities—and her Lavra of the Dormition of the Mom of God was at all times on the middle. She’s seen all of it, a lot grief, a lot religion, a lot heresy, and a lot holiness. Hers is a story of the bygone years, the story from whence got here the Russian lands, the place in Kiev the primary Grand Princes started to rule, and from what supply Rus’ has her origin.
These phrases ought to sound acquainted to any scholar of Slavic historical past—they’re a paraphrase of the Main Chronicle, an important of the traditional chronicles of Russian historical past. They had been written by St. Nestor of the Kiev Caves—the daddy of Russian historical past. Historic Russian chronicles reveal many issues, primarily that Rus’ individuals already thought of themselves to be a single nation at a time when there was no “Germany” or “France” on the map, however as an alternative, East and West Frankia.2
From all this, we study our first main lesson: Russia and the Rus’ Church is much extra historic than lots of these in opposition to her would love individuals to consider.
For instance, there may be a lot rhetoric from the Patriarchate of Constantinople of how the “Slavic youthful brothers” must obey the primacy of the “Greek nation”.
I need to first say I’ve nothing however respect and admiration for Hellenic tradition and civilization. The idea of conventional (versus put up “enlightenment” or post-modern) Western Civilization and European id is in brief, Greco-Roman tradition and legacy along with Christian religion—and I at all times regarded Russia to be part of that European “western” civilization”, and really, I might even argue Russia resembles much more the standard values of pre-schism Europe than the fashionable West.
However the rhetoric from Istanbul appears post-modernist and unrelated in any method to previous Hellenic tradition. Fairly frankly, it appears bigoted and racist. It appears the Phanar postulates that they—residents of Istanbul, Turkey—have the proper to the traditional legacy of Constantinople, however the Rus’ Church3 doesn’t have the proper to the traditional legacy of Kiev. And make no mistake about how historic the Russian Church is…
Kiev Caves Lavra—a sister of Mt. Athos
To place it in perspective, Mount Athos arose within the established type we acknowledge within the eighth century;4 nevertheless the event of its nice monasteries as we all know them at present appears to this point largely from between the ninth and fourteenth centuries. The Nice Lavra on Holy Athos, for instance, was based in 963, and most of its frescos are from the sixteenth centuries… This makes them youthful than the works of the Russian saint Andrei Rublev!
The Kiev Caves Lavra was based in 1051—an vital date, as a result of this most historic of Russian monasteries, technically talking, existed when all of Europe nonetheless knew just one Church. The Nice Schism with the papists occurred solely three years later. Which means that the Nice Lavra of Athos and the Kiev Caves Lavra are virtually contemporaries!
Probably the most wonderful monasteries on Athos, Simonopetra, was based within the thirteenth century, making it round 2 hundred years youthful than the Kiev Caves Lavra; nevertheless the Phanar would like you to consider that from the start Rus’ was a desolate empty steppe, and the Rus’ Church (which accurately fed the disadvantaged Phanar) was in a state of everlasting infanthood compared with the Hellenic world.
And Western media can be glad to proceed this portrayal of an historic Phanar (whose principal functioning church is roughly a recent of Moscow’s Sretensky Monastery’s previous catholicon) and a younger Rus’.
To place issues in perspective: Immediately, the second Sunday of Nice Lent, can also be the feast day of probably the most superb Holy Hierarch St. Gregory Palamas. St. Gregory lived within the early fourteenth century, whereas St. Andrew of Kiev, co-founder of the Kiev Caves Lavra was born previous to the Nice Schism in 983, and reposed in 1073. Which means that by the point Holy Hierarch Gregory Palamas lived, there have been already nice saints in Kiev.
This certainly not is meant as disrespect for Constantinople or the Hellenic world—all of us honor our superb Holy Hierarch St. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople and the early fathers. Nobody questions that the Rus’ individuals acquired Baptism from superb Constantinople. However the Phanar is taking part in with a double normal—pretending that the legal guidelines of the Roman Empire nonetheless apply to them, however the legal guidelines of Kievan Rus’ shouldn’t apply in Rus’.
St. Peter Mogila
The Holy Hierarch Peter Mogila, Metropolitan of Kiev (1596-1646) has at all times been one in every of my favourite saints,5 and though his works had been “extremely regarded” by St. John of Shanghai6, I’m usually unhappy at how hardly ever his story is advised. Merely put, this holy man saved Orthodoxy within the Ukraine, Rus’… and possibly far past her borders.
Whereas volumes could possibly be written on his works, this one uncommon quote of his may be very telling of the kind of individual he’s:
“I usually thought and mused about how essential it’s in faculties to show not solely the exterior sciences, however much more so, and above all the things else, that faculties instill piety, which have to be rooted and sown in your younger hearts, as a result of with out it, all knowledge is foolishness earlier than God.”
He was born a nobleman right into a princely household, he turned a monk, archimandrite, and primate; he was an educational physician skilled within the College of Paris, he was a thinker, linguist, liturgist, reformer7, writer, printer, pedagogue and theologian, and one in every of most tragically underappreciated, but best missionaries and holy hierarchs in Japanese Europe.
Even when they don’t know his title, nearly each Orthodox Christian was personally affected by his legacy.
Peter Mogila based the primary Orthodox seminary.
Sure, in fact, there have been clearly strategies of coaching clergy previous to Peter Mogjla, however in his Kiev Brotherhood-Mogila collegium, he was the primary Orthodox hierarch to take the rigorous tutorial research of the nice European universities and produce them along with the ascetic non secular enviornment of the monasteries. His methodology created a method of concurrently enlightening and instructing each the thoughts, and the guts, and on the identical time, usurping the logical thoughts from its tyranny over the human psyche, and brining it down into the guts. For the primary time, modern academia coexisted alongside real Orthodox piety.8
Earlier than there was the college of Athens, or the Greek-Latin-Slavic Academy in Moscow, there was the Kiev college of Peter Mogila.
I take into account him one of many four Evangelists of Japanese Slavic printing, collectively along with his contemporaries St. Job of Pochaev, Ivan Fyodorov of Moscow, and Polish-Ukrainian nobleman Prince Konstanty Wasyl Ostrogski.
Throughout the time of the Uniate heresy, Peter Mogila started to make use of his college for missionary work, ultimately starting the motion of mass literacy in Little Russia (Ukraine). What Sts. Cyril and Methodius did for the Slavic alphabet, these 4 did for Slavic printing, enabling Orthodoxy to lastly counter, not solely spiritually, but in addition academically and scientifically, the heresies within the West9, utilizing the brand new know-how of the printing press for the service of God, the Church, and the nation.
He was a person who, above all, really understood the missionary spirit the Church desperately wanted. He noticed the Uniate-Jesuits operating round Ukraine like Borgias, perverting the souls of the individuals, serving the corrupt pursuits of Rome. As a pioneer of early mass media, he countered the propaganda with the reality, with love, and with the religion—with out the necessity for knavish riots or insults, however as an alternative demonstrating the ethical superiority of Orthodoxy by charity.
A well-known Syrian historian and Melkite Archdeacon Paul of Aleppo, passing by Kiev, noticed first hand the fruits of Mogila’s work. These had been his phrases:
“Even villagers in Ukraine can learn and write … and village clergymen take into account it their obligation to instruct orphans and never allow them to run within the streets as vagabonds.”
Peter Mogila impressed upon all his clergy the necessity to not be elitist Jesuits, withholding information from the widespread people, or to cover inside the partitions of the Lavra, however to get out and educate the individuals by actual interplay.
That is as soon as once more what Ukraine and all Orthodoxy desperately wants now, greater than ever. Many are baptized, however so few are non secular, and spiritual schooling is what Orthodoxy wants. This contributes most acutely to the scenario in Ukraine.
The concept that the schismatics below the newly-formed construction of the “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” characterize Orthodoxy is ridiculous. Illustrative is this easy video, during which schismatics who got here to riot in opposition to the canonical Church had been referred to as upon to recite prayers, by devoted clergy and laity. The schismatic partisans, whom the Phanar regards to be Orthodox, did not recite even the Lord’s Prayer from reminiscence, but they appear to at all times keep in mind the phrases to their “Glory to the nation—dying to the enemies” chant.
In Peter Mogila’s time, there was the identical subject. Hierarchs had deserted Orthodoxy to dwell like feudal warlords within the Catholic union, whereas the rivers of western Ukraine ran purple with martyrs’ blood, and Transcarpathia turned one other Golgotha. Did he do nothing? No!
Peter Mogila and St. Job of Pochaev took a prayerful stance, and so they went out to counter the darkness with the sunshine of knowledge and theology. They revealed nice works!
That is what we’d like now!
I can think about the ultra-conservatives of their days may have even slandered them. “What’s a monk doing making an attempt to run a publishing home or taking part in with a printing press?!” In some ways, to my nice unhappiness, I think about there are some that assume the identical method about fashionable Orthodox media, clergymen who make movies on YouTube, and so on. I actually have even been advised there is no such thing as a level “losing time” writings articles on the schism…simply pray and ignore it.
However it isn’t straightforward to disregard when your Orthodox land is being ravished by schism, when your persons are dying; and fairly frankly, you’ll be able to pray and write articles on the identical time!
For that reason, for my part, fashionable Orthodox media initiatives can proceed the legacy of Peter Mogila; Jordanville Monastery’s printing home not solely bears the title, however is actually the direct continuation of St. Job’s Pochaev Press.
We want nothing lower than the restoration of the previous Ruthenian Brotherhoods—these unions of lay individuals, monastics, and easy clergy who labored collectively instructing in opposition to schism within the days of Peter Mogila. That self-sacrificing missionary spirit and need to unfold Orthodoxy by genuine fellowship and new applied sciences preserved the religion in these days; and whereas there are additionally main dangers, the web gives us these alternatives once more at present. Could God assist us all to make use of it correctly, by the prayers of these holy individuals.
Abyssus abyssum invocat — you’ll be able to’t compromise with heresy
Whereas studying concerning the Kievan saints commemorated at present, I additionally occurred to come back throughout the fascinating lifetime of St. Alexis of Goloseyevsky, who, amongst different issues, predicted1011 the assassination of Emperor Alexander II of Russia.
Emperor Alexander II was a tragic determine, and in addition barely polarizing amongst monarchists given his extra liberal views. Nonetheless, nearly all would agree that the tsar rightfully wished to carry an finish to slavery and feudalism by the emancipation of the surfs, which was on the time, an nearly revolutionary thought in conservative circles, particularly among the many very conservative historic the Aristocracy who in some ways felt threatened by the emergence of the capitalist and liberal nouveau riche.
And so who killed the “westernizing, liberal, revolutionary” Emperor, who tried to determine a constitutional monarchy? The conservatives? A gaggle of evil princes who didn’t wish to lose the autocratic system? No…Alexander II was assassinated by liberal, western-leaning revolutionaries.
Certainly, probably the most liberal of all Russian tsars, making an attempt to construct a constitutional monarchy, was assassinated by the liberals, who wished a constitutional monarchy.
I keep in mind being advised by a sensible priest from the Russian Church Exterior of Russia that that is the microcosm of why revolutionary ideology is a lie, that it was by no means about serving to the individuals, however all about lust of energy and the violent try to seize it. Mockingly…on this identical feast day this 12 months, the assassination of Emperor Paul I can also be commemorated.12
One other beautiful instance is Prime Minster Pyotr Stolypin, a statesmen and reformist who many believed, had he not additionally been assassinated, would have been able to saving Russia from the revolution by implementing very fastidiously and responsibly the wanted reforms.
His reforms are not possible to clarify in full scope right here, however oversimplified, he wished to abolish the antiquated remnants of the feudalist agriculture system, and create one primarily based on possession by particular person farmers of personal property.
The fashion of single homestead, impartial farms is understood in Ukrainian and Southern Russian tradition as khutors—as within the well-known work of Gogol, “Evenings on a Farm [Khutor] Close to Dikanka”. The khutor is the alternative of the previous Russian obschina, the collective farm.
Khutors are famously attribute of Ukrainian tradition. “A Khutor in Little Russia” Konstantin Kryzhitsky, 1884
The good Dostoyevsky additionally agreed with Stolypin on non-public possession (versus Tolstoy who most popular the collective system). Dostoyevsky mentioned: “If you wish to remodel humanity for the higher, to show close to beasts into people, give them land and you’ll attain your purpose.”13
Nonetheless, despite the fact that he strived to enhance the lives of each farmers and concrete dwellers, he was but once more assassinated by the revolutionaries, and his grave lies earlier than the Trapeza church within the Kiev Caves Lavra, the present cathedral of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
From this, we study an vital lesson—you’ll be able to’t negotiate with extremism, be it revolutionary, fascist, Bolshevik. Even should you give them what they need, they might fortunately kill you in any case.
To this identical finish, there’s a lesson within the ecclesiastical lifetime of Ukraine, and the world.
We will’t negotiate with heretics and schismatics. Papist, Ecumenist, Previous Believer, Previous Calendarist, nationalist, regardless of the heresy, it has no place within the Church.
That is the essential mistake of the Phanar. Whereas it appears extra possible they undertook these actions in Ukraine below the instruction of western powers controlling them, within the occasion they genuinely consider they’ll obtain schismatics with out repentance… it will and has failed miserably.
Already the schismatics have turned on one another, the Phanar, with Philaret straight contradicting Epiphany and Bartholomew. There can by no means be compromise with heresy.
In conclusion, I can solely surprise what the numerous saints of Kiev should consider this present scenario. I consider previous saints like Anthony of Kiev, and new ones like Raphael of Brooklyn who studied there. I can’t assist however surprise Ubi sunt (Baruch 3:16), in Slavonic: Гдѣ жє сyть; which is to say: The place are they? The place are our princely saints Vladimir and Alexander, our knights Ilya of Murom14 and Dobrinya, our Hetmans Bogdan Zinovii Khmelnitsky and St. Peter Kalnyshevsky?
It appears like all of the earthly powers of the world assist the schismatics.
I fear for my associates within the Lavra, and for its holy partitions, as a result of I rejoice in her stones, and her mud would transfer me to tears.15
Then one thing else moved me to tears. My weak point and lack of religion. “The place is your religion?” I keep in mind a good friend telling me.
As soon as I expressed my worry to a Ukrainian lady that the schismatics would seize the Kiev Caves Lavra as they’ve been seizing church buildings from the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church all through Ukraine. She nearly laughed at me. She mentioned to me “The Lavra belongs to the Mom of God! She gained’t let that occur.”
I additionally keep in mind one other dialog I had with a Carpatho-Russian lady. When she was within the Lavra, she spoke worriedly with a girl on the identical topic. The girl responded, “Are you aware the place we’re!? (contained in the Kiev Caves are the uncorrupt our bodies of numerous saints). The Lord will set all the things proper
The 2 devoted Orthodox women agreed that surrounding them had been all of the saints of Kiev from over a thousand years. With such non secular defenders throughout them, how may they be afraid?
That is the type of non secular energy you obtain if you stroll the Lavra grounds… You’ll be able to look upon saints from bygone years.
You see all of them, from the very starting of Kievan Rus’… and so they all see you.
You’re below their safety.
These Orthodox Ukrainians don’t worry no matter evil would dare assault the Lavra… After all, the Theotokos will save her Lavra, and never our worrying!
From this I additionally realized that really Orthodox girls have saved our religion in all our lands, whereas we with all our polemics and theological information generally neglect that it was our moms and grandmothers who gave us our Orthodox upbringing.
These ideas jogged my memory as soon as once more not solely of the best girl on this planet…however the highest creature in creation—the Mom of God. Sure…in fact… our Guiding Directress was at all times there within the Kiev hills, wasn’t she? Sure, our Champion Chief! She is going to defend her personal—her Son is not going to enable His Mom’s portion to fall.
Even when they arrive with the armies of hell…
1 http://orthochristian.com/calendar/20190311.html
2 http://www.unz.com/akarlin/mammoths-and-patriots/
3 Referring to your complete unity of the Russian Church, each in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, overseas, and so on.
4 I’m not discounting the Mom of God visiting Athos, I’m merely referring to the bodily [brick and mortar] buildings and communities we see at present…what’s frequently functioning at present.
5 Presently, Peter Mogila is glorified for native veneration as a saint within the Ukrainian Orthodox Church: http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/textual content/996346.html
6 http://www.pravoslavie.ru/29140.html
7 Within the sense of sensible, inner, and administrative/academic reforms—not liberal Protestant theological reforms.
8 http://orthochristian.com/116252.html
9 http://orthochristian.com/116252.html
10 https://drevo-info.ru/articles/16563.html (in russian)
11 https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Zhitija_svjatykh/velikie-russkie-startsy/18 (in russian)
12 http://orthochristian.com/calendar/20190311.html
13 https://www.rbth.com/arts/2013/12/07/stolypin_reformist_ahead_of_his_tim…
14 Saint Ilya lies uncorrupt within the Kiev Caves.
15 Psalm 102
Would you wish to see extra articles like this? Our fundraising purpose has not but been met, and we’d be very grateful to your assist.
It takes a full time workers to maintain this web site going, and our employees must feed their households. A recurring donation of even $15 or $25 monthly can be an enormous blessing.
[ad_2]
Source link
