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In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
We are keeping today the feast of all the Saints of Russia, a
country whose history was remarkably short, barely a thousand years,
and which has been filled, from the beginning to the end, by
tragedy, by bloodshed and by martyrdom. The number of the Saints
whom we knew are many, but innumerable are those whose names are
known only to God, who rest in His heart - men, women, children who
have lived according to His Gospel and of whom many have died,
following Him, as the Scripture say, whithersoever He went. And in
the last seventy years how many unknown martyrs have been the
resplendence and the glory of Russia! How many have lived, faithful
to the Gospel to the point of laying down their lives for their
neighbour! how many of them have died for their neighbours - or
because of them! And how many indeed are now interceding for their
martyred country, and also for those who were the instruments of
their martyrdom and of their death...
Many years ago now has died in Russia Bishop Luka of Simferopol and of
Crimea. Before the Revolution he had been one of the best known surgeons
of Russia whose name was known even abroad, whose books could be found
in the libraries of the medical schools of all of Europe. When the
Revolution came, he decided to become a priest and on being asked, why,
he said that he had thought that he could best serve mankind, his
neighbour, each one of them, by being a surgeon when times were peaceful
but now something else was needed: a testimony and a readiness to live
and to die... And he came, after his ordination, to give his lectures at
the University in his priestly clothes; he was arrested, deported to
Tashkent, and patriarch Tikhon made him Bishop of the city. And the
respect he was surrounded by was such that he did not die a martyr, but
he was accepted, and he was a witness throughout sixty years, or seventy
years of his life.
I want to read to you now a part of a sermon which he preached on
occasion of Good Friday many, many years ago. "The death of Christ, - he
said, - is a tearing apart of an immortal body from an immortal soul, of
the body that could not die from a soul that remained alive, alive
forever. This makes the death of Christ a tragedy beyond our imagining,
far beyond any suffering which we can humanely picture or experience.
Christ's death is an act of supreme love; He was true when He said, No
one takes My life from Me - I give it freely Myself... No one could kill
Him, the Immortal; no one could quench this Light which is the shining
of the splendour of God - He gave His life, He accepted the impossible
death to share with us all the tragedy of our human condition. The Lord
Himself has thus taken upon His shoulders the first cross, the heaviest,
the most appalling one; but after Him, thousands and thousands of men,
of women, of children have taken upon themselves their own crosses;
lesser crosses perhaps, but how often these crosses which are lesser
then Christ's, remain as frightening for us ... Innumerable crowds of
people have lovingly, obediently walked in the footsteps of Christ,
(treading) the long way which is shown by Our Lord; a way tragic, but
which leads from this earth on the very Throne of God, into the Kingdom
of God. They walk carrying their crosses, they walk now for two thousand
years those who believe in Christ; they walk on, following Him, crowd
after crowd; and on the way we see crosses, innumerable crosses on which
are crucified the disciples of Christ; crosses, one cross after the
other, and however far we look, it is crosses and crosses again... We
see the bodies of the martyrs, we see the heroes of the spirit, we see
monks and nuns, we see priests and pastors; but many, many more people
do we see, ordinary, simple, humble people of God, who have willingly
taken upon themselves the Cross of Christ. There is no end to this
procession, they walk throughout the centuries, knowing that Christ has
foretold us that they will have sorrow on this earth, but that the
Kingdom of God is theirs... They walk, with the heavy cross, rejected,
hated because of truth, because of the name of Christ! They walk, they
walk this pure victims of God, the old and the young, children and
adults - but where are we? Are we going to stand and look, to see this
long procession, this throng of people with shining eyes, with hope
unquenched, with unfaltering love, with incredible joy in their hearts
pass us by? Shall we not join them, this eternally moving crowd that is
marked as a crowd of victims, but also as little children of the
Kingdom? Are we not going to take up our cross and follow Christ? Christ
has commanded us to follow Him, He has invited us to the banquet of His
Kingdom, and He is at the head of this procession - nay, He is together
with each of those who walk! Is this a nightmare? How can blood and
flesh endure this tragedy, the sight of all these martyrs, new and old?
Because Christ is risen! Because we do not see in the Lord Who walks
ahead of us a defeated Prophet of Galilee, as He was seen by His
tormentors, His persecutors; we know Him now in the glory of the
Resurrection; we know that every word of His is true! We know that the
Kingdom of God is ours if we simply follow Him!”
These are the words of one who had a right to speak these words
because he lived not only in the twilight of history, but at the core of
its tragedy, at the core of its horror, but he knew that the
Cross that had once been the object of horror and the sign of defeat had
become, through the death and resurrection of Christ, victory, and this
victory indeed was won by all these man, these children, these women,
unknown to the world, known to God alone, and it is their blood that has
been the renewal of Russia; it is their prayers that uphold now the
martyred country, and open up new ways, new possibilities...
And shall we not follow them? We are not called to that
martyrdom, we are only called, each in our place, to be faithful to our
calling to the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Shall we not, in the
peace in which we live, be as faithful as they were in the tragedy, in
the darkness, in the terror that was theirs? Amen.
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