THE GOLDEN CHAIN

The Lives of Archbishop Theophan of Poltava, Archbishop John of San Francisco, Archbishop
Joasaph of Canada, Archbishop Andrew of Rockland and Metropolitan Philaret of New York


Vladimir Moss

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© Copyright: Vladimir Moss, 2013. All Rights Reserved.

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INTRODUCTION 4

I. ARCHBISHOP THEOPHAN OF POLTAVA 5

Early Years 5
At the Theological Academy 7
Rasputin 11
Bishop of Yamburg 13
Bishop of Astrakhan 21
Archbishop of Poltava 24
The Revolution 29
Exile 32
Dogmatic Disputes 43
Reclusion: Final Years and Repose 49

II. ARCHBISHOP JOASAPH OF CANADA AND ARGENTINA 54

In Russia 54
In Serbia 56
In Canada 58
In Argentina and Paraguay 60
Repose and Miracles 62

III. ARCHBISHOP JOHN OF SAN FRANCISCO 64

Early Years 64
Emigration 66
Vladyka and the Soviets 72
Archbishop of Western Europe 78
Archbishop of San Francisco 82
Repose and Glorification 84

IV. ARCHBISHOP ANDREW OF ROCKLAND 88

Early Years 88
Optina and the Priesthood 90
Vera 93
The Catacomb Church 97
War and Emigration 99
Novo-Diveyevo 101
Repose 107

V. METROPOLITAN PHILARET OF NEW YORK 109

Early Years 109
Confessor against Paganism 114
Confessor against Communism 116
Confessor against Ecumenism 125
The Third All-Diaspora Council 133
Conflicts in the Synod 137
Sorrows and Joys 141
The Anathema against Ecumenism 144
Repose and Miracles 147

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 INTRODUCTION

St. Symeon the New Theologian writes that the saints are like a golden chain, and
that it is our aim to become attached to the last link in the chain: “Those who have
become saints from one generation to the next through the fulfillment of the
commandments take the place of the previous saints and are united to them. They
are illumined and become like them through communion with the Grace of God, and
they all become a golden chain, each individual being connected with the previous
one through, faith, works and love.” The saints whose lives are described in this
little book (we call them “saints” out of conviction, even if only two of them have
been officially glorified) form a golden chain of a similar kind: they represent the
continuity of sanctity in the Russian Church Abroad from its earliest years to the
most recent times. Thus their lives also enable us to form a kind of panorama of the
life of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad in time and space, from its beginnings
in the South of Russia just after the revolution to its foreign mission-fields in Eastern
and Western Europe, China, Australia and the United States. Moreover, since all of
these saints were born in pre-revolutionary Russia, we are given glimpses into the
rich spiritual life of that period. Thus St. John of Kronstadt, the Optina elders and the
Tsar-Martyr enter into these pages, as well as several of the confessors of the
Catacomb Church of post-revolutionary times.

These saints are linked also in more personal ways. Thus the first in the series,
Archbishop Theophan of Poltava, was the spiritual father of the second in the series,
Archbishop Joasaph, and lived in the monastery of Milkovo in Serbia at the same
time as the third in the series, Archbishop John Maximovich, was beginning his
monastic struggle there. Again, both the fourth and the fifth in the series,
Archbishop Andrew of Rockland and Metropolitan Philaret of New York, worked
together with Archbishop John in the United States (and in Metropolitan Philaret’s
case, in China, too).

May this little book encourage Orthodox Christians to pray more to these newly
revealed intercessors before the Throne of God, and strengthen our faith that, even
in these our terrible times, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, and
that the wonderful river of Orthodox holiness will not dry up to the end of the age!

July 8/21, 2013.

Kazan Icon of the Most Holy Mother of God.
East House, Beech Hill, Mayford, Woking. GU22 0SB.

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 I. ARCHBISHOP THEOPHAN OF POLTAVA
Early Years

The future Archbishop Theophan was born in the village of Podmoshie,

Novgorod province on December 31, 1874 (1873, according to another source). His
father was the village priest, Fr. Demetrius Bystrov, and his mother was called
Maria. He was baptized with the name Basil, since the feast day of St. Basil the Great
(January 1) was the nearest to his birthday.

When he was seven years old, Basil had an extraordinary prophetic dream. He
saw himself standing in hierarchical vestments and wearing a golden mitre in the
high place during the Divine Liturgy. And his father went up to him and censed
him. It should be pointed out that the child had never yet witnessed a hierarchical
service. In the morning Basil told his mother the dream. His father, who was sitting
in the next room, heard him and said:

“Look a new Joseph has appeared!”

But the prophecy in the dream was fulfilled exactly. Many years later, when
Archbishop Theophan was going to be consecrated to the episcopate, the Holy
Synod asked his father to take part in the service. And during the service he censed
his son in the sanctuary in front of the holy altar…

As a child, his parents told him, Basil did not know any prayers by heart, but he
would fall on his knees in front of the icons and burble out, weeping:

“Lord, You are so great and I am so small!”

He was quiet and concentrated, and did not take part in childish games. But at the
same time he was radiant and joyful. He tasted of the fruits of prayer, and kept a
strict watch on his inner life. He loved the severe landscape of the north of Russia,
which spoke to him of God the Creator. And he breathed in the pious, humble spirit
of the peasants around him.

Basil went to the parish school, where his extraordinary intellectual talents were
first revealed. He was able to read a page once and repeat it almost word for word,
and jumped class three times. Then he went to theological seminary, which he
finished three years before those who had begun with him.

Having finished his secondary studies at the theological seminary, the young
Basil had to pass an examination to enter the Theological Academy in St. Petersburg.

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 “I was then scarcely seventeen. I was much younger than all the other candidates,
and I looked like a schoolboy… I was not afraid of the entry examination because I
had a good knowledge of the seminary programme. And then there came the time of
the written examination in philosophy marked by the famous Professor Korinfsky. I
was afraid of this exam because it was outside the seminary programme and because
it was the only written exam, all the others were oral. I prayed fervently to St. Justin
the Philosopher and the holy teachers of the Church Saints Basil the Great, Gregory
the Theologian and John Chrysostom to enlighten my mind and give me their
thought.

“The day of the exam arrived; it was due to take place at four o’clock. We sat
down, Professor Korinfsky entered, greeted us and then wrote on the board the
proposed subject:

“’The importance of personal experience in elaborating one’s world-view.’

“What joy and gratitude to the Lord I felt on reading this compositional subject! It
was clear and familiar to me. Thanks to the prayers of the saints, the Lord sent me
rapid, light thought and I finished my work astonishingly quickly, in half an hour. I
had written only one page… I got up and asked permission to give in my work. The
professor was clearly very surprised! He looked at his watch and said, not without
hesitation:

“’Oh well, give it to me.’

“He had seen that I was the youngest and probably thought that I had not
understood the subject. I noted his hesitation and handed him my paper. He asked
me to wait for a moment and began to read. During the reading, he raised his eyes
towards me from time to time, then said:

“’Thank you, thank you… You can go.’

“My fervent prayer to the philosopher saints had been heard,’ continued the
archbishop. ‘It was they, not I, who had written by my hand… Thanks be to Thee, O
Lord! For Thou are the Giver of all good things! In this way the exam which was
supposed to be the most difficult became for me the easiest of all. I had the distinct
impression that Professor Korfinsky was satisfied with my work. Finally, I got the
top pass into the St. Petersburg Academy. But as the Apostle writes: ‘Not I, but the
grace of God which is with me’ (I Corinthians 15.10).”

Many years later, when Basil was now Bishop Theophan and the Rector of the
Academy, he had to pacify the warring factions among the professors during the
revolutionary years 1905-06. After one of these debates, without himself taking part,

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Professor Korinfsky came up to the Rector, who had just calmed the tempest, and
said, smiling sweetly:

“Yes… I well remember your essay!”

At the Theological Academy

Archbishop Theophan had fond memories of several of the professors of the

Academy when he was there, including V.V. Bolotov, A.P. Lopukhin and N.N.
Glubokovsky. Professor Lopukhin even bequeathed him his very large theological
library (which he later gave to the Academy). With their help and support, he passed
all four years of his study as the first student.

Having finished his theological education at the age of 21, he was given a
professorial scholarship to continue to study at the Academy.

In 1896, Basil Dmitrievich was appointed lecturer at the St. Petersburg Academy
in the faculty of Biblical history. In 1898 he received the monastic tonsure with the
name Theophan in honour of St. Theophan the Confessor, Bishop of Sigriane, and in
respectful memory of Bishop Theophan the Recluse. In the same year he was
ordained to the diaconate and the priesthood.

In 1901, he was raised to the rank of archimandrite with the duties of inspector of
the Academy in the Academy’s house church by Metropolitan Anthony
(Vadkovsky) of St. Petersburg.

The Academy’s ustav said that the inspector had to have a master’s degree and so
was obliged to write a composition to obtain the degree. But Archimandrite
Theophan did not hand in a composition, although he had written it. The reason was
that as a monk he had given vows of poverty and humility, and could not seek or
desire academic glory. It contradicted the monastic vows. And so the work lay in his
desk for several years until another professor in his absence took it and gave it to the
Academic Council. The subject of the composition was: “The Tetragram, or the Old
Testament Name of God (Jehovah or Yahweh)”. This work became his master’s
dissertation at the faculty of the Biblical history of the Old Testament. It was
published in 1905 and was very highly esteemed by critics both inside and outside
Russia. It was called “the famous Tetragram”! However, when the book appeared in
the shops, Archbishop Theophan himself went round all the bookshops in a cab, and
bought and burned all the copies of the work! In this way he fought against the love
of glory in himself.

In this case, as in others, he sought the advice of the elders, especially

Hieroschemamonks Alexis of Valaam, and Barnabas and Isidore of Gethsemane

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skete.

Fr. Theophan would often take the steamer to Valaam. Once he left the monastery
church and went into the woods to practise the Jesus prayer. He soon noticed a large
silent mass of people with Fr. Alexis, upon whom the abbot had given the obedience
to teach the people outside the church. On seeing him, Fr. Theophan went in a
different direction, thinking that he would not meet the crowd again. But it turned
out that the elder led the pilgrims in the same direction. Then he decided to let the
procession pass him while he went off in the opposite direction. He stopped in a
thicket from where he could observe the pilgrims. In front strode the elder a large
distance from the people, while behind him came the pilgrims, most of them women.
The hieroschemamonk had his head bowed to the ground, and was praying.
Suddenly the thought occurred to Fr. Theophan: “Ach, in vain does
Hieroschemamonk Alexis surround himself with these women – and all of them are
young. There could be reprimands…”

“But I hadn’t managed to think this before the elder raised his head and, turning
in my direction, loudly said, almost shouting:

“’They followed Christ, too!’”

These words were so unexpected and short that none of the people could
understand their meaning and to whom they referred. Although the whole crowd
heard these words and looked in the direction of Fr. Theophan, they could not see
him because of the thicket. But the elder again lowered his head and immersed
himself in prayer…

“Truly, Elder Alexis was a great saint and wonderful clairvoyant,” witnessed
Vladyka Theophan. “He was as beautiful as an angel of God. It was sometimes
difficult to look at him, he was as it were in flames, especially when standing at the
altar in prayer. At the time he was completely transfigured, his face became different
in an indescribable way, extremely concentrated and severe. He was truly all in fire.”

But if the elder felt that those present in the altar were involuntarily observing
him and his prayer, he tried to hide his condition by a kind of foolery. He usually
went up to the wall and, pretending that he was an absent-minded worshipper, in
his shadow on the wall he corrected and combed the hair on his head.

Once Fr. Theophan set off for Valaam, troubled by the following thought: the
ascetic rules of the Holy Fathers said that a monk should pay as little attention to his
external appearance as possible. But the Church had blessed him to be an academic
monk and live and be saved in the world. But, living in the world, it was impossible
to forget his flesh and not care for his appearance…

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 He went to Fr. Alexis’ cell convinced that he would get the solution to his
problem. And his faith was rewarded. The elder, as always, received Fr. Theophan
very joyfully. He sat him down and asked him to wait for a moment. Then he took a
mirror, put it on the table at which Fr. Theophan was sitting, and began carefully to
comb his hair. After this he cleared everything from the table and, turning to Fr.
Theophan, said:

“Well, now we can talk.”

And so, without any words, the elder had resolved Fr. Theophan’s problem…

Another holy man to whom Fr. Theophan was close was the great
wonderworking priest Fr. John of Kronstadt.

Once Fr. Theophan was preparing to celebrate the Divine Liturgy the next day in
one of the capital’s churches whose altar feastday it was. But suddenly he was given
urgent work that could not be postponed: he had to prepare a written report for the
metropolitan. “From the evening and throughout the night I wrote the urgent report,
and so I was not able to rest. When I had finished my work it was already morning, I
had to go to the church. And there, together with the other clergy, Fr. John was
serving with me. The Liturgy was coming to an end and the servers were
communing in the altar. At a suitable moment, when the communion hymn was
being sung, Fr. John came up to me and congratulated me on receiving the Holy
Mysteries. And then he looked at me with particular attention and, shaking his head,
said:

“’Oh, how difficult it is to write the whole night and then, having had no rest at
all, to go straight to the church and celebrate the Divine Liturgy… May the Lord
help and strengthen you!’

“You can imagine how joyful it was for me to hear such words from such a
person. I suddenly felt that all my tiredness had suddenly disappeared at his
words… Yes, great was the righteous one Fr. John of Kronstadt!”

After pausing for a little, Vladyka continued: “But how many people there were,
blind and deaf ones, who did not accept Fr. John and treated him very crudely. And
there were such people even among the priests. Thus for example Fr. John once came
to the altar feast in one of the churches of St. Petersburg. But the superior of the
church, on seeing him, began to shout at him:

“’Who invited you here? Why did you appear? I didn’t invite you. Oh, you’re
such a ‘saint’. We know saints of your kind!’

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 “Fr. John was embarrassed and said:

“‘Calm down, batyushka, I’m leaving now…’

“But he shouted at him:

“‘Oh what a ‘wonderworker’ you are. Get out of here! I didn’t invite you….’

“Fr. John meekly and humbly asked forgiveness and left the church…

“Another time there was a service in the St. Andrew cathedral in Kronstadt,
where Fr. John was rector. One of the servers began to get disturbed:

“’Why do you give away money to everyone, but to me, who serve you, you have
never given anything? What does this mean?’

“Batyushka was silent, and was apparently praying within himself. But the other
continued to be disturbed and reviled him, not sparing his language.

“A reader who happened to be there stood up for batyushka:

“’What are you doing? Are you in your right mind? Is this possible? It is shameful
and terrible to think of what you are saying to batyushka.’

“And then he listed the merits of Fr. John, mentioning, among other things, that
he was a rector.

“’That’s right,’ said Fr. John. ‘After all, I’m a superior. Is it possible to speak with a
superior in such a way? No, no, no… It’s wrong, it’s wrong…’”

Vladyka Theophan noted: “What humility Fr. John had! Neither the gift of
clairvoyance, nor the gift of healings, nor of wonderworking – none of this did he
attribute to himself. But only that it was wrong to speak to a superior in such a
way!”

Fr. John had great influence with the royal family, and the tsar visited him
secretly. Rasputin feared this influence.

As Archbishop Theophan witnessed to the Extraordinary Commission: “Rasputin

indicated with unusual skill that he had reservations [about Fr. John]… Rasputin…
said of Fr. John of Kronstadt… that he was a saint but, like a child, lacked experience
and judgement… As a result Fr. John’s influence at court began to wane…”

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 Fr. John reposed on December 20, 1908. Fr. Theophan served at his funeral.

Rasputin

In 1905, after the publication of his master’s thesis, Fr. Theophan was raised to the
rank of extraordinary professor and confirmed in his post as inspector of the
Academy.

Perhaps the greatest mistake of Archbishop Theophan’s life was his initial trust of
the great pseudo-elder Gregory Rasputin. According to his own witness before the
Extraordinary Commission established by the Provisional Government in 1917, he
first met Rasputin, significantly, in the house of Bishop Sergius (Stragorodsky), the
future traitor of the Russian Church and first Soviet “patriarch” of Moscow. “Once
he [Bishop Sergius] invited us to his lodgings for tea, and introduced for the first
time to me and several monks and seminarians a recently arrived man of God,
Brother Gregory as we called him then. He amazed us all with his psychological
perspicacity. His face was pale and his eyes unusually piercing – the look of
someone who observed the fasts. And he made a strong impression.”

Archbishop Theophan was especially impressed by Rasputin’s apparent

prophetic gift. “At that time Admiral Rozhdestvensky’s squadron had already set
sail [to fight the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese War]. We therefore asked Rasputin,
‘Will its engagement with the Japanese be successful?’ Rasputin answered, ‘I feel in
my heart that it will be sunk.’ And his prediction subsequently came to pass in the
battle of Tsushima Strait.”

Again, “Rasputin correctly told the students of the seminary whom he was seeing
for the first time that one would be a writer and that another was ill, and then
explained to a third that he was a simple soul whose simplicity was being taken
advantage of by his friends… In conversation Rasputin revealed not book learning
but a subtle grasp of spiritual experience obtained through personal knowledge.
And a perspicacity that verged on second sight.”

Fr. Theophan invited Rasputin to move in with him, to stay in his apartment. It
was through Fr. Theophan that Rasputin gained entry into the house of Grand Duke
Peter Nikolaevich, the Tsar’s cousin, and his wife, the Montenegrin Grand Duchess
Militsa Nikolaevna, whose confessor Fr. Theophan had become. (According to
another source the Grand Duchess first met Rasputin in the podvorye of the
Mikhailov monastery in Kiev.) “Visiting the home of Militsa Nikolaevna, I let slip
that a man of God named Gregory Rasputin had appeared among us. Militsa
Nikolaevna became very interested in my communication, and Rasputin received an
invitation to present himself to her.” After that, Rasputin was invited to the Grand

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Duchess’ house on his own…

It was through the Grand Duchess that Fr. Theophan was introduced to the Tsar:
“I was invited to the home of the former emperor for the first time by Grand
Duchess Militsa Nikolaevna.” In his diary for November 13/26, the Tsar noted: “I
received Theophan, inspector of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy.”

Soon after, Fr. Theophan was offered the extremely responsible post of spiritual
father of the Royal Family. So he became, as it were, the “conscience of the Tsar” at a
critical moment in the nation’s history.

Fr. Theophan gave the Tsarina and her children books of the Holy Fathers to read.
In a note to her daughter, the Tsarina reminded them “to read the book that
batyushka brought you before communion”.

In view of Fr. Theophan’s closeness both to the Royal Family and to Rasputin, it is
often asserted that it was he who introduced them to each other, and that his later
self-imposed exile in France was in order to expiate this sin. This is untrue.
According to the words of Archbishop Theophan before the Extraordinary
Commission: “How Rasputin came to know the family of the former emperor, I have
absolutely no idea. And I definitely state that I took no part in that. My guess is that
Rasputin penetrated the royal family by indirect means… Rasputin himself never
talked about it, despite the fact that he was a rather garrulous person… I noticed that
Rasputin had a strong desire to get into the house of the former emperor, and that he
did so against the will of Grand Duchess Militsa Nikolaevna. Rasputin himself
acknowledged to me that he was hiding his acquaintance with the royal family from
Militsa Nikolaevna.”

The first meeting between the Royal Family and Rasputin, as recorded in the
Tsar’s diary, took place on November 1, 1905. Archbishop Theophan testified: “I
personally heard from Rasputin that he produced an impression on the former
empress at their first meeting. The sovereign, however, fell under his influence only
after Rasputin had given him something to ponder.” According to the Monk Iliodor,
Rasputin told him: “I talked to them for a long time, persuading them to spit on all
their fears, and rule.”

On hearing that Rasputin had impressed the empress, Grand Duchess Militsa
Nikolaevna said to him, as Archbishop Theophan testified: “’You, Grigory, are an
underhand person.’ Militsa Nikolaevna told me personally of her dissatisfaction
with Rasputin’s having penetrated the royal family on his own, and mentioned her
warning that if he did, it would be the end of him. My explanation of her warning,”
said Archbishop Theophan, “… was that there were many temptations at court and
much envy and intrigue, and that Rasputin, as a simple, undemanding wandering

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pilgrim, would perish spiritually under such circumstances.”

It was at about this time that Rasputin left Fr. Theophan’s lodgings and moved in
with the woman who was to become one of his most fanatical admirers, Olga
Lokhtina. Archbishop Theophan writes: “He only stayed with me a little while, since
I would be off at the Academy for days on end. And it got boring for him… and he
moved somewhere else, and then took up residence in Petrograd at the home of the
government official Vladimir Lokhtin,” who was in charge of the paved roads in
Tsarskoe Selo, and so close to the royal family…

Rasputin returned to his family in Pokrovskoe, Siberia, in autumn, 1907, only to

find that Bishop Anthony of Tobolsk and the Tobolsk Consistory - as was suspected,
at the instigation of Grand Duchess Militsa Nikolaevna - had opened an
investigation to see whether he was spreading the doctrines of the khlysty. Olga
Lokhtina hurried back to St. Petersburg and managed to get the investigation
suspended. Soon afterwards, testifies Fr. Theophan, “the good relations between the
royal family and Militsa and Anastasia Nikolaevna [the sister of Militsa], and Peter
and Nikolai Nikolaevich [the husbands of the sisters] became strained. Rasputin
himself mentioned it in passing. From a few sentences of his I concluded that he had
very likely instilled in the former emperor the idea that they had too much influence
on state affairs and were encroaching on the emperor’s independence.”

The place that the Montenegrin Grand Duchesses had played in the royal family
was now taken by the young Anya Vyrubova, who was a fanatical admirer of
Rasputin. Another of Rasputin’s admirers was the royal children’s nurse, Maria
Vishnyakova. And so Rasputin came closer and closer to the centre of power… His
influence on the political decisions of the Tsar has been much exaggerated. But he
undoubtedly had a great influence on the Tsarina through his ability, probably
through some kind of hypnosis, to relieve the Tsarevich’s haemophilia, a tragedy
that caused much suffering to the Tsar and Tsarina, and which they carefully hid
from the general public…

Bishop of Yamburg

On February 1, 1909 Archimandrite Theophan was appointed Rector of the St.

Petersburg Theological Academy. And on Sunday, February 22, the second Sunday
of the Great Fast, which is dedicated to the memory of St. Gregory Palamas, he was
consecrated Bishop of Yamburg, a vicariate of the St. Petersburg diocese, in the Holy
Trinity cathedral of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. The consecration was performed
by Metropolitan Anthony (Vadkovsky) of St. Petersburg together with other
members of the Holy Synod and other hierarchs who came to the service – 13 in all.

In answer to the accusation that he had gained his see through the influence of

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Rasputin, Bishop Theophan testified: “My candidacy for the bishopric was put
forward by church hierarchs led by Bishop Hermogen [of Saratov, the future
hieromartyr]. I would never have permitted myself to take advantage of Rasputin’s
influence… I was known personally to the royal family and had four times or so
heard confession from the empress and once from the sovereign… and I was already
the Rector of the Petersburg Theological Academy.”

It was a difficult time, with liberal ideas gaining ground even among the
professors of the Academy. Bishop Theophan more than once came into conflict with
these liberal professors, and they complained about him to Metropolitan Anthony.
After one such complaint, the metropolitan summoned the bishop to himself and
said:

“The professors are complaining that you are restricting their freedom of scientific
research.”

Instead of a reply, Vladyka Theophan showed the metropolitan a paragraph from

the ustav of the Theological Academies which said: “The Rector of the Academy is
responsible for the direction and spirit of the Academy”. Then he explained how
certain professors during their lectures to students were permitting themselves to
express freethinking ideas contrary to Orthodoxy. And the metropolitan had to
agree that the Rector had the right to oppose this.

As Rector of the Academy, Vladyka Theophan enlivened the religio-moral

atmosphere in it and created a whole direction among the students, a kind of school
of “Theophanites”, as they were called. He tried to instill in the students a respect for
the lofty authority of the Holy Fathers of the Church in everything that pertained to
Church faith and piety. When replying to a question of a theological or moral
character he tried to avoid speaking “from himself”, but immediately went to the
bookcase and found a precise answer to the question from the Holy Fathers, which
allowed his visitor to depart profoundly satisfied. He himself was a walking
encyclopaedia of theological knowledge.

And yet this was by no means merely book knowledge: because of his ascetic life,
he knew the truth of the teachings of the Fathers from his own experience. He would
go to all the services, and often spend whole nights in prayer standing in his cell in
front of the analoy and the icons. He would even take service books with him on his
travels, and read all the daily services.

His very look inspired respect, and soon cases of amazing spiritual perspicacity
revealed themselves. Never familiar, always correct and restrained in manner, but at
the same time warm and attentive, he was a fierce enemy of all modernism and
falsehood. If the conversation took a vulgar turn, he would immediately turn away,

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however distinguished his interlocutor. This caused him to have many enemies, but
people also involuntarily respected him. Once the famous writer V.V. Rozanov
spoke at length to him against monasticism. Vladyka Theophan did not reply with a
single word. But his silence was effective, for at the end the writer simply said:

“But perhaps you are right!”

Bishop Theophan began to have doubts about Rasputin. These doubts related to
rumours that Rasputin was not the pure man of God he seemed to be. “Rumours
began reaching us,” testified Vladyka, “that Rasputin was unrestrained in his
treatment of the female sex, that he stroked them with his hand during conversation.
All this gave rise to a certain temptation to sin, the more so since in conversation
Rasputin would allude to his acquaintance with me and, as it were, hide behind my
name.”

At first Vladyka and his monastic confidants sought excuses for him in the fact
that “we were monks, whereas he was a married man, and that was the reason why
his behaviour has been distinguished by a great lack of restraint and seemed
peculiar to us… However, the rumours about Rasputin started to increase, and it
was beginning to be said that he went to the bathhouses with women… It is very
distressing… to suspect [a man] of a bad thing…”

Rasputin now came to meet Vladyka and “himself mentioned that he had gone to
bathhouses with women. We immediately declared to him that, from the point of
view of the holy fathers, that was unacceptable, and he promised us to avoid doing
it. We decided not to condemn him for debauchery, for we knew that he was a
simple peasant, and we had read that in the Olonets and Novgorod provinces men
bathed in the bathhouses together with women, which testified not to immorality
but to their patriarchal way of life… and to its particular purity, for… nothing was
allowed. Moreover, it was clear from the Lives of the ancient Byzantine holy fools
Saints Simeon and John [of Edessa] that both had gone to bathhouses with women
on purpose, and had been abused and reviled for it, although they were nonetheless
great saints.”

The example of Saints Simeon and John was to prove very useful for Rasputin,
who now, “as his own justification, announced that he too wanted to test himself – to
see if he had extinguished passion in himself.” But Theophan warned him against
this, “for it is only the great saints who are able to do it, and he, by acting in this
way, was engaging in self-deception and was on a dangerous path.”

To the rumours about bathhouses were now added rumours that Rasputin had
been a khlyst sectarian in Siberia, and had taken his co-religionists to bathhouses
there. Apparently the Tsar heard these rumours, for he told the Tsarina not to

15
receive Rasputin for a time. For the khlysts, a sect that indulged in orgies in order to
stimulate repentance thereafter, were very influential among the intelligentsia,
especially the literary intelligentsia, of the time.

It was at that point that the former spiritual father of Rasputin in Siberia, Fr.
Makary, was summoned to Tsarskoe Selo, perhaps on the initiative of the Tsarina.
On June 23, 1909 the Tsar recorded that Fr. Makary, Rasputin and Bishop Theophan
came to tea. There it was decided that Bishop Theophan, who was beginning to have
doubts about Rasputin, and Fr. Makary, who had a good opinion of him, should go
to Rasputin’s house in Pokrovskoe and investigate.

Bishop Theophan was unwell and did not want to go. But “I took myself in hand
and in the second half of June 1909 set off with Rasputin and Monk Makary of the
Verkhoturye Monastery, whom Rasputin called and acknowledged to be his ‘elder’”.
The trip, far from placating Vladyka’s suspicions, only confirmed them, so that he
concluded that Rasputin did not “occupy the highest level of spiritual life”. On the
way back from Siberia, as he himself testified, he “stopped at the Sarov monastery
and asked God’s help in correctly answering the question of who and what Rasputin
was. I returned to Petersburg convinced that Rasputin… was on a false path.”

While in Sarov, Vladyka had asked to stay alone in the cell in which St. Seraphim
had reposed. He was there for a long time praying, and when he did not come out,
the brothers finally decided to enter. They found Vladyka in a deep swoon.

He did not explain what had happened to him there. But he did relate his meeting
with Blessed Pasha of Sarov the next year, in 1911. The eldress and fool-for-Christ
jumped onto a bench and snatched the portraits of the Tsar and Tsarina that were
hanging on the wall, cast them to the ground and trampled on them. Then she
ordered her cell-attendant to put them into the attic.

This was clearly a prophecy of the revolution of 1917. And when Vladyka told it
to the Tsar, he stood with head bowed and without saying a word. Evidently he had
heard similar prophecies…

Blessed Pasha then gave Vladyka a prophecy for himself personally. She hurled a
ball of some kind of white matter onto his knees, which, on unwinding, he found to
be the shroud of a dead man. “That means death!” he thought. But then she ran up
and seized the shroud from his hands, muttering:

“The Mother of God will deliver… Our All-Holy Lady will save!”

This was a prophecy of Vladyka’s near-mortal illness in Serbia several years later,
when he was saved from death by the Mother of God…

16
 On returning from Sarov, Vladyka conferred with Archimandrite Benjamin and
together with him summoned Rasputin. “When Rasputin came to see us, we, to his
surprise, denounced him for his arrogant pride, for holding himself in higher regard
than was seemly, and for being in a state of spiritual deception. He was completely
taken aback and started crying, and instead of trying to justify himself admitted that
he had made mistakes. And he agreed to our demand that he withdraw from the
world and place himself under my guidance.” Rasputin then promised “to tell no
one about our meeting with him.” “Rejoicing in our success, we conducted a prayer
service… But, as it turned out, he then went to Tsarskoe Selo and recounted
everything there in a light that was favourable to him but not to us.”

In 1910, for the sake of his health, Vladyka was transferred to the see of Tauris
and Simferopol in the Crimea. Far from separating him from the royal family, this
enabled him to see more of them during their summer vacation in Livadia. He was
able to use the tsar’s automobile, so as to go on drives into the mountains, enjoy the
wonderful scenery and breathe in the pure air.

He often recalled how he celebrated the Divine Liturgy in the palace. And how
the Tsarina and her daughters chanted on the kliros. This chanting was always
prayerful and concentrated.

Vladyka used to say: “During this service they chanted and read with such
exalted, holy veneration! In all this there was a genuine, lofty, purely monastic spirit.
And with what trembling, with what radiant tears they approached the Holy
Chalice!”

“The sovereign would always begin every day with prayer in church. Exactly at
eight o’clock he would enter the palace church. By that time the serving priest had
already finished the proskomedia and read the hours. With the entry of the Tsar the
priest intoned: ‘Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.’ And exactly at nine o’clock
the Liturgy ended. There were no abbreviations or omissions. And the priest did not
give the impression of being in a hurry. The secret lay in the fact that there were no
pauses at all. This enabled the Liturgy to be completed within one hour. For the
priest this was an obligatory condition. The sovereign always prayed very ardently.
Each petition in the litany, each prayer found a lively response in his soul.

“After the Divine service the working day of the sovereign began.”

However, the issue of Rasputin was destined to bring an end to this idyllic phase
in the relations between Vladyka Theophan and the Royal Family.

17
 “After a while,” testifies Vladyka, “rumours reached me that Rasputin had
resumed his former way of life and was undertaking something against us… I
decided to resort to a final measure – to denounce him openly and to communicate
everything to the former emperor. It was not, however, the emperor who received
me but his wife in the presence of the maid of honour Vyrubova.

“I spoke for about an hour and demonstrated that Rasputin was in a state of
spiritual deception… The former empress grew agitated and objected, citing
theological works… I destroyed all her arguments, but she… reiterated them: ‘It is
all falsehood and slander’… I concluded the conversation by saying that I could no
longer have anything to do with Rasputin… I think Rasputin, as a cunning person,
explained to the royal family that my speaking against him was because I envied his
closeness to the Family… that I wanted to push him out of the way.

“After my conversation with the empress, Rasputin came to see me as if nothing

had happened, having apparently decided that the empress’s displeasure had
intimidated me… However, I told him in no uncertain terms, ‘Go away, you are a
fraud.’ Rasputin fell on his knees before me and asked my forgiveness… But again I
told him, ‘Go away, you have violated a promise given before God.’ Rasputin left,
and I did not see him again.”

At this point Vladyka received a “Confession” from a former devotee of

Rasputin’s. On reading this, he understood that Rasputin was “a wolf in sheep’s
clothing” and “a sectarian of the Khlyst type” who “taught his followers not to
reveal his secrets even to their confessors. For if there is allegedly no sin in what
these sectarians do, then their confessors need not be made aware of it.”

“Availing myself of that written confession, I wrote the former emperor a second
letter… in which I declared that Rasputin not only was in a state of spiritual
deception but was also a criminal in the religious and moral sense… In the moral
sense because, as it followed from the ‘confession’, Father Gregory had seduced his
victims.”

There was no reply to this letter. “I sensed that they did not want to hear me out
and understand… It all depressed me so much that I became quite ill – it turned out
I had palsy of the facial nerve.”

In fact, Vladyka’s letter had reached the Tsar, and the scandal surrounding the
rape of the children’s nurse, Vishnyakova, whose confessor was Vladyka, could no
longer be concealed. Vishnyakova herself testified to the Extraordinary Commission
that she had been raped by Rasputin during a visit to Verkhoturye Monastery in
Tobolsk province, a journey undertaken at the empress’s suggestion.

18
 “Upon our return to Petrograd, I reported everything to the empress, and I also
told Bishop Theophan in a private meeting with him. The empress did not give any
heed to my words and said that everything Rasputin does is holy. From that time
forth I did not see Rasputin, and in 1913 I was dismissed from my duties as nurse. I
was also reprimanded for frequenting the Right Reverend Theophan.”

Another person in on the secret was the maid of honour Sophia Tyutcheva. As
she witnessed to the Commission, she was summoned to the Tsar.

 “You have guessed why I summoned you. What is going on in the nursery?”

She told him.

“So you too do not believe in Rasputin’s holiness?”

She replied that she did not.

“But what will you say if I tell you that I have lived all these years only thanks to
his prayers?”

Then he “began saying that he did not believe any of the stories, that the impure
always sticks to the pure, and that he did not understand what had suddenly
happened to Theophan, who had always been so fond of Rasputin. During this time
he pointed to a letter from Theophan on his desk.”

“’You, your majesty, are too pure of heart and do not see what filth surrounds
you.’ I said that it filled me with fear that such a person could be near the grand
duchesses.

“’Am I then the enemy of my own children?’ the sovereign objected.

“He asked me never to mention Rasputin’s name in conversation. In order for that
to take place, I asked the sovereign to arrange things so that Rasputin would never
appear in the children’s wing.”

But her wish was not granted, and both Vishnyakova and Tyutcheva would not
long remain in the tsar’s service…

It was at about this time that the newspapers began to write against Rasputin.
And a member of the circle of the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna, Michael
Alexandrovich Novoselov, the future bishop and hieromartyr of the Catacomb
Church, published a series of articles condemning Rasputin.

"Why do the bishops,” he wrote, “who are well acquainted with the activities of

19
this blatant deceiver and corrupter, keep silent?… Where is their grace, if through
laziness or lack of courage they do not keep watch over the purity of the faith of the
Church of God and allow the lascivious khlyst to do the works of darkness under the
mask of light?"

The brochure was forbidden and confiscated while it was still at the printer's, and
the newspaper The Voice of Moscow was heavily fined for publishing excerpts from it.

In November, 1910, Bishop Theophan went to the Crimea to recover from this
illness. But he did not give up, and inundated his friend Bishop Hermogen with
letters. It was his aim to enlist this courageous fighter against freethinking in his
fight against Rasputin. But this was difficult because it had been none other than
Vladyka Theophan who had at some time introduced Rasputin to Bishop Hermogen,
speaking of him, as Bishop Hermogen himself said, “in the most laudatory terms.”
Indeed, for a time Bishop Hermogen and Rasputin had become allies in the struggle
against freethinking and modernism.

Unfortunately, a far less reliable person then joined himself to Rasputin’s circle –
Sergius Trophanov, in monasticism Iliodor, one of Bishop Theophan’s students at
the academy, who later became a Baptist, married and had seven children. Fr. Iliodor
built a large church in Tsaritsyn on the Volga, and began to draw thousands to it
with his fiery sermons against the Jews and the intellectuals and the capitalists. He
invited Rasputin to join him in Tsaritsyn and become the elder of a convent there.
Rasputin agreed.

However, Iliodor’s inflammatory sermons were not pleasing to the authorities,

and in January, 1911 he was transferred to a monastery in Tula diocese. But he
refused to go, locked himself in his church in Tsaritsyn and declared a hunger-strike.
Bishop Hermogen supported him, but the tsar did not, and ordered him to be
removed from Tsaritsyn. However, at this point Rasputin, who had taken a great
liking to Iliodor, intervened, and as Anya Vyubova testified, “Iliodor remained in
Tsaritsyn thanks to Rasputin’s personal entreaties”. From now on, Olga Lokhtina
would bow down to Rasputin as “Lord of hosts” and to Iliodor as “Christ”…

When Rasputin’s bad actions began to come to light, Hermogen vacillated for a
long time. However, having made up his mind that Vladyka Theophan was right,
and having Iliodor on his side now too, he decided to bring the matter up before the
Holy Synod, of which he was a member, at its next session. Before that, however, he
determined to denounce Rasputin to his face. This took place on December 16, 1911.
According to Iliodor’s account, Hermogen, clothed in hierarchical vestments and
holding a cross in his hand, “took hold of the head of the ‘elder’ with his left hand,
and with his right started beating him on the head with the cross and shouting in a
terrifying voice, ‘Devil! I forbid you in God’s name to touch the female sex. Brigand!

20
I forbid you to enter the royal household and to have anything to do with the
tsarina! As a mother brings forth the child in the cradle, so the holy Church through
her prayers, blessings, and heroic feats has nursed that great and sacred thing of the
people, the autocratic rule of the tsars. And now you, scum, are destroying it, you
are smashing our holy vessels, the bearers of autocratic power… Fear God, fear His
life-giving cross!”

Then they forced Rasputin to swear that he would leave the palace. According to
one version of events, Rasputin swore, but immediately told the empress what had
happened. According to another, he refused, after which Vladyka Hermogen cursed
him. In any case, on the same day, December 16, five years later, he was killed…

Then Bishop Hermogen went to the Holy Synod. First he gave a speech against
the khlysty. Then he charged Rasputin with khlyst tendencies. Unfortunately, only a
minority of the bishops supported the courageous bishop. The majority followed the
over-procurator in expressing dissatisfaction with his interference “in things that
were not his concern”.

Vladyka Hermogen was then ordered to return to his diocese. As the director of
the chancery of the over-procurator witnessed, “he did not obey the order and, as I
heard, asked by telegram for an audience with the tsar, indicating that he had an
important matter to discuss, but was turned down.”

The telegram read as follows: “Tsar Father! I have devoted my whole life to the
service of the Church and the Throne. I have served zealously, sparing no effort. The
sun of my life has long passed midday and my hair has turned white. And now in
my declining years, like a criminal, I am being driven out of the capital in disgrace
by you, the Sovereign. I am ready to go wherever it may please you, but before I do,
grant me an audience, and I will reveal a secret to you.”

But the Tsar rejected his plea. On receiving this rejection, Bishop Hermogen began
to weep. And then he suddenly said:

“They will kill the tsar, they will kill the tsar, they will surely kill him.”

Bishop of Astrakhan

The opponents of Rasputin now felt the fury of the Tsar. Bishop Hermogen and
Iliodor were exiled to remote monasteries. And Vladyka Theophan was transferred
to the see of Astrakhan.

Before departing from the Crimea, Vladyka called on Rasputin’s friend, the
deputy over-procurator Damansky. He told him: “Rasputin is a vessel of the devil,

21
and the time will come when the Lord will chastise him and those who protect him.”

Later, in October, 1913, Rasputin tried to take his revenge on Vladyka by bribing
the widow of a Yalta priest who knew Vladyka, Olga Apollonovna Popova, to say
that Vladyka had said that he had had relations with the empress. The righteous
widow rejected his money and even spat in his face.

Vladyka’s health, which was in general not good because of his very ascetic way
of life since his youth, was made worse by the climate in Astrakhan. He contracted
malaria and a lung disease. Grand Duchess Elizabeth pleaded with her sister not to
forbid him to receive treatment in the Crimea, but the request was turned down.
Later, however, the grand duchess did manage to get Vladyka transferred to the see
of Poltava.

In spite of the Tsarina’s hostility to Bishop Theophan with regard to Rasputin,

Vladyka always had the highest opinion of the Tsarina and always defended her
against those who would slander her.

Although suffering from ill health and deeply grieving over his break with the
royal family and Rasputin’s continuing hold over them, Vladyka Theophan quickly
won the respect and love of his flock in Astrakhan.

Once, on the namesday of the Tsar, Vladyka went out with his clergy to serve a
prayer service for the health of his Majesty in the middle of the cathedral. But in
front of him, nearer the altar, stood what seemed to be, judging from his clothes, a
Muslim. It turned out later that this was the Persian consul dressed in extravagant
finery, with orders and a sabre, and a turban on his head. Vladyka, pale, weak and
ill, asked the consul through a deacon to step to one side or stand with the other
official persons, with the generals behind the bishop’s throne. The consul remained
in his place and made no reply to Vladyka’s request. After waiting for several
minutes, Vladyka sent the superior of the church to request the consul not to stand
between the altar and Vladyka and clergy, but to stand to one side. The consul did
not move. Vladyka waited, without beginning the official prayer service. And yet the
whole leadership of the province and the city, together with the military in parade
uniform, were gathered in the church. On the square in front of the church were
soldiers drawn up for parade.

Again they went up to the consul and asked him to go to one side and not to
stand between the clergy and the altar, the more so as he was dressed in such
demonstrative attire. Instead of replying, the consul pointed at the clock, and then
angrily said:

“Convey to your Hierarch that the prayer service should have been started long

22
ago as indicated in the official timetable, a prayer service for the prosperity of his
Majesty the Emperor. For this delay, he - your Hierarch - will answer for his
stubbornness. He has delayed the prayer service for a whole half-hour!”

When Bishop Theophan was informed of the consul’s reply, he asked them to
convey to him the message:

“It is not I, but you, who are delaying the prayer service. And until you go to one
side, the prayer service will not begin.”

When he heard that, the consul demonstratively left the church casting furious
looks and mumbling threats. Immediately Vladyka began the service and the choir
intoned the Te Deum.

As was to be expected, the consul made a protest to the Tsar, accusing the
“audacious hierarch who had stopped the Te Deum for the health of the Tsar from
proceeding normally”, and who, being a “hierarch in disgrace”, had attempted to
make a political act out of the incident. But then the opposite of what was expected
happened. The Tsar and Tsarina approved of Bishop Theophan’s act…

Before that good news arrived, however, Vladyka had been comforted in another
way, during Vespers in the church: “I had so much pain because of the Persian
consul and I felt so ill… One evening, when I was serving in the cathedral, I saw St.
Theodore the General in a coat of mail… Lord, what joy! How that comforted me!
All my sadness and tiredness vanished in an instant. I understood that the Lord
approved of my firmness and that He was sending me his martyr to support me… “

Another comfort came in a letter to him from the paralysed Schema-Nun Eugenia,
who had the gift of clairvoyance: “I’m having a dream. Some black, threatening
clouds have covered the sky. Suddenly the holy Bishop Joasaph of Belgorod
appeared. He read a long manuscript, then tore it up, and at that moment the sun
reappeared behind the clouds. Soon it was shining clearly and tenderly… Glory to
Thee, O Lord!”

On March 8/21, 1913 Vladyka was transferred from Astrakhan to Poltava. As he

was leaving Astrakhan, writes someone who knew him well, “there took place an
unusually vivid incident, which in itself witnessed to the loftiness and spirituality of
his soul, and his truly pastoral relationship to his flock. Before, the people in
Astrakhan had protested decisively against his transfer to Poltava. But he
nevertheless had to go, a huge crowd assembled at the station, and several hundred
people lay on the rails in front of the train to stop it from going. This continued for
several hours until they finally managed to free the railway line. I personally think
that this is the most vivid event in the story of his life. The people, the flock felt,

23
understood the loftiness of his soul, the soul of their archpastor, and witnessed this
love of theirs and understanding, perhaps in too primitive a way, but truly with all
their soul, mind and heart. Nobody ever heard of a similar incident with anybody
else!”

Archbishop of Poltava

Church life was at a low level when Vladyka came to his new diocese, and hardly
anyone attended the services. And so “I prayed to the Guardian Angels of my flock
to make to be born in them a zeal for God, to excite in their souls a thirst for prayer
and penitence. That is so important. Without penitence, there is no true prayer. Only
he who feels himself to be infinitely guilty before God truly prays.”

And his prayers were answered. The church began to fill up. And the people
began to pray with fervour; the zeal of the archbishop communicated itself to all the
clergy.

Vladyka also paid attention to the chanting in church. He looked for someone
who knew church chant since childhood to direct the choir. And he founded a
“chanting school” for the chanters. The pupils were entirely looked after by the
diocese and lived near the episcopal palace. They had to know the words of the
chants by heart and understand their meaning perfectly. The child voices of Poltava
were soon recognized to be among the best in Russia.

Vladyka also attended rehearsals and chose the chants. He saw it that the choir
became well-known not only through the technical perfection of its chanting, but
also through its truly liturgical spirit. The people understood this immediately, and
the church services were from then on very well attended.

Instead of the pagan celebrations of the New Year, Vladyka instituted a solemn Te
Deum at midnight, during which the choir sang marvelously and the cathedral was
full to bursting…

So popular did Vladyka become that when he arrived at the cathedral on feast
days he found his path covered with flowers…

In 1913 the Russian Church celebrated the 300th anniversary of the founding of the
Romanov dynasty. Patriarch Gregory of Antioch came to the celebrations, and
during the solemn service in his honour in the Pochaev Lavra the litanies were
pronounced in Greek by Archbishop Anthony (Khrapovitsky) of Volhynia, the host,
in Latin by Archbishop Theophan and in other languages by the other priests.

In Poltava a whole series of incidents took place which testified to the loftiness of

24
Vladyka Theophan, who had visions and revelations from God.

In Poltava there lived an exceptionally pious married couple, who were devoted
to Vladyka Theophan. When the husband died, the widow, being in indescribable
sorrow, asked Vladyka whether he could tell her what was the fate of her dead
spouse in the other life. Vladyka replied that perhaps after a period of time he would
be in a condition to give a reply to her question. Vladyka prayed that this should be
revealed to him, and after a certain time he consoled the widow, saying that God
had had mercy on her husband.

Prince Zhevakhov, who later became Bishop Ioasaph, asked Vladyka about the
fate beyond the grave of the Bishop of Belgorod who had been found hanged in the
lavatory of the archiepiscopal podvorye. Had his soul perished? Vladyka Theophan
replied that the bishop had not perished, since he had not laid hands on himself, but
this had been done by the demons. It turned out that this house was being
reconstructed, and there had been a house church in it before. But the atheist-
minded builders had blasphemously built a lavatory in the place where there had
been the altar. When holy places are defiled or where a murder or suicide is
committed, the grace of God leaves, and demons settle there. It is difficult to say
whether this bishop was guilty of this blasphemy, but he became the victim of the
demons.

Once a married couple came to the archbishop complaining about the behaviour
of their beloved son, who, though pious in his childhood, no longer went to church,
but returned home late at night in a drunken state. Weeping, they asked him to pray
for their son.

The son came home late again one night and began to curse and swear. The next
morning he could not get out of bed. He did not eat or speak, was feverish and
gradually wasted away. His parents were beginning to lose all hope of a cure when
they turned to the archbishop again. The sick boy was already unconscious, and was
groaning and crying. Then he came to himself and said that a monk had come to him
in his delirium and had said:

“If you don’t correct yourself, and turn from the path of sin, you will die and
perish without fail!”

The sick boy wept and swore that he would correct himself. Gradually he began
to eat again, and the illness left him. As soon as he could walk, he went to the
cathedral to pray and shed tears of penitence. After the service he approached the
server to kiss the cross and was amazed to recognize in the archbishop the monk
who had appeared to him in his illness! From then on, the young man visited the
archbishop frequently, thanked him for praying for him, asked him to forgive him

25
and reiterated his promise to reform his life.

Another rich couple came to the archbishop, complaining about their son, too.
Under the influence of bad companions, he was living a debauched life and paid no
heed to their pleas. They sought help from the archbishop, but at the same time
continued to indulge their son, giving him money. The archbishop advised them to
stop giving him money, to be severe with him. But they replied that in their opinion
this was not Christian.

“No,” they said, “we want to raise him with love in a Christian spirit. When he
gets bigger he will understand and will appreciate our kindness.”

The archbishop could only keep silent. The boy got bigger and became more and
more disobedient. Not content with asking for money, he demanded it and even
robbed his parents of it. They turned to the archbishop asking him what to do. He
gave them the same advice. They again rejected it. Finally the boy left his parents’
house and gave himself up completely to debauchery. The parents cursed him and
when they came back weeping to the archbishop, they recognized their error. But it
was already too late.

“Certain parents,” concluded the archbishop while telling this story, “before
beginning to educate their children should educate themselves, or rather re-educate
themselves in the spirit of Christianity. Then what happened in this family would
not happen with them.”

A private correspondent writes: “This is a story related by the wife of Professor

L.V. of Poltava theological seminary on what happened in their family.

“In 1915 her son, an officer, whose bride was in Poltava, returned on leave from
the front. This officer’s leave ended in Paschal week. The young people wanted to be
crowned before the departure of the bridegroom. L.V. knew Vladyka Theophan well
and he loved the whole of their family. And L.V. came to Vladyka and asked for his
blessing on the marriage on one of the days of Paschal week. Vladyka, who was
always attentive and ready to help anyone who asked, this time fell into sad thought
and said that he wanted first to look at the canons, and then he would give his
answer.

“A few days later the mother of the bridegroom again came to Vladyka. Vladyka
said firmly: ‘I cannot bless the marriage of your children on these Paschal days, since
the Church does not allow it and for the young people there will be great
unhappiness if they do not obey the Church.’

“The mother was terribly upset and threatened the Archbishop with many

26
unpleasantnesses. She thought that Vladyka, as a strict ascetic, did not understand
life and for that reason was not allowing the marriage in completely exceptional
circumstances.

“In spite of the Archbishop’s ban, they found a priest who agreed to carry out
their marriage. After the marriage, the officer departed, having left his young wife in
Poltava. But from this moment all trace of him was lost. In spite of all the inquiries of
the mother and young wife, nobody could tell them where he was or what had
happened to him.

“In relating this, L.V. wept bitterly. She used to say that the wife was in a terrible
condition. There was one man whom she wanted to marry. L.V. herself wanted this,
for she was convinced that her son was no longer among the living, but at the same
time there were no facts, and the wife, not knowing for certain about the death of her
husband, could not marry for a second time. This lack of knowledge tormented both
the mother and the young woman. L.V. wept and said: ‘How great Vladyka
Archbishop Theophan was! And we valued him so little, we did not understand and
did not obey…’

“The inhabitants of Poltava always remembered how the prayers of Vladyka

Theophan healed the sick, and how by his prayers he turned many from sin.”

There was a well-off family with two maid servants. One of them died, and it was
discovered after her death that a large sum of money had disappeared. Suspicion fell
upon the surviving maid servant. She wept and implored the Mother of God to
show where the money was hidden. The Mother of God answered her prayer: one
day, the dead woman appeared to Archbishop Theophan and showed him the place
where the money was buried…

A similar incident had taken place a few years before, when Vladyka was Bishop
of Simferopol. A young man whom Vladyka had known died, and then appeared to
him and asked him for his holy prayers to help him pass through the “toll-houses”.
Vladyka prayed, and the young man appeared to him again, thanking him for his
prayers and asking him to celebrate a thanksgiving service.

“But you are dead! It is a pannikhida that we must celebrate for you, and not a Te
Deum!”

“They told it me over there, they’ve allowed it for me… The point is that over
there we are all alive, there are no dead amongst us!”

Then he explained how he had died and passed into the next life, but the person
who passed on this story did not understand Archbishop Theophan’s words.

27
 Once the administration of the diocese received a letter from one of the parishes
complaining that their priest had given himself to black magic and sorcery. He was
naturally red-haired, but one night he had become brown, then violet and now he
was green! The priest was summoned.

Weeping, he explained:

“My wife reproached me for always being red-haired. ‘You should at least dye
your beard!’ And I dyed it black. And then during the night the dye disappeared,
and it became violet, and now it is becoming green… Forgive me, for Christ’s sake!
There’s no sorcery here, just cowardice!”

“Your fault,” replied the archbishop, “consists in having led these little ones into
error. They didn’t understand what was happening and basically they have not
acted wrongly. One cannot accuse them of anything. It’s you who should ask their
forgiveness and be more prudent in the future. I am not going to impose a penance
on you: you are a priest and can impose it on yourself.”

And he added, after telling this story:

“We had to send someone to the parish to explain matters to the parishioners and
reassure them.”

On another occasion, as Archbishop Averky tells the story, “one of the priests of
the Poltava diocese related that when Vladyka was touring his diocese the priests
who had modernist tendencies were afraid to appear before him. If Vladyka saw that
a priest’s beard and hair were obviously trimmed short or that there was some other
irregularity he would say very gently and tactfully:

“’And you, Batyushka, would you be so kind as to go and spend a month in such-
and-such a monastery?’”

Vladyka’s typical day in Poltava was ordered as follows. He would rise from
sleep in the second half of the night and carry out his prayer rule. In the morning,
when the bell sounded, he would go into the house church, where the hieromonk on
duty was performing the morning service and the Divine Liturgy. After the Liturgy
Vladyka would drink some coffee and withdraw to his study, where he occupied
himself with diocesan affairs, and then went over to the reading of his beloved Holy
Fathers. He wrote much. In the afternoon would come lunch. Weather permitting, he
would go into the garden for a time and walk around praying the Jesus prayer. Then
he would again withdraw to his study. When the bell sounded for Vespers, he
would go to the church. After Compline he would receive visitors. After supper

28
there would be free time for conversation with his clergy and work in his study.

His study was furnished in the simplest way possible. In the corner stood an iron
bed with planks instead of a mattress, on which Vladyka took a little sleep. There
were many icons, Vladyka prayed in front of them for a long time with a candle in
his hand in spite of the lighted lampadas. His food was the simplest, and he ate very
little. When he was very tired from meeting people, he would withdraw for a few
days to the Lubny Holy Transfiguration monastery.

The Revolution

The abdication of the Tsar, whom Archbishop Theophan greatly loved and
admired, was a terrible shock for him as for all the true believers. Soon the
Provisional Government set up an Extraordinary Commission to investigate the
truth about the relationship between the Tsarina and Rasputin. Vladyka was
summoned and testified that he had never had any doubt about the complete purity
of these relations. As former confessor of the Tsarina, he declared officially that on
her side the relationship was motivated only by her care for the Tsarevich, and the
undoubted success that Rasputin had in saving the Tsarevich’s life while the doctors
had shown themselves to be completely helpless. As for the other rumours, these
were lies and slanders… With regard to Rasputin himself, Vladyka considered that
he was not a hypocrite, but was a simple man who had suffered a terrible spiritual
catastrophe and had fallen, a fall that had been willed by those around him and
which they had treated as just a joke…

As Archbishop of Poltava, Vladyka was sent as a delegate to the Local Council of

the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow in 1917-18. The novice who served him at
the time said:

“The archbishop and I left Poltava and arrived in Moscow. Nobody greeted us
and we did not know what to do. We went to a monastery, but felt that we were not
welcome. They had nothing to eat. They gave only a bowl of soup with some thin
cabbage which his Eminence Theophan was not able to swallow because of the
weakness of his stomach. We had to leave. A student gave his room for some days…
I wrote an urgent letter to Poltava requesting that someone bring some food, for
there they had everything. An archimandrite arrived with food. Finally, he obtained
for us some lodgings in the Kremlin, in which some other hierarchs were already
living. They were starving: the archbishop had to nourish them. I did not attend the
Council sessions, I didn’t hear the speeches, I could only observe things from the
outside… I remember some attacks against Metropolitan Macarius [of Moscow], a
holy man. He left the assembly room, but with a smile…”

During the Council, some modernist clergy, future renovationist heretics, came

29
up to Vladyka and said:

“We respect you and venerate you, Vladyko. We know your principled firmness,
your faithfulness to the Church, your wisdom. But you yourself see how fast the
waves of time are rolling; they are changing everything, and changing us also…
There was a monarchy, there was an autocratic Tsar, and now there is nothing of all
that. We must, whether we like it or not, make concessions to the changes. As the
great teacher of the Church, St. John Chrysostom said so well, we must sometimes,
so as to guide the vessel of the Church up to the harbour, give in to the waves and
currents so as to await the favourable moment and bring the ship into the haven…
That’s how it is now, the Church must yield a little…”

“Yes,” replied the Archbishop, “but yield what?”

“You must be with the majority! Otherwise with whom will you remain? You
must yield, the wisdom of the Church demands it. Otherwise you will consign
yourself to complete solitude.”

Vladyka replied: “’The majority can frighten me,’ said St. Basil the Great, ‘but it
can never convince me…’ To continue the thought of the holy bishop, let us say that
it is not solitude that is frightening, but the renunciation of the truth. And that means
that it is necessary to stand without weakening in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is on Him
that the whole of the Church stands as on her foundation. ‘For other foundation can
no man lay than that which has been laid, Jesus Christ’ (I Corinthians 3.11). And
that is why we must not be, as the Apostle says, like ‘children, tossed to and fro, and
carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning
craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive’ (Ephesians 4.14). We must firmly hold
on to what we have received from the Fathers of the Church. As is so well said in the
kontakion of the Feast of the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council: ‘The
preaching of the Apostles and the doctrines of the Fathers confirmed the one Faith of
the Church. And wearing the garment of truth woven from the theology on high…’
This ‘garment’ is the clothing of the Church, the teaching received from the Fathers
of the ancient Church, which they themselves received from the preaching of the
Apostles. And the holy Apostles received it from the very Source of Truth, our Lord
Jesus Christ….

“As for the question with whom we shall remain if we do not join those who are
ready to make a revolution in the Church, the reply is perfectly clear: we shall
remain without moving with those who for the last two thousand years have formed
the body of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church on earth, although this is
the Church of the Heavens. We also in a certain sense have entered this Heavenly
Church, through the saints and first of all through him who baptised Russia, St.
Vladimir, and through all the saints, known and unknown, beginning with Saints

30
Anthony and Theodosius of the Kiev Caves, via Saints Sergius of Radonezh and
Seraphim of Sarov, and all the saints and martyrs of our Russian land, which is
protected by the Heavenly Queen, who intercedes for us… And with whom will
you, brothers, remain, if with all your numbers you give yourselves up to the will of
the waves of contemporary life? They have already swept you into the flabbiness of
Kerensky’s regime, and soon they will push you under the yoke of the cruel Lenin,
into the claws of the red beast…”

The church modernists silently left him…

Vladyka Theophan recounted the witticism that went the rounds in the Council:
“Archbishop Anthony Khrapovitsky is the most intelligent. Metropolitan Tikhon of
Moscow is the gentlest. And Archbishop Anastasy Gribanovsky is the wisest in a
special sense…”

During the Council, Archbishop Theophan was appointed head of a commission

entrusted with investigating the heresy of the name-worshippers, a heresy that had
broken out among the Russian monks of Mount Athos five years earlier and which
had been supported by Vladyka’s old enemy, Rasputin. This was a natural
appointment, since Vladyka’s master’s thesis had been on the Name of God.

He prepared a report on the subject, but unfortunately the red terror cut short the
proceedings of the Council. The commission (whose deputy president was the
heretic Fr. Sergius Bulgakov) did not meet, and it is not now known where this
report is. All we have is Vladyka’s succinct but precise formula: “The Divinity rests
in the Name of God”, which is an implicit rejection of the name-worshippers’ thesis
that the Name of God is God.

The October revolution, writes Vladyka’s disciple, the future Archbishop Joasaph
of Canada, “found Archbishop Theophan in Poltava. The Ukrainians arrested him
because he did not agree to pray for their self-called ‘directory’. The Bolsheviks also
tried to arrest him, but God preserved him. They went into his study, but did not
notice him, although he was sitting at his writing desk: ‘seeing, they did not see’…”

Vladyka Theophan had to suffer much from the Ukrainian autocephalists who, on
seizing power, demanded that he serve a triumphant requiem liturgy for Ivan
Mazeppa in Poltava cathedral. Mazeppa was the favourite of Peter the Great who
had betrayed him at the battle of Poltava in 1712 and had then been anathematised
by the Church. But Vladyka said:

“I cannot do this. I do not have the right to do what you ask me because the
Church has anathematised Ivan Mazeppa for his treachery. I am not entitled to lift
the anathema, which was hurled by the highest representatives of the Church at that

31
time.”

“But it was the Muscovites who did it!”

“No, you are mistaken. There was no patriarchate at that time. The Church was
ruled by the patriarchal locum tenens, Metropolitan Stephen Yavorsky, who was
from the Western Ukraine. Besides, Tsar Peter surrounded himself precisely with
Ukrainians, who were more educated…”

For his principled refusal, Vladyka was put in prison, and was released only
when the government of Petlyura was overthrown and the White Army liberated
Poltava. After Vladyka’s exile to Serbia, the struggle against the autocephalists and
renovationists was continued by his close disciple, the future hieromartyr Bishop
Basil of Priluki.

Exile

Civil war erupted between the Reds and the Whites, and by the beginning of 1920
it was clear that the Reds, who had already carried out unparalleled atrocities
against church property and church servers, were going to win. In the same year
Archbishop Theophan became a member of the Higher Church Administration of
the South of Russia, formed in accordance with the decree of Patriarch Tikhon and
the Holy Synod, ukaz № 362 of November 7/20, 1920. Almost immediately, at the
suggestion of the White army commanders, who said that their departure would be merely
provisional, the HCA prepared to flee southwards from the invasion of the barbarians.
Archbishop Theophan was evacuated with the Volunteer Army to Taganrog.

The first stage of the journey took them to Stavropol, and then to Yekaterinodar in
the Northern Caucasus. Coming out of Yekaterinodar cathedral, the president of the
HCA, Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) of Kiev, asked the thousands of
worshippers whether they should stay in Russia or leave. The people shouted that
they should leave and pray for them in the lands beyond the sea. A Te Deum was
celebrated, and the immense crowd prayed and wept. The Cossacks came to bid
farewell to their hierarchs.

Then the hierarchs set off with the remnants of the White Army for the Crimea,
the last refuge of Free and Orthodox Russia. They settled in the monastery of St.
George in Sevastopol. Three months later, they left for Constantinople.

Helena Yurievna Kontzevich writes: “[Vladyka Theophan] departed from Russia

on a steamship along with Metropolitans Anthony (Khrapovitsky) and Platon and
Bishop Benjamin (Fedchenko). They discussed the situation of the Church the whole
way. Bishop Theophan’s position differed from the united opinion of the other

32
bishops, who stood for the path of church politics, and they parted ways.”

However, these differences did not seem to be serious at that time, and in 1921
Vladyka, together with the whole Higher Church Administration, moved to
Yugoslavia at the invitation of Patriarch Demetrius of Serbia, and took part in
November of the same year in the First Russian All-Emigration Council in Sremsky-
Karlovtsy.

Nicholas Zernov, a participant in this Council, describes Vladyka Theophan at

this time as “a learned man and an ascetic, withdrawn from the world. His head
bowed, his voice scarcely audible, he sometimes celebrated in the Athonite
podvoryes. He seemed completely immersed in prayer and indifferent to the world
around him, but there came out from him a power that was his own and which fixed
people’s attention on this fragile old man.”

The most important decision of this Council was the call for the restoration of the
Romanov dynasty to the throne of Russia. In this connection, it is interesting to note
the letter which Archbishop Theophan wrote to Helena Yurievna Kontzevich in 1930
on the subject of the coming Tsar: “You ask me about the near future and about the
approaching last times. I do not speak on my own, but am saying that which was
revealed to me by the Elders, The coming of the Antichrist draws nigh and is very
near. The time separating us from him can be counted a matter of years, and at the
most a matter of some decades. But before the coming of the Antichrist Russia must
yet be restored - to be sure, for a short time. And in Russia there must be a Tsar
forechosen by the Lord Himself. He will be a man of burning faith, great mind and
iron will. This much has been revealed about him. We shall await the fulfilment of
what has been revealed. Judging by many signs it is drawing nigh, unless because of
our sins the Lord God shall revoke it, and change what has been promised.
According to the witness of the word of God, this also might happen.”

And to another visitor he wrote: "O Russia, Russia! How terribly she has sinned
before the goodness of the Lord. The Lord God deigned to give Russia that which He
gave to no other people on earth. And this people has turned out to be so ungrateful.
It has left Him, renounced Him, and for that reason the Lord has given it over to be
tormented by demons. The demons have entered into the souls of men and the
people of Russia has become possessed, literally demon-possessed. And all the
terrible things that we hear have been done and are being done in Russia: all the
blasphemies, the militant atheism and the fighting against God – all this is taking
place because of the demon-possession. But the possession will pass through the
ineffable mercy of God, and the people will be healed. The people will turn to
repentance, to faith. This will take place when nobody expects it. Orthodoxy will be
regenerated in her and will triumph. But that Orthodoxy which was before will no
longer exist. The great elders said that Russia would be regenerated, that the people

33
itself would re-establish the Orthodox Monarchy. A powerful Tsar will be placed by
God Himself on the Throne. He will be a great reformer and he will have a strong
Orthodox faith. He will depose the unfaithful hierarchs of the Church, and will
himself be an outstanding personality, with a pure, holy soul. He will have a strong
will. He will come from the dynasty of the Romanovs according to the maternal line.
He will be a chosen one of God, obedient to Him in all things. He will transfigure
Siberia. But this Russia will not continue to exist for long. Soon that will take place
which the Apostle John speaks of in the Apocalypse.”

And again he said, as witnessed by Archbishop Averky: “In Russia, the elders
said, in accordance with the will of the people, the Monarchy, Autocratic power, will
be re-established. The Lord has forechosen the future Tsar. He will be a man of fiery
faith, having the mind of a genius and a will of iron. First of all he will introduce
order in the Orthodox Church, removing all the untrue, heretical and lukewarm
hierarchs. And many, very many - with few exceptions, all - will be deposed, and
new, true, unshakeable hierarchs will take their place. He will be of the family of the
Romanovs according to the female line [according to Schema-Monk Epiphanius he
said: “He will not be of the family of the Romanovs, but will be related to them
through women”]. Russia will be a powerful state, but only for 'a short time'... And
then the Antichrist will come into the world, with all the horrors of the end as
described in the Apocalypse."

Vladyka Theophan was appointed abbot of the monastery of Petkovitsa in the

diocese of Shabats. However, because of his poor health, the new abbot was not able
to spend much time with the brethren, and, as Archbishop Anthony of San Francisco
recounts, “the older brethren began to complain, while the younger brethren were
on the side of Vladyka. Fr. Ambrose [Kurganov] was especially grieved when he
encountered the complaining. He always honoured the holiness of the authority of
the abbacy.

“Realizing his weakness to calm the ferment, and longing for another form of
life,… Archbishop Theophan decided to leave Petkovitsa.

“Before his departure, on the feast day of the Petkovitsa church, October 1, 1923,
he ordained Deacon Ambrose to the priesthood during the Divine Liturgy.

“It is said that on that day, St. Paraskeva was seen standing in the sanctuary near
the holy table…”

The archbishop was taken away, sick, to another monastery on the Adriatic coast.
It was meant to be a place of recuperation, but his health only worsened.

“I could scarcely move, I was so weak; my sick throat deprived me of my last

34
strength, and every day I became weaker. There were so few monks in the
monastery that there were no services. There was a Serbian Orthodox monastery not
far away. One day, as the bells were ringing for the beginning of Vespers, I decided
to go for the last time to pray in a church: I dressed and left, to respond to the call of
the bells.

“I dragged myself painfully to the monastery, and on arriving I saw a hieromonk

occupied in playing cards in the courtyard of the monastery, his stole hanging on a
tree beside the church, which was locked. I went up to the monk and asked him:

“’What’s happening, is Vespers already finished?’

“’We rang the bells so that the faithful should know that tomorrow is a feast day.’

“’But the Vespers service?’

“’We don’t have services! We only have the bells!’”

The archbishop bowed his head, and returned to his cell, immersed in sad
thoughts…

In the following days, his last strength left him. He was suffering terribly in his
throat. He could not swallow anything; in any case, he had no appetite. He felt the
end approaching…

The feast of the Protection of the Mother of God was drawing near. He addressed
a last tearful prayer to the Mother of God and delivered himself into the hands of the
Lord:

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, into Thy hands I commit my spirit!”

The brothers were panic-stricken. The archbishop was lying like a corpse, hardly
breathing… He remained in this state for forty-eight hours.

On the third day, he recovered consciousness and felt that an important change
had taken place in him. Tears of joy came to the eyes of the sick man, tears of
gratitude to God and the Holy Virgin…

Then he remembered the prophetic words of the fool for Christ, Pasha of Sarov:

“The Mother of God will deliver you! The Holy Virgin will save you!”

Just at that moment a parcel arrived from the Soviet Union from an unknown

35
person – at a time when no letters were arriving from the Soviet Union! Inside was a
beautiful icon of St. Seraphim of Sarov. He was convinced that he had been saved
through the Mother of God and the prayers of St. Seraphim.

Pascha arrived, and the priest of the Russian church in the town near the
monastery was going round the homes of his parishioners to wish them the joy of
the feast. But in his heart he was sad, because he had left his family in the Soviet
Union and had received no news of them. His sadness combined with the effects of
drinking too much in the houses of his parishioners, and suddenly he awoke from
his stupor to realize that the money collected in church which he carried with him
had disappeared. Terrible thoughts assailed him, he was convinced that nobody
would believe that he had not stolen the money, and he determined to kill himself.

Exhausted, he fell asleep. And then in a dream he saw Archbishop Theophan,

who approached him and said:

“Go to the temple of the Lord and you will find what you have lost.”

Dawn was breaking as he rushed to the church. Lighting a candle and making the
sign of the cross, he began to search. There was the money, on one of the side
benches!

Joyfully he began to chant the Paschal hymn: “Christ is risen from the dead!” He
felt that he himself had been truly resurrected from the dead!

Then he rushed to the archbishop and thanked him fervently for saving him from
perdition. But the archbishop said that he knew nothing about this, and told him to
ascribe the glory to God alone, and said:

“Always remember what God told you: ‘Go to the temple of the Lord and you
will find what you have lost.’”

In 1925 the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church invited Archbishop
Theophan to live in Sofia, in two rooms on the first floor of the Synodal House
overlooking St. Alexander Nevsky Square. The reason for this was that several
members of the Bulgarian Synod had been students of Vladyka at the St. Petersburg
Theological Academy, including the president of the Synod, Metropolitan Clement.
Also instrumental in the invitation was another former student of Vladyka’s, Bishop
Seraphim (Sobolev) of Lubny, a vicariate of the Poltava diocese, who was now in
charge of the Russian parishes in Bulgaria.

Archbishop Averky writes: “It was touching to see the attention and profound
reverence which our brothers the Bulgarians showed Archbishop Theophan. He

36
frequently served in the majestic Church of St. Alexander Nevsky which was erected
in memory of the liberation of Bulgaria from the Turkish yoke. It stood on the
enormous square adjacent to the Synodal house and could accommodate 7000
faithful. Occasionally, and especially during Great Lent, he served even in the Synod
‘paraklis’ – the small house church in the Synodal House. Those who participated in
his spiritually fulfilling and profoundly prayerful services even today remember
them with compunction…

“Indeed, Vladyka Theophan made a deep impression as a man of genuinely

spiritual life on all foreigners who came in contact with him. The enemy, however,
takes up arms against such saintly people and makes a special effort to pour out on
them all his diabolical malice with the help of malevolent and depraved individuals
who are devoted to his service. Thus in Sofia, due to various unfortunate events in
the local Russian Church, Vladyka Theophan had to suffer much grief simply
because he was a strict ascetic and an uncompromising Archpastor. Consequently,
he withdrew more and more from the world and its raging passions and began to
retire into himself, leading what was already virtually the life of a recluse. For some
time, however, he continued to participate in the sessions of the Synod, periodically
travelling to Yugoslavia for this purpose…

“Vladyka grieved over all the unnecessary events which took place in the Russian
émigré community. Most detrimental were all the arguments and disputes which, as
he put it, were not befitting of Orthodox Russians who, because of their sins, had lost
their homeland and were sentenced to live in exile, in some cases in extremely
difficult material and moral circumstances. He altogether disapproved of the idea of
proclaiming a Russian Emperor outside of Russia, or a ‘Patriarch of Russia’ or even a
‘patriarchal locum tenens’, notions which were widely circulated by certain
individuals. He believed that Russia would soon be resurrected, but only on the
condition that the whole nation repented of its grave sin of apostasy before God. He
considered our life in exile as nothing other than an opportunity for fervent
repentance and prayer for God’s forgiveness. This is why many of the events that
occurred during our life in exile gave him pain and sorrow and forced him to avoid
close contact with people. Neither would he engage in any kind of social interaction
in which he did not observe the repentance which should be evident in our people,
to whom God had given the penance of banishment. Vladyka Theophan never went
out of his cell in the Synodal House except to go to church, nor did he receive
anyone there except a few individuals who were deeply devoted to him and sought
his instructions and spiritual guidance.

“Every summer he moved from Sofia to the coastal city of Varna, where a group
of his admirers rented him a modest cottage about five kilometres from town. The
cottage was located in a very isolated and relatively uninhabited spot. There
Vladyka lived alone with his cell-attendant as in a skete, daily performing the whole

37
cycle of services and readers services in place of the Liturgy. Only on certain
Sundays and on major holy days did he ride to church in a carriage. Usually he went
to the Russian church of Athanasius of Alexandria, an ancient Greek church that had
been put at the disposal of the Russians by the Bulgarian Metropolitan Symeon of
Varna and Preslav.

“Here Vladyka worked especially hard on his dogmatic, exegetical and ascetic
spiritual writings. Himself a profound and refined expert in Patristics, he complied a
new edition of the Philokalia, organized according to a system which he had worked
out, which was very practical and handy to use. He also complied a Philokalia of
Russian Saints, wrote a very interesting and original interpretation of Revelation, and
many other things as well. In addition he conducted extensive correspondence with
his spiritual children. His letters contained penetrating spiritual advice and
instructions which were always accompanied by citations from the Holy Scriptures
and numerous quotations from the Holy Fathers. They were reminiscent of the
correspondence of Bishop Theophan the Recluse, and constitute a precious guide on
all matters of morality and spirituality…

“Most astonishing of all were Vladyka’s labours of prayer, to which he devoted

himself literally day and night. It was obvious that he never gave up the prayer of
‘the mind in the heart’, following the legacy of the Holy Fathers. He was often so
deep in contemplation that it seemed to him that the whole visible world around
him had ceased to exist. Prayer without ceasing was indeed vital to his spirit, which
dwelt on high…

“When he performed the Liturgy in the church of St. Athanasius in Varna, the
congregation of the church, righteous and patriarchal Greeks who lived in the
environs, told us: ‘When your Vladyka sits on the high place in the church, it seems
as if the Blessed Athanasius himself has come to his church and is performing the
services through him. One Greek woman, in whose house Vladyka spent the night,
was surprised that when she came in to clean up in the morning the bed appeared to
be untouched. Obviously, Vladyka had spent the whole night before the Liturgy in
prayer and had not gone to bed.

“It is not surprising that, given Vladyka Theophan’ strict ascetic life, as happens
with many genuine ascetics, he experienced frightening episodes of the sort that the
enemy of mankind uses to try to force people who lead an ascetic life to give up their
labours. These were the same sort of episodes that we know from the Russian
ascetics Saints Sergius of Radonezh and Seraphim of Sarov. Vladyka Theophan’
frightening episodes were reported by those who served as his cell-attendants, and
even by the Right Reverend Seraphim who rode with him in a sleeping-car on the
Sofia-Varna express, and who was at that time in charge of the Russian ecclesiastical
communities in Bulgaria. Once, when they were riding together in the same

38
compartment, something woke Vladyka Seraphim in the night and he saw in the
middle of the compartment a big black cat [according to Archbishop Theophan, it
was more like a tigress with a huge udder] with eyes of burning flames. Then the
loud voice of Vladyka Theophan resounded: ‘In the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of
the Living God, I adjure you: be gone from me, unclean one!’ The cat snorted,
spraying fiery sparks in all directions, and disappeared. Since that time, as Vladyka
Seraphim stated, he tried to avoid spending the night in the same place as Vladyka
Theophan because he was so shaken by this experience.

“In the cottage in Varna, there were only two rooms and a kitchen. Vladyka lived
in the front room which opened onto the veranda; the second room was empty, and
beyond it was the kitchen where Vladyka’s cell-attendants stayed. They took this
duty upon themselves voluntarily and served all Vladyka’s needs. One of them was
an elderly merchant from Moscow, Kh., another was a middle-aged but by no means
old Cossack from the Urals, S., and the third was the young student, T. At first they
took turns spending the night in the kitchen, but later they began to go home late at
night after doing all that Vladyka asked of them. The reason for this was certain
mysterious phenomena which frightened them. In the empty room between the
kitchen and Vladyka’s cell somebody’s footsteps would suddenly resound, clearly
audible, although there was nobody there. Then it seemed as if some unseen person
were throwing whole handfuls of sand or dirt in through the windows of the
cottage, and there were other unexplained noises of this kind. When this happened,
Vladyka’s loud voice, which was usually soft, could be heard very loud and strong,
clearly articulating, ‘In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God,
I adjure you: be gone from me, unclean one!’ Then everything grew quiet and calm.

“According to the cell-attendant S., at midnight the sound of various falling

objects could be heard, and this also ceased after Vladyka pronounced in a loud and
threatening voice his adjuration, apparently against the demonic forces which
menaced him. At first Vladyka used to ask his cell-attendant,

“’Did you hear what happened in the night?’

“’I did,’ he would answer.

“’And were you frightened?’

“’No.’

But once that cell-attendant himself experienced an attack of demons. When he was
half-asleep he suddenly felt some terrible hairy monster pressing on him and
choking him. He awoke and saw somebody squeezing his throat. At first he thought
that it was a robber and took it into his head to grab him with his hand, but his arms

39
went numb… Then he began to pray and he saw a grey cloud that twisted up in the
shape of a horn and gradually disappeared. Vladyka came in and made the sign of
the cross on his forehead, sprinkled the room with holy water, and such occurrences
were not repeated.

“After Vladyka had left for Sofia, his cell-attendants came to the cottage to pack
up and move out the things he had left behind. The neighbouring Bulgarian villagers
surrounded them and asked in astonishment,

“’What was going on last night in your Vladyka’s cottage?’

“’Nothing could have happened,’ they replied. ‘Vladyka left the day before and
nobody was in the cottage.’

“’What do you mean?’ the Bulgarians countered, bewildered. ‘All night long the
windows of the cottage were brightly lit, and it was evident that many people had
gathered and there seemed to be a party and some kind of dancing going on.’

“Some time later, one of his cell-attendants attempted to ask Vladyka in a most
cautious and tactful way what all these mysterious phenomena meant. Vladyka
smiled somewhat enigmatically and humbly said,

“’Well, this is what happens with monks!’

We, however, understood him thus: yes! This is what happens with monks, but not
with all of them, only real monks such as you!

“Vladyka was extraordinarily fond of his cell attendants. Sometimes when he

came to see them in the kitchen he was very gentle, loving and cheerful. He could
appreciate a good polite joke and laugh at it. Only once did his cell-attendants have
occasion to see Vladyka actually get angry: a certain priest once wanted to exclude
an individual who had offended him from Holy Communion. Vladyka told him that
he had no right to do so, and that one must forgive personal offences.”

Once, during the Cherubic hymn of the Liturgy that was being celebrated in the
small chapel in the cottage, noises and groaning were heard coming from under the
roof. One of the cell-attendants asked the blessing of the archbishop to investigate,
but he said it would not happen again. And it didn’t. Instead, however, snakes
appeared all round the house, which Vladyka attributed to demonic forces. As a
result, they had to move into another house a bit further down the coast in place
called “Roumi”…

Dr. Abbatti was working as a doctor in Bulgarian Macedonia when a malaria

40
epidemic broke out. And his wife Anna Vassilievna came down with the illness.
Now the doctor and his wife had sworn to each other that they would not conceal
from each other when one of them was dying. So the doctor, who had to leave to see
a patient, turned to his wife and said:

“Annette, you have no more than two hours to live!”

She was already in the throes of convulsions, and she asked her husband to send
a telegram to Archbishop Theophan immediately and ask him to pray for her. He
agreed, sent the telegram and left for his work. The telegram read as follows:

“Anna Vassilievna Abatti is dying. Two hours to live. Asking for your holy
prayers to save her from death. Doctor Abatti.”

Then he left. The region where he was working was mountainous and the
communications poor. On his way back, he received a telegram. Too preoccupied
and sad to read it, he stuffed it in his pocket. He was expecting to find his wife
dead… But as he entered his house he could not believe his eyes: his wife was
sitting, pale and weak, but with no traces of the illness… The telegram he hadn’t
read was from the archbishop and said:

“I am praying. By God’s mercy, the sick one will recover.”

He noted that the time when the telegram was sent and the time when his wife felt
the illness depart coincided. But when Anna Vassilievna came to thank the
archbishop, he did not let her open her mouth, telling her to tell nobody about the
miraculous healing and threatening her that if she did tell something worse would
happen to her. And it was only after the archbishop’s death in 1940 that she said:

“He was not a simple archbishop. He was a great man, a holy man of God,
ignored by men… Listen how, thanks to his holy prayers, I am alive now, although I
was in agony.”

And she told the story…

There lived in Varna a Russian by the name of Pelichkin, a former colonel, who
had converted from Orthodoxy to the Baptist faith. He knew how to conduct
conversations on religious matters, and was able to disturb someone who was not
trained in theology. And he decided to display his talents in a debate with
Archbishop Theophan.

When Pelichkin arrived at the house, Vladyka told his cell-attendants to stay close
to the room in which the interview was to take place.

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 “The interview will be short. You will wait in the corridor and will be witnesses,
is such are needed.”

Pelichkin was ushered in. He wanted to close the door, but the archbishop opened
it again, which disturbed him. Moreover, Vladyka did not offer him a seat and
remained standing himself. Then the archbishop began:

“When there are differences of opinion, and so as to avoid interminable disputes,

one makes appeal to the judgement of a third party. These arbiters decide which of
the two confess the true faith. Not long ago you and I confessed the same faith, the
Orthodox faith. The best judges that we could find are the three holy ecumenical
bishops, St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian and St. John Chrysostom.
Their authority is indisputable for us.”

To this Pelichkin objected: “But they are men like you and I! Why should I be
obliged to consider them as indisputable authorities?”

The archbishop replied: “If you consider yourself the equal of the holy bishops St.
Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian and St. John Chrysostom, we have
nothing more to say to each other. I ask you to leave the room!”

Pelichkin had nothing to answer to this. Disconcerted, he left the room. Later
Vladyka explained his tactics:

“If I had refused to speak with him, he would have told the world that ‘the
archbishop is frightened’. Whereas here, he had nothing to say in reply… In his heart
he well understands that to consider oneself the equal of Saints Basil the Great,
Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom is a great impudence and spiritual
delusion.”

In 1928 Vladyka came to Varna for Holy Week and Pascha. During the Liturgy for
Holy Thursday an earthquake suddenly hit the city. Tens of chandeliers suspended
on chains from the ceiling began to tinkle, the walls seemed to come to life, the bells
began to ring.

The people, too, were disturbed and began to flee from the church. The superior
of the church asked the archbishop to allow him to go and calm the people.

“Stay here and pray!” he replied.

And he immersed himself in prayer.

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 Again the superior, thinking the archbishop had misunderstood him, insisted:

“Allow me to go and say a word to the people!”

“You must not go and say anything… Stay here and pray!”

When the panic-stricken parishioners saw that everyone in the sanctuary was
staying and praying, they calmed down.

On Holy Saturday, there was another earthquake during the chanting of the
cherubic hymn: “Let all mortal flesh keep silence…” This time many of the faithful,
their fears reinforced by what they had read in the press, rushed out into the street.
Once again the superior asked:

“Your Eminence, bless me and allow me go and pacify the people!”

“Father Igumen, stay here and pray!”

This time the priest did not insist. And the people who had fled, seeing the
calmness of the clergy in the sanctuary, returned to the church.

But there were many victims in the city. People who should have been in church
praying… Vladyka saw the earthquake as a call to repentance….

Dogmatic Disputes

The 1920s were a period of great turmoil in the Russian Church both inside and
outside of Russia. Schisms and heresies, excited and exploited by political and extra-
ecclesiastical forces, threatened to tear apart the Body of Christ. In this chaos many
looked to the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia for guidance,
and in particular to its president and vice-president, Metropolitan Anthony
(Khrapovitsky) of Kiev and Archbishop Theophan of Poltava, who had respectively
been rectors of the Moscow and St. Petersburg Theological Academies. On many
issues the two hierarchs agreed. But unfortunately on one or two issues Archbishop
Theophan considered the metropolitan to be in error; and, for all his love and respect
for the older hierarch, he considered it his duty to point out these errors.

In 1926 there was published in Sremski Karlovtsy in Serbia the second edition of
Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky)’s Dogma of Redemption, an attempt to
conceptualise the mystery of Christ’s redemption of mankind by means of a sharp
contrast between redemption understood as an act of supremely compassionate love
and redemption understood as the satisfaction of God’s justice, the so-called
“juridical theory”. The juridical theory was rejected by Metropolitan Anthony as

43
“scholastic”, and he sharply criticised several Fathers of the Russian Church for
teaching it. In particular, he criticised the Catechism of Metropolitan Philaret of
Moscow, which he proposed to replace with his own Catechism containing his own
“monistic” theory of redemption. According to Metropolitan Anthony, our salvation
was not accomplished by a restoration of justice between God and man, but by an
outpouring of Christ’s compassionate love for man onto the whole of mankind. In
accordance with this theory, the central point in the redemption of mankind was
located by the metropolitan in the Garden of Gethsemane, rather than on the Cross.

Archbishop Theophan, supported by his vicar in Russia, Bishop Seraphim

(Sobolev) of Lubny, profoundly disagreed with the metropolitan. He considered the
so-called “juridical theory” to be Orthodox, and Metropolitan Philaret’s Catechism in
no need of replacing. And he considered Metropolitan Anthony’s Catechism to
contain serious dogmatical errors.

The issue came to a head in a session of the Synod held in Yugoslavia in April,
1926. On the one hand, the Synod expressed its approval of Metropolitan Anthony’s
Catechism. On the other hand, no decision was made to replace Metropolitan
Philaret’s Catechism with that of Metropolitan Anthony.

However, the dispute rumbled on “underground”. Thus in letters to

Hieroschemamonk Theodosius of Mount Athos, who took the side of Archbishop
Theophan, Metropolitan Anthony expressed the suspicion that Archbishop
Theophan was in “spiritual delusion” and continued to show himself in
fundamental disagreement “with the juridical theory of Anselm and Aquinas,
completely accepted by P[eter] Moghila and Metropolitan Philaret”. And again he
wrote: “We must not quickly return to Peter Moghila, Philaret and Macarius: they
will remain subjects for historians”.

Archbishop Theophan was unhappy that Metropolitan Anthony did not abandon
his incorrect views on redemption, but only refrained from pressing for their official
acceptance by the Synod. As he wrote on February 16/29, 1932: “Under the influence
of the objections made [against his work], Metropolitan Anthony was about to take
back his Catechism, which had been introduced by him into use in the schools in
place of Metropolitan Philaret’s Catechism. But, as became clear later, he did this
insincerely, and with exceptional persistence continued to spread his incorrect
teaching On Redemption and many other incorrect teachings contained in his
Catechism”.

Another dogmatic issue on which Archbishop Theophan and Bishop Seraphim

cooperated fruitfully was the Sophianist heresy of Fr. Sergius Bulgakov. (Another
theologian who worked on this issue was Hieromonk John Maximovich, the future
holy hierarch.) This heresy was based, according to Vladyka in a letter he wrote in

44
1930, “on the book of Fr. [Paul] Florensky, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth. But
Florensky borrowed the idea of Sophia from V.S. Soloviev. And V.S. Soloviev
borrowed it from the medieval mystics.

“In V.S. Soloviev Sophia is the feminine principle of God, His ‘other’. Florensky
tries to prove that Sophia, as the feminine principle of God, is a special substance. He
tries to find this teaching in St. Athanasius the Great and in Russian iconography.
Protopriest Bulgakov accepts on faith the basic conclusions of Florensky, but partly
changes the form of this teaching, and partly gives it a new foundation. In Bulgakov
this teaching has two variants: a) originally it is a special Hypostasis, although not of
one essence with the Holy Trinity (in the book The Unwaning Light), b) later it is not a
Hypostasis but ‘hypostasisness’. In this latter form it is an energy of God coming
from the essence of God through the Hypostases of the Divinity into the world and
finding for itself its highest ‘created union’ in the Mother of God. Consequently,
according to this variant, Sophia is not a special substance, but the Mother of God.

“According to the Church teaching, which is especially clearly revealed in St.

Athanasius the Great, the Sophia-Wisdom of God is the Lord Jesus Christ.

“Here, in the most general terms, is the essence of Protopriest Bulgakov’s teaching
on Sophia! To expound any philosophical teaching shortly is very difficult, and so it
is difficult to expound shortly the teaching of the ‘sophianists’ on Sophia. This
teaching of theirs becomes clear only in connection the whole of their philosophical
system. But to expound the latter shortly is also impossible. One can say only: their
philosophy is the philosophy of ‘panentheism’, that is, a moderate form of
‘pantheism’. The originator of this ‘panentheism’ in Russia is V.S. Soloviev.”

Bulgakov was only one of a series of heretical teachers who were teaching in the
1920s and 30s in the Theological Institute of St. Sergius in Paris, such as Nicholas
Berdyaev, Lev Zander and Nicholas Zernov. By no means all the Paris theologians
supported him. Fr. Georges Florovsky, for example, strongly criticized him.
However, Metropolitan Eulogius of Paris supported them, and was in turn
supported by them, which, combined with the intrigues of the communists, laid the
basis for the schism of the “Paris exarchate” from the Russian Church Abroad that
took place in 1927. The sticking point was Eulogius’s refusal to allow Synodal
supervision of the St. Sergius Institute; and his refusal to break links with the
masonically inspired and financed YMCA, proved the sticking point on which hopes
of a permanent reconciliation foundered.

Archbishop Averky writes: “Archbishop Theophan was the first to expose and
document the anti-Christian nature of certain so-called Christian organizations,
some of which were eager to extend their influence to the Russian Orthodox Church
Outside of Russia, and even to subjugate it to themselves somewhat by rendering

45
financial assistance much needed by our refugees who had no stable sources of their
own to draw from in exile. Vladyka Theophan himself categorically refused to
accept the monthly allowance offered to him by these organizations, and did not
approve of those who did, for he believed that this caused them to lose their spiritual
freedom, and that in one way or another they would consequently be forced to do
the will of their sponsors. Vladyka Theophan guarded his independence and
spiritual freedom, preferring a beggarly existence to a secure situation. This discloses
the most characteristic trait of our great pastor, a trait which he shared with the great
Fathers of Christian antiquity: any compromise of conscience, no matter how small,
was for him altogether inconceivable. In all of his actions and conduct, in his private
life as well as in his service to the Church and society, he was utterly constant, never
departing in any way from what his convictions dictated. Absolute incorruptibility,
uncompromising honesty and straightforwardness, demand for unconditional
loyalty to the true Church, to the Word of God, and to Patristic tradition – these were
his hallmarks, ideals which guided his life and which he liked to see in other
servants of the Church as well.”

In August, 1926, Archbishop Theophan wrote: “The real causes of the division are
deeper than it seems at first glance. Two of them are especially significant. ‘They’
consider the Soviet authorities as ‘ordained by God’, but we consider them
antichristian. On the basis of overwhelming documentary evidence, we recognized
that the YMCA is a masonic organization. They consider it a Christian organization.”

And he predicted: “Metropolitan Eulogius will not give in. Those around him are
pushing him toward schism. We could let him have his way, but we cannot entrust
the fate of Orthodoxy to him. He is ensnared in the nets of the [masonic] YMCA. The
YMCA in turn is having a demoralizing effect on student groups. In the magazine
The Way № 5, Professor Berdyaev stated openly that the schism in the church is
unavoidable and necessary. Metropolitan Eulogius is the only hierarch who ‘has
raised his consciousness to the realization that it is necessary to reform Orthodoxy’,
and he is therefore ‘a tool of God’s Providence’ in our days!”

Vladyka took a very strict attitude towards the Paris exarchate. As Helen
Kontzevich relates, “in Paris, Archpriest Sergius Chetverikov asked to come and see
Archbishop Theophan, to converse with him on the theme of the Jesus Prayer. But he
was presented with the condition that he cease all contact with the YMCA. The
Archpriest did not agree to it.”

Archbishop Averky says that Vladyka Theophan foresaw both the schism of
Metropolitan Eulogius of Paris and that of Metropolitan Platon in America. “He
warned and admonished, but his warnings were not heeded in time and the
subsequent reproach of those who broke away not only had no positive results, but
even deepened the division, as Vladyka had also foreseen. Such ecclesiastical

46
schisms and divisions caused Vladyka to sorrow in his heart, to suffer in his soul
and to grieve. Although he had at the very beginning identified the root of the
problem, he did not always approve of the measures taken to stop the schisms and
establish unity in the Church, and he indicated the errors sometimes made in so
doing.”

Although Eulogius at times sought, and obtained, reconciliation with

Metropolitan Anthony and the other hierarchs, his heretical entourage was stronger,
as Vladyka had predicted. First he joined the Moscow Patriarchate under
Metropolitan Sergius. But then, when Sergius demanded political loyalty to the
Soviet Union, he turned to Constantinople.

However, by 1927-28, both the Moscow and the Constantinople patriarchates had
fallen away from the truth of Orthodoxy, and Vladyka Theophan was prominent in
defending that truth against their innovations.

One of the last Hierarchical Councils that Vladyka attended condemned the
notorious declaration of Metropolitan Sergius, which recognized the Soviet power as
established by God and placed the Russian Church in more or less complete
dependence on it. As he wrote on September 1, 1927: “It is impossible to recognize
the epistle of Metropolitan Sergius as obligatory for ourselves. The just-completed
Council of Bishops rejected this epistle. It was necessary to act in this way on the
basis of the teaching of the Holy Fathers on what should be recognized as a
canonical power to which Christians must submit. St. Isidore of Pelusium, having
pointed to the presence of the God-established order of the submission of some to
others everywhere in the life of rational and irrational beings, draws the conclusion:

“’Therefore we are right to say that the thing in itself, I mean power, that is,
authority and royal power, have been established by God. But if a lawless evildoer
seizes this power, we do not affirm that he has been sent by God, but we say that he,
like Pharaoh, has been permitted to spew out this cunning and thereby inflict extreme
punishment on and bring to their senses those for whom cruelty was necessary, just
as the King of Babylon brought the Jews to their senses. (Works, part II, letter 6).

“Bolshevik power in its essence is an antichristian power and there is no way that
it can recognized as God-established.”

In relation to the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the introduction of the new

calendar into that patriarchate and other churches, Vladyka Theophan was similarly
uncompromising. Thus “only an Ecumenical Council”, he wrote, “can introduce a
new Church calendar, as the First Ecumenical Council introduced the one which we
now use. Any other unauthorized introduction cannot be recognized as canonical.”
Unlike Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), who, though opposed to the new

47
calendar innovation, argued in favour of remaining in communion with the new
calendarists, and served with the new calendarist Romanian patriarch Miron on
more than one occasion, Archbishop Theophan adopted the “zealot” line of the
Greek and Romanian Old Calendarists.

He wrote two extended works on the subject. In one of them, composed in 1926,
he wrote:

“Question. Have the pastors of the Orthodox Church not made special
judgements concerning the calendar?

“Answer. They have, many times – with regard to the introduction of the new
Roman calendar – both in private assemblies and in councils.

“A proof of this is the following. First of all, the Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremiah II,
who lived at the same time as the Roman calendar reform, immediately, in 1582,
together with his Synod condemned the new Roman system of chronology as being
not in agreement with the Tradition of the Church. In the next year (1583), with the
participation of Patriarchs Sylvester of Alexandria and Sophronius VI of Jerusalem,
he convened a Church Council. This Council recognised the Gregorian calendar to
be not in agreement with the canons of the Universal Church and with the decree of
the First Ecumenical Council on the method of calculating the day of Holy Pascha.

“Through the labours of this Council there appeared: a Conciliar tome, which
denounced the wrongness and unacceptability for the Orthodox Church of the
Roman calendar, and a canonical conciliar Decree – the Sigillion of November 20,
1583. In this Sigillion all three of the above-mentioned Patriarchs with their Synods
called on the Orthodox firmly and unbendingly, even to the shedding of their blood,
to hold the Orthodox Menaion and Julian Paschalion, threatening the transgressors
of this with anathema, cutting them off from the Church of Christ and the gathering
of the faithful…

“In the course of the following three centuries: the 17th, 18th and 19th, a whole
series of Ecumenical Patriarchs decisively expressed themselves against the
Gregorian calendar and, evaluating it in the spirit of the conciliar decree of Patriarch
Jeremiah II, counselled the Orthodox to avoid it…

“Question. Is the introduction of the new calendar important or of little

importance?

“Answer. Very important, especially in connection with the Paschalion, and it is

an extreme disorder and ecclesiastical schism, which draws people away from
communion and unity with the whole Church of Christ, deprives them of the grace

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of the Holy Spirit, shakes the dogma of the unity of the Church, and, like Arius, tears
the seamless robe of Christ, that is, everywhere divides the Orthodox, depriving
them of oneness of mind; breaks the bond with Ecclesiastical Holy Tradition and
makes them fall under conciliar condemnation for despising Tradition…

“Question. How must the Orthodox relate to the new calendarist schismatics,
according to the canons?

“Answer. They must have no communion in prayer with them, even before their
conciliar condemnation…

“Question. What punishment is fitting, according to the Church canons, for those
who pray with the new calendarist schismatics?

“Answer. The same condemnation with them…”

Reclusion: Final Years and Repose

As early as 1928 Archbishop Theophan wrote to one of his spiritual children: “I

would like to retreat in silence from all things and from henceforth, but I do not yet
know whether this is God’s will.” On April 16/29, 1931 he left Bulgaria and moved
in with a couple known to him from St. Petersburg, Theodore and Lydia Porokhov,
who were living in Clamart, near Paris.

It is not known for certain why Vladyka left Bulgaria for reclusion in France. A
desire for deep inner prayer, which is easier in reclusion, was probably one factor.
Another, according to his cell-attendant, the future Schema-Monk Epiphanius
(Chernov), was the deteriorating state of his relations with his vicar, Bishop
Seraphim. A third, according to the same source, was a desire to check out a report
that the Tsar was alive and living in France!

Certainly Vladyka was depressed about the state of the Churches, and perhaps
felt that he with his uncompromising views could make no further contribution to
public Church life. Thus on September 12, 1931 he wrote from Clamart: “You
complain about developments in ecclesiastical affairs in your country. I do not know
the details of your situation, but I think that the religious and moral state of other
Orthodox countries is no better, perhaps even worse. I can at least state with
assurance that this is true both of Russia under the yoke and of Russia in the
Diaspora. Regarding ecclesiastical matters there, I have an enormous amount of
material at my disposal: approximately 700 pages in all. I have at my disposal
materials about ecclesiastical affairs here as well which are no less important nor less
voluminous. The overall conclusion that can be drawn from these materials is
horrifying. Yet there is, of course, amid this general darkness a ‘grace-filled remnant’

49
that still perpetuates the Orthodox faith both here and there. Our times seem to be
apocalyptic. The salt is losing its savour. Among the Church’s highest pastors there
remains a weak, dim, contradictory and incorrect understanding of the written
word. This is subverting spiritual life in Christian society and destroying
Christianity, which consists of actions, not words. It grieves me to see to whom Christ’s
sheep have been entrusted, to see who it is that oversees their guidance and salvation. But
this is tolerated by God. ‘Let those in Judaea flee to the mountains!’ With these
words the great Russian hierarchs Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow and Bishop
Ignatius Brianchaninov characterized the state of ecclesiastical affairs in their own
times, sixty years ago. Do we not have even greater reason to repeat these
threatening words at the present time?”

One contributing factor to Vladyka’s decision almost certainly was his strained
relations with Metropolitan Anthony over the Dogma of Redemption and other
matters. According to Helena Kontzevich, Metropolitan Anthony wrote to Vladyka
after their disagreement over the dogma, and refused him permission to come to any
more sessions of the Synod. Whether this is true or not, the relations between the
two hierarchs were definitely strained. However, this did not lead to Vladyka
formally breaking relations with the Church Abroad, for the newspapers reported
that he concelebrated with Archbishop Seraphim (Lukianov) of Paris, and gave
sermons.

Vladyka’s letters became increasingly apocalyptic in tone. Already in 1931 he

predicted a new war in Europe. And “Czechoslovakia will be the first to succumb to
this threat!”, he added…

On April 31, 1936 he wrote: “Have you noticed what is happening in the world
today? The leaders of the world’s governments are all doing the same thing: they all
speak about world peace. The leaders of France and of states friendly to her are also
very insistent in speaking about ways to guarantee security, as if this were the
essential precondition of this ‘peace’. One cannot help but recall the words of the
Apostle Paul in his epistle to the Thessalonians: ‘The day of the Lord so cometh as a
thief in the night. For when they shall say peace and security, then sudden
destruction cometh upon them as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall
not escape’ (I Thessalonians 5.3). Everybody who loves the Truth must not only take
note of the signs of the times, but also follow these observations to their logical
conclusion.

“Regarding the affairs of the Church, in the words of the Saviour, one of the most
awesome phenomena of the last days is that at that time ‘the stars shall fall from
heaven’ (Matthew 24.29). According to the Saviour’s own explanation, these ‘stars’
are the Angels of the Churches, in other words, the Bishops (Revelation 1.20). The
religious and moral fall of the Bishops is, therefore, one of the most characteristic

50
signs of the last days. The fall of the Bishops is particularly horrifying when they
deviate from the doctrines of the faith, or, as the Apostle put it, when they ‘would
pervert the Gospel of Christ’ (Galatians 1.7). The Apostle orders that such people be
pronounced ‘anathema’. He said, ‘If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that
which ye have received, let him be accursed (anathema)’ (Galatians 1.9). And one must not
be slow about this, for he continues, ‘A man that is an heretic, after the first and second
admonition reject, knowing that he that is such is subverted, being condemned of himself’
(Titus 3.10-11). Moreover, you may be subject to God’s judgement if you are
indifferent to deviation from the truth: ‘So them because thou art lukewarm, and
neither cold not hot, I will spew thee out of My mouth’ (Revelation 3.6).

“Clouds are gathering on the world’s horizon. God’s judgement of its peoples and
of hypocritical Christians, beginning with heretics and lukewarm hierarchs, is
approaching.”

Soon after moving to France, Vladyka discovered that he was being followed. He
had to stop going to church in the Rue Odessa in Paris, and told one of his people in
Bulgaria that life in Clamart was “not peaceful”. Later he explained that there had
been a night-time descent on the house where he lived. It appears that the Soviets
were trying to kidnap Vladyka as they had kidnapped General Kutepov in 1931 and
General Miller in 1937. And although they did not succeed, after his death his papers
were all sent to Moscow…

Seeking a safer refuge, in 1936 Vladyka moved with the Porokhovs to Mosne,
near Amboise on the Loire. Soon after this Theodore Vassilievich Porokhov was
murdered. In 1939 Lydia Nikolaevna Porokhova, in monasticism Maria, also died.
Six months later, on September 1, 1939, Vladyka and the Porokhovs’ niece, Anastasia
Vassilievna, were taken by a former landowner of Poltava, Maria Vassilievna
Fedchenko, to a little property which she rented at Limeray, in the same region. Here
there were three caves suitable for living in. In the first lived Vladyka. In the second
was a church. In the third lived Anastasia Vassilievna. And Maria Vassilievna lived
in a house next to the caves. There was also a place for some domestic animals, and
for twelve Doberman-pinchers, who were chained up during the day but were
released into the park during the night, probably so as to protect Vladyka from his
enemies. After his death, they were all sold.

Archbishop Theophan reposed peacefully at three o’clock in the morning on

February 6/19, 1940, the feast of St. Photius the Great. According to one of those
present, there were no more than four people present at the funeral of the great and
holy hierarch, who was vested in his hierarchical vestments with the mitre and
panagia that the Tsar had presented him with at his consecration.

Vladyka was buried in plot № 432 in the municipal cemetery of Limeray.

51
 On the fortieth day after his repose he appeared to his spiritual son and the future
Archbishop of Canada Joasaph, who witnessed: “After the death of my marvelous
instructor, I was terribly afflicted… It was very difficult for me and I prayed much
for him. And then, on the night of the fortieth day after his repose, I dreamed that I
was standing in front of a magnificent church from which were proceeding a
multitude of hierarchs after the service. I recognized the great hierarchs: Saints Basil
the Great, John Chrysostom, Gregory the Theologian and many others. Suddenly, in
the middle of them I saw his Eminence Theophan! I ran up to him:

“’Your Eminence, where are you coming from? ‘

“’Well, as you can see, we have just celebrated the Liturgy together. Come with
us.’

“I followed him. All this took place in a spacious automobile – or was it a boat? –
which began to sail in the air, so to speak. We passed by mountains, forests and
valleys of an indescribable beauty. My elder began to show me these dwellings and
revealed to me their destiny:

“’That one will be saved, but that one over there at the bottom of the valley will
perish.’

“It was terrible to see! And all around us there were beautiful gardens and a
sweet perfume. I contemplated them with delight and without being sated. For a
long time we were carried about in this way in the air, in the middle of this
magnificence. Finally I could not restrain myself and asked:

“’But where are we?’

“His Eminence Theophan answered me: ‘And why do you not understand…? In
Paradise!’

“From that moment I was reassured, having understood that my dear instructor
had been found worthy of eternal blessedness.”

Miracles of healing have been attributed to Archbishop Theophan since his

repose.

Thus when he died in 1940 Helena Yurievna Kontzevich had had a terrible
toothache; she prayed to him and the pain disappeared instantly.

Towards the end of her life she had a vision of him, after which she wrote a

52
troparion to him in tone 3:

Defender of the right belief in Christ’s redemption,

thou didst endure afflictions and death in exile,
O holy father, Hierarch Theophan,
pray to Christ God to save our souls.

Sources: The Works of Archbishop Theophan in printed and manuscript form;

Archbishop Theophan of Poltava and Pereyaslavl, Selected Letters, Liberty, TN: St.
John of Kronstadt Press, 1989; V.K., Russkaia Zarubezhnaia Tserkov’ na Steziakh
Otstupnichestva (The Russian Church Abroad on the paths of Apostasy), St. Petersburg,
1999, pp. 29-30 (in Russian); Monk Anthony (Chernov), Vie de Monseigneur
Théophane, Archevêque de Poltava et de Pereiaslavl (The Life of his Eminence Theophan,
Archbishop of Poltava and Pereyaslavl), Lavardac: Monastère Orthodoxe St. Michel,
1988 (in French); Monk Anthony (Chernov), private communication; Sergius and
Tamara Fomin, Rossia pered Vtorym Prishestviem (Russia before the Second Coming),
Sergiev Posad, 1994; Richard Bettes, Vyacheslav Marchenko, Dukhovnik Tsarskoj
Sem’i (Spiritual Father of the Royal Family), Moscow: Valaam Society of America, 1994,
pp. 60-61 (in Russian); Archbishop Averky (Taushev), Vysokopreosviaschennij Feofan,
Arkhiepiskop Poltavskij i Pereiaslavskij (His Eminence Theophan, Archbishop of Poltava and
Pereyaslavl), Jordanville: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1974 (in Russian); Archbishop
Anthony of San Francisco, The Young Elder: A Biography of Blessed Archimandrite
Ambrose of Milkovo, Jordanville: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1974, p. 39; Abbot Herman,
“Helen Yurievna Kontzevitch”, The Orthodox Word, vol. 35, № 6 (209), November-
December, 1999, pp. 286-290; Edvard Radzinsky, Rasputin, London: Weidenfeld &
Nicolson, 2000; Polischuk, E.S. (ed.), Imiaslavie. Antologia (Name-worshipping. An
Anthology), Moscow, 2002, p. 518 (in Russian); Gubanov, Tsar Nikolai II-ij i Novie
Mucheniki (Tsar Nicholas II and the New Martyrs), St. Petersburg, 2000, p. 770 (in
Russian); M.E. Gubonin, Akty Sviateishago Patriarkha Tikhona (The Acts of His Holiness
Patriarch Tikhon), Moscow, 1994, p. 995 (in Russian); Pis’ma Blazhennejshago
Mitropolita Antonia (Khrapovitskago), (The Letters of His Beatitude Metropolitan Anthony
(Khrapovitsky)), Jordanville: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1988 (in Russian); V. Moss, The
Mystery of Redemption, Cafepress, 2007; Arkhiepiskop Feofan Poltavsky. Izbrannie
Trudy (Selected Works), http://www.prav-de.ru/mason.htm (in Russian);
“Arkhiepiskop Ioasaf (Skorodumov, 1888-1955)”,
http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/russian/archbishop_ioasaf_skorodumo
v.htm (in Russian)

53
 II. ARCHBISHOP JOASAPH OF CANADA AND ARGENTINA
In Russia

Our holy Father Joasaph was born Ioann Skorodumov on January 14, 1888 in the
village of Rebovichi, Tikhvin uyezd, Novgorod province. His father was the priest of
this village, Fr. Basil. His mother, Theodosia Mikhailovna, née Kachalova, died when
he was six years old. He had a twin sister, Maria, who was born three hours after
him, an older brother who died in the blockade of Petrograd in 1942, and a younger
brother who died at the age of twelve.

When their mother died, his sister Maria gradually took all the household chores
into her hands. Little Vanya was lively and obedient, and loved by everybody. The
boy was much influenced by the Church-centred life of Imperial Russia with its
abundance of monasteries, hermitages and sketes in towns, lakes and forests, the
wonder-working icons, the hermits unknown to the world, the wanderers and
pilgrims, the religious processions with many choruses singing and the bell ringing –
all this left a deep impression on the young ascetic.

In summer, Vanya and his elder brother would go fishing and stay outdoors
overnight, talking and reading about the great ascetics of old and the lives of the
saints. On the way back they would perform the “podvig” of carrying a pail of fish
on one shoulder without changing for miles, all the way home. At times their
shoulders would be bleeding, and their sister would have to take the pail off their
shoulders, while their father would simply smile and shake his head… They also
walked some distance barefoot in the snow, unseen by anyone…

At the age of ten his father brought him to Tikhvin, which housed the famous
wonder-working icon of the Mother of God. There, in 1902, he completed the
seminary preparatory school, after which he entered Novgorod theological
seminary.

In 1908, having brilliantly completed his seminary studies, Vanya entered the St.
Petersburg Theological Academy, where he became the director of the Academy
student choir already in his first year. He also became the devoted disciple of the
Rector, Bishop Theophan (Bystrov). Vladyka Theophan was a deeply learned
theologian and a great expert on the Jesus Prayer. Under his influence the young
Vanya Skorodumov was introduced into the art of arts, which he practised so well
that for the rest of his life he was always seen to be in a joyful state. Vanya’s
academy thesis was called “Monasticism according to St. John Chrysostom”, and
this saint had a deep and permanent influence on the spiritual life of the future
archpastor. It was on the feast of St. John Chrysostom that he was tonsured into
monasticism, and it was on the same day that he died.

54
 The revolutionary ferment of the years 1905 to 1908 also penetrated the Academy.
“Once,” Vladyka recalled, “because of some ‘revolutionary date’, the students
thought of going on strike and did not go to classes. But I, as always, set off for class.
Several students blocked my way.

“’Where are you going? Today is a “labour day”. Don’t you dare go to class.’

“’You said “labour day”. Well, I’m going to labour,’ I objected and went towards
the exit. They tried to stop me by force. Then I could take no more of this and, rolling
up my sleeves, challenged them:

“Who’s first? Come on!’

“Seeing that I was not joking, and knowing my physical strength, my opponents
gave way. I alone appeared in class.”

Not long before Vanya’s graduation, Archbishop Theophan was transferred to

Astrakhan, at the mouth of the Volga river, and after graduating Vanya gathered his
few earthly goods and undertook the journey down the river to his Abba in order to
receive monastic tonsure. On lying down to sleep for the last night on the steamer,
he counted up his “capital” and found that he had only a few tens of kopecks. That
night his sleep was troubled, but in a dream he saw that he had just enough money,
and that he had to go on a long journey in a cab to the Hierarchical podvorye, where
he had to cross a courtyard and go along long, dim corridors… On arriving at
Astrakhan the next morning, he hired a cab. The driver asked him for the exact sum
that was in his pocket. And then he went along exactly the same streets, courtyard
and corridor as he had seen in his dream the previous night…

Vanya was tonsured into monasticism on November 13/26, 1912, the feast of St.
John Chrysostom, and was given the name the name Joasaph after the recently
canonized St. Joasaph of Belgorod. On November 18 / December 1, he was ordained
to the diaconate, and three days later – to the priesthood. Soon he was appointed by
the Educational Committee of the Most Holy Synod to the post of assistant
supervisor of the Theological school in Yaransk, Vyatka province, but on December
17/30, 1913 he was transferred to the Theological school in Archbishop Theophan’s
see of Poltava, where he served as an army chaplain.

At one point Fr. Joasaph was living with the future priest V.Z. in the hospital
building of the Theological school. The Bolsheviks were all round and occupied the
whole building except for their room. But the two men walked in and out without
being seen by the Bolsheviks and without being asked any questions. Later, Fr.
Joasaph settled in the Hierarchical House with other hieromonks, while V.Z. lived

55
among the carriages. There he was brought food.

This continued until the Volunteer Army occupied Poltava. They found the body
of the murdered Hieromonk Nilus, steward of the Lubensk monastery, and had it
brought to the monastery, Fr. Joasaph, at the command of Archbishop Theophan,
met the body and, after burying it, gave a sermon. It was so powerful that it shook
all those present.

In 1920 Fr. Joasaph, now an archimandrite, fled with Archbishop Theophan and
other members of the Higher Church Administration to the last stronghold of the
Volunteer Army in the Crimea. He now joined a group of twelve missionaries for the
White soldiers under the direction of Bishop Benjamin, who was superior of the
Kherson monastery and administrator of the military and naval clergy. With the
above-mentioned V.Z. as his reader, he went round the front line positions of the
army. He would come into a town, serve a moleben in the square and then give a
powerful sermon in his melodious, strong voice.

He was also strong in body. During the evacuation, Fr. Joasaph was left alone on
the quayside to guard the hierarchs’ baggage. Suddenly the order came to get on the
steamer immediately. But how was he to get all the suitcases – eight of them,
together with books and vestments – on the steamer? It would be dangerous to take
some while leaving others on the quay. So he took them all at once!

In Serbia

In 1920 Fr. Joasaph was evacuated to Constantinople together with Archbishop

Theophan, and from December 1, 1920 to the end of February, 1921 served in the
military hospitals in the city under the direction of Bishop Benjamin. He lived with
Archimandrite Simon and V.A. Konovalov, the future Archimandrite Ambrose, in
hostel no. 8, where V.A. was assistant commandant.

When the Higher Church Administration moved to Serbia, Fr. Joasaph went with
them. From 1921 to 1922 he lived with two other archimandrites – Archimandrite
Simon and the future Archbishop Theodosius of Brazil - in the monastery of Vratna.
It was deserted apart from the three Russians, so they had to do everything, as well
as look after a Romanian-speaking parish sixteen kilometres away.

On February 13, 1922 Fr. Joasaph was appointed superior of the Orthodox
community, and teacher of the Law of God in the gymnasium, of Herzegovi on the
Dalmatian coast. One teacher in the school recalled: “We were without a priest, and
sorrowed… But the Lord did not abandon us – Vladyka Theophan arrived with
Archimandrite Joasaph, who became teacher of the Law of God in our school, which
later developed into an eight-class gymnasium. Thus one truly beautiful day there

56
arrived a humble quiet priest and immediately encompassed us with the light of his
unusual, light blue eyes. You encounter such eyes only rarely, there is no glint or
tenderness in them, but only light – the “quiet light” of Vespers. With this light Fr.
Joasaph overshadowed us during his sojourn amongst us. If the children were
naughty, or we the teachers quarrelled a bit, Fr. Joasaph would come, give his
blessing, and everything would pass, and again peace and quietness would arrive.
Fr. Joasaph was not tall, thin, with an amazingly beautiful, iconographic face… Like
all of us, Fr. Joasaph was not rich. But we soon learned that he was poorer than us
all. Once I saw that his ryasa was old and past its first freshness. Tanya B. and I
dared to ask Fr. Joasaph to give it to us for cleaning, saying that it would dry out
during the night. He replied in his lilting northern accent:

“’And then how will I cover myself at night? After all, the nights are cold.”

“Our faces must have expressed astonishment, because he added with such a
kind smile:

“’After all, I have no blanket.’

“And nobody knew about it! It was already autumn, and although there was no
winter in Herzegovi, the nights could be very cold. Of course, we immediately got
him a blanket, and he, evidently because of his youth, was somewhat embarrassed.”

When Bishop Benjamin moved to Paris, Fr. Joasaph took his place at the Don
Cadet Corps in the name of Emperor Alexander III in Goražde. Soon he gathered a
group of cadets, called the “Churchmen”, around him. Every day he served Vespers
and Mattins, a practice that he continued for the rest of his life, and his
“Churchmen” read and chanted on the kliros. He had some minor quarrels with the
choir director, who had a tendency to produce theatrical effects. But more serious
were his differences with the director, who ordered the shortening of already
shortened services. When he was not teaching the cadets or conducting services, Fr.
Joasaph read the works of the Holy Fathers, painted icons (under the influence of the
teacher of drawing, M.M. Khrisagonov) or went fishing in the River Drina.
Sometimes batiushka, who was a great lover of nature, would go on excursions with
paints and easel and a group of cadets for two or three days, stopping at the almost-
deserted monasteries along the way.

M.M. Khrisagonov witnesses that batiushka carried out many miracles. One they
brought a Muslim woman into the church on crutches. He asked her whether she
believed in Christ and in his prayers. She replied that she did. Then batiushka
prayed, and the woman got up and went home without the need for crutches.

57
In Canada

A friend of his, a former pilgrim who had roamed through many places of Old
Holy Russia, was now in Canada. He wrote from there to Fr. Joasaph that the schism
of Metropolitan Platon in 1926 left no legitimate Orthodox clergy in Canada, yet the
land was so reminiscent of Russia and was fertile ground for the seed of the Word of
God. “Do you want to move?” he concluded.

“I do!” was the reply, although Fr. Joasaph was quite aware of the hardships that
awaited him. A parish was being formed in Montreal, and Bishop Apollinarius
invited him to be the superior. However, he succeeded in getting a visa only two
years later, and in 1929 he arrived in New York, whence he set off for Montreal in
December. However, not all his documents were in order, so he had to go back to
New York and stay there for more than two months. Having arrived in Canada for
the second time on February 6/19, 1930, in September he was summoned by the
Synod to Yugoslavia for his consecration to the episcopate.

On October 12, 1930 Fr. Joasaph was consecrated Bishop of Montreal in the
Russian church in Belgrade by Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) and two other
bishops. On handing him his archpastoral staff, Metropolitan Anthony reminded
him of the nature of the world-view he would meet in Canada: “You are going to
people who have long lived with an understanding of things that has nothing
whatsoever to do with Christianity. Bring them the teaching of humility; accept this
staff as a staff of benevolence and, as you bless the people who now stand before
you, think of the flock there, who already love you.”

“In my life,” replied Bishop Joasaph, “two questions have especially occupied my
attention. First, the exploration of the ways of God’s mercy.” He found this first in
nature. “Then I began to observe human life; and even where free will was leaning
towards evil, I always found God’s mercy. Then I decided to turn to that which is
most sinful, most evil, and I turned to my inner life. It seemed that here there was no
place for God’s mercy because there was nothing good in it. But even here I
discovered God’s mercy, and I remembered the words of the Psalmist: ‘Whither
shall I go from They Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up
into heaven, Thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, Thou art there…’ Then I finally
became convinced that the mercy of God towards man is limitless and boundless.
The second question that I sought to answer was: will the Last Judgement be soon?
Judging by signs in nature, by the moral state of humanity, and finally by myself, I
felt that the time was close, that one had to hasten to do the work of God and
accomplish the preaching of His Kingdom…”

At the quayside in Montreal Vladyka was met by one hundred parishioners. From
there he went to the church, where the priest Fr. A. Tsuglevich and many

58
worshippers greeted him. Vladyka Joasaph’s new diocese presented many
difficulties: jurisdictional conflicts, slanders from communist-inclined people, and an
almost complete absence of material resources. Vladyka was an unmercenary, and
came to Canada almost penniless. He lived and travelled entirely on the donations of
his poor compatriots. At times, while going round his diocese, he would have hardly
enough to pay the fare to the next village parish. But he remained peaceful and
joyful amidst all his difficulties.

There were not enough priests, so Vladyka had to travel alone the length and
breadth of Canada on all kinds of transport, carrying out all kinds of Church needs,
preaching sometimes several times a day. Once he was invited to a parish in
Saskatchewan. There was nobody to meet him at the railway station, and the parish
was forty miles away. So, heaving his suitcases onto his shoulders, he started
walking… Often there were very few people in the church. So he had to do
everything: light the candles and the incense, read the hours, etc. Usually Vladyka
baked his own prosphoras.

And soon his labours were bearing fruit: in the course of the first ten years of his
episcopate, he founded about forty parishes and communities.

On arriving in Canada and discovering that there were very few Russians in the
East, Vladyka decided to move to the West, where there were more, as well as many
Ukrainians, Galicians, Carpatho-Russians and Bukovinians. So in 1936 he moved his
see to Edmonton, where he soon acquired a church, a hall and living quarters for five
people. Further north he built a skete at Bluffton that could accommodate 10-12
monks and dedicated it in the name of the Protecting Veil of the Mother of God.
Here his friend V. Konovalov, who had called him to Canada and given up his
house and all that he had to pay for the trip, became the abbot under the name of
Archimandrite Ambrose. In 1939 he bought 120 acres of land next to Whitefish Lake,
where he built a men’s skete in the name of St. Seraphim of Sarov.

Much of the labour of building these communities, including clearing the land
around them, was carried out by Vladyka himself. He built churches and painted
icons for them. His work was a mammoth spiritual and physical achievement.

One summer there was a severe drought that threatened the harvest. The clergy
of the American Metropolia served several molebens and cross processions – but the
rain did not come. Then, at the request of his parishioners, Vladyka Joasaph also
carried out a moleben. The worshippers had scarcely managed to arrive at the house
of a rich farmer when the rain came down in buckets. “Well, Orthodox,” said
Vladyka during the trapeza. “Our side has won! Now you see on whose side is truth
and justice!” But he ascribed the miracle, not to himself, but to the faith and prayers
of his flock…

59
 Vladyka’s childlike faith in men was often disappointed. Thus he once ordained a
man of whom his flock had a low opinion. But he believed in this man’s possible
correction and ordained him. About a week later the man joined the American
Metropolia…

Until May, 1936 Vladyka was Bishop of Montreal and vicar of Archbishop Vitaly
(Maximenko) in administering the North American and Canadian dioceses. On May
16/29 he was appointed Diocesan Bishop of Western Canada. And on October
16/29, 1945, at the insistence of the Hierarchical Synod of the Russian Church
Abroad, he was raised to the rank of archbishop.

Since Vladyka had always fled honour and glory, he was not altogether pleased
with this promotion. “Why do that to me?” he asked, half-jokingly, half seriously.
“Even without this I will not join another jurisdiction…”

In 1947 the ROCOR Synod decided to divide the Canadian diocese into two. The
western half remained, as before, under Bishop Joasaph, while the eastern half was
transferred to the jurisdiction of Bishop Gregory. By the end of his episcopate in
Canada, Vladyka had founded about sixty parishes.

In Argentina and Paraguay

On November 25 / December 8, 1950, Vladyka was transferred to the widowed

diocese of Argentina. Shortly before this, he had been struck down by a serious,
seemingly incurable illness and had had an operation. However, accustomed as he
was to unflinching monastic obedience, Vladyka did not refuse his new
appointment. While still not fully recovered from his illness, he flew to Buenos
Aires. On July 10/23, 1951 he was appointed ruling Hierarch of Buenos Aires and
Argentina.

Vladyka performed his first Divine service on Forgiveness Sunday in the

cathedral accommodated at that time in a rented basement, which Vladyka called
“the catacombs”. He knew about the sorrowful events that had taken place before
his arrival in the diocese, which had remained widowed for some time. He began to
speak about this after the service in his first sermon: “So you have all experienced
great sorrow…” Then he stopped and sighed, as if experiencing with all them this
recent sorrow. And then, completely unexpectedly, his face lit up with a smile of
sincere joy. “So glory to God! Since the Lord has allowed you to experience sorrows,
that means He has not forgotten us. It means that from now on He will give us
strength to bear sorrows without complaining. Glory to God!”

Vladyka soon became deeply loved by all. There were twenty-one parishes in his

60
diocese, including four in Buenos Aires and its suburbs that had their own churches,
while six were situated temporarily in ordinary houses or rented accommodation. In
the provinces were two parishes with their own churches and four without. In
Uruguay and Paraguay were five parishes. All these parishes were served by
nineteen priests and six deacon – three of the priests were in Uruguay and Paraguay.

Vladyka did much to calm the passions and quarrels that divided the Christians
of his diocese. He rarely used administrative measures, but worked through love
and humility. “In order to demand or order, there are police and other powers… But
it is enough for a Hierarch to suggest or counsel, this is equivalent to an order…”

In April, 1951 a Hierarchical podvorye was built with a hall and rooms for monks
and cell-attendants. Room was also made for his large collection of spiritual books.
On June 25, 1952 an Orthodox Congregation was created into which the property of
all the parishes was transferred. This congregation was then registered with the
Ministry of Cults in August, 1953, making the diocese a legal entity in Argentina.

During his first visitation of his diocese, which included Paraguay, he visited a
sick woman who had lain paralyzed in a hospital for a long time. She asked for his
prayers, to which he at once agreed, but he asked her whether she had faith in God
and His ability to heal her. She said “yes”. Whereupon he prayed and gave his
panagia to her to kiss. She was immediately healed. Again, the mother of Fr. V.
Drobov had a severe headache when Vladyka visited them. As he was about to
leave, he hit her with his fist right on the place of the aching teeth, and said: “That’s
nothing, it will go away.” And at once the pain stopped…

Once Vladyka told the following story about his twelve-year-old niece Natasha,
who was living with her parents in the Soviet Union. She fell seriously ill with
typhus, but displayed great patience in her sufferings. Once, being extremely weak,
she expressed the desire to receive Holy Communion, knowing that she would soon
die. Her parents tried to dissuade her, but she insisted, saying that the Mother of
God and St. Seraphim had warned her about this. They set off to find a priest, but it
was not so easy to find a “Tikhonite” priest, who was not an officially recognized
“livingchurchman”. But they found one who communed the girl. Then she asked to
be washed and dressed in clean clothes. She sat up and asked to eat a little (although
for a long time she had not been able to receive food), and even got up. Her parents
were encouraged, but she kept looking at the time, and half an hour before the time
indicated to her in her vision she lay down and began to say goodbye to all those
close to her. They again tried to convince her that she was wrong, that look she was
getting better after Communion, but she confirmed her desire and said that they
were coming for her now. Suddenly she trembled and joyfully cried: ‘Look, they’re
coming!’ ‘Who’s coming?’ they asked her. ‘The Mother of God and St. Seraphim!’
With these words her radiant soul flew away… “And then I wrote to my brother,”

61
said Vladyka, “that now they have their intercessor before the Lord!”

Repose and Miracles

Vladyka’s frail health and the hot climate of Argentina, especially after Canadian
winters, drained his last strength. He had cancer… “The Canadian doctors,” he said,
“told me that I had no more than two or three months to live, but I deceived them,
look, I’ve lived already several more years!” After his second operation, he could no
longer serve, which upset him much more than his physical sufferings. “You know,”
he said, “serving is the main thing for me, the most precious thing…” He lived for
another two years after the operation, and occupied himself with all the affairs of his
diocese, especially with church-building. In the middle of March, 1955 he had his
first stroke, which was repeated after a week, and his condition became critical. The
believers flocked to the church, and by a miracle Vladyka’s health improved. On
Palm Sunday he tonsured Fr. Anastasy, his cell-attendant. And at Pascha, ignoring
the advice of the doctors, he served the liturgy.

Before his first stroke, Vladyka had bought a plot of land in the village of La Bols,
in the Cordoba mountains, where there were many Russians. He built a small house
there and confirmed the plan for a miniature church. He very much wanted to retire
and create a monastic community there. In June he laid the foundation for a church
in the Orthodox Russian Ochag. During the Dormition he looked over the building
and said sadly: “I will not see this church.” And it was precisely there, two days
later, that he had his third stroke. He no longer went out, but received visitors
gladly, and continue to teach and exhort. Although he was in great pain, he never
grumbled. Only once, to his reposed abba, Archbishop Theophan of Poltava, he
once, as he recounted, complained: “I say to him: ‘Vladyka, it’s difficult for me, pray
for me, it’s a long time since I saw you last, let me just have a look at you, if only in a
dream!’ And my instructor fulfilled my request. When I was particularly suffering, I
saw him in a dream coming to my bed. He stood over me and looked at me for a
long time with love, but said nothing. And beside him stood a new metropolitan,
whom I do now know. After this dream things got easier for me!”

Vladyka often said: “It’s not important what happens here, the main thing is what
happens there! If one could only know that one would inherit the tiniest corner of
the Heavenly Kingdom, then one could die today. What is our earthly life?
Nothing!”

Once Vladyka told the starosta that as a Canadian citizen he had the right to be
buried in the English cemetery, which was the only place that one could buy for 99
years.

In his last days the young people, Vladyka’s beloved subdeacons, kept watch

62
during the night around his bed. Not long before his death he said to a priest who
visited him, congratulating him on his namesday: “But I won’t spoil your namesday
– I will already be dead.” That’s how it turned out – he died five days later.

During his last three months Vladyka often received Holy Unction and Holy
Communion. Various services were carried out in his house. He would get better,
then worse. It was particularly difficult for him on hot, humid days. Five days before
his death he had a fourth stroke. On November 22, hardly able to speak, he did
confession and received the Holy Mysteries. His last clearly spoken words were:
“May Christ save you all.” Then he lost consciousness and his breathing became
gradually quieter. He died a righteous death at 6.40 on November 13/26, 1955, the
feast of his beloved St. John Chrysostom and was buried in the English cemetery in
Buenos Aires.

After his repose he appeared to many people in their dreams. Archbishop

Theodosius said that he had several visions of Archbishop Joasaph soon after his
repose. Also, Fr. Ambrose told Fr. Macarius that Vladyka Joasaph had appeared to
him in full daylight: the first time when he was reading his cell rule, and the second
time during a service in the altar, as if he were alive, but in transparent vestments,
when he thanked him for commemorating his parents. There were also cases of
Vladyka giving help from the other world. But one of the most striking testimonies
of his holiness comes from the lips of the gardener-gatekeeper of the English
cemetery in Buenos Aires, D. Carlos. “Once when it was already dusk, I noticed that
in the chapel they had forgotten to turn off the electric light, and I went there. Before
I had reached it, my attention was attracted by a powerful light at the left side of the
chapel. But when I came closer, I saw that on the grave of your archpastor there was
such an enormous light. At first I was frightened, but then I thought: what can the
dead one do to me? And I decided to come closer. There was not chance that it could
be a reflection from the vigil light on the grace, since the light was blue like
moonlight. It was something enormous (fue algo enorme). Although I am an atheist,
I was terrified…”

Holy Father Joasaph, pray to God for us!

(Sources: Count A.A. Sollogub, Russkaia Pravoslavnaia Tserkov’ Zagranitsej, 1918-1968,

New York, 1968, volume 2, pp. 806-807, 1187; The Orthodox Word, March-April, 1968);
“Arkhiepiskop Ioasaf (Skorodumov, 1888-1955)”,
http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/russian/archbishop_ioasaf_skorodumo
v.htm (in Russian))

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 III. ARCHBISHOP JOHN OF SAN FRANCISCO
Early Years

Our holy Father John was born on 4 June 1896 in the village of Adamovka in the
province of Kharkov in Southern Russia. His father Boris Ivanovich was a marshal of
the nobility in a region of Kharkov, and his uncle - rector of the University of Kiev.
His paternal ancestors were of Serbian extraction. One of them, Saint John,
Metropolitan of Tobolsk, was an ascetic of holy life, a missionary, and a spiritual
writer. Saint John of Tobolsk lived in the first half of the 18th century and was
glorified in 1916. His glorification was the last celebrated during the reign of the Tsar
Martyr Nicholas. His mother was called Glaphira Mikhailovna. His relationship
with his parents was always excellent.

Throughout his youth, Michael was sickly and ate very little. He was a quiet
child, very polite and deeply religious. His sister recalls that it was very easy for his
parents to raise him. Ruminating about his future during his youth, he could not
make a definite decision as to a career, being unsure as to whether he should
dedicate himself to military or civil service. He only knew that his future life would
be guided by an insuperable desire to stand up for the Truth, which was nurtured in
him by his parents. He was inspired by the examples of those people who gave their
lives for the Truth. As he later wrote: "From the first days when I began to become
aware of myself, I wished to serve righteousness and truth. My parents kindled in
me a striving to stand unwaveringly for the truth, and my soul was captivated by
the example of those who had given their lives for it." When he played he would
dress his play soldiers as monks, collect icons and religious books and enjoyed
reading about the lives of the Saints. At night he would stand praying for long
periods. Because he was the eldest of five siblings, it was he who knew the lives of
the Saints very well and became their first teacher of the Faith. So much did he
impress his teacher, who was a Frenchwoman and Catholic, that she was baptized
into the Orthodox Church.

At the age of 11 Michael’s parents sent him to the Military Academy in Poltava.
There he met the Bishop of Poltava, Theophan, a much loved hierarch, who
influenced him greatly. Michael was an exemplary student, but he disliked two
subjects: gymnastics and dancing. He was well liked at the academy, but
nevertheless felt he should choose a different path. This idea was especially
furthered by contact with the well known religious instructor at the academy,
Archpriest Sergei Chetverikov, author of books about Saint Paisius Velichkovsky
and the Holy Optina Elders, and with the rector of the local seminary,
Archimandrite Varlaam.

Once, while marching with the other cadets in a military parade past the

64
cathedral, Michael (who was 13 at the time) turned and made the sign of the cross.
His classmates mocked him, and the officers decided to punish him. However Prince
Constantine, who was a benefactor of the school, told them not to punish him, for by
his action he had demonstrated profound and healthy religious feelings.

In 1914, he graduated from the military academy and wished to continue his
studies at the Theological School of Kiev. However, his parents insisted that he go to
law school and Michael obeyed them. Following the desire of his parents, he entered
law school in Kharkov. He was a naturally gifted student but spent more time
reading Lives of Saints than attending academic lectures. "While studying the
worldly sciences," he wrote, "I went all the more deeply into the study of the science
of sciences, into the study of the spiritual life."

The day of Michael Maximovitch's graduation from the military academy

coincided with that of Archbishop Anthony's (Khrapovitsky) investiture to the
cathedra of the See of Kharkov. This renowned hierarch and theologian was the main
advocate of the restoration of the patriarchate in Russia, subsequently the
Metropolitan of Kiev and Galich, and finally the First Hierarch of the Russian
Orthodox Church Abroad. Throughout his life this Archpastor inspired the church-
oriented academic youth in all matters spiritual, thanks to his principal attribute - his
sincere love for them. Having heard about young Michael Maximovitch, of whom
many spoke in church circles, Archbishop Anthony desired to meet him. It was in
Kharkov that Archbishop Anthony became Saint John's spiritual guide. This
relationship continued throughout Archbishop Anthony's whole life.

A great impression was made upon Michael by Bishop Varnava (subsequently the
Patriarch of Serbia) during his visit to Kharkov. The young Serbian bishop, who was
warmly greeted by Archbishop Anthony, related to him the suffering of the Serbian
people under the Turkish Yoke. This was in January 1917, before the revolution,
when the Serbs, who were battling against Germany, Austria and Turkey, had almost
no territory which was free of enemy occupation. Through the inspiration of
Archbishop Anthony the response of the Russian people in support of the Serbs was
unanimous. In this example, Michael recognized the universal significance of the
Church and the duty of a bishop to respond to the needs of all Orthodox people. In
turn, Bishop Varnava, upon becoming Patriarch, was particularly hospitable and
helpful to the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad.

When not studying, he spent all of his free time reading spiritual literature,
especially favoring the lives of the saints. “While studying the worldly sciences,” said
the Saint, “I delved all the more into the study of the Science of sciences, into the
study of the spiritual life.” Visiting the monastery in which Archbishop Anthony
lived, Michael had the opportunity to pray at the tomb of an ascetic of the first half of
the 18th century, Archbishop Meletius Leontievich, a deeply revered but not yet

65
glorified righteous one. The soul of the young saint was pierced by a thirst to obtain
the true goal and path of life in Christ.

Michael graduated from Kharkov Law School in 1918. The revolution had begun,
and under its influence the Kharkov diocesan council was decided to take down the
silver bell of the church and melt it. However, Michael, together with a few others,
was opposed, and arrests began. His parents told him to leave and hide but Michael
told them: “There does not exist a place where one can hide from the will of God and
without the will of God nothing happens, not even one strand of hair can fall from
our heads”. So he was imprisoned. A month later he was set free. Then he was re-
arrested. Finally, after determining that he did not care whether he was in freedom
or in prison, they discharged him.

Emigration

In 1921, during the Civil War, his whole family emigrated to Yugoslavia, where
Michael studied at the theological school in Belgrade University. To pay for his
upkeep, he sold newspapers. He graduated in 1925. During his last year, Michael
was tonsured a reader in Belgrade by Metropolitan Anthony, who also in 1926
tonsured him a monk in the Milkovo Monastery giving him the name John in honor
of his distant relative, the recently glorified Saint John of Tobolsk. Shortly thereafter
he was ordained hierodeacon. On the Feast of the Entry of the Most Holy Theotokos
into the Temple, the.young monastic became a hieromonk.

He became a religious instructor at the Serbian State High School, and in 1929 - an
instructor in the Serbian Seminary of the Holy Apostle John the Theologian in the
city of Bitol - part of the Ochrid Diocese. There he lived a truly ascetic life. He never
slept in a bed and after praying long hours at night, he would fall asleep sitting or
kneeling on the ground in front of his icons. This ascetic feat he continued for the rest
of his life, bringing his body "into subjection" according to the holy Apostle Paul,
"But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to
others, I myself should become disqualified" (I Corinthians 9:27). He fasted strictly,
and celebrated the liturgy every day, a practice he continued for the rest of his life.
He even celebrated the liturgy for the Greeks in the region, who loved him very
much.

The local bishop, the famous Nicholas Velimirovich, valued and loved the young
hieromonk John. Upon leaving the seminary once, he turned to a small group of
seminarians and said, “Children, listen to Fr. John. He is an Angel of God in the
image of a man.” And he would say: "If you wish to see a living saint, go to Father
John." The seminarians themselves were convinced that Saint John truly lived an
angelic life.

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 His patience and humility were similar to the patience and humility of the great
ascetic and desert dwellers. He relived the events of the Holy Gospel as if they were
taking place before his eyes. He always knew the chapter where to find an event and,
when needed, could always quote a given verse. He knew the character and details
of every student, so that at any moment he could assess what a student knew or did
not know. Saint John had a special gift of God: an unusually good memory.
Consequently, such assessments of his students could be made without referring to
any previous records or notes. Mutual love bound Saint John and the seminarians
together. For them he was the incarnation of all of the Christian virtues. They did not
see any shortcomings in him, not even in his speech (Saint John had a slight
stammer). There was no problem, personal or social, which he could not solve
quickly. There was not a question for which he could not find an answer. His answer
was always concise, clear, complete, and exhaustive because he was truly an
educated man. His education, his wisdom, was based on the most stable
foundation, the Fear of God. The Saint prayed zealously for his seminarians. Each
night he would make his rounds, checking everyone; adjusting one's pillow,
another's blanket. Upon leaving the room he blessed the slumberer with the sign of
the cross.

During the first week of Great Lent, Saint John ate nothing more than one
prosphora a day, the same during Passion Week. When Great Saturday came his
body was completely exhausted. But on the Day of the Holy Resurrection of the Lord
he was revived, his strength returned. At Paschal Matins he triumphantly exclaimed,
Christ is Risen! as if Christ resurrected specifically on that holy night. His face shone.
The Paschal joy which the Saint radiated was imparted to everyone in the church.
Anyone who was ever in church with Saint John at Pascha experienced this.

In 1934 Fr. John was elected to the episcopate. A woman who knew him recounts
that she met him on a tram and asked him what had brought him to Belgrade. He
answered that he came to Belgrade because he had mistakenly received a notice in
place of another hieromonk John, who was to be made a bishop. When she saw him
again the next day, he told her that the mistake was worse than he had expected,
because it turned out that they had decided to consecrate him a bishop. When he
objected, pointing out his stammer, he was told that the Prophet Moses had the same
difficulty.

Bishop of Shanghai

The consecration took place on May 28, 1934. Saint John was the last bishop to be
consecrated by Metropolitan Anthony. "This man,” said the metropolitan, “who
appears weak is, in fact, a miracle of ascetic steadfastness and determination in our
time of universal spiritual weakening.”

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 On November 21, 1934, the feast of the Entrance of the Mother of God into the
Temple, he arrived in Shanghai. Many people gathered on the dockside to meet their
new archpastor. The completion of a large cathedral, as well as the resolution of an
existing jurisdictional conflict awaited him. Saint John quickly quelled this conflict
and, in time, established relations with the Serbs, Greeks, and Ukrainians in his
diocese. The Saint completed the construction of the huge cathedral in honor of the
Icon of the Mother of God “The Surety of Sinners” and a three storey house with a
bell tower.

He took an active interest in the religious education of youth. He personally

taught the Law of God to the upper classes of the Commercial Institute and always
attended the examinations for the religious courses in all of the schools of Shanghai.
He was the inspirer and leader in the construction of churches, a hospital, an asylum
for the mentally ill, an orphanage, a home for the elderly, a community dining hall -
in short, all of the social undertakings of Russian Shanghai. The Saint was one with
his flock. He participated directly in the work of virtually all the emigre
organizations.

However, while participating actively in such an array of worldly affairs, he was

foreign to the world. From the first day of his arrival in Shanghai, the Saint, as before,
served Divine Liturgy daily. No matter where he was, he was always present at
Divine Services. Once, as a result of his continual standing, the Saint's foot was
severely swollen and a group of physicians, fearing gangrene, prescribed immediate
hospitalization. The Saint refused. Upon this, the Russian doctors informed the
Parish Council, that they could not take any responsibility for the health and even the
life of the patient. The members of the Parish Council, after extended requests and
even threats to forcefully hospitalize him, compelled the Saint to agree, and he was
sent to the hospital. That evening however, he left the hospital on his own and at six
o'clock was serving the All Night Vigil as usual.

He performed all of the daily services completely and unabridged, so that, at

Compline, five or more canons would be read, so as to honor all of the Saints. The
Saint did not allow unnecessary conversations in the sanctuary and personally made
sure that the servers behaved as they should, compiling for them a rule of conduct, to
which he strictly, yet affectionately, constrained adherence. After the Liturgy Saint
John remained in the sanctuary for two or three hours, concerning which he once
commented: “How difficult it is to tear oneself from prayer and return to worldly
affairs”.

Vladyka always wore clothing of the cheapest Chinese fabric and often went
barefoot, sometimes having given his sandals away to some poor man. He would eat
once a day at eleven o’clock at night. During the first and last week of Great Lent he

68
would eat nothing, and for the rest of the fast (as well as during the Christmas fast)
he would only eat prosphoras.

Vladyka had an extraordinary memory. He never forgot prayer requests, or

names, faces and family circumstances. He always sent his spiritual children cards on
their namesdays.

He never went visiting. Instead, he would appear unexpectedly to those in need,

in any weather and at the most unusual hours. Daily he visited the sick with the
Holy Gifts. Often he was seen, at some late hour, in inclement weather, walking on
the streets of Shanghai with his bishop's staff in hand and his rassa blowing in the
wind.

"Once in Shanghai Vladyka John was asked to the bed of a dying child, whose
case had been called hopeless by the physicians. Entering the apartment, Vladyka
John went straight to the room in which the sick boy lay, although no one had
managed yet to show him where this was. Without examining the child, Vladyka
immediately 'fell down' in front of the icon in the corner, which was very
characteristic of him, and prayed for a long time. Then, assuring the relatives that the
child would recover, he quickly left. And in fact the child became better towards
morning and he soon recovered, so that a physician was no longer needed."

Vladyka John loved to visit the sick and if the condition of a patient would
become critical, he would go to him at any hour of the day or night to pray at his
bedside. There were cases when patients would cry out to Vladyka in the middle of
the night from the hospital beds, and from the end of the city Vladyka John would
come without even being called by phone.

The miracle-working power and clairvoyance of Saint John were well known in
Shanghai. Once, during Bright Week, Saint John came to the Jewish hospital to visit
the Orthodox patients there. Passing through one ward, he stopped in front of a
screen, concealing the bed upon which an elderly Jewish woman lay dying. Her
family members were awaiting her death nearby. The Saint raised a cross above the
screen and loudly proclaimed: “Christ is Risen!” upon which the dying woman
regained consciousness and asked for water. The Saint approached the nurse and
said, “The patient wants to drink”. The medical staff was stunned by the change
which had taken place in one who only moments earlier was dying. Soon the woman
recovered and was discharged from the hospital. Such incidents were numerous.

It so happened that Saint John was urgently called to administer Holy

Communion to a dying man in the hospital. Having taken the Holy Gifts, the Saint
headed there with another clergyman. When they arrived they saw a young man,
about 20 years of age, playing on a harmonica. He had already recovered and was to

69
leave the hospital shortly. The Saint called him over saying, “I want to give you
Holy Communion right now”. The young man immediately came up to him,
confessed, and received Holy Communion. The amazed clergyman asked Saint John
why he did not go to the one dying, but detained himself with an obviously healthy
young man. The Saint answered simply, He will die tonight, but the other, who is
seriously ill, will live yet many years. That is precisely what came to pass. The Lord
manifested similar miracles in Europe and America through His Saint.

Once Vladyka was called to the bedside of a man who had rabies. He was foaming
at the mouth, but Vladyka determined to try and give him Communion. “If he
receives It,” he said, “he will live; if not, he will die.” Carefully, he placed the Holy
Gifts on the tongue of the sick man. However, he spat them out… Immediately
Vladyka reverently caught the Gifts mixed with the man’s spittle and swallowed
them. The doctors and those standing around were horrified. “Now you will get
rabies,” they said. But Vladyka, turning to the Orthodox among them, said: “Shame
on you! Have you forgotten that this is the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ?” He
remained completely healthy…

A speech therapist called Anna was teaching the saint to pronounce the vowels
correctly, because he had a problem with his lower jaw and could not correctly
pronounce words. Due to his strict fasting, his constitution was exhausted and his
lower jaw hung a lot. He always gave her $20 after each visit. When he would start
the fast, his defect would start again and she would visit him more often. In 1945, she
was seriously wounded during the war and she would ask him to come to the
hospital to commune her. However, the weather was bad and stormy. It was
between 10 and 11 p.m. and the doctors told her that he could not come because due
to the war the hospital closed after sunset. They would inform the bishop in the
morning.

“I was screaming, ‘Come, Vladyka!’ and suddenly the door of the hall opened and
the Saint came in all wet from the rain. I touched him because I thought that it was
his ghost. He smiled, communed me and I fell asleep. Later when I awoke, I told
them that the Saint had come and communed me. They didn’t believe me and told
me that the hospital was closed after sunset and the door was shut.” Another patient
told them that the Saint had really come but they would not believe her either. And
while the nurse who would not believe her was arranging her pillow, she found 20
dollars under it. When the Saint came he left her money for she had nothing during
that time.

The years passed and when the saint had left for San Francisco, she went there,
too, wishing the saint to chant and officiate at her funeral. And in fact, in 1968, she
died on the evening of the Transfiguration from gas poisoning at her home. Another
lady, Olga, dreamt that evening that the saint was inside the Church and was censing

70
a coffin with Anna in it and chanting the funeral service very beautifully. In this way
the saint fulfilled her wish. In the morning Olga learned that Anna had passed away
that night.

Vladyka encouraged and participated in various charitable organizations,

founded an orphanage dedicated to St. Tikhon of Zadonsk. He called together some
women and, with their help, began with eight little children and organized an
orphanage which gave refuge to many hundreds of children in its fifteen-year
existence in Shanghai. Vladyka himself gathered sickly and hungry children from the
streets and from the dark alleys of Shanghai. Once he brought in a little girl to the
orphanage, having bought her from a Chinaman for a bottle of vodka.

The parishioners of the Shanghai diocese had deep feelings of love and respect for
their archpastor, as is evident from the following excerpts from a letter written by
them to Metropolitan Meletius in 1943: “We, worldly people, laymen, cannot touch
his (Saint John's) breadth of knowledge of theology, his erudition, his homilies,
deeply penetrated with apostolic faith, pronounced almost daily and often printed.
We, the people of Shanghai, will speak about what we see and feel in our multi-racial
city from the day of arrival of our Bishop, that which we see with our sinful eyes and
that which we feel with our Christian heart. From the day of his arrival the sorrowful
phenomenon of the division of churches has ceased; the Orphanage of Saint Tikhon
of Zadonsk, which currently feeds, clothes, and educates 200 children, was built from
nothing; gradually the condition of the alms house in the name of Saint Philaret the
Merciful has improved; the sick in all Shanghai hospitals are visited by priests, are
administered the Holy Mysteries on a timely basis and, in the event of death, even
the homeless are buried with a proper funeral; the mentally ill, who are located in a
hospital far from the city, are visited by him personally; those incarcerated in the
prisons of the Settlement and the French Concession have the opportunity to pray in
the place of their imprisonment during the Divine Liturgy and to receive Holy
Communion monthly. He directs serious attention to the upbringing and education
of the youth in a strictly Orthodox and patriotic spirit. In many of the non-Russian
schools our children are now taught the Law of God. During all of the difficult
moments in the life of our community we see him leading the way, defending us and
our age-old Russian moral principles to the end. All of the sectarian organizations
and heterodox confessions now understand that to combat such a pillar of the
Orthodox Faith is very difficult. Our Bishop tirelessly visits the churches, hospitals,
schools, prisons, civil and military organizations, always bringing with him
reassurance and faith. From the day of his arrival not one infirm person has been left
without his prayer and personal visit. By the prayers of our Luminary many have
received relief and health. He, like a torch, illuminates our sinfulness, like a pealing
bell awakens our conscience, and calls our souls to the Christian struggle, calls to us,
as the Good Pastor, so that for a minute we might be diverted from the earth, from
worldly corruption, and lift up our eyes to heaven, from whence our help comes. He

71
is the one, according to the words of Apostle Paul, who is an example: in word, in
life, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity (I Timothy 4:12).”

His flock was not mistaken in giving such a great assessment of the work of its
pastor. People truly felt in him a readiness to lay down his life for the flock. During
the Japanese occupation, when two presidents of the Russian Emigration Committee
were killed in succession and fear gripped the Russian colony, Saint John, despite the
undoubted danger to himself, declared himself the temporary head of the Russian
colony.

Vladyka and the Soviets

At the end of the war in 1945, increased pressure was put upon the Russian
émigré clergy by the Sovietized Moscow Patriarchate, with the aim of subordinating
them to the new Patriarch Alexei I. In the Far East almost all of the hierarchs
submitted themselves to the newly chosen Patriarch; they accepted Soviet passports
and joined the patriarchate.

An eye-witness account of what took place is as follows. “The pressure on Bishop

John of Shanghai from the Soviets began even before the end of the Second World
War, when the hierarchs of the Church Abroad in Manchuria – Metropolitan
Meletius, Archbishops Nestor and Demetrius and Bishop Juvenal sent letters to the
Ruling Archbishop of Peking and China Victor and to Bishop John of Shanghai
informing them that on July 26, 1945 they had recognized Patriarch Alexis of
Moscow and All Russia, and suggesting that Archbishop Victor and Bishop John
follow their example and submit to the new Moscow Patriarch as to the lawful head
of the Russian Orthodox Church.

“Not having any communication with the Synod Abroad beyond the bounds of
China because of the military actions, and not knowing the true situation of things in
Europe, Bishop John wrote about the letter he had received from the hierarchs in
Harbin to his superior, Archbishop Victor in Peking, advising him to do nothing
with regard to recognizing the Patriarch before the re-establishment of links with the
Synod Abroad, while for the sake of clarifying the question of the legality and
canonical correctness or incorrectness of the choices of Patriarch Alexis Bishop John
advised Archbishop Victor to send him a short greeting on the occasion of his
consecration and wait to see what the result would be. In this way he aimed to
clarify whether the new Patriarch was a successor in God of the reposed and always
recognized by the Church Abroad Patriarch Tikhon and the locum tenens of the
Patriarchal Throne Metropolitan Peter (of Krutitsa), or simply a continuer of the
politics of the dead Soviet Patriarch Sergius.

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 “In expectation of a clarification of this question and for the sake of calming that
part of the Russian colony in Shanghai that had become pro-Soviet and demanded
the recognition of the Moscow Patriarch, Bishop John issued a resolution (ukaz №
650 dated September 6 / August 24, 1945) on the temporary commemoration of Patriarch
Alexis during the Divine services instead of the until-then-existing commemoration
of ‘the Orthodox Episcopate of the Russian Church’.”

A little earlier, on July 31, Bishop John had written to Archbishop Victor that he
considered that “the raising of the name of the President of the Synod Abroad
should be kept for the time being, since according to the 14th canon of the First-and-
Second Canon of the Local Council [of Constantinople in 861] it is wrong willfully to
cease commemorating the name of one’s metropolitan. But the raising of the name of
the Patriarch… should necessarily, in accordance with your ukaz, be introduced
throughout the diocese… At the given time no conditions of an ideological character
have yet been imposed that would serve as a reason for any change in our
ecclesiastical administration abroad. If unacceptable conditions are again imposed in
the future, the preservation of the present order of ecclesiastical administration will
become the task of that ecclesiastical authority which will manage to be created in
dependence on external conditions.”

This form of expression indicated that Bishop John was ready to revoke his
commemoration of the Moscow Patriarch if “unacceptable conditions of an
ideological character” were to be imposed. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that in
this letter he temporarily recognized the canonicity of the Moscow Patriarch,
declaring: “There is no canonical basis for such independence, since the lawfulness of
the recognized – both by his own Local Church and by all the other Local Churches –
Patriarch is not in doubt; and since communication with said ecclesiastical authority
(i.e., the Patriarch) has now become possible, therefore the ukaz (of Patriarch
Tikhon) of November 7, 1920 is not applicable.” In any case, in August Archbishop
Victor sent a telegram to Patriarch Alexis asking for him and Bishop John to be
received into his jurisdiction; and from that time Bishop John and his priests started
to commemorate the patriarch.

However, Bishop John now began to be opposed by his flock. Thus when his
priest, Fr. Peter tried to introduce the commemoration of the patriarch in the convent
ruled by Abbess Adriana (later of San Francisco), she forbade him, and told him to
go back to Bishop John and tell him that this was wrong.

At about this time, on September 28, Bishop John received a telegram from
Metropolitan Anastasy in Geneva telling him that the Synod Abroad was
functioning, that the parents of Vladyka John were alive and living in Germany, and
that he, the metropolitan, asked him to tell him about the situation of the Church in
China. Bishop John immediately stopped commemorating the Soviet patriarch, and

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on September 29 he telegraphed Archbishop Victor that he had re-established
contact with the Synod.

One of Bishop John’s spiritual children tells how he repented of his brief
commemoration of the Soviet patriarch every time he met another bishop, even
down to the time he lived in the U.S.

“The next telegram came in the month of November from the United States from
Archbishop Tikhon of Western America and San Francisco, in which Vladyka
Tikhon informed him that Metropolitan Anastasy, Archbishops Vitaly, Joasaph,
Jerome and he had come into contact with each other and asked Bishop John to be
with them and not to recognize the Moscow Patriarchate.

“This was all that Bishop John had to know, and when, at the beginning of
December, 1945 there arrived a letter from Archbishop Victor informing him that he
recognized Patriarch Alexis, Bishop John categorically refused to accept the new
Patriarch, in spite of terrible pressure, exhortations and threats.”

“On the evening of January 15, 1946 Archbishop Victor flew into Shanghai on an
aeroplane from Peking and declared that he not only recognized the Patriarch, but
had also become a Soviet citizen, having taken a passport of the USSR.”

“Archbishop Victor in vain tried to persuade Bishop John; he demanded and

ordered him John to submit and recognize the Patriarch. Finally he came to the
regular weekly meeting of the clergy, where he officially informed them of his move
to the Soviet church, and demanded that the church servers follow his example, and,
having left Bishop John to preside, left the session. After a word from Bishop John
calling on the clergy to remain faithful to the Russian Church Abroad, the meeting
passed a resolution suggested by him: to report to Metropolitan Anastasy on the
faithfulness of the clergy to the Synod Abroad and ask for instructions.

“There was no reply from the Synod for a very long time, and in this period of
about seven weeks terrible pressure was exerted on Bishop John from the Soviet
authorities, Archbishop Victor, Metropolitan Nestor from Manchuria, from a large
part of Russian society which had applied for Soviet passports, from clergy who had
moved to that side, and from others. In writing and orally, in the press, in clubs and
at meetings the Soviet side tried to prove that the election of the patriarch had been
completely legal, in accordance with all the ecclesiastical canons, and suggested as
proof the showing of a documentary film on the election of the Patriarch of Moscow
and All Russia.

“Bishop John agreed to see this film, so as personally to see and check the whole
procedure of the election, on condition that the film would be shown, not in the

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Soviet club, where all the Soviet pictures were being shown at the time, but in the
hall of a certain theatre.

“Most of the Shanghai clergy came to the showing, including Mitre-bearing

Protopriest N. Kolchev, who is now living in San Francisco, Fr. I. Wen and others.

“Before the beginning of the film, and without any warning, the orchestra began
to play the Soviet hymn, and Bishop John immediately left the hall. The arrangers of
the showing immediately rushed after the hierarch, and, having stopped him in the
foyer, began to apologise and tried to persuade him to stay. Bishop John returned to
the hall after the end of the hymn, and, having seen the film, declared that in the so-
called election of the Patriarch that had been shown there was absolutely no legality,
that the election had been conducted in accordance with the classic Soviet model, in
which only one candidate was put forward, for whom the representative of every
diocese without exception voted identically, reading out a stereotyped phrase, and
in which there was nothing spiritual or canonical.

“This declaration by Bishop John still more enraged the Bolshevized circles, and
the persecution of Vladyka and the clergy faithful to him intensified still more.

“On March 20, on the day of the patronal feast, Vladyka John was brought a
telegram during the Liturgy. Since he never paid attention to anything extraneous
whatsoever during the Divine services, Bishop John hid the telegram in his pocket
without reading it, and opened it only after the service. In the telegram, which was
signed by Metropolitan Anastasy, was written:

“’I recognize the resolution of the clergy under your presidency as correct.’

“This moral support received from the head of the Russian Church Abroad gave
fresh strength to the clergy that remained faithful in order to continue their defence
of the Orthodox churches from the claims and encroachment of the Bolsheviks.

“In the struggle Vladyka John had no rest, he literally flew from church to church,
visiting schools and social organizations and giving sermons in defence of the Synod
Abroad, calling on Russian people to be faithful, driving out Soviet agitators from
the Orthodox churches and White Russian organizations.

“In this period Vladyka John was subjected to especially strong pressure and
threats from both Archbishop Victor and from Metropolitan Nestor, who was to be
appointed Exarch of Patriarch Alexis in the Far East.

“Finally, on May 15, there arrived a telegram from Metropolitan Anastasy in

Munich raising Bishop John to the rank of Archbishop with his immediate subjection

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to the Hierarchical Synod. However, it was impossible to publicise this until the
official decree was received from the Synod.

“On Friday, May 31, 1946, Archbishop Victor again flew into Shanghai, but this
time, on his arrival, he was met by Soviet consular officials, and not by clergy and
parishioners. On the same evening, Archbishop Victor proceeded in state to the
cathedral surrounded by consular officials and newly enlisted komsomol members
and occupied part of the cathedral residence with his suite. That evening the Soviets
staged a demonstration, trying to drive Bishop John out of the cathedral and the
cathedral residence.

“The next day, June 1, 1946, there arrived the long-awaited official decree [№ 108]
on the raising of Bishop John to the rank of ruling Archbishop with immediate
submission to the Synod.

“The new ruling archbishop told Archbishop Victor of his appointment and
suggested that he leave the Cathedral House and leave the bounds of the Shanghai
diocese.

“Archbishop Victor, in his turn, gave Archbishop John on June 15 a decree of the
Moscow Patriarchate (№ 15 of June 13, 1946) on the appointment of Bishop Juvenal
from Manchuria at the disposal of Archbishop Victor ‘to take the place of the see of
Bishop John of Shanghai, who does not recognize the jurisdiction of the Moscow
Patriarchate.’

“On June 16, 1946 this decree was published in the Soviet newspapers, and there
came the time of open battle for the physical possession of the Cathedral, for the
right to celebrate Divine services in it. Archbishop Victor banned our clergy (Fr.
Hieromonk Modest, Fr. Medvedev, Fr. K. Zanevsky) from serving in the cathedral,
while Vladyka John himself served daily and ordered them to serve with him,
forbidding the Soviet priests from giving sermons and himself speaking for them,
explaining to the worshippers why the Orthodox Church Abroad did not recognize
the Moscow Patriarchate.”

On June 16 Archbishop John declared to the worshippers that he had received the
ukaz removing him from administration of the Shanghai diocese, but would not be
obeying it: “I will submit to this ukaz only if they prove to me from the Holy
Scriptures and the law of any country that the breaking of oaths is a virtue while
faithfulness to one’s oath is a serious sin.”

“Feeling that the balance was all the time shifting towards Archbishop John [four
Shanghai priests join the MP, but 12 remained with Archbishop John], the Soviet
side began to resort to threats, bringing in komsomol members and debauchees, and

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once there was a serious threat that Archbishop John and other anti-communist
leaders of the White Russian colony would be kidnapped and taken away by them
onto a Soviet ship. The representatives of our youth, without the knowledge of
Vladyka, organized a guard which always followed in his footsteps without him
knowing it and guarded him.

“When Archbishop Victor ‘removed’ Archbishop John with his decree and
banned him from serving, Vladyka John, instead of leaving the cathedral, went onto
the ambon and told the worshippers that he was being removed by Archbishop
Victor because he remained faithful to the oath he had given to the Synod Abroad,
which they had both sworn. And he went on to serve the whole Liturgy in full!…

“In August, 1946 the Soviet clergy and Soviet citizens ceased to frequent the
cathedral church, and the Chinese National Government and the city authorities
recognized Archbishop John as the head of the Shanghai Diocese of the Orthodox
Church Abroad.”

Jonah Seraphimovich Ma, a close disciple of Archbishop John who worked for the
Chinese Nationalist government, testifies: “I advised Archbishop John to apply for
Chinese citizenship; finally he agreed. After processing all of the necessary
documents for the Archbishop, I personally delivered to Archbishop John the
government’s approval. Only after the Archbishop acquired Chinese citizenship did
the Soviets abandon their plans to capture Archbishop John and take over the
cathedral in Shanghai. Our beloved Archbishop John and the cathedral were saved.”

On November 26, 1947, in defiance of the Soviets, the Chinese government in

Nanking confirmed Bishop John as head of the Russian Spiritual Mission in China.
However, in 1948, as the communists came closer to power, Archbishop John
evacuated his flock of five thousand to the Philippines, from where he planned to
take them to the United States. He himself left Shanghai on May 4, 1949.

At one time, Vladyka and his flock were living in an International Refugee
Organization camp on the island of Tubabao. They lived there in tents under the
most primitive circumstances. All of the children of the orphanage were brought
there, as were the elderly and infirm. They lived under the continual threat of fierce
hurricanes, since the island is located in the path of seasonal typhoons which pass
through that part of the Pacific Ocean. During the twenty-seven-month existence of
the Russian encampment, only once was the island threatened by a typhoon, which,
however, changed its course and passed around the island. Every night Saint John
would walk around the entire camp blessing it with the sign of the Cross on all four
sides. When one Russian expressed his fear of typhoons to the local people, they
replied that there was no reason to worry, because "your holy man blesses your
camp from four directions every night." And indeed, while Vladyka was there, no

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typhoon struck the island. Later, however, when the people had departed for
various countries and the camp had been almost completely evacuated, a fierce
typhoon swept over the camp and levelled it to the ground. Vladyka’s refusal to join
the Soviets undoubtedly saved both the physical and the spiritual lives of himself
and his flock. Those ten thousand Russian Orthodox in Shanghai who accepted
Soviet passports and returned to the “Fatherland” were not so fortunate…

As Vladyka was trying to resettle his flock from the Philippines to the United
States, he was advised to fly to Washington D.C. to personally petition the
authorities to change the immigration laws.

Bishop Constantine of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of St. John the Baptist told
the following story about Vladyka in Washington: “Vladyka John had a meeting
before the Senate, to appeal for the Russian refugees, and he had to be at that
meeting at a certain hour. However, the pious Vladyka John said he would go to the
meeting after he celebrated the Divine Liturgy. When the Liturgy was over, he went
to the Senate on behalf of the Russian refugees, and he was late! When the little of
stature holy man Vladyka John entered the Senate, they had already moved on to
another agenda, since Vladyka John did not arrive on time. Everyone in the Senate
stood up out of respect, for they had noticed a holy man of God had entered the
room. They then wanted to hear his appeal on behalf of the Russian refugees in the
Philippines. After Vladyka John gave his report before the Senate Committee, the
refugees were able to come to America and live in San Francisco, California, under
the supervision and direction of Vladyka John. All of the Russian refugees, through
the intervention of Vladyka John, were miraculously able to come to America -
including all the children in his orphanage, which he later re-established in San
Francisco, and which became known as the St. Tikhon Orphanage.”

Archbishop of Western Europe

In December, 195 the Hierarchical Synod of the Russian Church Abroad decided:
“To appoint Archbishop John of Shanghai as representative of the Synod of Bishops
in Western Europe… To divide the Diocese of Western Europe into two dioceses,
entrusting the principal, continental part of the previous diocese (France,
Switzerland, Belgium and Luxebourg) to Arhcibhsop John, who should assume the
title of Bishop of Brussels and Western Europe. The parishes in England and Holland
are to be entrusted to Bishop Nathanael, who should assume the title of Bishop of
Preston and The Hague.”

In Western Europe Vladyka John’s reputation for holiness spread - and not only
among the Orthodox. In one of the Catholic churches of Paris, a priest strove to
inspire his young people with these words: “You demand proofs; you say that now

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there are neither miracles nor saints. Why should I give you theoretical proofs, when
today there walks in the streets of Paris a saint - St. John the Barefoot.”

While in Europe, St. John collected information on a number of ancient Saints

venerated in the West, but forgotten in the East. Upon his recommendation, their
veneration was restored and their names recorded in the Church calendar. His
spirituality and knowledge of languages attracted many French, Dutch and other
Europeans to Orthodoxy. And in his striving to save as many people as possible, he
sometimes practised great “economy” in the reception of clergy and laity from other
jurisdictions of “World Orthodoxy”. These measures were controversial and not
always successful; but they were always undertaken out of love for the fallen. Thus
he celebrated the liturgy in French and Dutch as he had earlier in Greek, Chinese and
English, and revived the use of the pre-schism Gallican Rite among French converts
to Orthodoxy.

Again, he consecrated several new-calendarist bishops, all of whom left ROCOR

for “World Orthodoxy” after his death: Bishop Theophilus (Ionescu) of Detroit and
his Romanian new calendarists to the Romanian patriarchate (ROCOR defrocked
him in 1972), Bishop John-Nectarius (Kovalevsky) of Saint-Denis and his French
mission (following the Gallican rite) to the Romanian new calendar church, and
Bishop Jacob (Akkerduik) of the Hague to the MP. These consecrations were not
carried out because Vladyka approved of the new calendar. On the contrary, he
rejected it and always used the old himself. However, for the sake of the salvation of
the many, he exercised “economy” and allowed the use of the new calendar in
temporarily, hoping that in time these parishioners would come to see the
correctness of the old and adopt it.

One of his spiritual daughters, Zinaida Zouliem, who cared for him in France,
recalls: “I met the Saint for the first time at his house in Versailles, a cell that was
smaller than a small room, with small boxes with letters, a table, a sofa and a bag of
dry prosphoras. He wore sandals or slippers and many times he was barefoot
because he would give them to the poor. He did not wear socks no matter what the
weather conditions were.” She met him in 1958 and her father had died in 1957.
Before her father died he told her: “This evening a short monk in black visited me.”
She wondered who this could possibly be…

Then, when she had met him, one day she was in his house thinking to herself,
“What a pity! If I had known him then, when my father was sick, I would have
prayed and he would have gotten well again.” Reading her thoughts, the Saint
turned to her and told her, “You know, I visited your father when he was sick at the
hospital.” And he opened his small notebook and found the name of her father, Basil
Zouliem. “How was it possible for him to know my thoughts if he did not have the

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gift of foresight? Then I knew it was not the will of God for my father to live any
longer.”

“Many times I wanted to ask him about many things but he was busy and at night
when it would have been more convenient to ask him, I would forget the questions.
And while having his soup, he would whisper and I would hear everything I wanted
to learn from the questions I had wanted to ask him. The Saint would answer them
as if he had known them. When I learned that he would soon be leaving for San
Francisco I became very sad, and while he was talking to us in Church, I was crying.
He turned to me and told me, ‘People that have the same goals and struggle for the
achievement of the same thing, have unity of soul and do not feel the distance of
separation, and the distance cannot become an obstacle to the spiritual union of
people of a united soul.’ I immediately calmed down. When he was praying at the
Holy Altar the ‘Uncreated Light’ would engulf him and he would not step on the
ground. He always sprinkled the Church with holy water, as well as the mail box
where he dropped his letters himself, having crossed them first. Then he would walk
barefooted in the snow or in the rain, to drop them off. When he departed to America
and the letter box was changed with another new one, I was saddened and later
when the Saint returned to France for a short while, I saw him take holy water and
sprinkle the new mail box without me telling him anything.”

One day as she was passing by the Church, she heard loud weeping. She
continued towards the iconostasis, looked inside and saw the Saint in a kneeling
position behind the Holy Altar crying loudly about the problems of others. Her soul
could not endure his crying and she silently left the Church.

Before leaving for America, Vladyka had entrusted Zinaida with the
administration of the free meals to the poor, and arranged for her to take money
from the account of the Archbishop, a sum of twenty dollars every month for this
purpose. One day he gave her as a gift ten French francs. “I spent everything for that
purpose,” Zinaida said, “and in fact during that month I had many expenses and
owed seventy dollars. I did not know what to do. I prayed to the Saint (because he
was away in America) and I asked him to help me. I told him, ‘I do what you asked
me to, but now I have many problems, help me.’” And in the morning the mailman
gave her a letter from the account of the Archbishop. She thought that it was the
usual twenty dollars, but when she opened it she found seventy dollars, exactly what
she owed. She thus went and paid off her debts and wrote a letter of thanks, and the
following month it was the usual twenty dollars. The amount was sent by the Saint.

Before he left he placed her in charge of the care of an orphan, Vladimir. But partly
due to the administration of the free meals and partly due to her aged mother and
uncle, she had a nervous breakdown and she started asking the Saint to help her
manage. “I’m going to give up,” she would say. “I cannot take it anymore.” That

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night she saw the Saint in her dream come to her house, but he only blessed her. In
the morning the mailman brought her a parcel, a journal with the image of the Saint
on it as she had seen it in her dream, and on the cover there was a note: “To
Zinaida”. She immediately became happy and was strengthened to continue her
struggles.

Another time he saved her from certain death. One day while she was planning to
go out, she looked outside her window and saw something like a small tube among
some cars, and being overtaken by curiosity she got dressed to go down there to see
it, to kick it. Then at that moment there was a knock at the door, she opened and it
was the Saint. He came in, sat in the armchair for five minutes and left without
saying anything to her. Then she went over to the window again and she saw
policemen on the road carefully removing this strange thing. She quickly went down
and learned that it was a bomb. She would have been killed if she had kicked it, had
Saint John not delayed her.

A sick lady with a heart problem was wearing a badge with Saint John on it and
one day she fainted in church. The chanter then crossed her with the badge and
prayed to Saint John to make her well and she immediately recovered.

Zinaida describes how one day her mother cooked a meal, “vereniki”, which is
made with some sort of baked dough with cheese, and is commonly eaten in Russia
and was intended for Bishop John. Her uncle saw it on the table and wanted some,
but Zinaida took the vereniki to the saint. The saint ate very little of the food she
brought to him but he did not touch the vereniki at all. Zinaida pressed him to eat
some of it but he didn’t, as he knew that her uncle had wanted it.

Once she thought of going to him to ask for a blessing to go to a monastery. That
night she saw him in her dream and he would not bless her. While looking at the
wall he told her, “For his sake stay” and then the wall opened and out came a baby.
She started crying and woke up and in a few days the wife of her brother bore a child
but within a month she got sick with tuberculosis and died and her brother gave her
his son to raise him. That is why the Saint had answered her this way.

Once she was planning to go to America with her nephew but he had spent his
money, since he thought that his aunt had enough money. But she did not have
enough for the tickets. A certain archimandrite she knew had sent her a little money
in memory of the beloved Bishop John. So they decided to go, but her nephew had
spent his money, so she started praying to the Saint to help him. She said, “If you
believe that this trip will be good for Philip, help us.” That same day she received a
note from the post office with 7,700 francs in her name, exactly the sum she needed
for the tickets. She went to the post office and she was told that she could cash out

81
the money immediately the same day. And she cashed it without even having her ID.
“I thanked the Saint who always helps me,” she said.

A Russian émigré family was at a railway station in Germany, preparing to board

a train for Switzerland. Suddenly the mother, Maria Arsenyevna Morozova, saw
Vladyka John in the distance. “We must get Vladyka John’s blessing” she exclaimed.
So they did. Later that day, the train was passing over a ravine in Switzerland. It
came to a shuddering halt. What had happened? The first carriages had fallen off the
rails and into the ravine, but the carriage containing the émigré family was saved.
The family attributed this to the prayers of St. John Maximovich…

Vladyka John, was about to begin a vigil. He saw that very few people were in
church, and was agitated. Upon inquiring, he discovered that there was a gala ball
that evening, and people were "keeping their vigil" there. He left the church (fully
vested), and walked several blocks to the hall, walked out in the middle of the floor,
and bean the vigil right then and there! I am sure that nobody asked him to dance!

In Paris, a man was contemplating becoming a subdeacon. He asked Vladyka,

who replied that he would ordain him in two weeks. During this time, he should
pray, and be sure that he was willing to take on this obedience. The man's resolve
began to weaken during the two weeks, and he had many doubts. He was a
professional, and this could compromise his business. And he had many other
thoughts… He finally decided, on the appointed day, to tell Vladyka that he had
changed his mind. He walked in the altar. Vladyka (whose back was turned),
suddenly shouted "He's here! he's here! Do you see him! There's his tail! Step on him!
Step on him!" Then he turned to the erstwhile subdeacon-to-be. The man was
confused. Vladyka explained to him that the devil was tempting him, then asked
him what he wished to say to him. "Vladyka .... I want to be a subdeacon!" He later
became a priest.

Vladyka was estranged from a man in his parish for some reason. This vexed him,
and he grieved terribly. One day, during the liturgy, he left the altar (fully vested),
sought out the man, and prostrated before him, asking forgiveness. The man was
shocked and embarrassed. This was some spectacle! He begged Vladyka to get up,
but he would not, until the man said that he forgave him. The man later repented,
and admitted that the reason for the estrangement was entirely his fault. Vladyka's
humility had melted the man's heart.

Archbishop of San Francisco

St. John arrived in his last Diocesan See once again on the Feast of the Entry of the
Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple, November 21 / December 4, 1962. At first he
came to assist the aging and infirm elder, Archbishop Tikhon, but after his repose on

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March 17/30, 1963, he became the ruling Archbishop of Western America and San
Francisco. Again the Saint arrived to find an unfinished church, dedicated to the
memory of the Mother of God, and once again, as in China, the Church was torn by
discord.

St. John's first priority was to resume and complete the construction of the new
Diocesan Cathedral of the Most-Holy Theotokos Joy of All Who Sorrow, which had
been entirely halted due to a lack of funds and sharp disputes over the
disappearance of over $150,000 from the building fund. This time, the saint failed to
reconcile the warring parties, and in May, 1963 he was summoned to a session of the
Synod in which his supporters among the bishops did participate. The discussions
went on for four hours behind closed doors. Finally, it was decided by a majority of
votes to remove him from San Francisco.

When Vladyka returned with this news to San Francisco, there was massive unrest
and a petition with many signatures was sent to the Synod asking that their beloved
archpastor not be removed. The opposing party also redoubled their efforts. In his
report to the Synod of July 23, Vladyka John wrote: “There was a danger of massive
fights, I tried to hold people back as far as I could, my presence restrained this zeal
not according to reason, but to my profound sorrow everything that was done to
establish peace in my flock in the course of four months was destroyed at one blow
in one day.” (p. 3). Metropolitan Anastasy telephoned Vladyka John and spoke with
him for one hour, as a result of which conversation the temporary administration of
the diocese was given back to Vladyka John for another six months.

But passions did not cool. On July 9 there was due to take place the re-election of
the members of the parish council and the warden, but the members of the parish
council who were against Vladyka were categorically against the elections,
understanding that Vladyka John’s supporters were almost twice the number of their
own. The only way of keeping their places was to sue Vladyka for financial
mismanagement. The court ordered that the building of the cathedral be stopped
until the end of the trial.

Archbishop John was acquitted of financial mismanagement, and on August 13,

the Hierarchical Council of the Russian Church Abroad decided to confirm him in
the see of San Francisco. This affair, which rumbled on for years, caused the saint
much pain. However, when asked who was to blame, he did not accuse any man, but
simply said: the devil.

In 1964, construction of the largest church of the Russian Church Abroad in

America, adorned with five golden domes, was essentially complete. The elevation of
the magnificent crosses, the grandeur of which is visible when sailing in the San
Francisco Bay, was preceded by a solemn procession (over a mile) with masses of

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people participating. The procession was almost canceled due to heavy rains, but the
Saint, without any hesitation, led the procession with hymns into the drenched
streets of the City. As the procession began the rain stopped. The crosses were
blessed in front of the new cathedral, and when the main cross was elevated, the sun
broke through and a dove lighted upon the brightly shining symbol of Christ. This
visible triumph of the elevating of Orthodox crosses, symbols of Christ's victory,
shining on the hills of a contemporary Babylon where satanism has been openly
professed, was the crowning victory of the life of the Saint on earth.

To the end of his life, Vladyka continued visiting the sick, performing miracles,
founding parishes and brotherhoods (notably the Brotherhood of St. Herman of
Alaska in Platina, California), and celebrating the Divine Liturgy daily. The Holy
Disc was always full of the names of those he commemorated. For he would empty
pieces of paper with names from every pocket, and every day more names would be
added from the letters he received asking him to pray for them. At the Great
Entrance of the Holy Gifts he would re-read the names and other new ones which
they had given him in the meantime, which took a long time.

After the Divine Liturgy he would remain in the Church for hours. He would
clean the Holy Chalice, the Holy Disc, the Holy Altar and the Holy Prothesis with
great care. Meanwhile he would eat some prosphora and drink plenty of hot water.
He would read the letters he received in the afternoon after the Divine Liturgy,
having a trustworthy person open them just in case there was an urgent need in
some letter. Often he would say the content of the letters before he read them, since
he had the gift of foresight. His was a life full of spiritual struggle. Since he became a
monk he never laid on a bed, but slept only one to two hours at night either standing
or kneeling and bending down to the ground. And often while asleep for a short
time, he would answer the phone normally as someone who happened to be with
him in his room testified. While speaking the phone fell a little bit above his knees
and he answered as if he could hear the caller while still sleeping.

Vladyka wrote many wonderful short articles and sermons, together with some
longer works such as The Origin of the Law of Succession in Russia and The Orthodox
Veneration of the Mother of God.

Repose and Glorification

On Saturday, June 19 / July 2, 1966, the Saint reposed in eternity. He had gone to
Seattle with the miraculous Icon of the Kursk Mother of God, which he always
carried in a leather pouch around his neck. When he had completed the Divine
Liturgy and having prayed for three hours in the sanctuary, he went to serve a
pannikhida for a parishioner. Then he went to rest in a private room provided for
him. Suddenly, those accompanying the Archpastor heard the sound of someone

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falling to the floor. When they ran up the stairs they discovered him lying on the
floor and already departing this world. They sat him up in an armchair before the
Wonderworking Icon and the Saint peacefully reposed in the Lord. A noise was
heard. At 3.50 Vladyka was founded dead on the floor in front of the Kursk icon.

His unembalmed body was flown to San Francisco. He was received by the clergy
and an all-night vigil was performed in the cathedral which lasted for four hours,
after which the Psalter was read over his body the whole night. Metropolitan Philaret
wanted to be present at the funeral, but he had heart problems, so it was suggested
that he go to San Francisco by train rather than by plane. As a result the funeral was
delayed until the afternoon of July 7. However, this did not matter, because when
Vladyka Philaret arrived at the Cathedral in San Francisco for the funeral, Vladyka
John’s body showed no sign of decay in spite of the hot weather. His hands were soft
and pliant. And all of this, despite the fact that nothing whatsoever was done to his
body at the mortuary.

The atmosphere of the funeral was strikingly poignant and exaltedly prayerful.
None of its participants shall ever forget it. Despite the deep sorrow of the countless
admirers of Saint John, a kind of special joy predominated, enveloping all of the
faithful. “Sleep now in peace!” cried Archbishop Averky of Syracuse and Holy
Trinity, who zealously loved him. “Sleep now in peace, O our dear, beloved Vladyka.
Rest from your righteous works and struggles. Rest in peace until the General
Resurrection.”

Vladyka John was buried in the crypt of the cathedral, and it immediately became
a place of pilgrimage for thousands of Orthodox Christians from around the world,
and the scene of countless miracles.

One out of very many took place in London, England. A little Orthodox girl called
Diamond was playing in a park. Suddenly a large metal object was moved from its
place and threatened to fall on her and kill or injure her. But then a man dressed in
white appeared to her and pulled her away just in time. Then he disappeared. On
returning home Diamond related the incident to her mother. She took her to the icon
corner, showed her all the icons and asked her to point to the person who helped her
in the park. She immediately pointed to the icon of St. John Maximovich…

In the autumn of 1993, the Synod of Bishops of America with the presiding
Archbishop Anthony of San Francisco, having performed a pannikhida at the tomb
of the saint, decided to re-open it. When the sepulchre cover was removed, the metal
coffin was found to be in a poor state of preservation due to moisture. Rust had eaten
through the coffin and the cover was rusted tightly shut. Inside, the Gospel Book
over the remains had virtually disintegrated, the blessing cross in the Archbishop's
hand was corroded, an icon was heavily deteriorated, and the hierarchical vestments

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were mildewed and falling apart. However, the hierarchs immediately noticed the
saint’s incorrupt hands. And when they uncovered his face, they discovered that his
face was also incorrupt. His skin was white and soft, and upon being lifted out his
body was found to be very light due to dehydration but was totally intact. Those
who came forward to venerate the relics discovered that they exuded a sweet
fragrance. Exposure of a body to the amount of moisture that deteriorated metal and
other objects would surely have caused rapid decomposition. There is thus no basis
to argue that Archbishop John's body had undergone some sort of mummification.
Everyone experienced a feeling of heavenly peace and Divine Grace in front of the
saint of God. It was decided on July 2 of the following year, 1994, to officially
proclaim him a Saint.

Every year on the July 2, a Divine Liturgy is performed and crowds of people
come to his chapel. In the centre is the sepulchre which is covered with the saint’s
mandya (cape) and around it are candelabras with lit candles. At the head of the
sepulchre is the saint’s mitre and his shepherd’s staff is at the foot of the sepulchre.
There is a lectern with the Psalter that is read by the faithful when they go to the
Saint to tell him their problems. On another lectern close by is the icon of the
Entrance of the Theotokos which was dedicated by a family from China to the Saint.
The woman along with her mother had made a vow to donate this icon, their
heirloom, to the Saint at his tomb, out of gratitude for his help. This icon had special
meaning for the Saint, without them knowing about it. He had a special love for the
feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos, and on that feastday he was tonsured, was
consecrated to the episcopate and arrived in San Francisco as a bishop. Now this
woman married she went to live in San Francisco, where she bore a son, John. Later,
when he was enlisted in the army and was to be sent to the war in Vietnam, having
great reverence for St. John, she went to his tomb and left a picture he had of the
Saint on his bishop’s mitre that is on the Sepulchre. A few days later he took it back
as a blessing, put it in the pocket of his uniform on the side of his heart and went to
war. From there he wrote to his mother that the Saint had protected him and no
bullets had hit him. Once his unit was captured and he got away. Another time, a
bomb fell close to them, the others were wounded seriously but he remained
unharmed…

After his blessed repose, just as during his life, St. John continues to perform
various miracles and healings for those who turn to him with faith. People, during
difficult moments in their lives, when no earthly power is capable of helping, have
beseeched his intercession before the Lord. Letters, as well as prayer lists, have been
placed under the miter on the tomb of the Saint and many have received the help for
which they had hoped. He appears to many sick people in hospitals and heals them.
The holy oil from his tomb has cured many people.

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 The Saint wants us to continue praying and not to forget to commemorate the
reposed, as testified from an occurrence when he appeared to someone in a dream,
telling him, “Pray for the reposed.” He also appeared to a deacon and told him that,
“I am very happy that you pray for the sick, always pray and visit the sick.” To a
certain lady who saw him in her dream, he told her, “Tell the people that even
though I have died I am still alive.”

TROPARION, TONE 6 
"Glorious apostle to an age of coldness and unbelief, invested

with the grace-filled power of the saints of old, divinely-illumined seer of heavenly mysteries,,
feeder of orphans, hope of the hopeless, thou didst enkindle on earth the fire of love for Christ
upon the dark eve of the day of judgment; pray now that this sacred flame may also rise from
our hearts."

(Sources: Protopriest Valery Lukianov, Man of God: Saint John of San Francisco,
Redding, Ca: Nikodemos Orthodox Publication Society, 1991; Archpriest Peter
Perekrestov, Man of God – Archbishop John of Shanghai and San Francisco, Redding, Ca.:
Nikodemos Orthodox Publication Society, 1994; http://d-m-
vestnik.livejournal.com/68810.html; “Declaration”, sworn under oath on the Cross
and the Holy Gospel by members of the Russian Emigration Association of
Shanghai: G.K. Bolotov, P.I. Alexeenko, V.V. Krasovsky, N.N. Pleshanov, B.M. Krain,
B.L. Kuper, M.A. Moshkin, 9 May, 1963, San Francisco ®; Monk Benjamin,
“Arkhiepiskop Ioann (Maksimovich) kak okhranitel’ tserkovnago imushchestva v
Shankhae” (Archbishop John (Maximovich) as the Preserver of Church Property in
Shanghai), Pravoslavnaia Rus’ (Orthodox Russia), № 23, December 1/14, 1999, pp. 5- 7 ®;
Archive of the Department of External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate,
d. № 24; Archbishop Ambrose (von Sievers), “Proslavlen li u Boga Arkhiepiskop
Ioann (Maksimovich)?” (Has Archbishop John (Maximovich) been Glorified by
God?), Russkoe Pravoslavie (Russian Orthodoxy), № 2 (16), 1999, p. 34 ®; Fr. Andrew
Kencis, [email protected], December 3, 1998; One Church, vol. 12, №№ 9-10,
September-October, 1958, p. 228; Matushka Anastasia Shatilova, Church News, April,
1998, vol. 10, № 4 (71), p. 6; Holy Philotheos of Paros, Issue 23, May – August 2008,
Thessaloniki; Protopresbyter Valery Lukianov, “The Truth concerning Vladyka John
of Shanghai, the Wonderworkers: An Historical Inquiry”; Russkij Palomnik (The
Russian Pilgrim), № 9, 1994, p. 16; Maria Arsenyevna Morozova, personal
communication; http://www.orthodox.cn/saints/johnmaximovitch_en.htm;
http://www.serfes.org.lives/stjohn.htm; Diocesan News of the Greek Orthodox
Denver Diocese in January, 1994; http://www.orthodox.net/articles/stories-
vladyka-john.html; Protodeacon Christopher Birchall, Embassy, Emigrants and
Englishmen, Jordanville, N.Y.: Holy Trinity Publications, 2014, pp. 383-384)

87
 IV. ARCHBISHOP ANDREW OF ROCKLAND
Early Years

Archbishop Andrew, in the world Adrian Rymarenko, was born in the town of
Romny, Poltava province, Ukraine on March 15, 1893. As he said during his Address
on the day of his ordination to the episcopate:-

“I grew up in a pious family… I was surrounded by that Orthodox way of life

which for generations had been created by Holy Russia. In our family, life proceeded
according to the church calendar, according to the yearly church circle. Feast days
were as it were the signposts of life. At home there were constant Divine services,
and not only molebens, but all-night vigils also.

“… When I remember those years there inevitably rises before me an

unforgettable picture: early morning, it’s still dark. I have only just woken up and I
see in front of the icons, half-illumined by a lampadka, my mother. She prays for a
long time. But a still stronger impression was made on me by the early-morning
Divine services, to which our mother often took us and to which we went no matter
what the weather, autumn or winter! After these Divine services one always felt a
kind of extraordinary inspiration, a kind of quiet joy.

“Our family was wealthy. My father was a major industrialist and factory owner.
And the religious outlook with which our life was penetrated was naturally reflected
in deeds also: we participated in the building of churches, set out tables with food
for poor people, sent donations to prisons, hospitals, work-houses.

“Of course, there were also sorrows, and illnesses, and deaths. But they also were
accepted in the light of Christ. The awareness that ‘Christ is risen, and the life of man
will be in the Resurrection of Christ’ helped us to bear our misfortunes and reverses.
Everything was experienced lightly and joyfully, without the strains so characteristic
of many people.

“This feeling of joy, this Christian way of life, was characteristic not only of our
family, but also of the society which surrounded us.

“Years passed. My childhood and adolescence flashed by. I finished my studies at

the Real School.

“My life changed sharply. I entered the St. Petersburg Polytechnical Institute in
the economics section and arrived in St. Petersburg.

“At first Petersburg stunned and depressed me. I fell into the company of people

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who were completely foreign to me in spirit and mood.

“After the revolution of 1905, in place of the hopes and agitations there came
disillusionment and desolation. People became as it were closed in on themselves.
They were occupied with empty things, with little egoistic interests, visits, concerts,
the theatre. In human relations, dryness and formality reigned.

“And I, coming up against this cold alienation, this desolation, for the first time
experienced a feeling close, if not to despair, then to despondency, and my soul cried
out: ‘I cannot’. Why did my soul cry out?

“I was well provided for, I was studying in a fine institute. I had excellent
professors who gave me valuable knowledge, and there opened up in front of me
wide horizons of science and life.

“Why was my soul disturbed? Why did this cry burst out – ‘I cannot’? And what
precisely did it refer to?

“I felt that I could not live as people around me were living. I felt that I was
lacking that life, that Orthodox way of life, which had surrounded me in my
childhood and youth, that lightness of heart which I felt. I had the impression that I
had been deprived of the air which I had breathed.

“I had to have life. And I began to seek…

“Once I chanced on the lectures on Dostoyevsky of Professor Tugan-Baranovsky.

In examining the works of Dostoyevsky, Tugan-Baranovsky revealed what takes
place in the human soul. He opened up those sides of life that I had somehow not
recognized earlier. He showed me that horror which seizes a man who has pushed
God away from himself, those thrashings around and that torment that a man
experiences in seeking Him.

“In his works Dostoyevsky on the one hand portrays a whole gallery of characters
who consider themselves Christians but who live in paganism, by their own reason,
without God, in the power of their own lusts. On the other hand, Dostoyevsky shows
a world of people living in Christ and incarnating Holy Rus’ in themselves. He shows
the radiant face of Alyosha, who imbibes the source of his life from the Elder
Zosima, from Christ. And I understood that my place was near Alyosha, near the
Elder. And only with his support would I have the strength to swim across the sea of
life.

“Then I began to look for faithful ways. With the help of the same Tugan-
Baranovsky, I became acquainted with a Christian student group. But this group did

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not satisfy me. It was inter-confessional. But I, raised from childhood in the
conditions of the Orthodox way of life, needed precisely the confessional way; I
needed the Sacraments, the feeling of sanctification, prayer.

“All this was given to me by Archpriest George Yegorov, who was dear to me, a
teacher in the Smolny Institute and many other educational institutions in
Petersburg. He became the leader of a group of students who had left the Christian
student group. I spent five years in his ‘school’, where there were twenty-five of us,
and for me there was opened up the elemental reality of the life of Christ’s Church,
by which Holy Russia had lived. I understood that the Divine services are not
merely a ritual, but that in them is revealed the dogmas of faith…

“The examination and study of the works of the Fathers of the Church and the
Patristic writings revealed to me the paths of life.

“When I had gone through the whole course taught by Fr. John, I had literally
come back to life. I sensed the elemental power of Orthodoxy, I sensed that air of life
which it gave. I understood in what this life consisted. I came to know the freedom
of conscience which we receive through the Sacrament of Repentance.”

The future archbishop married Eugenia Grigorievna, and had two sons, Seraphim
and Sergius.

Optina and the Priesthood

“After this preparation,” continues Archbishop Andrew, “I came, in fact, upon an

Elder, Fr. Nectarius, disciple of the great Elder Ambrose of Optina, who was
portrayed by Dostoyevsky in the image of the Elder Zosima. Elder Nectarius
showed me my path, the path of pastoral service, and prepared me for it with the
help of his disciple, Fr. Vincent. He taught me that the confession of faith must be in
godliness. The Divine must enter into every aspect of our life, personal, family and
public.”

He came to Optina for the first time in 1921, and met Elder Anatolius the
Younger. “Eugenia Grigorievna had gone to him earlier. She told him all about our
life, he blessed our marriage [and became godfather to their elder son] and spoke
about my priesthood. I also arrived in Optina from Romny on June 26, 1921 to
resolve all these questions. At that time Optina was still full of life. There were
masses of pilgrims in spite of the fact that it was already a revolutionary time. My
journey was exceptionally difficult, I will not write about it, but I spoke about the
difficulties only so as to show how I was glad to meet the Elder.

“I arrived at Optina on the day of SS. Peter and Paul at 6 o’clock in the morning,

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and stayed at the guest-house with the wonderful Monk Theodulus. He told Fr.
Eustignius, Fr. Anatolius’ cell-attendant, that I had come. Batyushka immediately
sent for me and blessed me to come to him after the Liturgy. Vladyka Micah
celebrated the Liturgy. The service in the church of the Entrance was triumphant,
and after the service I immediately went to Batyushka. There was a whole crowd of
people around Batyushka’s house. They were mainly nuns. I was immediately let
through and went to the Elder… He was friendly and affectionate. In one moment I
completely forgot about what I had only just seen: through his questions the whole
of my life was handed over to him. The conversation was mainly about my inner life.
We talked about my pastorship. Feeling my unworthiness, I asked the Elder to
forbid me to think of the priesthood, to which he, just like Elder Nectarius later, said
to me: ‘Accept the priesthood without fail, otherwise you will suffer.’ When
Batyushka asked me about my life, he suddenly said to me: ‘Go to the holy things in
the holy corner.’ There he began to read the prayers of confession, and I thought that
I would do confession, but Batyushka summarized everything that I had said, I
confirmed my sinfulness, and he read the prayer of absolution. This was for me an
unexpected prayer, I felt that I was reborn. Batyushka blessed me to receive Holy
Unction. At first I was sent to Fr. Hieromonk Palladius, but soon a nun came to me
and Elder Fr. Anatolius again called me. Several people had gathered around him,
and he gave Holy Unction to us all.

“After this I went several times for talks with him, but, you know, this was fifty
years ago. I can only say that Batyushka Anatolius, like Elder Dositheus and Monk
Fr. Vincent, opened for me a new world, the world of the true man. I understood
what the heart is, what the breath of life is. The Lord allowed me to see what I had
once seen in my life.”

On October 14, 1921 Adrian was ordained to the diaconate, and three days later –
to the priesthood with the blessing of Elder Anatolius. He was appointed to the
church of St. Alexander Nevsky in Romny.

“And so in 1921 my pastoral activity began in my native Romny. It was a terrible

time. The country was turned upside down by revolution and civil war. People were
lost and shaken. Many perished, many were destroyed. Many returned to their ashes
poor and homeless. They came to complete despair. And everywhere one heard the
cry ‘help!’ They had to be helped: to be given food and drink and clothing. They had
to be consoled and instructed; human souls had to be saved.”

“A month before his death Batyushka Fr. Anatolius (I was already a priest then, it
seems this was in 1922) wrote to Eugenia Grigoryevna asking her to come quickly to
Optina, otherwise she would be sorry. At that time we had no money. Eugenia
Grigoryevna sold the diamond ring on her hand and went to Optina.

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 “It was August, and Batyushka had died on July 30. Eugenia Grigoryevna arrived
on the ninth day after Batyushka’s death. Thanks to the fact that she went to Optina,
we passed by inheritance from Fr. Anatolius to Elder Nectarius, who until the death
of Fr. Anatolius was only a monastic spiritual father.”

This was when Fr. Adrian’s life under the guidance of Elder Nectarius began. It
lasted until the elder’s repose in 1928. Shortly before his repose, the elder said to
Matushka Eugenia: “Let Batiushka Fr. Adrian pray to the Lord that He incline his
heart toward some Orthodox bishop and ask him about everything: now it is
necessary to search for bishops.” For Elder Nectarius rejected Metropolitan Sergius
and his uncanonical hierarchy. Therefore he knew that Fr. Adrian would have
difficulty in finding a true bishop…

“My pastoral activity was successful. And it passed under the guidance of Elder
Nectarius. All this time my communion with him did not cease. This communion
was in writing and in person. I often went to Optina Desert, and then to Kholmische,
where batyushka was in exile. The Elder resolved all my questions and perplexities
that arose in my pastoral activity. And Batyushka then died [in May, 1928] under my
epitrachelion. Fr. Vincent lived for three years with me in Romny. He was a close
disciple of the Elder, and I constantly took counsel with him.

“After a time, however, the Bolsheviks understood the danger that my pastoral
activity presented for them. I was deprived of my flock [his church had been closed
in 1926] and exiled to Kiev, under surveillance.

“There it was difficult for me at first, but then I became close to a group of
outstanding Kiev pastor-ascetics, and they became my instructors and friends. Now
before my eyes there stand my great teachers and confidants – Schema-Archbishop
Anthony (Prince Abashidze), Bishop Nicholas, the vicar of Saratov, Fr. Michael
Yedlinsky, Fr. Alexander Glagolev, Fr. Eugene Kapralov, Protopresbyter Nicholas
Gross, Fr. Nicholas Stepenko, Fr. Constantine Steshenko… Their activity and battle
for human souls took place during the frightful time of the revelling of the atheists,
against a background of demonic carnivals, in the heat of persecutions against the
Church and believers, of massive arrests and executions. And all of them gave up
their lives for what was already in my heart – for the quietness which I experienced in
childhood, for inner life, for establishment in the faith, for the Orthodox way of life,
for Holy Rus’.

“With these clergy there went to prison, exile and death thousands of their flocks,
who wanted to live in God and with God. On my shoulders lay the heavy
responsibility of continuing the work of the martyred ascetics…”

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Vera

“Fr. Adrian had dedicated, selfless people who were close to him, and who
helped in that Christian work of charity. They also were watched by the all-seeing
system of Soviet informers.

“Among these devoted workers for God and neighbour were two spinster sisters
who were always there when needed. They were indispensable, did a huge amount
of work, and were very quiet. They accomplished much in miraculous ways, for
their energy came from Christ. Without these two holy souls Fr. Adrian would have
been helpless – they were always reliable and long-suffering, as true handmaidens of
the Lord.

“One day the older sister became seriously ill. Fr. Adrian was too busy to pay
much attention to it and hoped it would pass, when suddenly she died. The younger
sister, Vera, was dumbfounded. Her death was so quick and unexpected and caught
her by such surprise that at first she was in a state of shock. Then the awful truth
came up: what will happen? How will she survive? She rushed to her spiritual
father-pastor, actually the only person the sisters lived for. All out of breath she
swung his door open and cried out, ‘She’s dead! Do you hear? She’s dead!’

“Fr. Adrian was aghast. He never imagined that these pillars – who held him up
and who, so to speak, were like the pastoral arms with which he was carrying out
his gigantic parish work – would collapse. His heart sank. Before him was Vera who,
in her grief, was in a state of shock too deep for her to handle, and he froze in silence.
He went inside his heart, seeking support from God, but did not expect what was to
follow.

“As he told us years later, after a brief moment she suddenly leapt on him like a
tigress. The Christian Vera collapsed. He saw a giant fall! She stopped there in the
open door, staring at him with glassy, hateful eyes, and blurted out a monstrous
monologue that went something like this.

“’Why would He take her away, knowing full well how she’s needed to do His
work? We were selflessly working for Him all these years, our whole lives were
given over to Him! We had no private existence, no peace, no comfort all these long,
painful years! We actually had no life, no joy, not a minute to ourselves!’

“She paused to take a breath. He skinny body was trembling. She was seized with
wrath.

“’Do you hear, you pious pastor of a dead and doomed group of losers? Your
pitiable flock will drop dead as she did and stink so badly you won’t even be able to

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come close to them! He is not only unkind and unmerciful, He is evil, for He enjoys
it when His devoted bugs, His self-enslaved idiots suffer and writhe in pain before
Him in agony while serving Him!’

“’Be quiet!’ cried Fr. Adrian. ‘This is blasphemy! It is sin that is coming out of
your mouth!’

“’No, my dear tovarisch [comrade] Rymarenko! Ha ha! Go on! Bring her back to
life! See if He will hear you! Will He hear you??!!’

“She gave a nervous-sounding laugh and burst into tears.

“’Why,’ she continued, ‘why couldn’t He be more human? We all are! It’s too
much! I give up! The Soviets are right – there is no God! It’s all wishful thinking, all a
trick to keep us going in meaningless circles until we drop dead. Besides, look whom
He is helping to destroy us – His own enemies! Where is His logic? The Bolsheviks
make more sense!’

“She paused and drew closer to him with her wild eyes wide open in utter
despair, waiting for him to say something. But he was silent. She waited. Silence.

“Then she wiped her eyes with a hopeless gesture and said calmly, ‘And now we
will have to bury her. How – in this weather, with no cart, and not even the right to
bury her in our own cemetery?... Until she’ll stink… she will stink! That’s God’s
gratitude to us !’

“She slowly turned around without looking at him, lowered her head and left,
leaving her sorrow and despair lingering in the room.

“It was true. Burials at that time were illegal. Besides, it was too far to walk to the
cemetery. It was wet – the snow was melting, as it was early spring, and slush and
mud were everywhere and almost impenetrable. Yet it had to be done, and in such a
way that no one would see it – and there was no one who could help them.

“But before Fr. Adrian was a bigger dilemma than how to bury the dead. For
Vera, although alive, was now dead. It was all so sad, so abysmally sad.

“Before she left he said to her, ‘Bring the censer and the epitrachelion.’

“Fr. Adrian told us all the details, for this was his life’s challenge. The woman
actually made no sense, but she had robbed him of his faith. His pastor’s heart had
suddenly become empty. After she had brought him the censer and finally obtained
a sled, she placed her dead sister on it in some sort of elongated, wooden box and

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began to pull her up the hill through the slush and the falling snow – and he burst
into tears!

“The whole picture of the bleak reality of this burial procession was so
inconsolable! Only Vera, himself, and the swinging, smoking censer were alive. The
dark, gray sky over them, so indifferent to their grief, only accentuated their utter
unhappiness. Thus they began the burial procession up the hill. Yet the slush and
muddy, thawing earth, which had given up its cold and frozen state of winter and
was now in expectation of the approaching spring, felt soft and almost warm – as if
welcoming the new breath of nature’s rebirth.

“Vera was still in a rage, pulling the load on the sled, and was audibly venting her
wrath. He followed her, up to his knees in mud, with an open service book that was
getting wet. This process, this ascent into death was the hardest experience he had
ever had, for he was dead inside. He had been stripped of something warm inside
and he was numb. He felt cold both outside and inside; the silky earth he was in felt
warmer than he himself did.

“Yet the saddest thing was that he could not remember the words of the
pannikhida’s prayers – such familiar words. His head was blank; his heart, usually
so quick to move to prayer, was indifferent now, and he knew in his heart of hearts
that he had not only been robbed, but defiled. Yes, he felt defiled!

“That must be so when a man is dead!

“Yet the wet prayer-book was held sturdily in one hand, and in the other hand
was the censer, vigorously swinging and wafting out the fragrant clouds of warm
smoke. He tried to remember the right words, but could only recall one phrase,
actually half of one, that somehow stuck in the back of his mind. He mechanically
kept repeating this phrase so as to keep walking.

“’Blessed are the undefiled’ – that was all. No memory came of what followed,
just that statement remained barely alive in his cold heart, as if it were an echo
resounding from the better days of his warm youth, cheering him somewhat. He
kept repeating it. Slowly the rest of the verse came back to him.

“’Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the Law of the Lord’. He
repeated it in his mind, then said it aloud, and then sang it quietly. However, as
spring rushed about him vigorously, he sang louder and louder and kept repeating
it until it began to make sense. Blessed are those who no longer feel that oppressive
state of being defiled in all their way, he thought, and kept repeating it over and
over again, almost to the rhythm of his heavy tread.

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 “Undefiled because they walk in the Law of the Lord. And really, he was walking
in the Law of the Lord – to give the last good thing to that sister. He wanted her to
be buried as a Christian should, so that she could go to heaven as a reward due to
her for all the godly things she had done for God, for His Law. She, the dead one,
was undefiled, and he himself did not want to be defiled – he wanted to walk in the
Law of the Lord. He was walking for the Lord now, for his Lord, Who had given
such a Law of undefilement. He knew that the Law he had given his life for did not
give him defilement. It is the abandoning of this Law out of weakness and
temptation that defiles the conscience. It was the Law of the Lord that he had clung
to all these years. He knew that even if everything in this present life were against
this Law, it was the Law of God’s righteousness that he wanted.

“He walked on and on, swinging the censer, slowly regaining composure and
singing about the Law of the Lord that undefiles, that give freedom to the suffering
heart, that makes man capable of taking a deep breath and living! And he wanted
life, not death!

“Death was before him. But what is death, he thought, if walking in the Law of
the Lord promises eternal life, if it promises Resurrection!

“He had seen too many tragic cases in his life of unbelief and defilement all
around him. His beloved Holy Russia, together with all her saints and holy things,
was being defiled – precisely because the new government did not want to walk in
the Law of the Lord. But he did not want to be defiled, he wanted resurrection from
the dead state in which his country was being immersed. And what hindered him
from wishing the dead sister resurrection in the future age? Nothing!

“As he was ascending to the lonely, dark cemetery, he gradually regained his
strength. Holding tightly to the censer, his concern now was what to say to Vera
before the horrible moment when the loved one was lowered into the cold, damp
grave. The hole had already been dug by some kind man. All was ready.

“He searched for what to say as they stopped to say the last prayer. In his mind
he heard: ‘With the saints give rest…’

“There was a moment of hesitation, and as he was about to open his lips to say
what was in his heart, just three little words, he glanced at Vera and saw her face
turning to his. It was no longer dark and angry. She was surprisingly at peace.
Standing before the yawning grave all covered with the soft earth, she searched for
his eyes and loudly exclaimed:

“’Christ is risen!’

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 “The very three words he had wanted to utter!

“They stood there drenched in tears, not from sorrow but from the joy of having
regained their faith, for they were now blessed! They were washed from the
defilement of unbelief through the suffering of wanting God. They had given their
lives to Christ, and after having been tested they knew that there was a state of
blessedness, even on this side of the grave, way beyond all the sorrows of this
temporal state – for Christ is risen from the dead!

“This is why Fr. Adrian’s favourite book was St. Theophan the Recluse’s
Commentary on Psalm 118, entitled, Blessed are the Undefiled.

The Catacomb Church

Matushka Eugenia recalls this period: "That was a very difficult time, especially
for the family of a priest. Fr. Adrian did not have a parish in Kiev, he served together
with [the catacomb priest] Fr. Michael [Yedlinsky, the future hieromartyr] in the
church of Saints Boris and Gleb in Podol.

"We lived mainly on chance parcels from former parishioners from Romny. The
whole time there were various unpleasantnesses. For example, a message would
come from the police: the next day Fr. Adrian was to go there to clean the snow; I
had to run, bustle around and get a medical certificate to say that Fr. Adrian was ill
and lying in bed. Moreover, the certificate could not be from a private doctor, but
had to be from the Red Cross.

"In 1929 [or 1930] Fr. Adrian was arrested. How Vladyka [Bishop Nicholas of
Aktar, who was martyred for the Faith in 1939] supported me, encouraged me,
prayed for me at that time! By some kind of miracle Fr. Adrian was released [he fell
seriously ill in prison].

“In 1931 the story with the flat began. At that time we were not living in the
basement but occupied two rooms in the house of people whom we knew. But the
house in which we were living had changed into a “communal living area”, so we
had to find a flat from a private house-owner. But when we with great difficulty
found it, it was almost taken away from us by a man who came into our flat, put a
bed in one of the rooms and said that the flat was his!

“How much I went through then! Alone with two small children, and with
constantly drunken people on the other side of the wall who shouted: ‘She’s hiding
her pope somewhere or other’. I knew that the wife of this man was about to come
from hospital with her just-born child. I understood our hopeless situation, our
complete lack of rights in a juridical sense. Our landlady, of course, wanted to evict

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this man who had settled in without her knowledge and have us in her house. With
her we decided that Poly (the nanny of our children, who at that time worked in a
factory) could take him to court since she had the rights of a working person. I ran to
Vladyka in complete despair, told him everything and said that we had to take a
lawyer. But Vladyka said to me: ‘What lawyer? Your lawyer is Nicholas the
Wonderworker.’ I left Vladyka encouraged, with a certain hope. We served a
moleben to the holy Hierarch Nicholas, and the next day Polya returned from the
court and said that the case had been decided in her favour and that if, in the course
of the next two weeks, the man did not appeal, he would have to vacate the flat. In
two weeks the flat was freed.

"Was this not the mercy of God, Who defended our rightless family according to
the laws of that time through the prayers of Vladyka?! How necessary in those
difficult times were such people as Vladyka Nicholas. By their deep faith and
authoritative word they were able to support us who were fainthearted and
wavering in faith. Vladyka always supported me in this way. We also had to suffer
material hardships at that time. Vladyka somehow understood them and knew
when they came. He would come to us, and after his visit you would find two
roubles on the table; you would look at them as at a blessing to escape your material
difficulties.

“In 1933 passportization was declared. With great difficulty Archbishop Sergius
succeeded in getting the department of cults to assign Fr. Adrian to the church of SS.
Boris and Gleb, and then to the Pokrov monastery, and finally to the church of
Askold’s grave. If we had not succeeded in getting this, we would have had to leave
Kiev.

“I worked at first as a needle-woman, and then in various libraries, and finally as

director of the Narkomzdrav library. Life was nerve-wracking: constant fears for Fr.
Adrian; we had constant searches, checks of the landlady’s books and questions
about the priest living there, worries for the children who were studying at school,
constant nervous tension at work, worrying whether my social position would be
revealed, whether I would be sacked. You would return home only to find
worshippers arrived from Romny. They came to see Batyushka Adrian, but
officially, as it were, to consult with doctors. Again worries, one had to think about
them, too, and put them up.”

Fr. Adrian continues the story: “From 1935, being in an illegal situation, I secretly
celebrated the Divine Liturgy in Kiev on an antimins given me by [the Catacomb]
Bishop Micah of Optina. I received it with the blessing of Elder Nectarius. One of the
Kievan hieromonks communed the sick and infirm with the Holy Mysteries from
our Liturgy. What would have happened then if the war had not started - we don’t
know.”

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 In 1937 almost all the Catacomb clergy of Kiev were arrested, and many were
shot. Fr. Adrian became the unofficial leader of the Catacomb Church in Kiev.

Once Fr. Adrian’s hand was injured and gangrene set in. An amputation would
have put a tragic end to his pastoral ministry, and he and his flock were very
worried. But then one of the parishioners got up and went to the church of St.
Barbara (whose relics repose in Kiev). She took some holy water from the church and
brought it to Fr. Adrian, who sprinkled it on his hand. Glory to God! A miracle took
place, and the hand was completely healed. Thereafter Fr. Adrian always expressed
great love and veneration for St. Barbara, and said that all Orthodox should know
that, in the event that they are dying without a priest, they should call on St. Barbara,
and she will come with the chalice and the Holy Gifts, as has happened many times.

War and Emigration

“The Germans arrived in Kiev. At first the German occupation did not interfere in
our church life. Churches were opened. The Lord helped us restore the Pokrov
hospital women’s monastery, and I was the rector of its church. The situation in the
city was difficult. Many people were starving. We again had to help people, and feed
them. We succeeded in restoring a hospital and a home for the elderly and the lame.
But the famine was not only bodily, but also spiritual. Starving for the Church and
the Orthodox way of life, people streamed into the churches. We had to satisfy this
hunger.

“After two years under German occupation we had to abandon everything and be
evacuated. The Soviets came.”

It was the German commanding officer in Kiev who suggested to Fr. Adrian that
he be evacuated to the West. And he asked him how many visitors he had. “More
than a hundred,” said Fr. Adrian with a smile…

“I and a group of people who were close to me – Prince D.V. Myshetsky, Doctor
A.P. Timofievich, P.A. Ivinsky and O.M. Kontsevich, the present Bishop Nektary of
Seattle – found ourselves in Berlin. Vladyka Metropolitan Seraphim [Lyade]
appointed me rector of the Berlin [Resurrection] cathedral. For almost two years,
under unceasing bombardment, Divine services were performed every day in the
church. [Fr. Alexander Kiselev, the spiritual father of General Vlasov of the Russian
Liberation Army, concelebrated with him. And Metropolitan Anastasy came on
feastdays.] The Lord helped us preserve the Divine gift of the Eucharist of Christ so
as to strengthen and establish the souls of our Russian people in the faith. They had
fled from communism or had been forcibly transported to Germany. The church was
constantly full of “Osten” youth [Russian worker-refugees from the East], most of

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whom in their homeland knew neither God nor the Orthodox way of life, but now
instinctively gravitated towards the Church and Christ. They had to be helped,
comforted, taught, instructed.”

Always gentle and kind with people, Fr. Adrian could be unbending when
necessary. Thus when they received an order for the Gestapo to stop the “Osten”
from going to the cathedral, Fr. Adrian, supported by Metropolitan Seraphim,
categorically refused, and the cathedral continued to be full as before, mainly with
young people, because it was mainly young people that were transported to
Germany. One of these young people was Nicholas Hamanovich, later Bishop Alypy
of Cleveland.

During one of the bombings on Berlin the elder son of Fr. Adrian, Seraphim, was
killed. This was a great loss to him and his matushka. But their faith helped them to
live through this loss and continue to serve others.

In the cathedral in Berlin was a greatly revered icon of St. Seraphim, which the
Royal Family had prayed in front in 1903, and which had been brought from
Diveyevo to Kiev, and then from Kiev to Berlin. Once, after a severe bombardment,
the Orthodox returned to the church from their bunker and saw that an explosive
bomb had fallen through the cupola and into the left side-chapel. There was a Good
Friday shroud there, and lying on top of that – the icon of the saint. They managed
to put out the flames, but were struck by the fact that both the shroud and the icon
were untouched by the flames, although everything around them, including the
footstool of a cross and an icon of SS. Gurias, Amon and Abibas, were burning. The
next morning, during the service, they noticed that the smell of burning was still in
the air, and even getting stronger. Then they found that in the attic of the church
there was a second, smouldering explosive bomb. Hardly had they touched it when
a huge column of flame rushed upward. So the fire had smouldered for twelve
hours, but had not exploded… From that time the cathedral did not suffer again
from fire, although everything around it was burned and destroyed.

In 1945 Fr. Adrian, his matushka and his second son Sergius together with the
whole of his spiritual family were re-settled to Wűrtemberg, to the small town of
Wendlingen, near Stuttgart.

Another notable miracle took place at this time… Now in 1923 the Optina
Hermitage had been ravaged and everything in it subject to desecration. Icons were
taken from the churches and piled up on the ground to await destruction. Among the
women who stood tearfully watching was Schema-nun Eudocia, who managed to
take away the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God, which, as she knew, had formerly
been in the cell of the famous Optina Elder, St. Ambrose. She brought it to Kozelsk,
from where, at the request of Fr. Michael Yedlinksy, it was brought to Kiev. Fr.

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Michael then instructed Fr. Adrian to serve an akathist to it after the early (5 a.m.)
liturgy on Sundays.

Fr. Adrian brought this holy icon with him to Berlin and then to Wendlingen. But
the house in which the Orthodox were located caught fire during a tank battle
between American and German forces. Then Fr. Adrian, followed by several dozen
Orthodox people with him, squeezed together between the flames, lifted the Image of
the Queen of Heaven over his head, dashed forth across the field on which the tank
battle was taking place, and crossed between the two opposing forces unharmed…

It was with this icon that Metropolitan Anastassy, First-Hierarch of the Russian
Orthodox Church Abroad, blessed Father Adrian and his co-strugglers on their
journey to America. Since its passage to the United States, the Holy Image has rested
in the women's monastery of Novo-Diveyevo, in Spring Valley, New York.

“In the difficult period that began it after the capitulation of Germany, being in
constant fear of repatriation, our small group, under my guidance, created a church
and immediately established the great Sacrament of the Divine Eucharist. And we
again began to create a quiet order of life, the Orthodox way of life. Divine services
were celebrated daily, life proceeded in godliness from Sunday to Sunday, from
feast to feast. All around passions flared, there was enmity and a bestial struggle for
existence. Many at first looked on us as naïve people who did not live in accordance
with the times. But we lived, we lived in God. Little by little attitudes towards us
changed. Pilgrimages began. People who had come to the depths of despair acquired
amongst us peace of soul and a quiet joy, and went away enlightened and in peace.”

Novo-Diveyevo

In 1949 Fr. Adrian, his family and small group of Russian émigrés, most of them
invalids because of age or illness, arrived in America. In the autumn Archbishop
Vitaly (Maximenko) and Archbishop Nicon (Rklitsky) “entrusted me to found a
women’s monastery wherein to gather nuns scattered in various countries of the
Diaspora, and to establish for them the quietness of Christ and the Orthodox way of
life. This assignment seemed beyond our powers in the difficult circumstances in
which we lived. Especially in view of the lack of money. Some people tried to
dissuade me from this work. But the idea of establishing here, in America, a little
corner of the Orthodox way of life, saturated in that spirit by which I had lived and
breathed since childhood, took hold of me, and I agreed, hoping on the help of the
Lord. And the Lord did not abandon us.

Although they had no money, and no knowledge of the English language, they
managed to found a women’s monastery. First the monastery was located in
Nayack, one hour’s drive from New York. Soon, with the help of some good people,

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they were able to rent a more fitting place for 200 dollars a month. This was still not
suitable, and every day prayers and an akathist were offered before the Optina icon
of the Mother of God – and a miracle was performed. Quite unexpectedly, in the
neighbouring little town of Spring Valley they found a former Catholic women’s
monastery that had been empty for some years. Fr. Adrian made a great impression
on the Catholic abbess, and she obtained from Cardinal Spellman permission to sell
the property for the very cheap price of $30,000 on condition that nothing would be
built in the plot that would defile the holiness of the former monastery. An Orthodox
women’s monastery satisfied this condition.

But where were they to get $30,000? Again, a miracle of God’s mercy took place.
K.N. Maleyev, who had already given $5,000 from his savings to the nascent
community, gave another $15,000. The bank provided the other half of the needed
sum. And so the land and buildings passed into the possession of the Orthodox, who
were not required to pay taxes on it since it was a former Catholic monastery. On
August 24, 1952 the cemetery was blessed – a purely Russian cemetery of the kind
that the Russian émigrés had not had in the New York region before.

“Nuns were gathered together. About one thousand displaced persons were
brought over from Europe, of whom a significant number settled around the
monastery and formed, so to speak, a large Orthodox family. The Lord helped
inspire people to build a beautiful church in which daily services were celebrated
and to which Russian people flowed from all ends of America.

“And the main thing was that the Lord helped us to establish in Novo-Diveyevo
that which had filled my soul since childhood. In the conditions of the emigration,
when Russian people, confused in the midst of foreign conditions of life and non-
Orthodoxy, were caught in a whirlpool of vanity, the Lord helped us to establish in
Novo-Diveyevo the Orthodox way of life, a church atmosphere of the quietness of
Christ and of godliness; to establish Holy Russia in a foreign land.

“But it is not yet enough to establish a monastic life; one must preserve it. For there
is always the danger that life can be converted into a hothouse, a greenhouse, where
it will be supported by artificial warmth, and as soon as the source of warmth ceases
to operate, life will perish.

“Therefore there must be a constant source of life. Just as the earth and its vital
juices constantly nourish vegetation, so our life also must be ceaselessly nourished
by that elemental power which the Church of Christ gives, which is incarnated in the
Orthodox way of life, in the Divine services, in fasting, in prayer, in vigils, in all that
which embodies our Holy Russia. This is the elemental power which places in the
mouth of the man who is leaving his earthly existence the last words, ‘Into Thy
hands I commend my spirit’, and gives him the possibility to depart into eternal

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existence with the name of Christ.

Matushka Evgenia reposed in the Lord, and in February, 1968 Fr. Adrian received
the monastic tonsure. In the same year he was consecrated to the episcopate. In 1973,
at the age of 80, he was raised to the archiepiscopate as Archbishop Andrew of
Rockland.

He said: “When Archbishop Nicon suggested that I accept the grace of the
episcopate, I understood that the Lord was calling me to preserve – with the help of
holy Grace and with the support of my Abba, Vladyka Metropolitan – Holy Russia
in the hearts of our people, who had been cast into a foreign land. I understood that
the Lord was giving me yet more strength and power to continue my labours on the
field of Christ.

“Therefore the sight of an open grave does not disturb me, but forces me to new
labours in the name of Christ, which I must carry out before I depart for the Lord.

“The forty-six years of my pastoral service have been sanctified by the Grace of
the Lord, from which I drew strength and power. Now a new, higher Grace – the
archpastoral Grace – is being laid upon me. I tremble, because I know that I am
unworthy of it, but I accept it as the will of God, and in my trembling I call upon the
Lord for help…”

As a bishop, Vladyka Andrew continued to live in Novo Diveyevo. He was the

spiritual father of Metropolitan Philaret, and counselled many other members of the
Church, both Russian and English-speaking.

Once a letter came to the monastery from a certain Vasilyeva in California. Her
parents had been exiled in Russia, and she did not know their fate. Then she had a
dream. She saw a new cabin, and in the kitchen was sitting her mother. There was a
hatch in the floor leading to a cellar. It was dark. She was led to understand, perhaps
from her mother, that her father was in the cellar. Then she looked and saw that
although the cabin was new, there was no glass in the windows. “Why is there no
glass?” she asked her mother. “Only Bishop Andrew can do this,” she replied. The
daughter woke up and began to think that things were bad with her parents. It
seemed that her father had died, and it was necessary to pray for him. It was
necessary to find this Bishop Andrew.

She searched for a year, in various countries, but there was no bishop with the
name of Andrew. But then she heard of the monastery, and sent a letter there asking
for a burial service to be served, and giving a detailed account of her dream. Vladyka
performed a burial service and sent her the prayer of absolution and some earth
from the grave.

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 Vladyka possessed the gift of eldership. As Bishop Gregory of Alaska wrote:
“Vladyka was an elder in the best meaning of this word. For very many believers he
was a spiritual leader who incarnated in himself all the qualities necessary for
eldership: a heartfelt intuition that is unusual for our time, sincere love for his
spiritual child, great tact in touching on spiritual wounds, absolute non-
possessiveness, boundless Christian humility.”

Archbishop Gregory of Colorado writes: “During the Nativity a number of

teenage Russian boys were travelling by bus to various churches, singing Russian
Christmas carols. Novo Diveyevo was on their route and they visited Archbishop
Andrew. They all sang before him, and when they had finished their performance,
the Archbishop asked them to come in to his kellia separately, one by one, to receive
his blessing before they departed. They did this, and the one whom he was waiting
for came in. The Archbishop told the young man to take out what was in his pocket.
The young man denied that there was anything in his pocket. The Archbishop
demanded again: ‘Take out that which is in your pocket,’ in a strong voice. The
young man slowly, with shame, gave the book which was in his pocket to Vladyka’s
cell attendant. It was a pornographic book, and Vladyka told the young man to have
himself looked at by a doctor, for he was about to get sick. After he admonished him,
he dismissed him. Vladyka called them in, one by one, so as not to draw attention to
him by calling him alone…”

Archbishop Gregory writes again: “One time a Serbian man drove down from
Massachusetts to visit and receive the blessing of Archbishop Andrew, because he
heard of his reputation of being a holy person. He had no particular question to ask
him, but this man inwardly complained to God that he did not have a male issue,
but only had girls. When he met the Archbishop, and received his blessing, the
Archbishop immediately told him the following story.

“In Russia, after the revolution, there was a man who bitterly lamented that his
daughter died very young. His lament continued for years and about the time when
the girl would have been twenty years old, he saw a dream. In the dream, he was
looking down from the window of his apartment to the street below, where a
military march was passing by. In the march, there was an open truck with Soviet
soldiers inside, and they were flirting with a young, twenty-year-old girl. In the
dream, he thought how shameless this woman was, being in that situation.

“When he awoke in the morning, a military parade was passing by his apartment
and just as in the dream, he went to the window and beheld the Soviet soldiers
marching by, and indeed, there came the truck, only this time, there was no young
girl with those soldiers.

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 “He was shocked and understood that if his daughter had lived, she would have
been a communist, thereby denying Christ. He fell on his face and wept, saying, ‘I
think Thee, O Lord, that Thou didst spare me this continuous death, for me to see
my daughter as a communist.’ He never complained again.

“When the Serbian man heard this story, he was cut to the heart, and he
understood why the Archbishop had spoken this story. From that day on, he gave
thanks to God for His providence, and did not complain against His judgements.”

And again Archbishop Gregory writes: “We know of two separate occasions
when men, on a visit with Archbishop Andrew, were told their whole life stories.
One was a layman, and one was a priest. He told them details of their early life
which they had completely forgotten.”

Archbishop Andrew also told the whole life story of Archimandrite John Lewis,
together with exactly what he would do and whom he would meet on leaving the
monastery.

Archpriest Stefan Pavlenko writes: “After graduating Holy Trinity Seminary and
getting married, my wife and I decided that I would go for a time to California. My
wife’s grandmother and aunt were quite close to Bishop Andrei, as was her whole
family, especially her mother. When my wife’s parents learned that we were
planning a trip to California, they suggested we got to Novo Diveyevo for a blessing
from Bishop Andrei. So off we went. He greeted us and treated us to tea and cakes…
He asked about my parents and relatives, blessed our trip and made some very
private comments concerning our choices made. Just when we were about to make
our escape, he ‘remembered’ some photo albums that he had wanted to show us!
And for the next 40 minutes or so we were (young and restless that we were) treated
to the most boring and ‘useless’ rehash of old houses, old people, and old pets that
you could imagine. Finally we were out and off! Not five minutes into our return
trip to Boston on one of the main arteries out of the New Jersey / New York border
area was a giant car pile up with injuries and even a death. Only then did we realize
that had we not been ‘detained’ by Bishop Andrei, we would surely have been in the
middle of that accident, instead of just passing by it in awe and wonder!”

Vladyka also took part in the dogmatic debates of the time. Thus, following in the
footsteps of Archbishop Theophan of Poltava, he was an opponent of the false
teaching of Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) on the ‘Dogma of Redemption’.
When this teaching surfaced again in the Church Abroad a group of hierarchs,
including Bishops Nectarius, Athanasius and Averky, not wishing to offend the first-
hierarch, asked Archbishop Andrew, as the spiritual father of the metropolitan
himself, to remove this subject from the agenda of the 1972 Council, so as to prevent
a schism. When the danger had passed through the efforts of Archbishop Andrew,

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he crossed himself, thanking God that Orthodoxy had been preserved for the
Americans.

On July 22, 1975 Vladyka was visited by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the famous
writer. He greeted him with the following words: “Dear, deeply respected
Alexander Isayevich!

“I have thought much, and am thinking much, about you; and involuntarily,
while thinking of you, there arise before me two places in Sacred Scripture. One is
from the Old Testament: the image of righteous Noah. It was revealed to him by God
that there would be a world-wide flood which would destroy all those who
remained in ungodliness. But for the salvation of those who would remain in
godliness, those who still preserved all that is God’s in honour, God commanded
Noah to build an ark. And Noah began to build an ark, and at the same time to call
the people to repentance…

“But the sky was clear, not a cloud was in sight; the whole of nature, as if
indifferent to the sins of men, remained solemnly quiet. Men listened to Noah, but
shrugged their shoulders and went away. Time passed. The building of the ark was
finished, but only the family of Noah entered it. They entered the ark, not yet to
escape the flood, but to escape the ungodliness that was everywhere. And then, at
last, a cloud appeared in the sky; it soon grew into huge rain clouds. The whole sky
was covered with them, and the rain poured down. The water began to rise and
inundate everything. At this point the frightened people rushed to the ark, but the
doors closed of themselves, and nobody could now enter…

“And now, thinking of you, I involuntarily thought of this magnificent figure of

Noah calling the people! You, too, my dear one, are calling people from the
ungodliness of Communism! They listen to you, they applaud you. And they
listened to Noah, and perhaps expressed their enthusiasm. Yes, they listened… but
they did not obey, and perished!

“Noah called men from something, from ungodliness. But he also called them to
something: to godliness, and to a concrete godliness: to the godliness which was in
the ark. And at this point I remember another passage from Holy Scripture, the
Epistle of the Apostle Peter. This they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God
the heavens were of old, and the earth made out of the water and in the water: whereby the
world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished. But the heaves and earth which
are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the Day of Judgement
and perdition of ungodly men (II Peter 3.5-7).

“If all this is to be destroyed in this way, then what a holy life and godliness must
we have! This is what the New Testament Ark is: godliness, preserving what is

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God’s in honour!

“In your recent address you said that you were born a slave. That means that you
were born after the revolution. But I saw everything that happened before the
revolution and what prepared it – it was ungodliness in all forms, and chiefly the
violation of family life and the corruption of youth… With grief I see that the same
thing is happening here also, and indeed in the whole world. And it seems to me
that your mission also is – to call people from ungodliness to godliness!

“And the source of godliness is Christ!...”

Repose

Vladyka Andrew died on the feast of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, June 29 /
July 12, 1978 (according to another source, on the following day, July 13). The
weather was hot. He received Communion reverently, as he did on all Sundays and
feastdays. He was very weak, and lay down surrounded by the people most devoted
to him, waiting for the long-awaited hour.

Every day he listened to three akathists: the first, to the Vladimir icon of the
Mother of God, was read by Mother Nonna, the second, to St. Nicholas, was read at
midday, and the third, to St. Seraphim, was read in the evening. He listened to all
the services through a microphone that was connected to the church.

In the evening, towards the end of Mattins, Vladyka was praying with particular
fervour to the Mother of God. He took out an icon that had been given to him by his
mother and which he always carried. On this day he prayed before it with special
intensity, with all his might. This was felt by everybody.

Blood started to flow. His son and Fr. Alexander were worried. Brother Michael
began to read the akathist to the Vladimir icon. Then Vladyka called everyone to say
goodbye to them and to give them his last blessing. He said that he was dying and
asked everyone to pray for him. And then he began fervently to cry out: “Most Holy
Mother of God, save me!” with other prayers. When a cold sweat came out on his
face, he cried: “I am dead!”, and became white as snow.

Fr. Alexander ran into the neighbouring room to get hold of his epitrachelion –
the same under which Elder Nectarius had died fifty years before. But Vladyka
Andrew had already left this world.

It was 11 p.m. on the feast of SS. Peter and Paul, the same day on which Vladyka
had entered Optina for the first time.

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 Nun Maria (Stakhovich) recalls: “I was especially upset by the death of our
Vladyka, although we were expecting it. The ‘heart’ had left our community: such a
one was no longer to be found. Forty days had already passed.. Each day after the
liturgy there was a litiya in the church, and in the evening after the service there was
a pannihida at the grace. There were always many people present.

“This death was marked by some special signs.

“On the eve of the burial, in the evening after the service, we were all told from
the ambon (the church was full of people) that on the day of the death of Vladyka
the children in a summer camp, aged from 8 to 15, saw in the sky a cross made of
clouds, and then it took the form of a face. The children recognized in it Vladyka
Andrew. The face turned into an angel, and flew upwards.

“One of our parishioners saw him – the fifteen-year-old daughter of Doctor

Zarudsky. Each of these children was separately interrogated by Fr. Alexander
Kiselev. All the children confirmed one and the same story, so he was convinced that
it was not a fantasy.”

Holy Father Andrew, pray to God for us!

(Sources: “Batyushka o. Adrian”, Russkij Palomnik, no. 18, 1998, pp. 92-109; “Our
Living Links with the Holy Fathers: Archbishop Andrew of New-Diveyevo”, The
Orthodox Word, July-August, 1975, pp. 135-137; Archbishop Andrew, “The
Restoration of the Orthodox Way of Life”, The Orthodox Word, July-August, 1975, pp.
138-144, 168-171; Evgenia Grigorievna Rymarenko, "Remembrances of Optina
Staretz Hieroschemamonk Nektary", Orthodox Life, vol. 36, no. 3, May-June, 1986;
“Parish Life”, June, 1997,
http://www.stjohndc.org/Russian/theotokos/e_9706_optina_novo_div.htm; Count
A.A. Sollogub, Russkaia Pravoslavnaia Tserkov’ Zagranitsej, 1918-1968, New York, 1968,
volume 1, pp. 554-570; “Blessed are the Undefiled: Fr. Adrian and Vera”, The
Orthodox Word, vol. 36, no. 1 (210), January-February, 2000; Archbishop Gregory of
Colorado, “[paradosis] Archbishop Andrew”, orthodox-
[email protected], August 4, 2001, August 6 and August 8, 2001;
Archpriest Stefan Pavlenko, “[paradosis] Bishop Andrew of Rockland”, orthodox-
tradition: yahoogroups.com, August 6, 2001; Archimandrite John Lewis, private
communication; Bishop Andrew of Pavlovskoye, private communication; Vladimir
Samarin, “Arkhiepiskop Andrei (Rymarenko)”, Vernost’, 162, April, 2011; Matushka
Nina Kochergin, Facebook communication)

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 V. METROPOLITAN PHILARET OF NEW YORK
Early Years

Metropolitan Philaret, in the world George Nikolayevich Voznesensky, was born

in the city of Kursk on March 22 / April 4, 1903, into the family of Protopriest
Nicholas and his matushka, Lydia Vasilyevna. In Holy Baptism he was called
George. In 1909 Fr. Nicholas was appointed to serve in Blagoveschensk-on-Amur in
the Far East, and moved there with his whole family. There the young George served
his father in church together with his elder brother Nicholas, while his three sisters
sang in the church choir. And there the future hierarch finished high school.

In a sermon at his nomination as Bishop of Brisbane, the future metropolitan said:

“There is hardly anything specially worthy of note in my life, in its childhood and
young years, except, perhaps, a recollection from my early childhood years, when I
as a small child of six or seven years in a childishly naïve way loved to ‘play service’
– I made myself a likeness of a Church vestment and ‘served’. And when my parents
began to forbid me to do this, Vladyka Evgeny, the Bishop of Blagoveschensk, after
watching this ‘service’ of mine at home, to their amazement firmly stopped them:
‘Leave him, let the boy “serve” in his own way. It is good that he loves the service of
God.’” In this way was the saint’s future service in the Church foretold in a hidden
way already in his childhood.

In 1920 the family was forced to flee from the revolution into Manchuria, to the
city of Harbin, a town built by Russians to serve the railway. There, in 1921, George’s
mother, Lydia Vasilievna, died, after which his father, Fr. Nicholas, took the
monastic tonsure with the name Demetrius and became Archbishop of Hailar.
Vladyka Demetrius was a learned theologian, the author of a series of books on the
history of the Church and other subjects. From 1923 he served in the church of the
Iveron Icon of the Mother of God, one of 22 churches in the city. He breathed new
life into the Iveron Brotherhood that was attached to the church.

George Nikolayevich helped his father in educating the younger generation, and
took part with him in the work of the House of Mercy, founded by Bishop Nestor for
children of all ages, which combined in itself an orphanage and a work-house for the
very old.

Living in the family of a priest, the future metropolitan naturally became

accustomed, from his early years, to the church and the Divine services. But, as he
himself said later, at the beginning there was in this “almost nothing deep, inwardly
apprehended and consciously accepted”.

“But the Lord knows how to touch the human soul!” he recalled. “And I

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undoubtedly see this caring touch of the Father’s right hand in the way in which,
during my student years in Harbin, I was struck as if with a thunder-clap by the
words of the Hierarch Ignatius Brianchaninov which I read in his works: ‘My grave!
Why do I forget you? You are waiting for me, waiting, and I will certainly be your
inhabitant; why then do I forget you and behave as if the grave were the lot only of
other men, and not of myself?’ Only he who has lived through this ‘spiritual blow’, if
I can express myself thus, will understand me now! There began to shine before the
young student as it were a blinding light, the light of a true, real Christian
understanding of life and death, of the meaning of life and the significance of death –
and new inner life began… Everything secular, everything ‘worldly’ lost its interest
in my eyes, it disappeared somewhere and was replaced by a different content of
life. And the final result of this inner change was my acceptance of monasticism…”

George’s desire to become a monk was shared by his friend Basil Lvov, son of the
over-procurator of the Holy Synod Prince Vladimir Lvov, who became a monk with
the name Nathanael in 1929 and later - Archbishop of Vienna. The two youths went
to risky trips to the Soviet-Chinese border, where they established links with
Orthodox communities on the other side. George was also very close to Hieromonk
Methodius (Yogel) and Hierodeacon Nilus (Nosov), who in spite of his rank and
monasticism continued to cross the border into the Soviet Union with anti-Bolshevik
plans until the middle of the 1930s.

Fr. Nicholas opposed his son’s desire to become a monk, saying that he should
first finish his studies and acquire a profession – then they would talk about it. And
so, in obedience to his father, George entered the Russo-Chinese Polytechnical
Institute and received a specialist qualification as an electrical engineer and
mechanic, graduating in 1927. Later, when he was already First Hierarch of the
Russian Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), he did not forget his friends at the
institute. All those who had known him, both at school and in the institute,
remembered him as a kind, affectionate comrade. He was distinguished by his great
abilities and was always ready to help.

Having graduated from the Institute, George went to his father, gave him the
diploma and said: “I have carried out your will, now I want to carry out His [God’s]
will.”

Together with his closest friends, George now began Pastoral-Theological Courses
in what was later renamed the theological faculty of the Holy Prince Vladimir
Institute. His father was president of the Pedagogical Council and read lectures in
Holy Scripture, Church history and apologetics. George graduated with distinction
in 1930 (or 1931).

At the same time he continued to work in the House of Mercy and also got a job

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as a teacher. He was a good instructor, and his pupils loved and valued him. But his
instructions for the young people went beyond the bounds of the school programme
and penetrated every aspect of human life. Many of his former pupils and colleagues
after meeting him retained a high estimate of him for the rest of their lives.

In 1930 George again approached his father with his former request, and now Fr.
Nicholas did not object. He was ordained as a celibate, and then, in 1931, to the
priesthood. He served in the church dedicated to the Mother of God “The Joy of All
Who Sorrow” attached to the House of Mercy.

In the same year two monks from the Holy Trinity Shmakovo monastery, which
had been destroyed by the Bolsheviks, fled to Harbin. With his friend Fr. Nathanael
and these two monks, Fr. George founded the monastic community of the House of
Mercy. There, in 1931, he was tonsured into monasticism with the name Philaret in
honour of Righteous Philaret the Merciful. Within a few years the numbers of monks
had risen to nine, and many young people were attracted by the spiritual fervour of
the community. It was here that Fr. Philaret lived the happiest years of his life. For
eight years he and Fr. Nathanael lived “in one cell without once quarrelling”. Also in
the community were Fr. Innocent (Bystrov) and Hieromonk Methodius.

In this period Fr. Philaret became a teacher of the New Testament, pastoral
theology and homiletics at the St. Vladimir University. In 1936 his book, Outline of
the Law of God, was published in Harbin.

“Man thinks much, he dreams about much and he strives for much,” he said in
one of his sermons, “and nearly always he achieves nothing in his life. But nobody
will escape the Terrible Judgement of Christ. Not in vain did the Wise man once say:
‘Remember your last days, and you will not sin to the ages!’ If we remember how
our earthly life will end and what will be demanded of it after that, we shall always
live as a Christian should live. A pupil who is faced with a difficult and critical
examination will not forget about it but will remember it all the time and will try to
prepare him- or herself for it. But this examination will be terrible because it will be
an examination of our whole life, both inner and outer. Moreover, after this
examination there will be no re-examination. This is that terrible reply by which the
lot of man will be determined for immeasurable eternity… Although the Lord Jesus
Christ is very merciful, He is also just. Of course, the Spirit of Christ overflows with
love, which came down to earth and gave itself completely for the salvation of man.
But it will be terrible at the Terrible Judgement for those who will see that they have
not made use of the Great Sacrifice of Love incarnate, but have rejected it. Remember
your end, man, and you will not sin to the ages.”

He also studied the writings of the holy fathers, and learned by heart all four
Gospels. One of his favourite passages of Scripture was the passage from the

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Apocalypse reproaching the lukewarmness of men, their indifference to the truth.
Thus in a sermon on the Sunday of All Saints he said:

“The Orthodox Church is now glorifying all those who have pleased God, all the
saints…, who accepted the holy word of Christ not as something written somewhere
to someone for somebody, but as written to himself; they accepted it, took it as the
guide for the whole of their life and fulfilled the commandments of Christ.

“… Of course, their life and exploit is for us edification, they are an example for
us, but you yourselves know with what examples life is now filled! Do we now see
many good examples of the Christian life?!…. When you see what is happening in
the world,… you involuntarily think that a man with a real Orthodox Christian
intention is as it were in a desert in the midst of the earth’s teeming millions. They all
live differently… Do you they think about what awaits them? Do they think that
Christ has given us commandments, not in order that we should ignore them, but in
order that we should try to live as the Church teaches?

“…. We have brought forward here one passage from the Apocalypse, in which
the Lord says to one of the servers of the Church: ‘I know your works: you are
neither cold nor hot. Oh if only you were cold or hot!” We must not only be hot, but
must at least follow the promptings of the soul and fulfil the law of God.

“But there are those who go against it… But if a man is not sleeping spiritually, is
not dozing, but is experiencing something spiritual somehow, and if he does not
believe in what people are now doing in life, and is sorrowful about this, but is in
any case not dozing, not sleeping – there is hope that he will come to the Church. Do
we not see quite a few examples of enemies and deniers of God turning to the way of
truth? Beginning with the Apostle Paul…

“In the Apocalypse the Lord says: ‘Oh if only thou wast cold or hot, but since
thou art neither cold nor hot (but lukewarm), I will spew thee out of My mouth’…
This is what the Lord says about those who are indifferent to His holy work. Now, in
actual fact, they do not even think about this. What are people now not interested in,
what do they not stuff into their heads – but they have forgotten the law of God.
Sometimes they say beautiful words. But what can words do when they are from a
person of abominable falsehood?!… It is necessary to beseech the Lord God that the
Lord teach us His holy law, as it behoves us, and teach us to imitate the example of
those people have accepted this law, have fulfilled it and have, here on earth,
glorified Almighty God.”

In 1933 Fr. Philaret’s father was tonsured into monasticism with the name
Demetrius, and within a year he had been tonsured as Bishop of Hailar while
remaining as rector of the Iveron parish in Harbin.

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 In the same year Fr. Philaret was raised to the rank of igumen, and in 1937 - to the
rank of archimandrite. Thousands of young people came to the community at the
House of Mercy to listen to the young igumen’s sermons and to share with him their
woes.

In these early years of his priesthood Fr. Philaret was greatly helped by the advice
of the then First-Hierarch of ROCOR, Metropolitan Anthony (+1936), with whom he
corresponded for several years. The young pastor was a talented preacher and
pedagogue. He performed the Divine services with burning faith, and attracted
multitudes to the church. All sections of the population of Harbin loved him; his
name was also known far beyond the boundaries of the Harbin diocese. He was kind
and accessible to all those who turned to him. Queues of people thirsting to talk with
him stood at the doors of his humble cell; on going to him, people knew that they
would receive correct advice, consolation and help. He converted many to God and
the Holy Church, and had hundreds, if not thousands of disciples who remembered
him for the rest of their lives. Fr. Philaret immediately understood the condition of a
man’s soul, and, in giving advice, consoled the suffering, strengthened the
despondent and cheered up the despairing with an innocent joke. He loved to say:
“Do not be despondent, Christian soul! There is no place for despondency in a
believer! Look ahead – there is the mercy of God!” People went away from him
pacified and strengthened by his strong faith.

In imitation of his name-saint, Fr. Philaret was generous not only in spiritual, but
also in material alms, and secretly gave help to the needy. Many homeless people
turned to him, and he refused help to nobody, except in those cases in which he
literally had nothing left, when he would smile guiltily and say: “Nothing, my dear!”
But then he would find a way out – and give away the things he was wearing.

Once Fr. Philaret had visited his father, and on the way back had to go from the
Iveron church to the House of Mercy – quite a long distance. He had ten cents for the
journey. However, on leaving the house a poor man came to him begging for alms.
Fr. Philaret gave him the ten cents and went home on foot, thinking that he should
not be sorry about the ten cents since the Lord would reward him a hundredfold. On
returning home, he remembered that he was due to celebrate a wedding in the
church. After the wedding, to his surprise, the newly-weds gave him ten dollars,
saying: “Dear Batyushka, please take these ten dollars for yourself out of our great
love for you”. Fr. Philaret joyfully reflected that he had received exactly a hundred
times what he had given to the beggar, but then complained: “For today’s good
work I will receive nothing in the Kingdom of Heaven, since I have received [my
reward] completely in this age”…

On another occasion Fr. Philaret came out of the church in his vestments with a

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golden cross on his breast. Some believers came up to him and said that they were
intending to collect some initial capital for a soup-kitchen for the poor. Fr. Philaret
began to look for something in his pockets, but found nothing. Then he asked them
to wait, and went to a pawn-shop not far away, where he pawned his gold cross.
Then he gave the money to the needy…

On hearing about this, Fr. Methodius ran around the rich parishioners, quickly
collected some money and redeemed the cross before the owner of the pawn-shop
could re-sell it or melt it down…

Fr. Philaret did not teach others what he himself did not do. He himself, like the
saints, whom he called on people to imitate, accepted everything written in the Holy
Scriptures and the patristic writings “not as something written somewhere to
someone for somebody,” but as a true guide to life. He was exceptionally strict with
himself and conducted a truly ascetic style of life. He had a rare memory, keeping in
his head not only the words of the Gospel and the holy fathers, but also the sorrows
and woes of his flock. On meeting people the holy hierarch demonstrated great
interest in all sides of their life, he did not need to remember their needs and
difficulties – he himself developed the subject of conversation that interested a man,
and gave ready replies to the perplexities tormenting him.

Confessor against Paganism

From 1931 until 1945 Manchuria with its capital city of Harbin was occupied by
the Japanese. At first the Russians were not worried. They remembered how the
Japanese had helped many Russians to escape to the east at the end of the Civil War,
and they welcomed the order that they introduced into the country.

However, the Japanese soon began to persecute all those Russians who were
against them (many Russians had married Chinese, and so were against the Japanese
occupation for that reason), numbering them together with the Soviet agents.
Moreover, towards the end of this period the Russians were called upon to confess
their faith; for the Japanese placed a statue of their goddess Amateras, who
according to Japanese tradition was the foundress of the imperial race, directly
opposite the Orthodox cathedral of St. Nicholas. Then, in May, 1943, they demanded
that Russians going to church in the cathedral should first make a “reverential bow”
towards the goddess. It was also required that on certain days Japanese temples
should be venerated, while a statue of the goddess was to be put in Orthodox
churches.

The question of the admissibility of participating in such ritual venerations was

discussed at the diocesan assemblies of the Harbin diocese on September 8 and
October 2, 1943, in the presence of the hierarchs of the Harbin diocese: Metropolitan

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Meletius, Bishop Demetrius and Bishop Juvenal (Archbishop Nestor was not
present). According to the witness of the secretary of the Episcopal conference, Fr.
Leonid Upshinsky, “the session was stormy, since some objected that… Amateras
was not a goddess but the Ancestress.” It was decided “to accept completely and
direct to the authorities” the reports of Bishop Demetrius of Hailar and Professor K.I.
Zaitsev (the future Archimandrite Constantine), which expressed the official view of
the episcopate that participation in the ritual venerations was inadmissible.

However, on February 5, 1944 the congress of leaders of the Russian emigration in

Manchuria met in Harbin. The congress opened with a moleben in the St. Nicholas
cathedral, after which the participants went to the Japanese temple “Harbin-Jinjya”,
where they carried out a veneration of the goddess Amateras. On February 12 the
Harbin hierarchs responded with a archpastoral epistle, in which they said: “Since
any kind of veneration of pagan divinities and temples is forbidden by the
commandments of God…, Orthodox Christians, in obedience to the will of God and
his Law, cannot and must not carry out this veneration, for such venerations
contradict the basic theses of the Orthodox Faith.” Archbishop Nestor refused to sign
this epistle.

In March both vicars of the Harbin diocese, Bishop Demetrius and Bishop
Juvenal, were summoned to the police, where they were closely interrogated about
the circumstances of the illegal distribution of the archpastoral epistle and about the
attitude of the flock to this question. On April 28 Metropolitan Meletius was
subjected to interrogation. The conversation, which lasted for several hours,
produced no result. Referring to his extreme exhaustion and illness, Vladyka
Meletius asked that the conversation be continued on May 1. This again produced no
result. Bishop Demetrius, who also took part, categorically and sharply protested
against the venerations.

On May 2, an Episcopal Convention took place (Archbishop Nestor, as usual, was

not present), at which this position was confirmed. Several days later, Metropolitan
Meletius presented the text of the Episcopal Convention to Mr. Kobayasi. Kobayasi
demanded that he give a written promise not to raise the question of venerations
until the end of the war. Metropolitan Meletius asked that the words “if there will be
no compulsion to venerations” should be added to the text. Vladyka’s demand again
elicited a quarrel. However, in the end Kobayasi gave in. On August 31 the Harbin
archpastors sent a letter to Archbishop Nestor in which they appealed to him “to
unite with us, return, and may your voice sound out in defence of the purity of the
Faith and zeal for its confession. Sign (better late than never) our Archpastoral
Epistle and announce this publicly – in whatever way and place you can.” In reply,
Vladyka Nestor wrote that he did not disagree with his brother archpastors about
the inadmissibility of venerating the temples of Amateras.

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 An important influence on the Japanese in their eventual climb-down was the
courageous confession of Fr. Philaret. The Japanese seized him and subjected him to
torture. His cheek was torn and his eyes were almost torn out, but he suffered this
patiently. Then they told him: “We have a red-hot electrical instrument here.
Everybody who has had it applied to them has agreed to our requests. And you will
also agree.” The torturer brought the instrument forward. Then Fr. Philaret prayed
to St. Nicholas: “Holy Hierarch Nicholas, help me, otherwise there may be a
betrayal.” The torturer commenced his work. He stripped the confessor to his waist
and started to burn his spine with the burning iron. Then a miracle took place. Fr.
Philaret could smell his burning flesh, but felt no pain. He felt joyful in his soul. The
torturer could not understand why he was silent, and did not cry out or writhe from
the unbearable pain. Then he turned and looked at his face. Amazed, he waved his
hand, muttered something in Japanese and fled, conquered by the superhuman
power of the confessor’s endurance. Fr. Philaret was brought, almost dead, to his
relatives. There he passed out. When he came to he said: “I was in hell itself.”
Gradually his wounds healed. Only his eyes were a bit distorted. And the Japanese
no longer tried to compel the Orthodox to bow down to their idol.

Confessor against Communism

In 1945 the Soviet armies defeated the Japanese army; later the Chinese
communists took control of Manchuria. In the first days of the “Soviet coup” the
Soviets began to offer Russian émigrés the opportunity to take Soviet passports.
Their agitation was conducted in a skilful manner, very subtly and cleverly, and the
deceived Russian people, exhausted from the hard years of the Japanese occupation
during which everything Russian had been suppressed, believed that in the USSR
there had now come “complete freedom of religion”, and they began to take
passports en masse.

50,000 Russian citizens of Harbin, and every third young person, fell into the
snare. The reality was soon revealed to them. At Atpor station 14,000 people were
shot, and the remaining 36,000 were deported to concentration camps, where most of
them perished of hunger and other privations.

Metropolitan Valentine of Suzdal writes: “I remember the year 1956, the

Dormition men’s monastery in Odessa, where I was an unwilling witness as there
returned from the camps and prisons, having served their terms, those hierarchs
who returned to Russia after the war so as to unite with the ‘Mother Church’ at the
call of Stalin’s government and the Moscow patriarchate: ‘The Homeland has
forgiven you, the Homeland calls you!’ In 1946 they trustingly entered the USSR,
and were all immediately captured and incarcerated for 10 years, while the ‘Mother
Church’ was silent, not raising her voice in defence of those whom she had beckoned
into the trap. In order to be ‘re-established’ in their hierarchical rank, they had to

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accept and chant hymns to Sergianism, and accept the Soviet patriarch. And what
then? Some of them ended their lives under house arrest, others in monastery
prisons, while others soon departed for eternity.”

At this time Fr. Philaret was the rector of the church of the holy Iveron icon in
Harbin. There came to him a reporter from a Harbin newspaper asking his opinion
on the “mercifulness” of the Soviet government in offering the émigrés Soviet
passports. He expected to hear words of gratitude and admiration from Fr. Philaret,
too. “But I replied that I categorically refused to take a passport, since I knew of no
‘ideological’ changes in the Soviet Union, and, in particular, I did not know how
Church life was proceeding there. However, I knew a lot about the destruction of
churches and the persecution of the clergy and believing laypeople. The person who
was questioning me hastened to interrupt the conversation and leave…”

Soon Fr. Philaret read in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate that Lenin was the
supreme genius and benefactor of mankind. He could not stand this lie and from the
ambon of the church he indicated to the believers the whole unrighteousness of this
disgraceful affirmation in an ecclesiastical organ, emphasising that Patriarch Alexis
(Simansky), as the editor of the JMP, was responsible for this lie. Fr. Philaret’s voice
sounded alone: none of the clergy supported him, and from the diocesan authorities
there came a ban on his preaching from the church ambon, under which ban he
remained for quite a long time. Thus, while still a priest, he was forced to struggle
for church righteousness on his own, without finding any understanding amidst his
brothers. Practically the whole of the Far Eastern episcopate of the Russian Church
Abroad at that time recognised the Moscow Patriarchate, and so Fr. Philaret found
himself involuntarily in the jurisdiction of the MP, as a cleric of the Harbin diocese.
This was for him exceptionally painful. He never, in whatever parish he served,
permitted the commemoration of the atheist authorities during the Divine services,
and he never served molebens or pannikhidas on the order of, or to please, the
Soviet authorities. As he said, “I never sullied my lips and my prayer with prayers
for the servants of the Antichrist”. But even with such an insistent walling-off from
the false church, his canonical dependence on the MP weighed on him “as a heavy
burden, as an inescapable woe”, and he remained in it only for the sake of his flock.
When the famous campaign for “the opening up of the virgin lands” was declared in
the USSR, the former émigrés were presented with the opportunity to depart for the
Union. To Fr. Philaret’s sorrow, in 1947 his own father, Archbishop Demetrius of
Hailar, together with several other Bishops, were repatriated to the USSR. But Fr.
Philaret, on his own as before, tirelessly spoke in his flaming sermons about the lie
implanted in the MP and in “the country of the soviets” as a whole. Not only in
private conversations, but also from the ambon, he explained that going voluntarily
to work in a country where communism was being built and religion was being
persecuted, was a betrayal of God and the Church. He refused outright to serve
molebens for those departing on a journey for the USSR, insofar as at the foundation

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of such a prayer lay a prayer for the blessing of a good intention, while the intention
to go to the Union was not considered by Fr. Philaret to be good, and he could not lie
to God and men. That is how he spoke and acted during his life in China.

Such a firm and irreconcilable position in relation to the MP and the Soviet
authorities could not remain unnoticed. Fr. Philaret was often summoned by the
Chinese authorities for interrogations, at one of which he was beaten. In October,
1960 they even tried to kill him…

As he himself recounted the story, at two o’clock on a Sunday morning Fr.

Philaret got up from bed because of a strange smell in his house. He went to the
living-room, in the corner of which was a larder. From under the doors of the larder
there was coming out smoke with a sharp, corrosive smell. Then he went to the
lavatory, poured water into a bowl, returned to the larder and, opening the doors,
threw the water in the direction of the smoke. Suddenly there was an explosion and
a flash. The fire burned him, while the wave of the explosion lifted him up and
hurled him with enormous force across the whole length of the living-room and
against the door leading out. Fortunately, the door opened outwards: from the force
of his flying body the bolts were broken, and he fell on the ground deafened but
alive. On coming to, he saw the whole of his house on fire like a torch. He
understood that the explosion had been caused by a thermal bomb set to go off and
burn down the house at a precise time.

During this night, at about midnight, a certain Zinaida Lvovna, one of the sisters
of the church of the House of Mercy, came out of her house, which was situated
opposite the church across the street, and saw some fire engines in the street near the
church – but there was no fire. This unusual concourse of fire engines surprised her.
About two hours later, when the sound of the bomb awoke her, she immediately
went out into the street and saw the fire, which the fire-fighters had already
managed to put out. Fr. Philaret was standing on the threshold of the church shaking
from the cold and suffering from burns and concussion. Zinaida Lvovna
immediately understood that the fire had been started by the communists with the
purpose of killing Fr. Philaret. She quickly crossed the street and invited him to enter
her house.

But the Chinese firemen, on seeing Archimandrite Philaret alive, accused him of
starting the fire and wanted to arrest him. However, the quick-witted Zinaida
Lvovna quickly turned to the chief fireman and said: “It looks like you put your fire
engines here in advance, knowing that a fire was about to begin. Who told you
beforehand that about the fire?” The fire chief was at a loss for words and could not
immediately reply. Meanwhile, Zinaida Lvovna and Fr. Philaret went into her
house. She put him in a room without windows because she knew that the
communists might enter through a window and kill him.

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 The next day, some young people came early to the Sunday service, but the
church was closed, and the house in which Fr. Philaret lived was burned to the
ground. The twenty-year-old future pastor, Fr. Alexis Mikrikov came and learned
from Zinaida Lvovna what had happened during the night. He asked to see Fr.
Philaret. Immediately he saw that the saint was extremely exhausted and ill. His
burned cheek was dark brown in colour. But the look in his eyes was full of firm
submission to the will of God and joyful service to God and men. Suddenly Fr.
Alexis heard him say: “Congratulations on the feast!” as he would say “Christ is
risen!” Tears poured down the face of Fr. Alexis in reply. He had not wept since his
childhood, and here he was, a twenty-year-old man, on his knees before the
confessor, weeping and kissing his hand.

As a consequence of the interrogations and burns he suffered, for the rest of his
life Fr. Philaret retained a small, sideways inclination of his head and a certain
distortion of the lower part of his face; his vocal chords also suffered.

Two months passed. Fr. Philaret again began to serve, and within half a year he
was able to live on his own in a separate maisonette above the church. But then he
again went to Zinaida Lvovna. The reason was that he had gone into his cell after the
service, but suddenly saw two big boots sticking out from under the curtain.
Understanding that an assassin sent by the communists was standing there, he went
to the chest of drawers, took something out to divert attention, and then quickly left
the cell, locking it behind him. After this a Chinese policeman came to Zinaida
Lvovna and asked her why Archimandrite Philaret did not sleep in his cell. She
immediately understood what he was on about, and replied: because of his physical
weakness.

Soon after this Fr. Philaret, through his spiritual sight, discovered a portrait of
satan under the altar in the church of the House of Mercy. The portrait was
immediately removed…

Having made contact with Metropolitan Anastasy, from 1953 Archimandrite

Philaret made continual efforts to leave China. Finally, in 1962, after almost the
whole of his flock had left Harbin, he succeeded. On March 29, 1962 the Hierarchical
Synod of the Russian Church Abroad “heard a letter of Archimandrite Philaret
(Voznesensky) to the president of the Synod on his arrival in Hong Kong and his
repentance over the fact that in 1945 he had entered the jurisdiction of the Moscow
Patriarchate, and also a penitential declaration signed by him in accordance with the
form established by the Council of Bishops” in 1959.

The form in question was as follows: “I, the undersigned, a former clergyman of
the Moscow Patriarchate, ordained to the rank of deacon (by such-and-such a bishop

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in such-and-such a place at such-and-such a time) and ordained to the rank of
presbyter (by such-and-such a bishop in such-and-such a place at such-and-such a
time) and having passed through my service (in such-and-such parishes), petition
that I be received into the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad.

“I am sincerely sorry that I was among the clergy of the Moscow Patriarchate,
which is in union with the God-fighting authorities.

“I sweep aside all the lawless acts of the Moscow hierarchy in connection with its
support of the God-fighting authorities and I promise from now on to be faithful and
obedient to the lawful hierarchy of the Russian Church Abroad.”

“While striving to guard my flock from Soviet falsehood and lies,” recounted the
metropolitan, “I myself sometimes felt inexpressibly oppressed – to the point that I
several times came close to the decision to leave altogether, to cease serving. And I
was stopped only by the thought of my flock: how could I leave these little ones? If I
went and stopped serving, that would mean that they would have to enter into
service to the Soviets and hear prayers for the forerunners of the Antichrist – ‘Lord,
preserve them for many years,’ etc. This stopped me and forced me to carry out my
duty to the end.

“And when, finally, with the help of God I managed to extract myself from red
China, the first thing I did was turn to the First Hierarch of the Russian Church
Abroad, Metropolitan Anastasy, with a request that he consider me again to be in
the jurisdiction of the Russian Church Abroad. Vladyka Metropolitan replied with
mercy and love, and immediately blessed me to serve in Hong Kong already as a
priest of the Synodal jurisdiction, and pointed out that every church server passing
into this jurisdiction from the jurisdiction of Moscow must give a special penitential
declaration to the effect that he is sorry about his (albeit involuntary) stay in the
Moscow jurisdiction. I did this immediately.”

Soon Fr. Philaret flew to Australia and arrived in Sydney, from where he went to
Brisbane. Many of his former parishioners were there, and they petitioned the Synod
to appoint him bishop of Brisbane. Archbishop Savva of Australia supported this
petition enthusiastically. Archimandrite Philaret considered himself weak and
unworthy of such a lofty service. However, the experience of monastic obedience did
not allow him to decline from the path to which ecclesiastical authority summoned
him. On May 26, 1963 he was consecrated Bishop of Brisbane, a vicariate of the
Australian diocese, by Archbishop Sabbas of Sydney and Bishop Anthony of
Melbourne.

In his sermon at his nomination as Bishop Archimandrite Philaret said to the

Archpastors who were present:

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 “Holy Hierarchs of God! I have thought and felt much in these last days, I have
reviewed and examined the whole of my life – and… I see, on the one hand, a chain
of innumerable benefactions from God, and on the other – the countless number of
my sins… And so raise your hierarchical prayers for my wretchedness in this truly
terrible hour of my ordination, that the Lord, the First of Pastors, Who through your
holiness is calling me to the height of this service, may not deprive me, the sinful and
wretched one, of a place and lot among His chosen ones…

“One hierarch-elder, on placing the hierarchical staff in the hands of a newly

appointed bishop, said to him: ‘Do not be like a milestone on the way, that points
out for others the road ahead, but itself remains in its place…’ Pray also for this,
Fathers and Archpastors, that in preaching to others, I myself may not turn out to be
an idle slave.”

On May 14/27, 1964, having been for many years First Hierarch of ROCOR,
Metropolitan Anastasy, for reasons of health and age, petitioned the Hierarchical
Council for his retirement. The question arose who would be the new First Hierarch.
Some members of ROCOR wanted to see the holy Hierarch John (Maximovich) as
their head, but another part was very opposed to this. Then, to avoid any further
aggravation of the situation, and a possible scandal and even schism, the Hierarch
John removed his candidacy and suggested making the youngest Hierarch, Bishop
Philaret, First Hierarch. According to one source, Philaret’s election was “entirely
due to the prompting and influence of Archbishop John”. According to another
source, however, the suggestion was made by Archbishop Sabbas, who had sent Fr.
Philaret to New York in his place. This choice was supported by Metropolitan
Anastasy: Vladyka Philaret was the youngest by ordination, had mixed little in
Church Abroad circles, and had not managed to join any “party”. He himself
compared his election to a death sentence: “My position at that time reminds me of
the position of one who is being led out to execution,” he said in his Word to the
Hierarchical Council. And so he was enthroned as First Hierarch by Metropolitan
Anastasy himself in a service that, for the first time in centuries, used the ancient text
for the enthroning of a metropolitan of Moscow.

Almost immediately, in his 1965 Epistle “to Orthodox Bishops and all who hold
dear the Fate of the Russian Church”, Metropolitan Philaret made clear his
completely uncompromising attitude to the Moscow Patriarchate and his great love
for the Catacomb Church. In view of the continuing relevance of his words, when
the gracelessness of the Moscow Patriarchate is understood by few, we quote it in
full:

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 “In recent days the Soviet Government in Moscow and various parts of the world
celebrated a new anniversary of the October Revolution of 1917 which brought it to
power.


 “We, on the other hand, call to mind in these days the beginning of the way of
the cross for the Russian Orthodox Church, upon which from that time, as it were, all
the powers of hell have fallen.


 “Meeting resistance on the part of Archpastors, pastors, and laymen strong in

spirit, the Communist power, in its fight with religion, began from the very first days
the attempt to weaken the Church not only by killing those of her leaders who were
strongest in spirit, but also by means of the artificial creation of schisms.


 Thus arose the so-called ''Living Church" and the renovationist movement,
which had the character of a Church tied to a Protestant-Communist reformation.
Notwithstanding the support of the Government, this schism was crushed by the
inner power of the Church. It was too clear to believers that the ‘Renovated Church’
was uncanonical and altered Orthodoxy. For this reason people did not follow it.


 “The second attempt, after the death of Patriarch Tikhon and the rest of the
locum tenentes of the patriarchal throne, Metropolitan Peter, had greater success. The
Soviet power succeeded in 1927 in sundering in part the inner unity of the Church.
By confinement in prison, torture, and special methods it broke the will of the vicar
of the patriarchal locum tenens, Metropolitan Sergius, and secured from him the
proclamation of a declaration of the complete loyalty of the Church to the Soviet
power, even to the point where the joys and successes of the Soviet Union were
declared by the Metropolitan to the joys and successes of the Church, and its failures
to be her
failures. What can be more blasphemous than such an idea, which was
justly appraised by many at that time as an attempt to unite light with darkness, and
Christ with Belial. Both Patriarch Tikhon and Metropolitan Peter, as well as others
who served as locum tenens of the Patriarchal throne, had earlier refused to sign a
similar declaration, for which they were subjected to arrest, imprisonment, and
banishment.


 “Protesting against this declaration—which was proclaimed by Metropolitan

Sergius by himself alone, without the agreement of the suppressed majority of the
episcopate of the Russian Church, violating thus the 34th Apostolic Canon—many
bishops who were then in the death camp at Solovki wrote to the Metropolitan: ‘Any
government can sometimes make decisions that are foolish, unjust, cruel, to which
the Church is forced to submit, but which she cannot rejoice over or approve. One of
the aims of the Soviet Government is the extirpation of religion, but the Church
cannot acknowledge its successes in this direction as her own successes’ (Open Letter
from Solovki, September 27, 1927).

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 “The courageous majority of the sons of the Russian Church did not accept the
declaration of Metropolitan Sergius, considering that a union of the Church with the
godless Soviet State, which had set itself the goal of annihilating Christianity in
general, could not exist on principle.


 “But a schism nonetheless occurred. The minority, accepting the declaration,

formed a central administration, the so-called ‘Moscow Patriarchate,’ which, while
being supposedly officially recognized by the authorities, in actual fact received no
legal rights whatever from them; for they continued, now without hindrance, a most
cruel persecution of the Church. In the words of Joseph, Metropolitan of Petrograd,
Metropolitan Sergius, having proclaimed the declaration, entered upon the path of
‘monstrous arbitrariness, flattery, and betrayal of the Church to the interests of
atheism and the destruction of the Church.’


 “The majority, renouncing the declaration, began an illegal ecclesiastical

existence. Almost all the bishops were tortured and killed in death camps, among
them the locum tenentes Metropolitan Peter and Metropolitan Cyril of Kazan, who
was respected by all, and Metropolitan Joseph of Petrograd, who was shot to death at
the end of 1938, as well as many other bishops and thousands of priests, monks,
nuns, and courageous laymen. Those bishops and clergy who miraculously remained
alive began to live illegally and to serve Divine services secretly, hiding themselves
from the authorities and originating in this fashion the Catacomb Church in the
Soviet Union.


 “Little news of this Church has come to the free world. The Soviet press long
kept silent about her, wishing to give the impression that all believers in the USSR
stood behind the Moscow Patriarchate. They even attempted to deny entirely the
existence of the Catacomb Church.


 “But then, after the death of Stalin and the exposure of his activity, and
especially after the fall of Khrushchev, the Soviet press has begun to write more and
more often on the secret Church in the USSR, calling it the ‘sect’ of True-Orthodox
Christians. It was apparently impossible to keep silence about it any longer; its
numbers are too great and it causes the authorities too much alarm.


 “Unexpectedly in the Atheist Dictionary (Moscow, 1964), on pages 123 and 124
the Catacomb Church is openly discussed. '’True-Orthodox Christians,’ we read in
the Dictionary, ‘an Orthodox sect, originating in the years 1922-24. It was organized in
1927, when Metropolitan Sergius proclaimed the principle of loyalty to the Soviet
power.’ ‘Monarchist’ (we would say ecclesiastical) ‘elements, having united around
Metropolitan Joseph (Petrovykh) of Leningrad' (Petrograd) — the Josephites,’ or, as
the same Dictionary says, the Tikhonites, formed in 1928 a guiding centre, the True-

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Orthodox Church, and united all groups and elements which came out against the
Soviet order’ (we may add from ourselves, ‘atheist’ order). ‘The True-Orthodox
Church directed unto the villages a multitude of monks and nuns,’ for the most part
of course priests, we add again from ourselves, who celebrated Divine services and
rites secretly and ‘conducted propaganda against the leadership of the Orthodox
Church,’ i.e., against the Moscow Patriarchate which had given in to the Soviet
power, ‘appealing to people not to submit to Soviet laws,’ which are directed, quite
apparently, against the Church of Christ and faith. By the testimony of the Atheist
Dictionary, the True-Orthodox Christians organized and continue to organize house,
'i.e., secret, catacomb churches and monasteries... preserving in full the doctrine and
rites of Orthodoxy.’ They ‘do not acknowledge the authority of the Orthodox
Patriarch,’ i.e., the successor of Metropolitan Sergius, Patriarch Alexis.


 “’Striving to fence off’ the True-Orthodox Christians ‘from the influence of

Soviet reality,’ chiefly of course from atheist propaganda, ‘their leaders... make use
of the myth of Antichrist, who has supposedly been ruling in the world since 1917.’
The anti-Christian nature of the Soviet power is undoubted for any sound-thinking
person, and all the more for a Christian.


 “True Orthodox Christians ‘usually refuse to participate in elections,’ which in

the Soviet Union, a country deprived of freedom, are simply a comedy, ‘and other
public functions; they do not accept pensions, do not allow their children to go to
school beyond the fourth class...’ Here is an unexpected Soviet testimony of the truth,
to which nothing need be added.


 “Honour and praise to the True-Orthodox Christians, heroes of the spirit and
confessors, who have not bowed before the terrible power, which can stand only by
terror and force and has become accustomed to the abject flattery of its subjects. The
Soviet rulers fall into a rage over the fact that there exist people who fear God more
than men. They are powerless before the millions of True-Orthodox Christians.

“However, besides the True Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union and the
Moscow Patriarchate, which have communion neither of prayer nor of any other
kind with each other, there exists yet a part of the Russian Church—free from
oppression and persecution by the atheists the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of
Russia. She has never broken the spiritual and prayerful bonds with the Catacomb
Church in the home land. After the last war many members of this Church appeared
abroad and entered into the Russian Church Outside Russia, and thus the bond
between these two Churches was strengthened yet more—a bond which has been
sustained illegally up to the present time. As time goes on, it becomes all the stronger
and better established.

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 “The part of the Russian Church that is abroad and free is called upon to speak
in the free world in the name of the persecuted Catacomb Church in the Soviet
Union; she reveals to all the truly tragic condition of believers in the USSR, which the
atheist power so carefully hushes up, with the aid of the Moscow Patriarchate, she
calls on those who have not lost shame and conscience to help the persecuted.


 “This is why it is our sacred duty to watch over the existence of the Russian
Church Outside of Russia. The Lord, the searcher of hearts, having permitted His
Church to be subjected to oppression, persecution, and deprivation of all rights in the
godless Soviet State, has given us, Russian exiles, in the free world the talent of
freedom, and He expects from us the increase of this talent and a skilful use of it.
And we have not the right to hide it in the earth. Let no one dare to say to us that we
should do this, let no-one push us to a mortal sin. For the fate of our Russian Church
we, Russian bishops, are responsible before God, and no one in the world can free us
from this sacred obligation. No one can understand better than we what is
happening in our homeland, of which no one can have any doubt. Many times
foreigners, even Orthodox people and those vested with high ecclesiastical rank,
have made gross errors in connection with the Russian Church and false conclusions
concerning her present condition. May God forgive them this, since they do not
know what they are doing.


 “We shall not cease to accuse the godless persecutors of faith and those who
evilly cooperate with them under the exterior of supposed representatives of the
Church. In this the Russian Church Outside of Russia has always seen one of her
important tasks. Knowing this, the Soviet power through its agents wages with her a
stubborn battle, not hesitating to use any means: lies, bribes, gifts, and intimidation.
We, however, shall not suspend our accusation.


 “Declaring this before the face of the whole world, I appeal to all our brothers in
Christ—Orthodox bishops—and to all people who hold dear the fate of the
persecuted Russian Church as a part of the Universal Church of Christ, for
understanding, support, and their holy prayers. As for our spiritual children, we call
on them to hold firmly to the truth of Orthodoxy, witnessing of her both by one's
word and especially by a prayerful, devout Christian life.”

Confessor against Ecumenism

The new metropolitan faced a daunting task. For he had, on the one hand, to lead
his Church in decisively denouncing the apostasy of World Orthodoxy, communion
with which could no longer be tolerated. And on the other, he had to preserve unity
among the members of his own Synod, some of whom were in spirit closer to
“World Orthodoxy” than True Orthodoxy…

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 While Metropolitan Philaret was first-hierarch, ecumenism finally showed its true
face – the mask of a terrible heresy uniting in itself all the earlier heresies and
striving to engulf Orthodoxy completely, destroying the very concept of the Church
of Christ and creating a universal “church” of the antichrist. An important turning-
point came in 1964, when, in defiance of the holy canons, Pope Paul VI and Patriarch
Athenagoras of Constantinople prayed together in Jerusalem, and in December, 1965
they “lifted the anathemas” placed by the Roman and Constantinopolitan Churches
on each other in 1054.

At this critical point the Lord raised Metropolitan Philaret to explain to the
ecumenist Orthodox the essence of the danger into which they were falling. In the
first of a series of “Sorrowful Epistles”, on December 2/15, 1965, he wrote to
Patriarch Athenagoras protesting against his action: “The organic belonging of the
Orthodox to the union of the contemporary heretics does not sanctify the latter,
while it tears away the Orthodox entering into it from Catholic Orthodox Unity…
Your gesture puts a sign of equality between error and truth. For centuries all the
Orthodox Churches believed with good reasons that it has violated no doctrine of
the Holy Ecumenical Councils; whereas the Church of Rome has introduced a
number of innovations in its dogmatic teaching. The more such innovations were
introduced, the deeper was to become the separation between the East and the West.
The doctrinal deviations of Rome in the eleventh century did not yet contain the
errors that were added later. Therefore the cancellation of the mutual
excommunication of 1054 could have been of meaning at that time, but now it is only
evidence of indifference in regard to the most important errors, namely new
doctrines foreign to the ancient Church, of which some, having been exposed by St.
Mark of Ephesus, were the reason why the Church rejected the Union of Florence…
No union of the Roman Church with us is possible until it renounces its new
doctrines, and no communion in prayer can be restored with it without a decision of
all the Churches, which, however, can hardly be possible before the liberation of the
Church of Russia which at present has to live in the catacombs… A true dialogue
implies an exchange of views with a possibility of persuading the participants to
attain an agreement. As one can perceive from the Encyclical Ecclesiam Suam, Pope
Paul VI understands the dialogue as a plan for our union with Rome with the help of
some formula which would, however, leave unaltered its doctrines, and particularly
its dogmatic doctrine about the position of the Pope in the Church. However, any
compromise with error is foreign to the history of the Orthodox Church and to the
essence of the Church. It could not bring a harmony in the confessions of the Faith,
but only an illusory outward unity similar to the conciliation of dissident Protestant
communities in the ecumenical movement.”

In his second Epistle, written in 1969, Metropolitan Philaret said that he had
decided to turn to all the hierarchs, “some of whom occupy the oldest and most
glorious sees”, because, in the words of St. Gregory the Theologian, “the truth is

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betrayed by silence”, and it is impossible to keep silent when you see a deviation
from the purity of Orthodoxy – after all, every bishop at his ordination gives a
promise to keep the Faith and the canons of the holy fathers and defend Orthodoxy
from heresies. The holy metropolitan quoted various ecumenist declarations of the
World Council of Churches (WCC) and clearly showed, on the basis of the patristic
teaching and the canons, that the position of the WCC had nothing in common with
Orthodoxy, and consequently the Orthodox Churches should not participate in the
work of this council. He also emphasised that the voice of the MP was not the voice
of the True Russian Church, which was persecuted and concealed itself in the
catacombs. He called on all the Orthodox hierarchs to stand up in defence of the
purity of Orthodoxy.

On December 16, 1969 the MP Synod decided “that in cases where Old Believers
and Catholics ask the Orthodox Church to administer the holy sacraments to them,
this is not forbidden.”

ROCOR’s Archbishop Averky commented on this decision: “Now, even if some

entertained some sort of doubts about how we should regard the contemporary
Moscow Patriarchate, and whether we can consider it Orthodox after its intimate
union with the enemies of God, the persecutors of the Faith and Christ’s Church,
these doubts must now be completely dismissed: by the very fact that it has entered
into liturgical communion with the Papists, it has fallen away from Orthodoxy
[emphasis in the original] and can no longer be considered Orthodox…”

Metropolitan Philaret agreed with this judgement; and on March 31, 1970, under
his presidency the ROCOR Synod passed the following resolution, which for the first
time in the history of ROCOR defined the MP as not only schismatic, but also
heretical: “to consider the decision of the Moscow Patriarchate granting Roman
Catholics access to all the sacraments of the Orthodox Church as in violation of the
holy canons and contrary to Orthodox dogmatical doctrines. Entering thus into
communion with the heterodox, the Moscow Patriarchate estranges itself from the
unity of the holy Fathers and Doctors of the Church. By its action it does not sanctify
the heretics to whom it offers the sacraments, but it itself becomes part of their
heresy.”

Eighteen months later, on September 15/28, 1971 a decree of the Hierarchical

Council confirmed this decision: “The lack of accord of the decree of the Moscow
Patriarchate, concerning the granting of communion to Roman Catholics, with
Orthodox dogmatic teaching and the Church canons is completely clear to any
person even slightly informed in theology. It was justly condemned by a decree of
the Synod of the Church of Greece. The holy canons do permit the communication of
a great sinner who is under penance (epitimia) when he is about to die (I Ecumenical
13, Carthage 6, Gregory of Nyssa 2 and 5), but there is not a single canon which

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would extend this to include persons foreign to the Orthodox Church, as long as
they have not renounced their false doctrines. No matter what explanation
Metropolitan Nicodemus and the other Moscow hierarchs might try to give of this
act, it is completely clear that by this decision, even though with certain limitations,
communion has been established between the Moscow Patriarchate and Roman
Catholics. Furthermore, the latter have already made the decision to permit
members of the Orthodox Church to receive communion from them. All this was
particularly clearly demonstrated in the service held on December 14, 1970, in St.
Peter's Basilica in Rome, when Metropolitan Nicodemus gave communion to
Catholic clerics. It is perfectly clear that this act could not be justified by any need.
By this act the Moscow Patriarchate has betrayed Orthodoxy. If the 45th Canon of
the Holy Apostles excommunicates from the Church an Orthodox bishop or cleric
who has ‘only prayed together with heretics’, and the 10th Apostolic Canon forbids
even prayer together with those who are excommunicated, what can we say about a
bishop who dares to offer the Holy Mysteries to them? If catechumens must leave
the church before the sanctification of the Gifts and are not permitted even at point
of death to receive communion until they are united to the Church, how can one
justify the communicating of persons who, being members of heretical communities,
are much farther away from the Church than a catechumen, who is preparing to
unite with her? The act of the Moscow Synod, which was confirmed by the recent
Council of the Moscow Patriarchate in Moscow, extends the responsibility for this
un-Orthodox decision to all participants of the Moscow Council and to their entire
Church organization. The decision to admit Catholics to communion is an act that is
not only anticanonical, but heretical as well, as inflicting harm on the Orthodox
doctrine of the Church, since only true members of the Church are called to
communicate of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist. The Moscow decree,
logically considered, recognizes as her members those who, through their doctrinal
errors, in both heart and mind are far from her.”

The metropolitan wrote a third “Sorrowful Epistle” on the Sunday of Orthodoxy,

1972. In it he noted that although in the last two years hierarchs had made
declarations about the heterodoxy of the ecumenical movement, not one Orthodox
Church had declared that it was leaving the WCC. His aim in writing this fresh
epistle was “to show that abyss of heresy against the very concept of the Church into
which all the participants in the ecumenical movement are being drawn”. He
recalled the threatening prophecy of the Apostle Paul that to those who will not
receive “the love of the truth for salvation” the Lord will send “strong delusion, that
they should believe a lie. That they all might be damned who believed not the truth,
but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (II Thessalonians 2.10-12).

A fourth Epistle, written in 1975, was devoted to the so-called “Thyateira

Confession” of Metropolitan Athenagoras [of Thyateira and Great Britain], the
exarch of the Constantinopolitan Patriarchate in Europe – a document written in a

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completely heretical spirit, but which did not elicit any reaction from the leaders of
the official churches. Evidently Metropolitan Philaret hoped at the beginning that at
any rate one of the bishops of ‘World Orthodoxy’ might listen to his words, which is
why he addressed them in his epistles as true Archpastors of the Church. Besides,
attempts at exhortation corresponded to the apostolic command: ‘A man that is a
heretic after the first and second admonition reject, knowing that he that is such is
subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself’ (Titus 3. 10-11). It was fitting,
before anathematizing the apostates, to try and convert them from their error. Alas,
no conversion took place, and the ecumenical impiety continued to pour out. And so
the saint continued to explain the danger of the new heresy, which encompassed all
the old heresies into a heresy of heresies.

Thus while telling about the zeal of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, who slapped
the face of Arius when he blasphemed against the Son of God, Vladyka said: “O how
often we do not have enough of such zeal when it is really necessary to speak for the
insulted and trodden-on truth! I want to tell you about one incident that took place
not long ago and which it would have been difficult even to imagine several years
ago – and now we are going further and further downhill all the time. One man
came from Paris and said that the following incident had taken place at a so-called
‘ecumenical meeting’. Of course, you know what ecumenism is; it is the heresy of
heresies. It wants to completely wipe out the concept of the Orthodox Church as the
guardian of the Truth, and to create some kind of new, strange church. And so there
took place this ‘ecumenical meeting’. Present were a so-called Orthodox protopriest
from the Paris Theological (more exactly, heretical) Institute, a Jewish rabbi, a pastor
and a Catholic priest. At first they sort of prayed, and then began the speeches. And
then (forgive me for saying such things from the holy ambon, but I want to show
you what we have come to) the Jewish rabbi said that the Lord Jesus Christ was the
illegitimate son of a dissolute woman…

“But that’s not the main horror. The Jewish people has opposed God for a long
time… - so there’s nothing surprising in this. But the horror was that when he said
this everyone was silent. Later, a man who had heard this terrible blasphemy asked
the ‘Orthodox’ protopriest: ‘How could you keep silent?’ He replied: ‘I didn’t want
to offend this Jew.’ It’s wrong to offend a Jew, but to insult the All-Pure Virgin Mary
is permitted! Look at the state we have come to! How often does it happen to us all
now that we do not have the zeal to stand up, when necessary, in defence of our
holy things! The Orthodox cleric must zealously stand up against blasphemy, just as
the holy Hierarch Nicholas stopped the mouth of the heretic… But now,
unfortunately, we have become, as the saying goes, ‘shamefully indifferent to both
the evil and the good’. And it is precisely in the soil of this indifference, of a kind of
feeling of self-preservation, that the heresy of ecumenism has established itself – as
also apostasy, that falling away which is becoming more and more evident… Let us
remember, brethren, that Christian love embraces all in itself, is compassionate to all,

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wishes that all be saved and is sorry for, and merciful to, and loves every creature of
God; but where it sees a conscious assault on the truth it turns into fiery zeal which
cannot bear any such blasphemy… And so must it always be, because every
Orthodox Christian must always be zealous for God.”

Again he wrote, concerning the comments of certain ecumenist intellectuals: “I

must say that it is not the Church that has lagged behind the times, but it is they that
have fled to who knows where!"

“To what lengths of lunacy has contemporary mankind gone! It is not difficult to
arrive at this conclusion, if one observes what is transpiring in the world. Recently,
there was a press report stating that the organization of the so-called World Council
of Churches - which includes nearly all Christian denominations and Orthodox
Churches, except one i.e. ROCA - has accepted as a full member, a new religious
order that serves satan! Satanism has been embraced by the World Council of
Churches!

“Consequently, this means that the ill-fated person, which heads this frightening
and ungodly teaching - Satanism, will be seated at the same table with
representatives of Christian faiths, perhaps assisting in the formulation of
ecumenical communion and services that will not displease anyone! This means that
the WCC has secured a new brother-in-arms, a new colleague - the leader of this
insane Satanism.

“Incidentally, in passing, and as I stated before, nearly all Orthodox Churches

have joined the World Council of Churches, the most recent being the partial entry
of the American Red Sovietonomous Church, which has now existed for a number
of years.

“All these developments beg the question - where to now? This is to what extent
of madness that humanity has reached! Yet they yell that the Church cannot keep up
with them. But keep up with what? I reiterate - it's not the Church that has lagged
behind the times, but these people that have created their new lifestyle. They are the
ones that have fled from the Church to who knows where, and their demise will be
frightening!”

In addition to issuing his “Sorrowful Epistles”, Metropolitan Philaret and his

Synod took concrete measures to guard his flock against the heresy of ecumenism. It
was especially necessary to make clear that Catholics and Protestants were not inside
the True Church. And so in 1971 it was decreed that all Catholics and Protestants
coming to the Orthodox Church should be received by full threefold immersion
baptism.

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 This re-establishment of the canonical norms in relation to the reception of
heretics increased the prestige of ROCOR among all those seeking the truth of
Orthodoxy, and many converts from western confessions, as well as Orthodox from
other, ecumenical jurisdictions, sought refuge in ROCOR.

While rebuking the apostasy of the “World Orthodox” who took part in the
World Council of Churches, Metropolitan Philaret was zealous to establish relations
with other truly confessing Churches. Thus in December, 1969, under his leadership,
the Synod of ROCOR officially recognised the validity of the ordinations of the
“Florinite” branch of the Greek Old Calendarists. And in September, 1971
communion was also established with the “Matthewite” branch of the same Church.

On September 20, 1975, Metropolitan Philaret wrote to Metropolitan Epiphanius

of Kition, the leader of the Old Calendarist Church of Cyprus: “From the beginning
our Russian Church has known that the calendar innovation was unacceptable, and
has not dared to move this boundary set by patristic tradition, for the Ecclesiastical
Calendar is a support of the life of the Church and as such is fortified by decrees of
Holy Tradition.

“However, it is obvious to all that the calendar innovation caused a schism in the
Greek Church in 1924, and the responsibility for the schism weighs exclusively on
the innovators. This is the conclusion that will be reached by anyone studying the
Patriarchal Tomoi (as that of 1583) and taking into account the wretched and self-
evident fact of the schism and the frightful punishments, persecutions and
blasphemies which those who have cleaved to the patristic piety of Holy Tradition
have undergone.

“Thinking in this way, our Holy Synod has decreed that we ‘flee’ concelebrations
with the new calendarist modernists. We do not concelebrate with them, nor do we
give permission or a blessing to our clergy for such a concelebration. In order to
assure you of the truth of what we say, we inform you that whenever a community
in the diaspora is received into our Church, they are required to follow the patristic
Calendar of the Orthodox Church…”

In 1977 the metropolitan received under his omophorion fourteen priests of the
Russian Catacomb Church whose archpastor had died, thereby marking the
beginning of the return of ROCOR to the Russian land. He had a lofty estimate of the
exploit of the catacombniks and used to cite the example of the catacomb nuns
imprisoned in an Arctic camp, who refused to work for the commands of the godless
authorities and were put out in the icy wind in order to die - but through a miracle
of God – did not die. He used to say: “If the whole multi-million mass of Russian
people were to display such faithfulness as these nuns displayed, and refused to
obey the robbers who have planted themselves on the Russian people – communism

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would fall in a moment, for the people would receive the same help from God as
miraculously saved the nuns who went to certain death. But as long as the people
recognises this power and obeys it, even if with curses in their soul, this power will
remain in place.”

The decision of the MP to give communion to Catholics put the other Russian
jurisdiction in North America, the American Metropolia, into a difficult position; for
in the early 1960s the Metropolia (a body in schism from ROCOR since 1946) had
been, through Fr. Georges Florovsky, among the most conservative participants in
the ecumenical movement. However, this Church had been secretly negotiating with
the Moscow Patriarchate for a grant of autocephaly. According to the deal
eventually agreed upon, the patriarchate was to declare the Metropolia to be the
autocephalous Orthodox Church of America (OCA) in exchange for the Japanese
parishes of the Metropolia coming within the jurisdiction of the patriarchate. And
yet the MP’s parishes in America did not pass into the OCA, but remained directly
under the patriarchate!

This deal, which was recognized by none of the Local Churches and was to the
advantage, in the long run, only of the MP and the KGB (it was engineered by the
KGB General Metropolitan Nikodim of Leningrad), was made public in December,
1969 – just at the moment that the patriarchate announced that it had entered into
partial communion with the Catholics. Thus the former Metropolia found that it had
been granted autocephaly by a Church that was now in communion with the
Catholics. Naturally, this dealt a death blow to such anti-ecumenist opinion as still
existed in that Church.

In 1971 the ROCOR Council of Bishops passed over the heretical aspect of the
matter, and concentrated on the illegality of the church that had given the
autocephaly: “The Council of Bishops, having listened to the report of the Synod of
Bishops concerning the so-called Metropolia’s having received autocephaly from the
Patriarchate of Moscow, approves all the steps taken in due course by the Synod of
Bishops to convince Metropolitan Irenaeus and his colleagues of the perniciousness
of a step which deepens the division which was the result of the decision of the
Cleveland Council of 1946 which broke away from the Russian Orthodox Church
Outside of Russia.

“The American Metropolia has received its autocephaly from the Patriarchate of
Moscow, which has not possessed genuine canonical succession from His Holiness
Patriarch Tikhon from the time when Metropolitan Sergius, who later called himself
Patriarch, violated his oath with regard to Metropolitan Peter, the locum tenens of
the patriarchal throne, and set out upon a path which was then condemned by the
senior hierarchs of the Church of Russia. Submitting all the more to the commands
of the atheistic, anti-Christian regime, the Patriarchate of Moscow has ceased to be

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that which expresses the voice of the Russian Orthodox Church. For this reason, as
the Synod of Bishops has correctly declared, none of its acts, including the bestowal
of autocephaly upon the American Metropolia, has legal force. Furthermore, apart
from this, this act, which affects the rights of many Churches, has elicited definite
protests on the part of a number of Orthodox Churches, who have even severed
communion with the American Metropolia.

“Viewing this illicit act with sorrow, and acknowledging it to be null and void,
the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, which
has hitherto not abandoned hope for the restoration of ecclesiastical unity in
America, sees in the declaration of American autocephaly a step which will lead the
American Metropolia yet farther away from the ecclesiastical unity of the Church of
Russia. Perceiving therein a great sin against the enslaved and suffering Church of
Russia, the Council of Bishops DECIDES: henceforth, neither the clergy nor the laity
[of the Russian Church Abroad] are to have communion in prayer or the divine
services with the hierarchy or clergy of the American Metropolia.”

The Third All-Diaspora Council

In spite of his strictness in relation to heretical and schismatic churches, ROCOR

under the wise leadership of Metropolitan Philaret flourished and grew. True
Orthodoxy was preached not only to the Russian émigrés, but also in Alaska, and
India and Africa. New monasteries were founded, and the seminary attached to the
Holy Trinity monastery in Jordanville, New York State, became the major publisher
of books in Church Slavonic, as well as the best publisher of Orthodox English-
language texts. Old Russian icon-painting was regenerated under the hand of
Archimandrite Cyprian of Jordanville and his disciples. And church schools,
orphanages, work-houses and old people’s homes were built in many dioceses.

In 1974 the Third All-Emigration Council of ROCOR took place in Jordanville.

Just as the First Council, held at Karlovtsy in 1921, had defined the relationship of
ROCOR to the Bolshevik regime and the Romanov dynasty; and the Second Council,
held in Belgrade in 1938, defined her relationship to the Church inside Russia; so the
Third Council tried to define her relationship to the ecumenical and dissident
movements. As Metropolitan Philaret, president of the Council, said in his keynote
address: “First of all, the Council must declare not only for the Russian flock, but for
the entire Church, its concept of the Church; to reveal the dogma of the Church…
The Council must determine the place our Church Abroad holds within
contemporary Orthodoxy, among the other ‘so-called’ churches. We say ‘so-called’
for though now they often speak of many ‘churches’, the Church of Christ is single
and One.”

Here the metropolitan was hinting that faithfulness to the dogma of the One

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Church was not compatible with communion with “World Orthodoxy”, the Local
Orthodox Churches that participated in the ecumenical movement. However, such a
vision of ROCOR was not shared by all her hierarchs. Some saw the isolation of
ROCOR from other local Churches as necessitated, not so much by the struggle
against ecumenism, as by the need to preserve Russianness among the Russian
émigrés. They had passively acquiesced in Metropolitan Philaret’s “Sorrowful
Epistles”, and in the union with the Greek Old Calendarists. But they began to stir
when the consequences of this were spelled out by the “zealots” in ROCOR: no
further communion with the new calendarists, the Serbs and Jerusalem. The
unofficial leader of this group of bishops turned out to be Archbishop Anthony of
Geneva, who was supported by Bishop Laurus of Manhattan, Archbishop
Philotheus of Germany and Bishop Paul of Stuttgart.

In his address to the Council, entitled “Our Church in the Modern World”,
Anthony of Geneva declared: “By the example of our First Hierarchs [Anthony and
Anastasy] we must carefully preserve those fine threads which bind us with the
Orthodox world. Under no circumstances must we isolate ourselves, seeing around
us, often imagined, heretics and schismatics. Through gradual self-isolation we will
fall into the extremism which our metropolitans wisely avoided, we will reject that
middle, royal path which until now our Church has travelled… By isolating
ourselves, we will embark upon the path of sectarianism, fearing everyone and
everything, we will become possessed with paranoia.”

This somewhat hysterical appeal not to separate from the World Orthodox at just
the point when they were embarking upon “super-ecumenism” was criticised by
Protopresbyter George Grabbe: “The report does not mention to the degree
necessary, maybe, that life goes on, and the sickness of ecumenism deepens and
widens more and more. Condescension, oikonomia, must under different
circumstances be applied differently, and to different degrees. In doses too great it
can betray the Truth.” Then Archbishop Anthony of Los Angeles recalled that “we
have many Greek [Old Calendarist] parishes. Our concelebration with the new
calendarists was very bitter for them.”

Another important issue that divided the hierarchs was the attitude that needed
to be taken to the Moscow Patriarchate. In 1971 the MP elected a new patriarch,
which drew two resolutions from the Hierarchical Council of ROCOR. The first,
dated September 1/14, declared: “The free part of the Russian Church, which is
beyond the frontiers of the USSR, is heart and soul with the confessors of the faith
who… are called ‘the True Orthodox Christians’, and who often go by the name of
‘the Catacomb Church’… The Council of Bishops recognizes its spiritual unity with
them…”

The second, of the same date, is called “Resolution of the Russian Orthodox

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Church Outside of Russia Concerning the Election of Pimen (Izvekov) as Patriarch of
Moscow”: “All of the elections of Patriarchs in Moscow, beginning in 1943, are
invalid on the basis of the 30th Canon of the Holy Apostles and the 3rd Canon of the
7th Ecumenical Council, according to which, ‘if any bishop, having made use of
secular rulers, should receive through them Episcopal authority in the Church, let
him be defrocked and excommunicated along with all those in communion with
him’. The significance that the Fathers of the 7th Council gave to such an offence is
obvious from the very fact of a double punishment for it, that is, not only deposition
but excommunication as well, something unusual for ecclesiastical law. The famous
commentator on Canon Law, Bishop Nicodemus of Dalmatia, gives the following
explanation of the 30th Canon of the Holy Apostles: ‘If the Church condemned
unlawful influence by the secular authorities in the ordination of bishops at a time
when the rulers were Christians, then it follows that She should condemn such
action all the more when the latter are pagans and place even heavier penalties on
the guilty parties, who were not ashamed of asking for help from pagan rulers and
the authorities subordinated to them, in order to gain the episcopate. This (30th)
Canon has such cases in view’. If in defence of this position examples are given of
the Patriarchs of Constantinople who were placed on the Throne at the caprice of the
Turkish Sultans, one can reply that no anomaly can be regarded as a norm and that
one breach of Canon Law cannot justify another.

“The election of Pimen (Izvekov) as Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia at the
gathering calling itself an All-Russian Church Council in Moscow the 2nd of June of
this year, on the authority of the 3rd Canon of the 7th Ecumenical Council and other
reasons set forth in this decision, is to be regarded as unlawful and void, and all of
his acts and directions as having no strength.”

However, ROCOR’s attitude to the MP was complicated by the phenomenon

known as “the dissident movement” in the Soviet Union. The dissidents were
courageous opponents of the Soviet regime and supporters of human rights whose
activity affected both the political sphere (for example, Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn)
and the religious sphere (Solzhenitsyn again, the priests Eshliman, Yakunin and
Dudko, the layman Boris Talantov).

One of the most famous dissidents, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, had been expelled
from the Soviet Union in 1974 and now turned up at ROCOR’s All-Diaspora
Council, although he was a member of the MP, at the invitation of Archbishop
Anthony of Geneva. He promptly created a sensation by declaring that he did not
believe in the existence of the Catacomb Church. He supported ROCOR’s
independent stance, but opposed any condemnation of the MP as graceless.

This position eminently suited those hierarchs of ROCOR, such as Anthony of

Geneva, whose attitude to events in Russia was dictated as much by political as by

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spiritual or ecclesiological considerations. They were sincere anti-communists and
despised the kowtowing of the MP hierarchs to communism, but did not wish to
deny that the MP was a true Church. In other words, their opposition to the MP was
political and patriotic rather than strictly ecclesiastical and dogmatic.

Taking the opportunity presented by Solzhenitsyn’s speech, Archbishop Anthony

of Geneva read a report calling on ROCOR to support the dissidents, in spite of the
fact that they were ecumenists and in the MP. He was countered by Archbishop
Anthony of Los Angeles, who, while respecting the courage of the dissidents,
objected to a recognition of them that would devalue the witness of the true
catacomb confessors by giving the impression that it is possible to be a true confessor
from within a heretical church organization.

Also, Metropolitan Philaret moved for an official statement that the MP was
graceless. According to the witness of a seminarian present at the Council, the
majority of bishops and delegates would have supported such a motion. However,
at the last minute the metropolitan was persuaded not to proceed with the motion
on the grounds that it would have caused a schism.

The following is an extract from Protocol № 3 of the ROCOR Council, dated October
8/21, 1974: “Bishop Gregory says that to the question of the existence (of grace) it is not
always possible to give a final reply immediately. The loss of grace is the consequence of
spiritual death, which sometimes does not come immediately. Thus plants sometimes
die gradually. In relation to the loss of grace in the Moscow Patriarchate, it would be
interesting to make the comparison with the position of the iconoclasts, although the
sin of the Patriarchate is deeper. The President [Metropolitan Philaret] says that we
cannot now issue a resolution on grace in the Moscow Patriarchate, but we can be
certain that grace lives only in the true Church, but the Moscow hierarchs have gone
directly against Christ and His work. How can there be grace among them? The
metropolitan personally considers that the Moscow Patriarchate is graceless.”

Voices were heard at the 1974 Council arguing for union not only between the
ROCOR and MP dissidents, but also between ROCOR and the Paris and American
Metropolia (Orthodox Church of America) jurisdictions. Love, they said, should
unite us, and we should not emphasize our differences. But Metropolitan Philaret
pointed out that love which does not wish to disturb our neighbour by pointing out
his errors is not love but hatred! He continued to regard the Paris and American
jurisdictions as schismatic, and did not allow intercommunion with them. This was
in accordance with his profoundly felt conviction that there is only One True
Church.

Some years later, on November 26 / December 9, 1979, he returned to this subject

in a letter to Abbess Magdalena (Grabbe) of Lesna: “To such a degree do I not

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believe in the grace of the schismatics’ ‘manipulations’, that in the event that I were
dying and it was necessary to give me Communion, I would receive it neither from
the ‘Parisians’ nor from the American False-Autocephalites, lest in place of the Holy
Mysteries I should swallow a piece of bread and some wine… I am accused of
excessive strictness and of ‘fanaticism’. But I have sufficient basis for holding my
point of view, for behind me stand great authorities, both ancient and
contemporary… What do these clear and categorical words of this Holy Father [John
Chrysostom] signify? They indicate nothing other than that schism is graceless!
Christ was not divided, and His grace is one. If one is to believe in the ‘state of grace’
of schism, then one must either admit that we do not have grace, those who broke
away having taken it with them; or else admit that there are two graces and
obviously two true Churches, for grace is given only in the true Church… How
correct Vladyka Nektary [of Seattle] is when he always affirms: there is no such
thing as ‘different jurisdictions’; but there is only the Orthodox Church Abroad, and
outside of her are schisms and heresies.”

Conflicts in the Synod

The divisions that were beginning to emerge between Metropolitan Philaret and
the majority of other hierarchs were expressed by him in a letter to one of his few
allies, Protopresbyter George Grabbe, the Secretary of the Synod. Describing a
meeting with the hierarchs, he wrote: “I saw how truly alone I am among our
hierarchs with my views on matters of principle (although on a personal level I am
on good terms with everyone). And I am in earnest when I say that I am considering
retiring. Of course, I won’t leave all of a sudden, unexpectedly. But at the next
Council I intend to point out that too many things that are taking place in our church
life do not sit well with me. And if the majority of the episcopacy agree with me then
I will not raise the matter of retiring. But if I see that I am alone or see myself in the
minority then I will announce that I am retiring. For I cannot head, nor, therefore
bear the responsibility for that with which I am not in agreement in principle. In
particular, I do not agree with our practice of halfway relations with the American
and Parisian schismatics. The Holy Fathers insistently state that long and obdurately
continuing schism is close to being heresy, and that it is necessary to relate to
stubborn schismatics as to heretics, not allowing any communion with them
whatsoever (how Vladyka Anthony’s hair would stand on end at such a
pronouncement! But I remain unyielding)… There are very many other matters, too,
in particular about Solzhenitsyn, concerning whom I continue to remain more than
just cautious…”

Another important dissident was the Moscow priest Fr. Demetrius Dudko, who
conducted open meetings in his church that attracted many and influenced many
more. Unlike Solzhenitsyn, he knew of the Catacomb Church, and wrote of it in
relatively flattering terms. However, Fr. Demetrius was infected with ecumenist and

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liberal ideas, which, of course, he communicated to his followers. The right attitude
to him would have been to applaud his courage and the correct opinions he
expressed, while gently seeking to correct his liberalism and ecumenism. In no way
was it right to treat him as if he were a true priest in the True Church, and an
example to be followed that was no less praiseworthy than those of the true
confessors in the catacombs. But that is precisely what many in ROCOR, led by
Archbishop Anthony of Geneva, now began to do.

In 1979, in response to a series of protests by Fr. Demetrius against what he saw

as excessive strictness on the part of ROCOR towards the MP, Archbishop Anthony,
breaking the rule imposed by Metropolitan Anastasy and reasserted by Metropolitan
Philaret that ROCOR members should have no contact, “even of an everyday
nature”, with Soviet church clergy, wrote to Dudko: “I hasten to console you that the
part of the Russian Church which lives in freedom beyond the bounds of the
homeland, has never officially considered the Moscow Patriarchate, which is
recognised in the USSR, as graceless…. We have never dared to deny the grace-filled
nature of the official church, for we believe that the sacraments carried out by her
clergy are sacraments. Therefore our bishops received your clergy into the Church
Abroad in their existing rank… On the other hand, the representatives of the
Catacomb Church in Russia accuse us of not wanting to recognise the Moscow
Patriarchate as graceless.”

However, in 1980, Fr. Demetrius was arrested, which was closely followed by the
arrest of his disciples Victor Kapitanchuk and Lev Regelson. Then, on Soviet
television, Dudko confessed that his “so-called struggle with godlessness” was in
fact “a struggle with Soviet power”. Regelson confessed to having “criminal ties”
with foreign correspondents and of mixing religious activity with politics, while
Kapitanchuk also confessed to links with Western correspondents, saying that he
had “inflicted damage on the Soviet state for which I am very sorry”. Both men
implicated others in their “crimes”.

Metropolitan Philaret had been proved right – although many continued to justify
Dudko and denounced the zealots for “judging” him. But it was not a question of
“judging”, and nobody rejoiced in the fall of the dissident. It was a question of the
correct discerning of the boundaries of the Church and the correct attitude to those
struggling outside it. This tragedy overtook Dudko, wrote the metropolitan, because
his activity had taken place from within the Moscow Patriarchate – that is, “outside
the True Church”. And he continued: “What is the ‘Soviet church’? Fr.
Archimandrite Constantine has said often and insistently that the most terrible thing
that the God-fighting authorities have done to Russia is the appearance of the ‘Soviet
church’, which the Bolsheviks offered up to the people as the True Church, having
driven the real Orthodox Church into the catacombs or the concentration camps.
This false church has been twice anathematised. His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon and

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the All-Russian Church Council anathematised the communists and all their co-
workers. This terrible anathema has not been lifted to this day and preserves its
power, since it can be lifted only by an All-Russian Church Council, as being the
canonically higher Church authority. And a terrible thing happened in 1927, when
the leader of the Church, Metropolitan Sergius, by his shameful apostate declaration
submitted the Russian Church to the Bolsheviks and declared that he was
cooperating with them. In the most exact sense the expression of the prayer before
confession was fulfilled: ‘fallen under his own anathema’! For in 1918 the Church
anathematised all the co-workers of communism, and in 1927 she herself entered
into the company of these co-workers and began to praise the red God-fighting
authorities – to praise the red beast of which the Apocalypse speaks. And this is not
all. When Metropolitan Sergius published his criminal declaration, the faithful
children of the Church immediately separated from the Soviet church, and the
Catacomb Church was created. And she in her turn anathematised the official
church for her betrayal of Christ… We receive clergymen from Moscow not as ones
possessing grace, but as ones receiving it by the very act of union. But to recognize
the church of the evil-doers as the bearer and repository of grace – that we, of course,
cannot do. For outside of Orthodoxy there is no grace; and the Soviet church has
deprived itself of grace.”

Again, writing to Fr. Victor Potapov in 1980, he said: “Will anyone dare to affirm
that the Lord and His grace abide in the church of the evil-doers, which praises His
demonized enemies and cooperates with them… Can a church be grace-filled which
has been united with the God-fighters?! The reply is obvious…. We received clergy
from Moscow not as having grace, but as receiving it in the act of union itself. But we
cannot of course recognize the church of the evil-doers as the bearer and keeper of
grace. For there is not grace outside Orthodoxy, and the Soviet church has deprived
itself of grace.”

Another important cause of conflict between Metropolitan Philaret and

Archbishop Anthony of Geneva was the issue of relations with the Serbian Church.
The Serbs had joined the WCC in 1965 and were as fully under the control of the
communists as the MP. In spite of this, Archbishop Anthony continued to serve with
the Serbs in his West European diocese, citing the pre-war hospitality of the Serbs to
ROCOR in his justification. He also continued to serve with the new calendarists,
which led to several parishes leaving his diocese, and to the Matthewite Greek Old
Calendarists breaking communion with ROCOR in 1976.

The ROCOR Bishops had actually decided to refrain from communion with Serbs
as long ago as May 19 / June 1, 1967 in a conciliar resolution marked “Top Secret”:
“In addition to the resolution of the present Council of Bishops on relations with the
Serbian Orthodox church, the suggestion of his Eminence the First Hierarch and
President of the Council of Bishops Metropolitan Philaret has been accepted and

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confirmed, that all the Reverend Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad
should refrain from concelebration with the hierarchy of the Serbian Orthodox
Church.”

In connection with the Serbian issue Metropolitan Philaret wrote to Archbishop

Anthony: “I consider it my duty to point out to you, Vladyka, that your assertion
that we must thank the Serbian Church for her treatment of us, I fully accept, but
only as regards her past – the glorious past of the Serbian Church. Yes, of course, we
must holy the names of their Holinesses Patriarchs Demetrius and Barnabas in
grateful memory for their precious support of the Church Abroad at that time when
she had no place to lay her head.

“There is no denying that a certain honour is due the Serbian Church for her
refusing to condemn our Church Abroad at the parasynagogue in Moscow in 1971,
and also on later occasions when Moscow again raised the matter. But then, on the
other hand, she did participate in the aforementioned parasynagogue, when it
elected Pimen, and the Serbian hierarchs did not protest against this absolutely anti-
canonical election, when he who had already been chosen and appointed by the
God-hating regime was elected. Our Council of 1971 did not, and could not,
recognize Pimen, whereas the Serbian Patriarchate recognized and does recognize
him, addressing him as Patriarch, and is in full communion with him. And thus she
opposes us directly, for we attempt at all times to explain to the “Free World” that
the Soviet Patriarchate is not the genuine representative and head of the much-
suffering Russian Church. But the Serbian Church recognizes her as such, and by so
doing commits a grave sin against the Russian Church and the Russian Orthodox
people.

“How can there be any talk here of a special gratitude to her? Oh, if the Serbian
Church would, while recognizing our righteousness, likewise directly and openly,
boldly recognize the unrighteousness of the Soviets! Well – then there would truly
be something for us to thank her for! But now, as it is, while extending one hand to
us, she extends her other hand to our opponents and the enemies of God and the
Church. If it pleases you, having shut your eyes to this sad reality, to thank the Serbs
for such ‘exploits’ of theirs, then that is your affair, but I am not a participant in this
expression of gratitude.

“How dangerous are compromises in matters of principle! They render people

powerless in defence of the Truth. Why is it that the Serbian Patriarchate cannot
resolve to sever communion with the Soviet hierarchy? Because she herself is
travelling along the same dark and dangerous path of compromise with the God-
hating communists. True, she has not progressed along that path to the extent that
the Soviet hierarchy has, and she attempts to preach and defend the faith, but if the
shades and nuances here are quite different, yet, in principle, the matter stands on

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one and the same level”.

Metropolitan Philaret was the humblest and meekest of men. However, when it
came to matters of the faith, he showed no partiality to anyone. Thus in 1970
Archbishop Averky of Syracuse and Jordanville, who was a zealot for the faith and
close to the views of the metropolitan, permitted some Monophysite Copts to
celebrate a service in Jordanville. Metropolitan Philaret, considering that the church
in Jordanville had been defiled by the ministrations of heretics, ordered that it be re-
consecrated. Then, in a letter to Archbishop Averky, he pointed out all the
anticanonicity of this act, emphasising that it could be justified by no economy and
expressing the fear that the faithful children of ROCOR would turn away from her if
similar incidents were repeated…

Sorrows and Joys

Metropolitan Philaret had to suffer many slanders and attacks, even physical
ones. Once a certain archimandrite in his presence declared to the other hierarchs
that it was necessary quickly to remove “such an unfitting Metropolitan”…

In 1976, the holy hierarch came to England and was asked by the ruling hierarch,
Archbishop Nikodim of Richmond and Great Britain, why he had criticised the
baptism of a group of laypeople in his diocese. The metropolitan said he had no
objection and asked to see his letter. On being shown it, he said that he had not
written it – his signature had been forged…

Again, in 1977, to a layman who was protesting against the ecumenist activities of
Archbishop Anthony of Geneva, he said that while he agreed with his protest, he
could do nothing to help him because he had a gun at his head – and at this point he
formed the fingers of his right hand in the form of a revolver and pointed it at his
temple.

According to Fr. Alexis Makrikov, several attempts were made on his life. One
took place when he was returning by ship from the Lesna convent in France to the
USA. Suddenly the fire in the ship’s furnace became so powerful that the smoke-
stack became white-hot. The captain of the ship, seeing no possibility of quenching
the force of the fire, which threaten to melt down the smoke-stack and engulf the
whole ship, turned for help to Metropolitan Philaret and asked him to pray, because
in his opinion only God could save the ship and its passengers. The saint listened to
the captain and immediately began to pray to God. Between 10 and 20 minutes
passed, and the smoke-stack began to cool and turn red. And within an hour it had
become black again. The ship was saved by the grace of God! The captain again
came to the metropolitan, kissed his hand and thanked him for his prayers…

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 In spite of the opposition of individual bishops and clergy, as well as the enemies
from outside the Church, Metropolitan Philaret was loved by the broad masses of
the church people. As during his life in Harbin, the holy hierarch refused nobody
help on his becoming First-Hierarch. He took special care over the spiritual
enlightenment of the young, whom he very much loved and by whom he was
always surrounded.

He taught people true humility and repentance: “Sometimes people say about
themselves: “Oh, I’m very religious, I’m a deep believer,” – and they say this
sincerely, thinking that can in actual fact say this about themselves with good
reason… From the life of the Church we see that those who really had true faith
always thought about themselves and their faith in a very humble way, and always
considered and were conscious of themselves as being of little faith… He who really
believes does not trust his faith and sees himself as being of little faith. He who in
essence does not have the true faith thinks that he believes deeply…

“We see a similar ‘paradox’ in the moral, ethical and spiritual evaluation of a
person;… righteous men see themselves as sinners, while sinners see themselves as
righteous.

“… In the soul of a sinner unenlightened by the Grace of God, who does not think
about the spiritual life, who does not think about correction, who does not think
about how he will answer for himself before God, everything has merged together,
and he himself can make out nothing in it; only the all-seeing God sees the pitiful
condition of the soul of this man. But he himself does not feel it and does not notice
it, and thinks that he is not that bad, and that the passages in the Gospel that talk
about great sinners have no relationship at all to him. Perhaps he does not think of
himself as holy, but he supposes that he is not that bad…

“Those who were pleasing to God thought of themselves in a completely different

way and saw themselves and their spiritual nature in a completely different light.
One ascetic wept all the time; his disciple asked him: ‘Father, what are you weeping
about?’ ‘About my sins, my son,’ he replied. ‘But what sins can you have? And why
do you weep over them so much?’ ‘My son,’ replied the ascetic, ‘if I could see my
sins as they should be seen, in all their ugliness, I would ask you to weep for my sins
together with me.’ That is how these extraordinary people spoke about themselves.
But we, being ordinary people, do not see our sinfulness and do not feel its weight.
Hence it turns out as I have just said: a person comes to confession and does not
know what to say. One woman arriving for confession just said: ‘Batyushka, I’ve
forgotten everything.’ What do you think: if a man has a painful hand or leg or some
inner organ, and goes to the doctor, will he forget that he has a pain? So is it with the
soul: if it really burns with a feeling of repentance, it will not forget its sins. Of
course, not one person can remember all his sins – all to the last one, without

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exception. But true repentance unfailing demands that a man should be conscious of
his sinfulness and feel sincere compunction over it.

“We pray in the Great Fast that the Lord grant us to behold our sins – our sins,
and not other people’s. But it is necessary to pray about this not only in the Fast, but
at all times – to pray that the Lord may teach us to see ourselves as we should and
not think about our supposed ‘righteousness’. But we must remember that only the
mercy of God can open a man’s eyes to his true spiritual condition and in this way
place him on the path of true repentance.”

During the period of service of Metropolitan Philaret as first-hierarch of the

Russian Church Abroad many new saints of God were glorified by the Church
Abroad: Righteous John of Kronstadt (in 1964), St. Herman of Alaska (in 1971),
Blessed Xenia of St. Petersburg (in 1978), the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and
Confessors of Russia (1981) and St. Paisius Velichkovsky (1982).

Of these canonizations the most significant was that of the Holy New Martyrs
and Confessors of Russia. Unlike the seemingly similar act of the MP in 2000, this
act did not confuse true martyrs with false, true servants of Christ with sergianists
and traitors. Its influence within Russia was, and continues to be, very great. Thus
in 2008 the Russian True Orthodox Church continued the act of 1982 by canonizing
a further 49 catacomb saints – and St. Philaret himself!

Metropolitan Philaret wrote about this unique event: "Although in the history of
the Church of Christ we see examples of martyrdom in all periods of her existence,
still, before the Russian Revolution the exploit of martyrdom was something
primarily of the first centuries of Christianity, when paganism strove by iron and
blood to annihilate the Holy Church.

"We see something else today. With the appearance and consolidation of God-
fighting communism in Russia, there began a persecution of the faith unheard of in
its cruelty and broad scale. As one Church writer has defined it, Orthodox Russia
has been on Golgotha, and the Russian Church on the Cross .... The Russian Church
and people have given an uncounted multitude of cases of the martyric endurance
of persecutions and death for faith in Christ... not merely hundreds or thousands,
but millions of sufferers for faith--an unheard of and shocking phenomenon!

"But at the same time the Russian land is being purified of this defilement by the
sacred blood of the New Martyrs who have suffered for faith and righteousness.
The Russian land has been abundantly watered by this blood--watered, sanctified,
and cleansed from the senselessness of the atheists and God-fighters! ....

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 "The day draws near of the canonization-glorification of the uncounted choir of
martyrs and confessors of the faith which the Russian Church and people have
manifested to the world. This will be a day of the greatest solemnity for the
Orthodox faith--not only in Russia and in the Russian diaspora, but in the whole
World, wherever there are · faithful children of the Orthodox Church....

"Great and numerous is the choir of the Russian New Martyrs. It is headed first
of all by the sacred names of His Holiness, Patriarch Tikhon, the murdered
Metropolitans Vladimir and Benjamin; Metropolitan Vladimir occupies a special
place of honour in it as the first martyr who placed the beginning of this glorious
choir. At the same time, an entirely special place in the choir of the New Martyrs is
taken by the Royal Family, headed by the Tsar-martyr, Emperor Nicolas
Alexandrovich, who once said: ‘If for the salvation of Russia a sacrifice is needed, I
will be this sacrifice…’

“Members of the Russian Church Outside of Russia! We are preparing for a great
solemnity – a solemnity not only for the Russian Orthodox Church, but also for the
entire Ecumenical Church, because the whole Orthodox Church in all its parts is
one and lives a single spiritual life. Let this solemnity of the Orthodox faith and the
beauty of the exploit of martyrdom be not only a general Church solemnity, but
also a personal solemnity for each of us! We call all members of the Church Outside
of Russia to prepare for it with increased prayer, confession, and communion of the
Holy Mysteries of Christ, so that our whole Church with one mouth and one heart
might glorify Him from Whom comes every good gift and every perfect gift - God
Who is wondrous in His saints!"

In 1982 a great miracle of the mercy of God was revealed – the wonder-working
icon of the Iveron-Montreal icon of the Mother of God, which for fifteen years
unceasingly emitted myrrh until its disappearance in 1997…

The Anathema against Ecumenism

Time passed, and it became clearer and clearer that it was impossible for the
Orthodox to have any kind of communion with the “churches” of World Orthodoxy,
let alone be in them. In 1980 the ecumenical press-service (ENI) declared that the
WCC was working out a plan for the union of the all Christian denominations into
one new religion. In 1981 in Lima (Peru) an inter-confessional eucharistic service was
devised at a conference during which Protestant and Orthodox representatives in the
WCC agreed that the baptism, eucharist and ordination of all the denominations was
valid and acceptable. But the greatest scandal was elicited by the Vancouver General
Assembly of the WCC in 1983. Present at it were representatives of all existing
religions, and it began with a pagan rite performed by the local Indians. Orthodox
hierarchs took part in the religious ceremonies together with representatives of all

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the world’s religions.

The ROCOR Synod was also meeting in Canada at this time. It condemned this
latest and most extreme manifestation of ecumenism: “In its decision of 28 July / 10
August, our Council explained that the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia
does not participate in the World Council of Churches insofar as the latter attempts
to represent those assembled in it, representatives of religions differing in their
opinions, as though they had some sort of unity in faith. In reality, though, this very
position is a lie, inasmuch as they, members of various confessions and sects, have
not given up their points of disagreement with each other, much less with the
Orthodox Church, in dogmas and in fundamental attitudes. In the name of unifying
formulas, these differences of opinion are not destroyed, but are just set aside.
Instead of the unshakable truths of the faith, they try to see only opinions, not
obligatory for anyone. In reply to the confession of the one Orthodox Faith, they say
together with Pilate: ‘What is truth?’ And the nominally Orthodox members of the
Ecumenical Movement more and more deserve the reproach of the Angel of the
Church of Laodicea: ‘I know your works: you are neither hot nor cold: O if only you
were hot or cold’ (Revelation 3.15). A clear manifestation of such false union was the
serving of the so-called Lima Liturgy…”

Then the Synod anathematised ecumenism, declaring: “To those who attack the
Church of Christ by teaching that Christ’s Church is divided into so-called
‘branches’ which differ in doctrine and way of life, or that the Church does not exist
visibly, but will be formed in the future when all ‘branches’ or sects or
denominations, and even religions will be united in one body; and who do not
distinguish the priesthood and mysteries of the Church from those of the heretics,
but say that the baptism and eucharist of heretics is effectual for salvation; therefore
to those who knowingly have communion with these aforementioned heretics or
advocate, disseminate , or defend their new heresy of Ecumenism under the pretext
of brotherly love or the supposed unification of separated Christians, Anathema.”

Commenting on the anathema, Archbishop Vitaly of Montreal wrote: “Without

doubt, the time for discussion and polemics has passed, and the time has come to
judge this movement. And, however insignificant our Council of 1983 may seem, it
has at last condemned ecumenism and anathematized it…”

The Anathema against Ecumenism was seized upon with delight by the True
Orthodox not only in ROCOR, but also in Greece and on Mount Athos, and may be
considered the single most important ecclesiastical act of the True Orthodox Church
in the second half of the twentieth century. For many who had been worried that
ROCOR was not being firm and clear enough in her dealings with the ecumenists, it
put an end to their doubts and reaffirmed their faith in her. The import of the
anathema was clear: all Orthodox Churches that were fully participating members of

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the WCC fell under it and so were deprived of the grace of sacraments. Moreover,
those in communion with the ecumenist heretics became participants in the same
heresy. De facto, the ecumenists had already fallen away from the Church, and the
anathema only witnessed to the faithful at large that they were outside the Church.

The opponents of this decisive break with “World Orthodoxy” said and say much
about the “invalidity” of this anathema – to the extent of saying that the hierarchs of
ROCOR accepted no anathema at all, but that certain “evil-minded people” simply
introduced it into the text of the Acts of the Council. However, this seems
improbable: after all, none of the hierarchs later renounced the anathema (in fact, it
was reaffirmed in council in 1998), none of them said that he had not signed it; the
anathematisation of ecumenism was introduced into the Synodicon of the Sunday of
the Triumph of Orthodoxy…

Thus the work of Metropolitan Philaret’s whole life found its highest expression
in a historical act having universal significance for the whole fullness of Orthodoxy –
in the official anathematisation of “the heresy of heresies” and the apostates of our
age. It is evident that no exhortation directed at the “Orthodox” ecumenists could
have any effect, and a very powerful cauterisation was necessary in order to halt the
general infection. Thus in one of his sermons, while speaking about those who
transgress the teaching of the Church, he explained the significance of the anathema:
“The Church declares that they have cut themselves off from communion with the
Church, having ceased to listen to her maternal voice. And this is not only for the
information of others, so that they should know this, but also for the good of the
excommunicates themselves. The Church hopes that this threatening warning, at
any rate, will act upon them…”

“The distinguishing characteristic of our time,” he used to say, “is that people are
now more and more possessed by indifference to the Divine truth. Many beautiful
words are spoken, but in fact – in reality – people are completely indifferent to the
truth. Such indifference was once displayed by Pilate, when the Lord stood before
him at his trial. Before Pilate stood the Truth Himself, but he sceptically declared:
“What is truth?” – that is, does it exist? And if it does, then it is a long way from us,
and perhaps does not exist. And with complete indifference he turned away from
Him Who announced the truth to him, Who was the Truth Himself. And now people
have become similarly indifferent. You have probably more than once heard
supposedly Christian words about the union of all into one faith, into one religion.
But remember that what lies behind this is precisely indifference to the truth. If the
truth were dear to a man, he would never go on this path. It is precisely because the
truth is of little interest to everyone, and they simply want somehow to make
simpler and more convenient arrangements in matters of the faith, too, that they say:
‘Everyone must unite’…

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 “Brethren, we must fear this indifference to the truth. Our Lord Jesus Christ in the
Apocalypse clearly indicates to us how terrible indifference to the truth is. There he
turns to the Angel standing at the head of the Laodicean Church and says: ‘I know
thy works. Thou art neither cold nor hot. Oh if only thou wast hot or cold! But since
thou art neither cold nor hot (but lukewarm – neither the one nor the other, the truth
is not dear to thee), I will spew thee from My mouth!’ As an organism cast out of
itself something which is absolutely repulsive and harmful to it.

“Let us remember that this indifference to the truth is one of the main woes of our
age of apostasies. Value the truth, O man! Be a fighter for the truth… Place the truth
higher than all else in life, O man, and never allow yourself to decline in any way
from the true path…”

Repose and Miracles

Metropolitan Philaret passed away to the Lord at about 6.30 a.m. on November
8/21, 1985, on the day of the Chief Captain of the Heavenly Hosts, St. Michael. He
had been suffering from cancer.

In his typewriter after his repose was found a sheet of paper including the
following words from his Spiritual Testament, a quotation from the words of the Lord
to the angel of the Church of Philadelphia: “Hold fast that which thou hast, that no
man take thy crown” (Revelation 3.11).

He continued: “These words, taken from the sacred Book of the Apocalypse, have
a particular significance in our time, in our greatly sorrowful, evil, temptation-filled
days. They remind us of that priceless spiritual wealth that we possess, as children of
the Orthodox Church.

“Yes, we are rich. This spiritual wealth is that which the Holy Church possesses,
and it is offered to all her faithful children. The teaching of the Faith, of our
marvelous, salvific Orthodox Faith; the countless living examples of the lives of
people who have lived according to the Faith, according to those lofty principles and
rules that the Church offers us. Those who have attained that spiritual purity and
exaltedness that is called holiness; the beauty and majesty of our Orthodox Divine
services and a living participation in them through faith and prayer; the plenitude of
the grace-filled spiritual life that is open to each and every one, and, crowning it all,
the unity of the children of the Church in that love of which the Savior said: By this
shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another (John
13.35).”

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 Metropolitan Philaret was truly the angel of the Philadelphian Church, the True
Orthodox Church of Christ, and the righteous accuser of the Laodicean Church, the
church of ecumenist indifference to the truth, the church of the Antichrist…

Nearly a thousand people attended the Metropolitan's funeral, which was held at
the Cathedral of the Mother of God of the Sign in New York, on the Sunday after his
blessed repose. Eight hierarchs, thirty-one priests and eight deacons led the service.
At the end of the ceremony, when the faithful had given their Archpastor the last
kiss, his relics were taken to the convent of Novo-Diveyevo in Spring Valley, where
they rested the night. In the early morning they were taken to Holy Trinity
Monastery at Jordanville. After the Divine Liturgy, they were laid to rest in the crypt
of the Cemetery Chapel of the Dormition of the Mother of God.

The handmaiden of God Nadia Mokhoff said, “This man was the kindest. He
would take the youth that no one cared about and bring them into the church with
nothing but kindness. He was a father to every single one of us." His care for the
young people of the Church was something that did indeed characterize his
episcopate. His instructions to young people have been published in English
translation. Only a year before his blessed repose the Metropolitan presided at the
consecration of his vicar, Bishop Hilarion of Manhattan, to whom he particularly
entrusted the spiritual care of the youth. Larry Binins in Newsday (Monday, 25th
November) caught the key-note of the Metropolitan's ministry by portraying him as
‘the kind Bishop of Russian Orthodoxy’.”

Nearly thirteen years passed, and it was arranged that the remains of
Metropolitan Philaret should be transferred from the burial-vault under the altar of
the cemetery Dormition church of the Holy Trinity monastery in Jordanville into a
new burial-vault behind the monastery’s main church. In connection with this, it was
decided, in preparation for the transfer, to carry out an opening of the tomb. On
November 17, 1998 Archbishop Laurus of Syracuse and Holy Trinity, together with
the clergy of the community, served a pannikhida in the burial vault; the coffin of
Metropolitan Philaret was placed in the middle of the room and opened. The relics of
the metropolitan were found to be completely incorrupt, they were of a light colour;
the skin, beard and hair were completely preserved. His vestments, Gospel, and the
paper with the prayer of absolution were in a state of complete preservation. Even
the white cloth that covered his body from above had preserved its blinding
whiteness, which greatly amazed the undertaker who was present at the opening of
the coffin – he said that this cloth should have become completely black after three
years in the coffin… It is noteworthy that the metal buckles of the Gospel in the
coffin fell into dust on being touched – they had rusted completely; this witnessed to
the fact that it was very damp in the tomb; and in such dampness nothing except
these buckles suffered any damage! In truth this was a manifest miracle of God.

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 However, the reaction of Archbishop Laurus to this manifest miracle was
unexpected: he ordered that the coffin with the relics be again closed…

On the eve of the reburial of the relics, November 20, at the beginning of the
fourth hour of the day, the coffin of the holy hierarch was taken from the Dormition
church to the monastery church of the Holy Trinity in a car. The pannikhida was
served by Archbishop Laurus and 20 clergy. None of the other hierarchs of ROCOR
came to the translation of the relics of the holy hierarch Philaret (only Bishop Gabriel
of Manhattan wanted to come, but he was hindered by a sudden illness). After the
pannikhida the coffin with the body of the holy hierarch was placed in the side wall
of the church, and at 19.00 the All-Night Vigil began. The next day, November 21,
Archbishop Laurus headed the celebration of the Divine Liturgy in the church. With
him concelebrated 18 priests and 11 deacons, several more clergy who had arrived
prayed with the laypeople in the church itself. About 400 people gathered in the
over-crowded church. All those present were greatly upset and grieved by the fact
that during the pannikhida, as during the All-Night Vigil and the Liturgy, the coffin
with the relics of Metropolitan Philaret remained sealed. In spite of the numerous
requests of clergy and laity, who had specially come to Jordanville so as to kiss the
relics of the holy hierarch, Archbishop Laurus refused to open the coffin. He also
very strictly forbade making photocopies from the shots that had already been taken
of the incorrupt relics of the saint or even to show them to anyone. Archbishop
Laurus called on those assembled to pray for the peace of the soul of the reposed
First Hierarch until the will of God should be revealed concerning his veneration
among the ranks of the saints… After the Liturgy a pannikhida was served, and then
the coffin with the relics of the holy hierarch Philaret were taken in a cross
procession around the Holy Trinity cathedral and then to the prepared place in the
burial vault, where Archbishop Laurus consigned the relics of the holy hierarch to
the earth.

Several miracles have been recorded since the repose of Metropolitan Philaret:

1. I.K. writes: “I am writing to you in order to inform you of an unusual

occurrence in connection with Metropolitan Philaret. I will try to briefly convey to
you all the details.

“In November of 1994 I had a serious operation after which the doctor gave the
diagnosis of cancer in its third stage, i.e., the worst type, which would not
successfully respond to treatment. Although they removed much of the malignant
growth from the abdomen, still there remained some in microscopic form. After this
there was a course of chemotheraphy, the results of which were encouraging.

“In September of 1996 the cancer returned. The doctors determined that perhaps I
might live until spring. Towards Pascha of 1997 my condition became very bad – my

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abdomen began to fill up with fluids and my strength was failing quickly. The
doctors decided to try another course of chemotherapy, beginning on Wednesday of
Bright Week.

“During Passion Week they brought me a shirt of Metropolitan Philaret. The shirt
was wrapped in a plastic bag. Upon opening it I smelled the slight fragrance of
myrrh.

“That evening I put the shirt on and stood to pray, first evening prayers and then
an akathist for the reposed. During the reading the fragrance of myrrh increased
from time to time. That night I was often awakened from the powerful fragrance of
myrrh. In the morning, when my family came to my bedroom to see me, they were
all struck by the strong fragrance of myrrh which filled the room. This continued for
three successive nights.

“Attending the Paschal services was very difficult, since by that time I had
become very weak. I had to sit throughout the entire service. With much effort I
walked in the procession, during which time I implored the Lord to have mercy on
me. During Liturgy I felt relief and was even able to stand through part of it.

“On Wednesday I went to my scheduled appointment with the doctor. They took
a blood sample. The course of chemotherapy followed, but during the first injection
my body rejected the medicine. A serious reaction occurred and they stopped the
treatment. In a week I returned for an appointment with the doctor. He was
completely bewildered, and said that the analysis of the blood (taken before the
attempted treatment the previous week) showed a sharp decrease in the spread of
the cancer.

“I know that many people were praying, and continue to pray, for my health, for
which I am deeply grateful and thankful. However, the incident with the shirt of
Metropolitan Philaret is indisputable and miraculous. To this day the shirt continues
to give off a faint fragrance.”

2. The seminarian Sergei Kartavy writes: “On Sunday, November 22, 1998, the
feast of Archangel Michael and the day of the translation of the relics of
Metropolitan Philaret, I was supposed to receive Communion. I awoke about an
hour and a half before the beginning of Liturgy in order to read my morning prayers
and the preparatory prayers for Communion. The night before I felt fine, but upon
awakening I felt a severe pain in my stomach.

“Hoping that the pain would subside I remained lying in bed. The pain had not
subsided but had in fact increased somewhat, and there was just a little extra time in
which to read the prayers for Communion and go to Liturgy. Because of the severe

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pain in my stomach, I was already considering going to look for Fr. Gabriel in order
to get some sort of medicine, but if I did, I would not be able to receive Communion.

“Prior to this many people were talking about Metropolitan Philaret, requesting
prayers for him and somehow to him. Frankly speaking up to then I did not
understand how to pray if a saint has not yet been glorified, nevertheless, I decided
to somehow pray for him with the hope of receiving some relief from my pain, and
mainly so I could read my prayers and receive Communion. I said three times, ‘Lord
have mercy on the soul of Metropolitan Philaret’, unsure if I was praying correctly or
not. But, in the course of five minutes after this, the pain completely went away.
There remained only a feeling of heaviness in my stomach, which also vanished after
some time. Therefore, I was able to read my prayers and receive Communion. Glory
be to God!”

3. Matushka Tatiana Fyodorov, the wife of Protopriest Constantine Fyodorov,

writes: “During the time of the church troubles shortly after Metropolitan
Philaret reposed, my husband was suffering very much over it. Hearing both sides
of these sad situations finally ‘got to him’. He prayed to Metropolitan Philaret about
it. He was very tired and fell asleep. He had a dream that he was in church, fully
vested for the Divine Liturgy, and was told that Metropolitan Philaret was coming
unexpectedly. He prepared to meet the Bishop with the Holy Cross on the plate. The
altar boy gave Metropolitan Philaret the staff and Metropolitan gave the altar boy his
staff. Metropolitan was looking very radiant and young. Then Fr. Constantine put
the plate with the Holy Cross on the analoy, which is not customarily done, made a
full prostration before the metropolitan and said: ‘Vladyka, it is so difficult for me.’
The metropolitan answered: ‘Yes, I know. But you, Fr. Constantine, should think less
and pray more.’ Father tried to get up from the prostration but the metropolitan
pinned his head down with the staff. At that moment, Father woke up full of joy and
peace, but with a headache where the staff had been placed on his head. Since than,
he feels Metropolitan is looking after him, and is always there to help.

“In December of 2005, soon after the Feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos into
the Temple, Father suffered terrible pains in the bones of his legs. He could not even
walk. He had severe, excruciating pain. To try to get up he had to use crutches or a
wheelchair, all with intense pain. From the severe pain he could not even sleep. He
remained in bed for several days, thinking it would get better if he took some pain
killers. That didn't help either. It was the worst he ever suffered, as he does have
some bone problems. On Friday he finally called the doctor. He said he would come
on Saturday with a specialist. That Friday evening we prayed from the Canon for the
Sick and Father asked Blessed Metropolitan Philaret to help him. After the prayers,
Father finally fell asleep peacefully for the night without pain. Lo, and behold, the
next morning he was relieved of the pain so that he could walk normally!
The doctor came with the specialist, examined him, asked questions and gave him

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some medicine. He said it was a bone virus. The pain did not come back and he was
able to walk. Thanks be to God!”

4. Protopriest Constantine Fyodorov (France). “Just before going to Jordanville,

on the occasion of the uncovering of the relics of Metropolitan Philaret, Matushka
and I made a big trip around France. After two hours (it was necessary to travel
seven hours in all), the car stalled. It seemed as if the petrol had run out. No matter
how much I pumped the pedal, nothing helped. There was nothing around us, and
my matushka panicked. I said: ‘There’s no need to worry so much – I’m wearing the
epitrachelion of Metropolitan Philaret, and the main thing is that I have the Life-
giving Cross. You’d better get down to praying.’ A couple of seconds passed, and
suddenly she said from the heart: ‘Vladyko Metropolitan, help. It’s your child sitting
here. Not for my sake, I’m unworthy, but for his sake, help us. Arrange it so that we
can go further.’ I turned the key, and the machine started as if nothing had
happened. That was a great joy for my matushka.”

5. Protodeacon Christopher Birchall (Canada). “I was told this story by Lydia

Mikhailovna Klar, the wife of Evgenia Iosiphovich Klar, the dean of the Jordanville
seminary. In 1994 it was discovered that their daughter-in-law, Irina Klar, was ill
with cancer. Her husband, Michael, a doctor by profession, was in despair. He
prayed ardently for her recovery, and at times it seemed that the illness was in
recession. Recently, however, in 1997, there was a sharp deterioration. Lydia
Mikhailovna gave the pious spouses a shirt that had belonged to Metropolitan
Philaret, which she in her time had received from the cell-attendant of the hierarch,
Protodeacon Nikita Chakirov. Irina put it on and immediately sensed a powerful
fragrance; she thought that someone in the room had poured out some perfume.
Irina and Michael prayed fervently for the whole evening, and then Irina fell asleep
in this shirt. The next morning she felt significantly better and went to the hospital
for an examination. As a result of the investigation it became clear that the cancerous
tumour had become 70 times smaller! There was no rational explanation for this, and
the hospital personnel were amazed. At the end of 1998 Irina’s tumour again began
to grow. After the remains of Metropolitan Philaret had been uncovered and found
to be incorrupt, Archimandrite Luke from Jordanville became to gather information
on miracles. Irina decided that she had to tell him about her healing, and felt that she
had not been right when she had been silent about it earlier. After she told Fr. Luke
what had happened, she again felt better. Since then (a year has passed) she has been
in good health. The cancerous tumour had not completely disappeared, but it has
become so much smaller that Irina can carry on a normal life and dedicate herself to
the upbringing of her children.”

6. Priest Stephen Allen (USA). “Above my desk a photograph of Metropolitan

Philaret has been hanging for a long time. I attached no particular significance to it.
But suddenly I had the thought that I should light a lampada in front of it and pray

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to Vladyka. Several days later I was informed that his incorrupt relics had been
uncovered in Jordanville. And now I always pray to the holy hierarch Philaret.”

7. Elena Kudryavtseva (Moscow). “Some time ago, the symptoms of an allergy

appeared in our little son. It got worse and worse from day to day. The doctors could
give no coherent explanation of the rash, which spread all over his body, and in
places was turning into a hard crust. Medicines provided only insignificant relief.
Moreover, it was not without harm for the child to take the tablets so often. We
didn’t know how to be or what to do. An acquaintance of ours, a pious and sincere
person, who venerated Vladyka Philaret (Voznesensky), told a story about a
seriously ill person who was taken to hospital. The doctors had already lost hope of
curing him. The sick person took a photograph of the hierarch and with faith placed
it on the painful place. Soon he improved, an operation was not required, and he
was healed from his serious illness. Remembering this story, we took a photograph
of the hierarch Philaret (Voznesensky) which had been taken not long before his
death by Protopriest Constantine Fyodorov, and put it under the bed of the child.
The next day the crusts on the legs of the child had begun to peel off, the rash
became less, and after a time the symptoms of the allergy disappeared completely.”

8. Irina Smirnova (Konigsberg). “I am a journalist. I obtained work in the editorial

office of a newspaper, but it was very difficult for me working there: I began to get
an allergy from the ordinary dust, since I cannot be in an unventilated place,
whereas my neighbour in the office, on the contrary did not like draughts and was
always closing not only the hinged pane, but even the door into the office. I was
suffocating, I was dying, I ran to inject myself, without pills I couldn’t enter the
office. An acquaintance of mine advised me to pray for help to the hierarch Philaret.
I began to pray to him, and soon the editor gave me a separate office, and I simply,
so to speak, ‘rose from the dead’….”

9. The following miracle accomplished through the prayers of Metropolitan

Philaret took place on the feast of St. Stephen, January 9, 2006 in the True Orthodox
women's monastery of New Stenik, Serbia. This monastery has just been built in a
very remote part of Serbia in spite of threats to destroy it coming from the false
patriarchate of Serbia. The nuns were expelled from Old Stenik a few years ago
because of their opposition to the heresy of ecumenism, and are under the
omophorion of a hierarch of the “Florinite” branch of the True Orthodox Church of
Greece.

Nun Ipomoni (which means “patience” in Greek) suffers from very severe asthma
attacks. On this day, she had the most severe attack yet and suffocated. For 20
minutes she did not breathe and her body was without any sign of life. Now it
should be noted that a few days before this, the 10 nuns in this monastery led by

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Schema-Abbess Euphrosyne had earnestly prayed to the Lord to give them the fear
of God.

During the 20 minutes that she was clinically dead Nun Ipomoni met several
demons in a dark tunnel; they got hold of her and were trying to drag her to hell. It
was a most terrifying experience. After 20 minutes, Matushka Euphrosyne anointed
her dead body with oil from the lampada in front of the icon of Metropolian Philaret
of New York. At the moment when the oil touched her head, which felt like an
electric shock, she revived and began to move. For some time afterwards, she was
still very weak and wept all the time. But the next day Fr. Akakije arrived at the
monastery, served the liturgy for three days in a row, communed her and gave her
the sacrament of Holy Unction. Now she has fully recovered. She feels well, walks
and even prepares food.

This whole incident has had a very beneficial effect on all of the nuns. Their
prayer to receive the fear of God was answered. And they ardently thank God and
his great hierarch, Metropolitan Philaret of New York.

10. Milivoje Miljkovic from Belgrade writes: “My mother is about eighty years
old, and out of a small lump on her right hand she got a big wound which started to
ache. There were no medicines that could help, nor did the doctors know what the
illness was. She was taking antibiotics, getting pain-killer injections, and in the end
she got fifteen penicillin injections, too. But nothing helped; the wound was
constantly increasing, so that even mum was pretty scared.

“Mum is very pious; even in the most difficult period of communist rule she
studied theology and lived in a patriarchal Christian family. But it was in no way
clear to her how it was possible that the whole (Serbian) Church could have
separated from God, and that only three or four hundred of us could be standing in
the truth. (I must admit that this was even difficult for me, but unfortunately that is
the way it is.)

“Since she had brought me up in the Orthodox spirit, and I remained without a
job, my mum financially supported my going to the Divine Liturgy – in the
monasteries of the True Orthodox also. So I used to mention her in my prayers.

“One of these services took place on the day of St. Philaret the Confessor, which
our leader Fr. Akakije traditionally celebrated with devout prayers and the
celebration of the Divine Liturgy. A considerable support was provided by the
sisters of the Novistjenik monastery at Mikulj rock, led by their abbess, the Reverend
Mother Euphrosyne. The church was full of people, and this-earthly words are
insufficient to convey the atmosphere – it can only be experienced. I think that not
even the whole of the world’s technology would be able to convey even a bit of the

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atmosphere before the Holy Chalice.

“After the festal Agape, and the reading from the life of St. Philaret Voznesensky,
which mentioned miracles that had taken place as a result of prayers to the Saint and
holy oil from his incorrupt relics, we set off home sustained in faith and the Grace of
God Who celebrated His Saint. By the efforts of the Novistjenik sisters, all the
faithful received a copy of the Akathist to St. Philaret the Confessor, Metropolitan of
New York and Eastern America and first-hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad.
(The akathist had been written by one of the sisters, who often prayed to the Saint
for support in the confession of the faith.) Besides the akathist, Monk Joseph, with
the blessing of Fr. Akakije, gave me a bottle of holy oil from the lampada in front of
the icon of St. Philaret.

“Having arrived home, I read the akathist to St. Philaret and then anointed my
mother’s wound with the holy oil in the sign of the cross. The condition of my
mother before the reading of the akathist was such that during the prayers she could
not stand on her legs and had to sit down. After the anointing the pain ceased
immediately, and in the morning the wound had been halved in size, while puss
was beginning to come out of it.

“Glory and honour to the holy and God-pleasing Philaret the Confessor. May the
Lord in His Providence have mercy on all Serbian people, and through the prayers
of St. Philaret may He bring the Serbs back to Christ and make the Bolsheviks
ashamed and cast them into the everlasting fire with their master, Satan. Glory to
God in the highest through the prayers of St. Philaret the Confessor and all the True
Orthodox Christians. Amen.”

11. Svetlana Shumilo from Chernigov (RTOC) writes: "Tomorrow [December

1/14] is the commemoration of the Holy Hierarch Philaret, and I want to tell you a
story. My son was two years old, and Fr. Evfimy and M. Euphrosyne from Lesna
came to stay with us for a couple of days, since there was a big conference on church
matters. What is a church conference? Everybody is busy, and there's still more
work... But one morning we had a couple of free hours, and we asked Fr. Evfimy,
since there was no time for a liturgy, to give communion to our son from the
reserved Gifts. He had brought the Gifts with himself from Lesna. From the morning
in his childish language he told everybody that Fr. Philaret had come to him in the
night and said that he - the child - would receive Communion. We were a little
surprised since we had not warned our son - he was still so young - about
Communion. Nevertheless, he continued to repeat the phrase several time, striving
to pronounce the complicated name. Everyone thought that he was talking about Fr.
Philaret, who sometimes came to us and gave us Communion - and paid no attention
to the words of a child. After Communion Fr. Evfimy in his final words read out the
saints of the day - and suddenly everyone remembered that today was the

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commemoration of the holy Hierarch Philaret (this was a year after the Council [of
2008] at which St. Philaret had been glorified). That evening, when everybody had
already left, we showed our son several photographs of St. Philaret and asked him: is
this Fr. Philaret who told you that you would receive Communion. Our son replied
to this: "No, this is an old man!" Then we showed him an icon of St. Philaret and
posed the same question. And he replied: "Yes, this is the one!

12. Nikolai Jovanovich (Australia): From my early years I have suffered from sinus
troubles and various allergies. On 20th April, 2005, I wrote the following in my diary:
“Two weeks ago I had a strong sinus attack, accompanied by the flu, and my nose
ran like a tap. The medicines, which I had been taking for three days, did not help. I
was desperate, but just at this time Metropolitan Philaret came to mind. In China,
Metropolitan Philaret had baptized me. I did not know - was it right or not? - but I
asked the Lord to forgive me if I was doing anything wrong. I turned in prayer to
Metropolitan Philaret, and asked God’s help from him. My running nose dried up.
Within 30 minutes my nose was completely dry. Yesterday (19th April) again, while I
was praying, my nose began to run. I prayed to Metropolitan Philaret, asking him to
help me, and immediately it all passed.” From that time I have never taken any
medication for my nose troubles.

13. Elena Pikul (Australia): From 1946, our family lived in Harbin. We attended
the church attached to the House of Kindheartedness, where Father Philaret served.
Once during the Winter of 1960, my elder son, Galik, fell ill. His temperature rose to
over 40o. He was suffering greatly. We called a Chinese doctor, and he found that
pneumonia was setting in. Before the doctor came, our daughter, Zina, ran to Fr
Philaret, but he was not at home. She asked the neighbours to tell Batiushka that her
brother had fallen ill. I sat by Galik’s bed; his temperature was 40 and higher; his
heart was pounding. He was delirious… and then what? His temperature began to
fall, it went down to 37o. Galik started breathing regularly, his pulse was normal; the
patient peacefully fell asleep. When he woke up, he felt very much better. My
daughter returned, we were both bewildered. What had happened? What had
happened was this: soon after Zina had left [his place], Fr Philaret returned and went
to the neighbours for a cup of tea. They told him about Zina’s visit. Immediately
Batiushka jumped up from his place without finishing his tea, he quickly ran up the
stairs to his apartment and began to pray. From what the neighbours reported it is
evident that my son began to recover at the very same moment that Father Philaret
prayed for him. His prayer is powerful!

14. O. Chistyakova (Australia): When I was in Harbin in 1955, in hospital I

happened to be the witness of the healing from a nervous disorder of the sick T.M.
The patient, a young woman, came down with a nervous disorder, and not only did
she refuse to drink, but she even put the baby at her breast in the wardrobe! They
committed her to hospital, and Father Philaret prayed for her. She improved

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gradually so that, meeting her some years later, one could only say that she was a
normal young woman. Whether Archimandrite Philaret prayed for her in the
hospital or at his place in the House of Kindheartedness, I cannot say. Members of
her family are still alive, although she herself has died of a completely different
illness.

15. Abbess Alexandra (Chernyavskaya), Monastery of St John: I became

acquainted with Vladyka Philaret in my student days, and he became my spiritual
father. The first miracle of Metropolitan Philaret is bound up with my family life. In
1967, I was expecting a second child and the doctor said that it was highly probable
that the baby would be stillborn. I was totally desperate, and in my grief I went to
Vladyka Philaret. Vladyka calmed me down, saying that everything was in God’s
hands. After this, he anointed me with holy oil and blessed me. By turning to prayer,
Vladyka saved my baby. The power of his prayer was such that shortly thereafter I
safely gave birth to a healthy child. Just as the doctor on duty said, this was a
manifest miracle.

16. The Nun Ioanna (Karlova), Monastery of St John: I was not well acquainted
with Metropolitan Philaret’s legacy, but nonetheless, I was in two minds about
whether he was a holy man. Then the thought would come to me that one could
place him in the same rank as such a luminary as Vladyka John of Shanghai and San
Francisco, in whose honour I was tonsured. On 14th December [n.s.], 2007, on the
nameday of Vladyka Philaret, I was standing by the table in my cell and looking at
the church calendar, and doubtful thoughts about the sanctity of Metropolitan
Philaret again came into my head. Suddenly for no apparent reason I started to fall
backwards. Behind my back there was a chair, which was then pushed over and
turned on its side. Nothing was hurt, I fell onto the rug, lying alongside the bed. This
was a very felicitous fall: physically I suffered nothing, but somehow at that very
time the Lord showed me that Vladyka Philaret was indeed a saint. After this with
reverence and with greater interest I read through his sermons.

17. Protodeacon Christopher Birchall (Canada): This story was told to me by Lydia
Mikhailovna Klar, the wife of Evgenii Iosifovich Klar, the dean of the Seminary at
Jordanville. In 1994, it became known that their daughter-in-law, Irina Klar, had
contracted cancer. Her husband, Michael, a doctor by profession, was desperate. He
prayed fervently for her recovery, and in time it appeared that the disease had
departed. However, in 1997, there was a severe deterioration. Lydia Mikhailovna
gave the pious wife a undershirt, which had belonged to Metropolitan Philaret and
which she had been given by the holy hierarch’s cell attendant, Protodeacon Nikita
Charikov. Irina put it on, and immediately she smelled a strong fragrance; she
thought that someone in the premises had given up their soul. Irina and Michael
prayed fervently all the evening, and at last Irina fell asleep still wearing this
undershirt. Next morning she felt significantly better, and went to the hospital for a

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check-up. The result of the examination showed that the size of the cancerous
tumour had diminished by 70 (!) times. There was no rational explanation for this,
and the hospital staff were at a loss. At the end of 1998, Irina’s cancerous tumour
began to grow again. After this, when the remains of Metropolitan Philaret had been
uncovered and found to be incorrupt, Archimandrite Luke from Jordanville started
to gather information about the miracles. Irina decided that she ought to tell of her
healing, and she felt that she had been wrong when, earlier, she had been silent
about this. After she had told father Luke about what had happened, she began to
feel better again. Until now (a year has passed) she continues in good health. The
cancerous tumour has not disappeared completely, but it has diminished to such an
extent that Irina is able to carry on a normal life and dedicate herself to the
upbringing of her children.

18. Elena Kudryavtseva (Moscow): In our little boy signs of an allergy appeared,
which grew stronger and stronger day by day. The doctors could not give a clear
reason for the rashes which broke out all over his body and, in places, developed into
hard scabs. The medicine they prescribed gave hardly any alleviation, and taking
these tablets was often noxious for the child. We did not know what was to be done,
or what to do. An acquaintance of ours, a pious and sincere man, who revered
Vladyka Philaret (Voznesensky), told the story of what had befallen a seriously ill
patient in the clinic, whom the doctors already had no hope of curing. The sick man
took a photo of the hierarch, and with faith placed it on the bad place. In a short time
he came to recovery, an operation was not necessary, and he was healed of his severe
infirmity. Remembering this story, we took a photograph of the hierarch Philaret,
taken not long before his demise by Archpriest Constantine Fedorov, and placed it
over the infant’s cot. On the next day, the scabs on the child’s legs began to come off,
the rash diminished, and within a short time all signs of the allergy completely
disappeared.

19. Archimandrite Alexis (Pobjoy). In 1970, a small group of seminarians from

Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary in Jordanville, myself included, went to the Kursk
Root Icon Hermitage at Mahopac, N.Y., over the Thanksgiving weekend, to help
despatch some books on the Coronations of the Russian Tsars, which had been
published by the Russian Youth Committee. At that time a nun was staying at the
Hermitage, and she greatly revered Metropolitan Philaret and told us that he knew
the Four Gospels off by heart. She also told us that for many years she had suffered
from very severe headaches, which at that time I did as well, which made me pay
attention to what she had to say. She reported that on one occasion, she had a
particularly bad headache and asked the Metropolitan to pray for her that she might
be delivered from it. Out of humility, he said that he could not do such a thing, and
so in desperation she fell at his feet and said she would not let him go until he did.
He prayed, and not only did her headache leave her immediately, but from that day
until the time she told us her tale she had not suffered another one.

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 St. Philaret was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church in
Suzdal on May 1, 2001, and by the Sacred Council of the Russian True Orthodox
Church in Odessa on November 1, 2008.

Holy Father Philaret, pray to God for us!

(Sources: Tatiana (Nun Cassia) Senina, “’And his lot is among the saints…’”,
Vertograd-Inform (English edition), № 15, January, 2000, pp. 6-24; Fiery Pillar.
Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky) of New York and Eastern America and the Russian
Church Abroad (1964-1985); Monk Vsevolod (Filipiev), “Mitropolit Filaret: k
dvadtsatiletiu co dnia konchiny, 1985-2005”, Pravoslavnaia Rus’, № 22 (1786),
November 15/28, 2005, pp. 1-3; Pravoslavnaia Rus’, June 14, 1981; Bishop Gregory
Grabbe, Pis’ma (Letters), Moscow, 1998, pp. 14-15; Tserkovnaia Zhizn’, №1, 1962;
Protopriest Alexis Mikrikov, “Unia s MP privedet k dukhovnoj karastrofe” (The
Unia with the MP will lead to a spiritual catastrophe),
http://metanthonymemorial.org/VernostNo34.html; Monk Benjamin (Gomarteli),
“Letopis’ Tserkovnykh Sobytij Pravoslavnoj Tserkvi nachinaia s 1917 goda” (A
Chronicle of Church Events of the Orthodox Church beginning from 1917),
http://www.zlatoust.ws/letopis.htm; Metropolitan Valentine of Suzdal, Nativity
Epistle, 2000/2001; Ivan Ostroumoff, The History of the Council of Florence, pp. 193-
199; Archbishop Averky, Sovremennost’ v svete Slova Bozhia. Slova i Rechi (1969-1973)
(Contemporary Life in the Light of the Word of God: Sermons and Speeches),
Jordanville: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1975, vol. III, p. 216 ; Archbishop Vitaly, in
Orthodox Life, vol. 34, no. 4, July-August, 1984 ; Fr. Alexey Young, The Russian
Orthodox Church Outside Russia: A History and Chronology, San Bernardino: The Borgo
Press, 1993, pp. 117-118; Nun Vassa (Larin) “’Glory be to God, Who did not
Abandon His Church’, The Self-Awareness of ROCOR at the 1974 Third All-
Diaspora Council”,
http://www.russianorthodoxchurch.ws/01newstructure/pagesen/articles/svassas
obor.htm; A. Golitsyn, The Perestroika Deception, London and New York: Edward
Harle, 1995, p. 175; Protodeacon Basil Yakimov, “Re: Fundamental Question”,
[email protected], 4 June, 2003; Vertograd-Inform, № 11 (68),
November, 2000, pp. 52-53; Vertograd-Inform, № 11 (44), November, 1998, pp. 24-27,
28-32; “A Letter from Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky) to a Priest of the Church
Abroad concerning Father Dimitry Dudko and the Moscow Patriarchate”, Vertograd-
Inform, № 4, February, 1999, pp. 16-20; Vestnik Zapadno-Evropejskoj Eparkhii (Herald of
the Western European Diocese), 1979, № 14; Tserkovnie Novosti (Church News), № 4 (95),
June-July, 2001, p. 9; "A Contemporary Patristic Document", Orthodox Christian
Witness, November 14/27, 1983, p. 3; "Encyclical Letter of the Council of Bishops of
the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia", Orthodox Life, vol. 33, № 6,
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the Blessed Remains of Metropolitan Philaret”, Orthodox Life, vol. 48, no. 6,

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November-December, 1998, pp. 33-36; “Miraculous Occurrences Associated with
Metropolitan Philaret”, Orthodox Life, November-December, 1998, pp. 37-38; “An
Important Anniversary”, Orthodox Life, July-December, 2010, pp. 60-65;
Hieroschemamonk Akakije, personal communication, March, 2006; Matushka
Tatiana Fyodorov, personal communication, April, 2006; Nun Xenia (Mitrenina),
personal communication, April, 2006; K. Preobrazhensky, “Otravlenia v
Zarubezhnoj Tserkvi”, Nasha Strana, № 2816, March 23, 2007, p. 8; Bishop
Agathangelus of Odessa, August 21, 2007, http://guest-
2.livejournal.com/294723.html; Vernost, no. 104, March, 2008,
http://metanthonymemorial.org/VernostNo104a.html; Fr. Christopher Birchall,
Embassy, Emigrants, and Englishmen. The Three-Hundred Year History of a
Russian Orthodox Church in London, Jordanville, N.Y.: Holy Trinity Publications,
2014, p. 425; Nun Euphrosyne (Molchanova), “Doklad Osviaschennomu Soboru
RIPTs o podvige sviatitel’skogo sluzhenia Mitropolita Philareta (Voznesenskogo),
http://catacomb.org.ua/modules.php?name=Pages&go=print_pageIpid=1441;
Milivoje Miljkovic, personal communication; “An Important Anniversary”, Orthodox
Life, July-December, 2010, pp. 60-65; Nikolai Smolentsev-Sobol’, “K Biografiu
Sviatitelia Filareta (Voznesenskogo)”, http://m-
Idelamballe.livejournal.com/28963.html;
www.monasterypress.com/mphilaret.html; http://www.homb.org/calendar-and-
daily-readings/docs/28-st-philaret-feast-
day.pdf?PHPSESSID=b6bedde089e1addfb19c855658265a03; Svetlana Shumilo;
http://www.saintedwardbrotherhood.org/0209/shepherd2.html)

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