Dear Brother in Christ, Daniel,<\/p>\n
Greetings in our Lord Jesus Christ! I’ll write a note while your letter is fresh, and while we’re paralyzed waiting for our generator to be repaired. We’re still kept busy enough on building projects, however!<\/p>\n
Your letter was a joy to us, too. Sometimes I\u2019m afraid we let the worldly side weigh a litde too heavy with us, and we start sliding toward despondency. The linotype is slow (so many things to watch for, and I proceed almost purely by trial and error; the books I have sometimes omit the most elementary things because, apparently, everybody is supposed to know them \u2014 but I don\u2019t find out until I have lead squirting out and then have to find out what to do about it! Gleb took one look at the machine in operation, with its rumblings and groanings, the big arm slamming down from the back of the machine and (hopefully) returning with the type in one piece, and he retreated to the printing department. But I\u2019m beginning to master the principles at last and am finally beginning to set type faster than we could by hand.) \u2014 the linotype is slow, the generator breaks down, paper doesn\u2019t arrive, Post Office breathes down our neck to be more regular, etc. But this apparently is to be expected if the work is God-pleasing, and we take comfort from that.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve finally heard about (but not from) Father Seraphim, from several sources. He left St. Tikhon\u2019s just before their May-30 celebration, with Soviet hierarch present, and is now safely on Mt. Athos in the Skete of St. Elias. It will, however, be a miracle if he survives, as the conditions are most difficult \u2014 all old, feeble monks, and he alone is strong enough to serve and work. He told a seminarian who visited us two days ago that he likes it there, but he can\u2019t keep it up if someone else doesn\u2019t join him.<\/p>\n
Several Canadian parishes have apparently left the Metropolia for the Synod, but I\u2019m not too certain about the details. The Metropolia seems convinced that their autocephaly is a great success, but objectively I don\u2019t think it could be considered so. Indications are no one will recognize it for a while except Finland and Iron Curtain Churches (and not all of them); the Exarchate churches in America met in August and, despite Nikodim\u2019s attempts to persuade them, they voted unanimously to stay out of the Metropolia, some of them even preferring to join some other jurisdiction if necessary. So Moscow will have at least three bishops here all the same, with foreign titles \u2014 Mark of San Francisco becomes \u201cof Ladoga.\u201d Nikodim was quietly kept away from the canonization in Kodiak, but he visited the next week with Archbp. John Shahovskoy \u2014 and on Spruce Island they met our Fr. Michael Lightfoot \u2014 who wrote us that he was not allowed to serve on Spruce Island, and a seminarian was assigned to watch him and give the now-standard argument in some Metropolia circles (Alaska, for example): we know your bishops are the best, that you alone have monasteries and spiritual centers, that you preserve Orthodoxy better than anyone else \u2014 but why pick on everyone else and judge them? I hope our new article by Fr. Azkoul will make it clear that the Synod is \u201cjudging\u201d no one, only calling on all to stand up with us for Orthodoxy. The response to this is close to zero so far, but I think there\u2019s more below the surface than appears in broad daylight and before long there will be solidarity shown in a few places, but not many. The Greek Church (Athens), by the way, has protested so strongly to Athenagoras against Moscow giving Communion to Catholics that I don\u2019t see how they can avoid breaking off Communion with Moscow now \u2014 and that from the \u201cecumenist\u201d Archbp. Ieronymos \u2014 one senses he feels the pressure of the Old Calendarists, who are apparently getting stronger. Meanwhile, even though Athenagoras did not recognize the autocephaly, the Metropolia is clinging to him, and Fr. Meyendorff writes in the new Orthodox Church that anyone who does not recognize Athenagoras as a genuine Orthodox Patriarch is simply \u201coutside the communion of world Orthodoxy.\u201d And this at a time when Athenagoras is being driven to wilder and wilder statements (he\u2019s afraid that Moscow will turn out to be more modernist that he, and thus will take over the leadership of \u201cworld Orthodoxy\u201d!), and when a Greek Archpriest in America (Fr. Dombalis) has seriously called for the canonization of Athenagoras while alive!!!<\/p>\n
Truly, the Orthodox way in our times is not easy, and more and more we begin to look to the time of martyrdom. Our new issue has two articles on the Catacomb Church in Russia, and the relevancy to our own situation already becomes visible. We are beginning a collection of statements from the Metropolia on the situation in the USSR today (\u201cthings there are changing, full churches, happy people,\u201d etc.), and its service to the Communist cause is only too apparent \u2014 and this at a time when many documents exist concerning the actual situation there, some of them positively bloodcurdling \u2014 such as Anatoly Marchenko\u2019s My Testimony, which Gleb just read, concerning the satanic tortures he has undergone just recently (and for smuggling the book out he was put back in concentration camp) where he indicates that treatment is getting worse, if that is possible! The writer A. Kuznetsov (who recently escaped) writes: \u201cIf you are a citizen of Soviet Russia, you automatically cannot be a 100-per-cent decent person\u201d; and Marchenko writes that when he was in freedom he couldn\u2019t bear to look at happy, successful people, knowing how they had to sell their souls (and often help out in torturing others) in order to achieve this status. But Bp. Theodosius of Alaska says he was surprised how well off and happy people were…<\/p>\n
As I see it, there are two great gifts that God has given Orthodox people today: in the Soviet world, the difficult gift of suffering, which by God\u2019s grace will probably be the salvation of Russia; and in the free world, the gift of freedom \u2014 to speak and witness the truth and tell what is going on. How poorly this gift is being used among us \u2014 and how soon, perhaps, it will be taken from us. While there is daylight, we must speak out.<\/p>\n
But I am being carried away, and my short note is going over into worktime. Already we are getting cooler weather and the leaves are turning yellow, and winter promises to be earlier and harder than last year. Vladika Anthony paid us a surprise visit two days ago and served Liturgy \u2014 probably drawn to us by the relic of St. Mamas (on whose day he came) which Fr. Panteleimon gave us in August. The day of our tonsure is tentatively set for Oct. 14\/27, if Deacon Nicholas can help us get a church built by that time \u2014 a small chapel about the size of our printshop.<\/p>\n
We look forward to seeing you before long. Please keep in mind that you are welcome to come and share our life here at any time, for a short or long time. If you get here early enough, you can spend the winter, and take turns with us going for the mail on snowshoes! Pray for us \u2014 and pray also for Archbishop Leonty of Chile and his flock \u2014 a Marxist government is about to be installed, and the future is uncertain. Archbishop Leonty has already been in prison in the USSR and served Catacomb Liturgies there and knows well the character of these times.<\/p>\n
With love in Christ our Saviour,
\nEugene<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear Brother in Christ, Daniel, Greetings in our Lord Jesus Christ! I’ll write a note while your letter is fresh, and while we’re paralyzed waiting for our generator to be repaired. We’re still kept busy enough on building projects, however! Your letter was a joy to us, too. Sometimes I\u2019m afraid we let the worldly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orthodoxaustralia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}