Homily of Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad at the church of the Russian New Martyrs and Confessors, Vanve, France
18.02.2001 · English, Архив 2001
HOMILY
OF METROPOLITAN KIRILL OF SMOLENSK AND KALININGRAD AT THE CHURCH OF THE RUSSIAN NEW MARTYRS AND CONFESSORS
Vanve, France
Your Grace, dear Bishop Innocent,
Your Eminence, Archbishop Anatoly,
Dear fathers, brothers and sisters:
It is a great spiritual joy and consolation for me to celebrate the Divine Liturgy together with you, prayerfully praising the feat of the Russian New Martyrs and Confessors in a place far from my Motherland and in the days preceding the celebrations to mark the 70th anniversary of the cathedral church of our Church in Paris. This day is quite ordinary for the Church but at the same time very special. For, according to the Orthodox church calendar, the memory of holy martyrs is celebrated almost every day. Because the faithfulness to Christ and His Church is martyrdom in all times and under any circumstances.
The Lord spoke about His yoke imposed on every one who follow Him (cf. Mt. 11:29-30). Therefore, to be a Christian means to carry His yoke. True, the Lord added that His yoke is easy and its burden is light; but a yoke is a yoke and a burden is a burden. But then the question arises: Why there should be the faith and the Church that call people to accept His yoke and burden as blessing and joy? Indeed, the basic psychological, ideological and value aim of modern man is precisely to throw off any yoke and liberate himself from any burden in order to become fully independent of responsibility and commitment. Then nothing will disturb his peace and comfort and irritate his soul and human existence in the world will be an easy, light and pleasant affair. This desire of man to get rid of any burden whatsoever, of duty and self-limitation, lies in the heart of the contemporary culture and civilization for which the Christian calling is truly a burden difficult to bear. Meanwhile the Church calls one to take one’s cross and to follow Christ, submitting to His salvific yoke and seeing in it a reward and blessing. What great mystery of Christianity is hidden behind this apparent contradiction? It is God’s great truth about man.
The Lord has given to our being the likeness of His Divine image and at the same time He has implanted in our nature the instincts which help man to support his bodily life. But a terrible lie has become rooted in the human consciousness as a truth. It claims that we can be liberated and can attain well-being and happiness in our life as much as we comply with the requirements of instinct. From the point of view of most people who seek happiness today, the ideal of existence is the situation where nothing restrains, contains or put limits to human self-will and where everything is permissible and attainable. But the Lord calls man to strain every nerve to go against the stream by rejecting this understanding of happiness, for it is impossible to remain a human being preserving intact God’s image in himself while living according to the laws of instinct and human passion. Because in this case man voluntarily reduces himself to animal being, while the human community turns into a wolf pack. Is it not exactly what happens to those who assign primary importance to freedom in everything and from everything, to the triumph of emancipated instinct and to oblivion in easy life?
To be Christian means to go always against the dominating common fallacy. Some believe that religion is for the weak and the timid. Those who are far from the Church are accustomed to think that only those put their trust in God who lack strength to assert themselves, to fight and win. That is why they have to rely on God’s power for support and protection.
No, dear bothers and sisters, the faith of Christ is for strong people, because the Lord calls us to be different from the majority, to go our own way, to enter the narrow gates, seeing as temptation and death what for others is joy, happiness and full life. That is why martyrdom is the most common way of Christian holiness. Every day we celebrate the memory of martyrs. And it cannot be otherwise, because the devil assails those who remain faithful to Christ and fights them even unto death. In the great community of martyrs, a special place belongs to our, Russian, New Martyrs and Confessors of the 20th century. Most of the martyrs of the previous centuries were executed before the eyes of the people. Many people witnessed their feat, and history knows of many cases where torturers and executioners, struck by the inhuman staunchness of the people of God they tortured, turned ardently to God to suffer martyrdom later in their turn.
It was different with Russian new martyrs who performed their feat and met their last hour in obscurity, hidden thoroughly from people’s eyes. Nobody knew about their feat, nobody witnessed it, nobody witnessed to it. Precious grains of information about where, when and how a particular martyr bore witness to his faithfulness to Christ become known decades after his feat was performed. The executions of martyrs were concealed from the people. And if something became known incidentally, it was declared that it was not at all martyrdom and that this person was killed not for his faithfulness to Christ, but because he was a criminal, even a political criminal, a traitor who hated his people and tried to deprive them of the happiness they deserved. Thus, it is an example of martyrdom unique in the history of the Church as it involved the truly Satanic lie and the same Satanic falsification of history. To support this great lie that the theomachist power raised against Christ and His Church, books were written, films was shot, plays were staged, articles were composed, false evidence was circulated. And this continued over generations.
It was not so long ago. It is terrible to say, but some of the executioners are still alive, while the victims of the Russian golgotha have been glorified as new martyrs. In this way has God’s truth revealed itself to Russia and to her Church and people. This is the truth that nobody has the power to slander. The example of the feat of faith, life and death given to us by the Russian new martyrs gives great internal strength to the Church and the people of God. Indeed, one can often hear today that the Christian message to the world is out of date, that it has failed to justify the hopes, that its promise is illusive and that modern man can make himself happy through science, technological progress and economic development.
But we should remember that however fierce this internal opposition of contemporary society to God’s design for the world and the humankind may be, it is essentially the same lie that the persecutors of the Russian new martyrs once tried to assert. Holiness and martyrdom do not belong to the past, but nourish and warm up the Church eternally. And today too, as in all times of Christianity, every one of us either joins the ranks of the followers of Christ or the ranks of those who hate Him, led by the father of falsehood. For by the sword that the Lord has brought to the world, this world is divided into those who are with God and those who are against God. We, on our part, should always remember that at any moment in our life we can be summoned to martyrdom and confession. We can be called to them not necessarily through physical suffering or violent death, but certainly through our standing firm in the faith against the value of life without God, the way without Christ and truth without His truth asserted in the world today.
Today’s feast, which as if links the past and the present, make this day special. The experience of the 20th century martyrs of Christ brings us closer to the understanding of the meaning and significance of the feat of confession in general.
Let us remember all this and ask the Lord to give us strength in our weakness and to make us His worthy disciples, so that we may always and in all situations choose the way of His truth and remain obedient to Him in everything, even unto death if need be.
It is a special day today also because we begin to celebrate the 70th anniversary of our cathedral church in Paris. We will have an opportunity to speak about the striking history of Russian Orthodoxy in Paris. Today I will only say one thing: the Russian Orthodox people, being a small flock in France and in Western Europe, did much in their time to preserve their faithfulness to Christ and His Church.
We hope that today too, in the new circumstances of life, Orthodoxy in this country will continue to carry out the great mission to which it has been called by history.
I congratulate you, dear Vladyko, and the clergy and all the faithful on this remarkable feast, and may God’s blessing be with us all through the intercession of Russia’s holy New Martyrs and Confessors. Amen.
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