The world grieved when the Taliban destroyed towering statues of the Buddha from the sixth and seventh century in Afghanistan — World Heritage sites "of importance to humanity as a whole," declared the United Nations. These Muslims sought to erase history in order to advance their narrow agenda.
Now bloody bandits turn their evil intent to another World Heritage site in Ukraine, the Kievan Caves Lavra — the oldest and holiest site in Russian Orthodoxy. They too wish to alter the historical record. Volodymyr Zelinsky, labeled a "mobster" and "the ultimate criminal" by Newsweek columnist Candace Owens, has set his sites on rewriting the history of Ukraine, setting up a counterfeit church (dubbed "the CIA church") founded five years ago, to supplant the Ukrainian Orthodox Church founded in 988. We watch in horror as bishops, priests, and monks of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church are beaten and arrested and the holy things desecrated.
The world has seen this thuggery before. In a two-year period alone (1937-1938), 168,300 Russian Orthodox clergy were arrested and over 100,000 shot according to records of the Moscow Patriarchate. Many more were executed or sent to the cruel gulags during the long, bloody decades of Soviet oppression. By contrast during the Great Persecution of the third and fourth centuries, between 3,000-3,500 Christian martyrs died. These are not regrettable tales of a bygone period but occurring in these days and weeks of 2024.
Today, we will hear words written by St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco, whose life coincided with these events. As Archbishop he oversaw a large diaspora of Russians praying that the terror might abate and that they might go home. In this homily (redacted for the sake of time), he offers a wide historical view of the Russian saints.
It is difficult to say what eastern Europe would have become if Saints Cyril and Methodius had not shed the light of Christ upon the Slavs and begun the enlightenment of the Slavic peoples. Together with their disciples, Saints Cyril and Methodius enlightened some of the Slavs with the teachings of Christ. The influence of Christianity was soon felt among them, and it brought them into the family of Christian nations. Within a short span of lime, those countries which accepted Christianity were transformed. Yet the majority of the Slavs, the East Slavs, continued in their old ways. At times there was reason to fear that their militant princes, such as Sviatoslav, would destroy the young shoots, watered by Christianity, which had sprung up on their brothers' fields. The darkness which hung over the East Slavic tribes was so thick and impenetrable that it could not even be dispelled by one who emerged on the princely throne like the morning star on the horizon, the first Russian Christian princess, Olga. It required the rising of the bright sun itself, and for Rus' this meant Olga's grandson, the Great Prince Vladimir.
Vladimir had learned the rudiments of faith in Christ from his grandmother, but had drowned them in the revelry of youthful passions. Shaken to the depths of his soul by the martyrdom of the Varangian boyars, Theodore and John, he decided to change his way of life. After carefully investigating questions of faith, Vladimir, whose life and convictions were closely connected, made a choice. Being by nature straightforward and honest, he did not stop half way along the road, but pursued the best course to the end. He was enlightened by the light of Orthodoxy, and after his baptism became a zealous follower of the commandments of Christ. By his example and his appeals, he led his subjects to follow him. A striking change took place in Vladimir; from a pleasure-loving youth of unbridled passions, he turned into a man of holiness.
No less striking was the change which came over Rus' after its baptism. The baptism of Kiev, followed by that of the rest of Rus', opened up a new life for the East Slavs; it became the point of departure for their glorious history.
The divided Slavic tribes, which composed Vladimir's nation, began to feel united. This new consciousness of their unity was strengthened by the fact that for several centuries the whole of Rus' constituted, in ecclesiastical terms, one metropolitan district, despite the later division of Rus' into independent principalities.
The Church greatly influenced the unification of Rus' into one state. As Orthodoxy spread among the Slavic and non-Slavic tribes, which were living in eastern Europe, they were able to become one with the Russian nation. The Church acted as a peacemaker in times of civil strife, and inculcated an awareness that the Russian nation is one, and should therefore constitute an integral unit in all things. It was under the protection of the Holy Orthodox Church that Rus' was formed, became strong, and grew into a great power occupying one-sixth of the globe. The Russian people, who accepted Christianity not by force but freely, strove from the very first years following their baptism to make their life reflect the teachings of the Gospel. People whose hearts had been brutish were reborn through baptism and changed from within. While retaining those qualities which were good from their past, they were freed from the bad qualities which had also been present. The battle between good and evil did not take place in Vladimir's soul alone, but in the entire nation as a whole, and the result was a great change for the good. The Russian people after baptism were not the same as they had been before baptism. They were a new people, a new nation.
This does not mean that they all became perfect right away, or that evil vanished from every heart and ceased to be found in Rus'. Not at all! Evil was still present, and it continued its struggle with good in every man. But the force which motivated the Russian people was Orthodoxy, which embraced all areas of life — personal, social and political. Family and community life was imbued with the spirit of the Gospel. Opinions were formed under the influence of the Church's rules. And civil laws were in harmony with the canons. The life of the Russian people had a common direction, to seek God's righteousness.
This striving to attain God's righteousness penetrated legislation, the administration of justice, and decisions of state. The same striving to serve God marked the intellectual and spiritual life of the Russian people. Practically all spheres of their cultural life had their origin in the life of the Church and developed under her influence.
Russian literature and Russian art originated in the monasteries and were so thoroughly penetrated by the Christian spirit that not even those writers of later times whose goal was to combat the Church's teachings could completely escape its influence. The principal rulers of Rus', the grand dukes and the emperors of all Russia, were aware of their responsibility to the King of kings and regarded themselves as servants of God, which is what they were in the eyes of their subjects as well. The tsars of Russia were not tsars "by popular will," but tsars "by the grace of God."
Of course, not everything in Rus' went along with this general direction. Not by any means! Over the past centuries much was done that was evil. "If there is no man that liveth and sinneth not," all the more do sin and evil inevitably occur in the life and history of a nation. However, just as in assessing the character of a person the important thing is to determine which of his qualities are more prominent and outweigh others, so also, in defining the character of a nation, one must ascertain what are the chief elements of its spiritual life.
For Rus' and the Russian people, despite all their individual deviations and departures from their ideal, what was of primary importance was to serve righteousness and to stand in the truth. When we call to mind ancient Greece, the words of the Apostle Paul about the ancient Greeks come to mind, The Greeks seek wisdom, even though there were certainly many among them who did not seek wisdom. Sparta is linked with the idea of physical development. The name of Phoenicia is connected with trade. Rome was proud of its civic virtue. Just so, the Russian nation became known as a God-bearing nation, and the Russian land was called Holy Rus'.
Rus' was holy in the multitude of saints who shone forth in the Russian land. Beginning with the sons of Saint Vladimir, the holy and right-believing princes Boris and Gleb — who were the first saints glorified by miracles in Rus'. From the baptizer of Rus' — Saint Vladimir and his grandmother Olga — a countless multitude of saints have lived in holiness and been glorified by miracles in the Russian land. These saints are the "beautiful fruit" of Orthodox Rus' sharing the very flesh and bones of the Russian people. They were not strangers in their beliefs and way of life. No! They were the clearest expression of the strivings of the people as a whole.
From the baptism of Rus' down to our own times, there has not been a single hour when, somewhere in Russia, there was not living a saint — one who after death became a Heavenly protector of the Russian land. All parts of Russia have had their heroes, from Carpatho-Russia (St. Moses the Hungarian and St. Ephrem of Novo-Torzhok) to Alaska, which only belonged to Russia for a short time but produced St. Herman. Every area of Russia and practically every city of any significance had its shrines. The monasteries were spiritual centers which exercised an influence on the cities and the countryside. Every place, every dialect was sanctified by the service of God. The history of Russia is full of wonderful proofs of God's care for her — it is a history of the divine plan, a new sacred history. The effect of Russia's holy men on the events of its history has been so great that the history of the Russian State cannot be separated from the history of the Church. The whole way of life of the Russian people was steeped in the piety of the Church. Even Russia's foreign policy was frequently an expression of her spiritual make-up.
So it was in the past. But where are you now, Holy Rus'? Do you no longer exist? The throne of Saint Vladimir has fallen, holy things have been desecrated, churches are destroyed. Has the God-bearing nation become a beast? Has the red dragon devoured Holy Rus'? How has a land of spiritual heroism become the site of infamous crimes? How is it that where saints once sought salvation now bandits rule? Is it possible that Holy Rus' is no more and will never again exist, or perhaps that it never did exist, that it merely wore a veil of holiness, which has now fallen once and for all?
No! Holy Rus' is not a mirage or an illusion, but a true reality! In Heaven there is no end to the offering of incense which are the prayers of the saints who have shone forth in the Russian land and who now pray for it before the throne of God. Yet Holy Rus' exists not only in Heaven; it continues to exist even here on the sinful earth. The rule of God's enemies has but enslaved it, not destroyed it. The council of the ungodly which has taken over the Russian nation is alien to it, having nothing in common with the essence of Russia. An alien international force, calling itself "the International," has imposed its yoke on Russia, but remains her enemy. Those of them who formerly called themselves Russians, because they were of Russian blood, have forfeited the name of Russian, because they have become alien to the spirit of Rus'. Of such it may be said, "They went out from us, but they were not of us" (John 2:19). They have fallen away from the Russian nation, having become oppressors of Rus'. By rejecting God they have also rejected man's likeness to God, and have surpassed the wild beasts in their ferocious cruelty.
But Rus' remains holy. The choir of the Apostles was not diminished when Judas fell away from it. The radiance of the angelic ranks was not dimmed when Satan fell away from them together with those angels who listened to him.
Just as it happened that the devil came from the ranks of the angels, but after the fall of Lucifer and his adherents, the rest of the angels were inflamed with an even greater love for God and shone even more brightly in Heaven, so also the godless came from among the Russian people, but their defection made the holiness of Rus' more apparent and caused it to be glorified in Heaven and throughout all the earth.
An innumerable multitude of new martyrs have borne witness to their loyalty to Christ. The entire Russian nation has endured with indescribable patience such sufferings as no other nation on earth has yet experienced, and has furnished an incalculable multitude of new testimonies to its steadfastness in faith. In spite of the crudest persecution, the Church remains unconquered. Numerous churches have been destroyed, so that in many cities which were once adorned with majestic churches, not a single one of them is left. Yet believers gather in secret to pray to the Lord God. Russia has met the age of the catacombs, which it never knew before because it had never before experienced persecution for the faith.
In the great choir of saints who were pleasing to God and were glorified in Rus', there were many holy hierarchs, monks, righteous men and women, and fools for Christ's sake, but in all of its preceding history, there were only a few martyrs in the Russian land. The "radiant army of martyrs," whose blood was the seed of Christianity throughout the world, and which is glorified almost every day by the earthly Church, was practically nonexistent in the Heavenly Russian Church. The time came to fill up its ranks. Now an inestimable number of new martyrs and sufferers has been added to the small number of passion-bearers and martyrs who suffered in ages past. Among them is the Tsar, wearing his crown, the descendant and heir of the baptizer of Rus', along with his whole family, as well as that namesake of the baptizer of Rus' who was the chief hierarch of the city of the baptism [Kiev], and also bishops, princes, noblemen, soldiers, priests, monks, the learned and the illiterate, city dwellers and country folk, the famous and the ordinary. Every age, every class, every corner of Rus' has produced new martyrs. All Rus' has been flooded by martyrs' blood and sanctified thereby.
O wonderful and glorious army of new martyrs! Who can worthily proclaim your glory? Truly, "blessed is the land which has been watered with your blood, and holy are the places which have received your bodies."
Blessed are you, O Russian land, purified by the fire of suffering! You have passed through the water of baptism; now you are passing through the fire of suffering, and you will enter also into your rest.
Once Christians would reverently gather the sand of the Coliseum soaked with the blood of the martyrs. The places where the martyrs suffered and died were regarded as sacred and worthy of special honor. But now all Rus' is the ground where the martyrs contested. Its soil has been hallowed by their blood, its air by their souls' ascent to Heaven. Truly sacred are you, O Rus'! That writer of old was right in saying that you are the third Rome, and there will be no fourth. You have surpassed ancient Rome in the multitude of your martyrs' exploits. By your firmness in the Orthodox faith, you have outshone even that Rome which baptized you, and you will remain unsurpassed till the end of the world. Only that land which was made holy by the earthly life and sufferings of the God-Man is holier than you in the eyes of Orthodox people.
Sons [and daughters] of Russia, shake off the sleep of sloth and despondency! Gaze upon the glory of Russia's sufferings and cleanse yourselves, wash yourselves from your sins! Strengthen yourselves in the Orthodox faith, that you may be worthy to abide in the dwelling place of the Lord and to take up your abode in His holy mountain. Awake, awake, arise, O Rus', who have drunk from the Lord's hand the chalice of His anger! When your sufferings come to an end, your righteousness will be with you and the glory of the Lord will accompany you. Nations will come to your light and kings to the radiance rising over you. In that day, lift up your eyes round about you and behold, for your children will come to you from the west and the north, from the south and the east, blessing Christ in you unto the ages.
As we look back on his words, written in the early 1960s, we see that he was prophetic. Holy Rus' did rise again from the holy blood of her martyrs. No country or region, not the Great Age of Martyrs, could hope to compare with this sacred offering of faithfulness. Holy Orthodoxy is the second largest group of Christians on earth (after the Roman Communion). And more than half live in Russia. When you add those in communion with the Russian Orthodox Church, the number is overwhelming.
Still she fights off the onslaught of atheists,
and atheism's most grotesque expression in human history,
in the form of our Western culture.
If years or decades hence,
we should learn
that God-fearing humanity made its last stand in this era,
would we really be surprised?
And God's chief warrior in this sacred cause,
the one who was faithful without compromise,
will have been Holy Rus'
as she continues to offer the blood of her martyrs even to the present hour.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.