A REFLECTION ON THE WAR IN UKRAINE

 

Dear Parish Faithful,

The situation in Ukraine is desperate and worsens by the hour. The unprovoked attack on this sovereign country by Vladimir Putin and the Russian military is already a humanitarian crisis unknown to Europe since WW II. There are over a million refugees fleeing Ukraine as of now, and the number grows daily. It is very difficult to find the words to fully express the murderous devastation unleashed by Putin upon an innocent people that he claims, as a Russian, to have such close historical, cultural and religious ties with. Perhaps we can say there is something deeply sinister and even hideous in Putin's willingness to slaughter the Ukrainian people in order to fulfill his fantasy of restoring the former Soviet Empire. As the death toll rises among innocent men, women, and children, it is deeply troubling to sit back and watch this in the comfort of our homes. 

 

Ukraine's largest flag flies over Kiev

 

How can we fathom the horror of having a sick tyrant do whatever is necessary to destroy Ukraine - a free, democratic country. For that is clearly his goal, as Kremlin watchers inform us. There is no "off ramp" at this point in time for Putin to exit onto. This is not the time to call Putin a "genius," or tell us how "sophisticated" he is. Vladimir Putin is a corrupt, autocratic thug, and he has made himself a pariah in the eyes of the civilized world. It is clear that many Russian people are vehemently opposed to this war, and I can only hope that their numbers increase to the point that he cannot jail or silence them all. As a ray of light, we are deeply moved by the courage and resolve of the Ukrainian people as they offer their lives in defense of their homeland. What a contrast between President Volodymyr Zelensky and Putin!

On the "spiritual level," Putin poses as an Orthodox Christian. Meaning, we can assume that he was baptized as an Orthodox Christian (as was Joseph Stalin); and he appears publicly in church either venerating an icon, crossing himself, lighting a candle, or receiving a blessing from the patriarch. As I have said to others, as Orthodox Christians this can only embarrass us and fill us with shame. His actions are not only "un-Christian," they are completely anti-Christian. (If a Ukrainian considered him to be an antichrist figure, who will argue against that?). Would a Christian leader unleash his war machine against his fellow innocent Orthodox Christians on the eve of Great Lent? Is Putin aware that Forgiveness Sunday is fast approaching? Ukrainian Christians are taking up their personal crosses as Great Lent guides them to Golgotha and the Cross of Christ. Is Putin aware that by next Monday Orthodox Christians across the world enter into the "School of Repentance?” These questions may seem naive in the world of realpolitik, but there are Orthodox Christians - including here in America - who commend Putin for his piety and visibility in the Church. This is profoundly misguided and misleading.

Are his actions what we would want or expect from an Orthodox Christian leader supposedly defending traditional Christian values? I just saw a video of a young evangelical Christian woman praise Putin as a "Christian nationalist" who protects Christian values. What values would those be? I have no idea as to whether or not Putin approaches the Chalice for Holy Communion. If so, and if Patriarch Kyrill of Moscow had any courage, shouldn't he excommunicate Putin? Just one example: We tell young people in love that if they choose to have sex outside of marriage then they should not approach the Chalice. Can the Church, then, with any integrity, allow a mass murderer guilty of war crimes to receive the Eucharist? 

Here is a powerful critique, if not a rebuke, of those members of our hierarchy, beginning with Patriarch Kyrill of Moscow and All Russia, who have responded with bland admonishments to "seek and pray for peace" over the war in Ukraine. None of these hierarchs here criticized by Archdeacon John Chryssavgis have denounced Putin's actions for what they are: The immoral and sinful actions of a twisted mind that should be denounced by the Church with the same vehemence as secular writers denounce him. Pious phrases and appeals to humility cannot mask outright evil. Once we realize that that is what we are dealing with, we will then be able to appreciate the victory of Christ over all evil and death itself.

https://publicorthodoxy.org/2022/02/27/orthodox-christian-standing-with-ukraine/

Fr. Steven & Presvytera Deborah

 

Followup to 'Byzantine Symphonia in the Nuclear Age'

Dear Parish Faithful,

Back in November 1 of last year, I wrote a reflection about the very troubling fact that in Russia there was a nationalist movement that was promoting the great saint, Seraphim of Sarov, as the patron of the country's nuclear weapons. This reflection was eventually posted on the OCA's website. 

With that in mind, you may want to read this recent tweet from a certain Greta Van Susteren writing for the blog foreignpolicy.com. According to what she writes/tweets, the Russian Orthodox Church is now "considering" a proposal that would ban all such blessings of nuclear weapons on the part of the Church. 

I, for one, hope that this "consideration" becomes a firm policy of the Church. Please click on the yellow highlight to read this reassuring update. Was the Church's newly-stated policy due to pressure from dissident voices that found such patronage morally intolerable? Hard to say, but this is encouraging news and I thought to share it as a "follow through" from what I wrote earlier.

 

	Greta Van Susteren (@greta)
2/5/20, 9:46 AM Below from ⁦‪@ForeignPolicy⁩ ...thoughts? pic.twitter.com/KvCJ3gEVCQ

Byzantine Symphonia in the Nuclear Age

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

"He who dwells in peace collects spiritual gifts as it were with a scoop, and he sheds the light of knowledge on others."

- St. Seraphim of Sarov

The students in my Christian Mysticism class at XU recently took their mid-term exam. One young woman in the class chose as one of her "identifications" to describe the life and contributions to Orthodox spirituality of St. Seraphim of Sarov. Many of you know of this great Russian Orthodox saint (+1833) and his incredible life and profound experience of God through his life of interior prayer. 

This young woman is a fine student and her answer was coming along fine until she added: "He is the patron saint of nuclear weapons!" 

That sentence jumped out at me as not only terribly inaccurate, but as completely incongruous when applied to St. Seraphim. The saint was something of a "pacifist" on the personal level at least, regardless of any loyalty he may he felt for the tsar. In one well-known incident from his life, he was badly beaten and left for dead in the forest (something like the fate of the good Samaritan in the parable). He was eventually discovered and brought to the monastery for care and recovery. St. Seraphim did recover, but he remained quite stooped over for the remaining years of his life, as he is often depicted in his icons. But the point being made here is that the saint refused to bring any charges against his assailants once they were apprehended. In the spirit of Christian charity, he simply forgave them. St. Seraphim, therefore, chose not to "nuke" the robbers.

Getting back to my student, I wrote in the margins something like: "I have never heard of this before!" But I made sure to ask her about her source for this rather absurd claim, because I had an uneasy feeling about where it may have come from. And sure enough, she told me that when she had — of course — "googled" St. Seraphim in preparation for the exam, she read about his patronage of nuclear weapons on a Wikipedia article about him. A different site she shared with me, a site that claims to keep track of news coming from Eurasia, had the following statement: "The Russian Department of Defense's 12th Directorate, which is responsible for Russia's nuclear weapons, has been assigned a patron saint by the Russian Orthodox Church: St. Seraphim of Sarov." She was therefore simply passing on what she assumed was accurate information from these two sites. 

So now we have the utterly incoherent claim that this great "mystic," who was actually transfigured before one of his disciples, is extending his heavenly "blessing" to nuclear bombs or, as we now like to call them, "weapons of mass destruction!" This is unfair to the legacy of the saint, and an embarrassing misappropriation of that legacy for the Orthodox Church or for any Orthodox Christian who would have to explain or apologize for it. According to the Gospel, a saint simply cannot be the "patron" of nuclear weapons! That is not simply a non-Christian attitude; it is an anti-Christian attitude.

Yet I have to admit that I am not that surprised. It has been some years now, but I distinctly recall a photograph that was circulating on the internet of a Russian bishop sprinkling missiles on a fighter jet with holy water. That was shocking, to say the least. Within the post-communist Russian Orthodox Church there are definite signs of such an aberration. Key figures within the Church and a sizable portion of the faithful are nostalgically looking back to a "golden age" of the Church's existence when Church and State were closely bound together in a vision usually described as "holy Russia." 

After the horrors of the dreadful and deadly communist regime following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, such nostalgia is understandable. But that "golden age" never really existed in the harsh light of historical analysis. The scholar Dimitri Pospielovsky likened that era actually to a "golden cage." The pre-revolutionary Russian Orthodox Church lacked any real independence under the Russian monarchy, having its status diminished to a position of compromised passivity dating back to the time of the ecclesiastical reforms of Tsar Peter the Great (who much preferred being called the "emperor"). 

Nevertheless, after the "gates of hell" were unleashed against the Russian Orthodox Church by Lenin and Stalin, and the militantly atheistic regime of communist totalitarianism, the former Church-State relationship that existed under the Romanov dynasty could only seem like a long-lost era of freedom of religious expression and a status worthy of eventual recovery. However, in both eras under discussion — pre and post communist — the Church suffers from this relationship, as a privileged position vis-a-vis the State comes at a heavy price: that of offering moral support to the State even when that support compromises the integrity and prophetic voice of the Church.

Another way of explaining this is to employ the phrase used by the scholar Fr. Cyril Hovorun from the title of his book Political Orthodoxies - The Unorthodoxies of the Church Coerced. As Fr. Cyril writes: 

"Modern political Orthodoxies can also be presented as ideologies dressed in the robes of theology ... The difference between the two is that for theology the unseen is the uncreated God, while for ideology, the unseen is the world of ideas confined to the human mind." (p. 7) 

Only amidst such a confusion between theology and ideology could St. Seraphim of Sarov be designated the "patron of nuclear weapons."After a book full of dreary case studies wherein this confusion is chronicled within the contemporary Orthodox world, Fr. Cyril offers a clear choice on this issue: 

"Political Orthodoxies distract the Church from its original Orthodoxy - bringing people to God in the straight and unimpeded way. Deconstruction of false Orthodoxies is possible through the reconstruction of Orthodoxy as the apostles and the fathers of the Church taught and lived in it. An alternative to the politicization of the Church is the apostolic and patristic way of believing, behaving, and belonging." (p. 200-201) 

It is not that difficult to embrace his conclusion.


It is my modest opinion, shared, I am certain, by many others — including Orthodox believers in Russia and elsewhere — that this poorly-conceived retrieval of the old Byzantine symphonia within the context of both a post-communist and postmodern world will not serve the Russian Orthodox Church — or any of the autocephalous Orthodox Churches — well. This lesson could have been learned from pre-revolutionary Russia, for the temptation to restore an idealized "status" to the Church as the moral and spiritual bulwark of the State confuses theology, ideology, nationalism in a way that only obscures the Gospel of Jesus Christ.