Sunday, July 30, 2017
Orthodox Christians should be ready for self-sacrifice and even martyrdom
…In order to pray one had to be ready at any minute for a martyr’s death. And we were ready for it…
…everyone who entered [the one remaining church that did not accept the Declaration of 1927 by Metropolitan Sergius] was registered and later arrested. This was the time when the atheist Soviet power demanded of believers that they go to the Churches of the official Church.
I, too, was arrested and banished for five years. At Solovki I encountered many hierarchs of the true Church. And there we already had our Catacomb church.
In the concentration camps the persecution against faith was completely open: priests were shorn and shaved, forbidden to wear cassocks and crosses. For making the sign of the Cross a new term of imprisonment was given. Of course there was no question of any open services. (…) In order to pray one had to be ready at any minute for a martyr’s death. And we were ready for it, always carrying with us, like the first Christians, a Particle of the Holy Gifts. I brought such a Particle abroad and gave it to Metropolitan Anastassy.
what terror overwhelmed me when, fairly recently, I managed to come abroad and found that some people here ’spiritually’ recognize the Soviet Church. Spiritually!
And not only were we ready to die, but many did die, confident that somewhere there, outside the reach of the Soviet authorities, where there is freedom - there the Truth was shining in all its purity. There people were living by it and submitting to it. There people did not bow down to Antichrist. And what terror overwhelmed me when, fairly recently, I managed to come abroad and found that some people here ’spiritually’ recognize the Soviet Church. Spiritually! Many of us there fell, ‘for fear of the Jews’, or giving in to the temptation of outward cooperation with the authorities. I knew priests of the official Church who, at home, tore their hair out, who smashed their heads making prostrations, begging forgiveness for their apostasy, calling themselves Cain - but nonetheless they did not have the strength to decide upon martyrdom. But even they spiritually did not recognize the Red Church. But these others abroad - it is precisely spiritually that they submit to it. What good fortune that our priest-martyrs, in dying, did not find out about this betrayal!
…even they spiritually did not recognize the Red Church. But these others abroad - it is precisely spiritually that they submit to it. What good fortune that our priest-martyrs, in dying, did not find out about this betrayal!
I. M. Andreyev: Russia’s Catacomb Saints
