Sunday, July 30, 2017
…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
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