I saw two photographs on
a priest’s Facebook page: There was a cross procession mainly consisting of old
ladies on one of them, and a festival in a mosque with mostly young men praying
shoulder to shoulder on the other one. And there was a caption: “Islam is the religion of young men of the
East, and Christianity is the religion of elderly women in the West.”
I am not sure about the
West, but there are indeed many elderly people in our Church, though they are
far from being a majority. In the churches of Ekaterinburg that my wife and I
attend—St. Alexander Nevsky Church of New-Tikhvin Convent and the Great Church
of St. John Chrysostom Church—married couples with children (like us) make up
most of the parishioners. There are quite a lot of young people too, and plenty
of old ladies. Old women are stable and some even come with their chairs. They
settle down comfortably, take their prayer-books out, pray and follow the
service attentively. From the perspective of a non-believer old ladies are the
weakness of the Church. They are aged, feeble and are seemingly incapable of
anything. It is quite different with bearded men in mosques who block streets
to slaughter sheep for Qurban Bairam and are ready to conquer the world for
their faith. Such things impress. But it is quiet in Orthodox churches, icon
lamps slowly burn in front of icons; people stand, pray and cross themselves;
the service is celebrated with reverence. Modern people, who want everything at
once without making any efforts, feel uncomfortable at church. Someone often
comes and says: “Alright, I have come to believe that our Orthodox faith is the
true faith; but what can you offer me at the Church? I want to gain success and
respect, earn a lot of money, and be healthy and happy!”
But our Orthodox faith
is not about this at all; it is entirely about the salvation of the soul and
the victory over death. As Christ said to His disciples: For what is a
man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what
shall a man give in exchange for his soul? (Mt. 16:26). It is not the
custom in our Church to share the stories that Western preachers are very fond
of: “I have come to church and God helped me earn a million dollars!” In
Orthodoxy it is often the other way round: First someone earned millions and
then began to think deeply about his soul, distributed his possessions among
the poor and choose to follow Christ. An illustrative example is the Life
of St. Seraphim of Vyritsa who was almost
our contemporary.
The Church teaches: love
God and your neighbor, live according to the commandments and struggle with
your sins. That is far more difficult than walking to Mecca and back because
this is your life’s journey; and whether or not you achieve your aim is known
to God alone. You got baptized? Well done! You came to church for a feast? That
is fine! You started reading the morning and evening prayers? That is even
better! However, you will not draw very close to God until you begin to take
care of your soul and struggle with your sins. There are cases in modern Church
life when someone attends church, keeps the fasts, goes on pilgrimages to holy
places, but does not love people—then all he does is in vain. After all, the
criterion of your faith is your love for God and people and not the frequency
of church-going or the holy places you have visited. For this is the
law and the prophets (Mt. 7:12). As St. Anthony the Great, the father
of monasticism, said: “Our life and our death is with our neighbor. If we gain
our brother, we have gained God, but if we scandalize our brother, we have
sinned against Christ.”[1]
However, few young
people care about the salvation of their souls—above all they want to achieve
something and find self-fulfillment. Imagine a group of students sitting on the
steps of a university and talking about repentance. One of them says: “Hurray!
Great Lent is coming soon! Looking forward to it! I can’t wait to stop hanging
out on social networks and playing tanks! I will turn off my smartphone, attend
the Vespers after lectures and read the Great Canon in the evening!” His
fellow-student answers: “As for me, I want to spend the weekend at a monastery!
Its Lenten services are so strict and long and it will be good to think about my
sins during them!” Is this picture real?
Once things were quite
different in Russia. Why? Because every family gave a Christian upbringing to
their children; there was the tradition and this tradition was Orthodox. In the
mid-seventeenth century, Patriarch Makarios III of Antioch and Archdeacon Paul
of Aleppo paid a visit to Russia, and later the archdeacon wrote:
“I marvel at how these
Russians pray from morning to night! They stand in churches motionless like
stones. The Tsar’s Lenten menu consists only of shchi (cabbage soup), radishes
and bread. After the Liturgy they have a meal and then the bells ring to
announce the evening service. As for us, after their long services we would
leave churches with absolutely worn-out legs and pain in our backs. I have the
impression that these Russians have legs of iron and are all saints.”
In old Novgorod,
churches stood about 110 yards from each other. The little, agreeable town of
Borovsk, on the outskirts of which I lived at the Dependency of the Holy
Protection of St. Paphnutius’s Monastery, once had as many as twenty-eight
churches with a population of 10,000.
In the years of state
atheism, Orthodox traditions were stamped out in our country for several
generations in a row. As we know, they cannot reappear by themselves; it is a
long process that starts from our… old ladies. It is they (who were brought up
in faith from childhood, walked dozens of miles for services to the rare
churches that had miraculously survived the ravages and desecration, prayed
secretly using hand-written prayer-books before the icons that they had hidden
from the eyes of others) who rescued our churches from oblivion. Our “church
old ladies” are not the weakness of the Church; rather, they are the blessing
of God that preserved faith in the darkest of the godless times.
I recall how Georgian
female choristers from St. Barbara’s Church in Tbilisi told me that they had
had a tradition of serving not only in Georgian but also in Slavonic in their
church—for the old Russian lady parishioners, thanks to whom the temple had not
been closed and ransacked in the period of anti-Church persecution. The rector
used to call them respectfully, “white headscarves”. As long as at least one of
them was alive, he would worship in Slavonic rigorously. The Holy Protection
Cathedral in my native Kamyshlov [a town in the Sverdlovsk region.—Trans.] was
also rescued from oblivion by old ladies who saved it by prayer, washed it
clean, rebuilt it and then became its first parishioners. They did not take
seats of honor; rather, they became singers, janitors, seamstresses and cooks.
What did the Savior say? If any man desire to be first, the same shall
be last of all, and servant of all (Mk. 9:35). Not only did they teach
me to sing and read in the choir: they also taught me a sincere Christian love
that surrounded me like a warm down blanket during a frost.
When it comes to young
people, today young people in our Church are different from those who filled
our churches in the 1990s when, let us be frank, it was fashionable to go to
church in our country. Our churches were scarce and cramped, and half of
newcomers knew neither, “Our Father”, nor the Creed by heart. In our days, if
young people go to church, they do it with serious intentions and after careful
consideration. They want to understand everything themselves, ask questions,
sometimes awkward ones, and that is very good. True, our young people often
stand in churches in smart jackets and with backpacks on their shoulders, but
they hold service books in their hands, pray thoughtfully, with sense, and
stand from beginning to end. Many go to confession and Communion. As you look
at them you realize that it is no longer a fashion or a game—it is life where
everything is genuine. This means they will live by faith and teach their
children the same.
Before the Nativity I
met with my brother Ilia (he is sixteen years my junior) at our parents’. I
asked him how he had greeted the New Year. He shrugged his shoulders and said:
“Alone with my wife. We had dinner and then went to sleep.” I was surprised:
“And what about walking around till the morning with your friends?” He replied:
“We have not gathered with our friends for the New Year for five years now. All
of us have families, children, and everybody stays at home. But we certainly
gather at Nativity! It has become our tradition. That is a true festive
occasion! As for the New Year, it is for those who watch these ever-boring and
annoying pop singers on TV, while enjoying the Russian salad and ‘herring under
a fur coat’ [or dressed herring: a Russian layered salad composed of diced
herring covered with layers of various grated boiled vegetables.—Trans.].”
Honestly, I was amazed
and happy to hear these words. It is not to say that my brother and his friends
who are in their early thirties go to church every Sunday and observe all the
fasts—that would not be true. But it is a real fact that they don’t enjoy and
value the New Year as much as their parents and my peers (in the late forties)
who grew up in the Soviet Union do.[2] The Nativity of Christ makes a great
difference! Even many of those whom you would otherwise not drag to church by
force go to church at the Nativity. Even out-and-out sceptics hurry to church
on this day to ask the newborn Christ for something known to them alone.
When my wife and I were
travelling to church by bus, I met an acquaintance whom I knew before church:
“How are you doing?”
“I am doing well.”
“So am I.”
“Where are you going so
early on Sunday?”
“I need to be somewhere
in the morning.” (And he names the bus-stop near the church).
Knowing that he was not
interested in religion I simply ignored his words. Later that morning I saw him
carrying a little baby in his arms for Communion in the church. I thought: “Why
did you not tell me this on the bus? There is nothing to be ashamed of in
coming to church early in the morning on Sunday and praying to God.” He must
have been too shy to tell me. At the beginning I too was ashamed of telling my
friends that I had become a church-goer, fearing that they would say, “There is
surely something wrong with him! He was a normal guy, but now he sings with old
women in church!”
We talked after the
service. He said:
“I take my godchildren
for Communion every Sunday! Today it is my sister’s son, and last Sunday it was
my brother’s daughter.”
Another acquaintance of
mine who earlier had not been especially pious was standing in the corner
behind the columns and praying through the service. He looked serious and
concentrated. He was listening to the priests’ exclamations as if they were the
announcement of a sentence; without frowning or clenching his fists, humbly and
simply. Once he had seen a familiar face, he relaxed a little. “Happy feast,
Denis!”—“The same to you!”
Later, I saw an old
comrade who had previously had a business in Moscow. He used to call me only on
business matters. Now he was walking towards the chalice with a little son with
his arms crossed and smiling. I came up and we embraced. It turned out that he
had sold his business in Moscow and was building a house in the country. Once
they had their son baptized, they firmly decided to go to church regularly.
I also met a deputy of
the State Duma whom I have known. His wife and children go to church every
Sunday and the children go to Sunday school. Sometimes he went to pick them up
after the service. Formerly he would always wait in the car without going into
the church. And now that they have three children he stood in the church with
his family, crossed himself, and made bows.
And now there are many
people in the Church who once were “too busy” to care about the faith: they had
business, business, and more business… “Am I some fool that bows to priests? My
God is in my soul. You beat your foreheads against the floor and bring money to
church!” I cannot count the times I heard these words before! But when you have
a family and children, these foolish things disappear quickly—as soon as you
keep fast a little, take a prayer-book into your hands and come to your first
Communion. And see your child’s happy eyes in church.
There are new people in
church all the time. True, some of them leave, yet there are those who remain.
And it is the true quiet miracle of our faith. When someone lives “like
everybody else” for years but says at some point, “Enough! I cannot live
without God anymore!” And begins to go to church.
Denis Akhalashvili
Translated by Dmitry Lapa
2/11/2020
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