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By Archbishop Averky Taushev
"O wondrous, life-giving, divine Orthodoxy! I see your radiant image!" – this is how our great righteous man, prayer-maker, and miracle-worker, the ever-memorable Father John of Kronstadt, loved to exclaim repeatedly .
And this is understandable! After all, he himself constantly sensed within himself the incomparable grace-filled power and spiritual might of wondrous, life-giving, Divine Orthodoxy—that pure, uncorrupted, unadulterated, genuine Christian faith, the one true, one saving faith, undistorted and uncontaminated by any human delusions or inventions. Where does all the greatness and glory of our wondrous, all-Russian righteous man come from, who acquired worldwide renown, was bowed before, and deeply revered as a true shepherd of Christ's Church, even by many foreigners and non-believers who experienced the miraculous power of his prayers and intercession for them before God, and who only heard of him from others? From Holy Orthodoxy.
After all, Father John—the son of a poor, pious clerk and his equally pious wife, the scion of a long-established spiritual line—is flesh and blood of that Holy Rus' that lived and breathed Holy Orthodoxy. With his pious mother's milk, he imbibed the spirit of true Orthodox piety from his earliest infancy; he was nourished and nurtured by the life-giving juices of the Holy Orthodox Faith. Having received a strong spiritual foundation from childhood in the prayerful atmosphere of his native rural Orthodox church, he later received the most thorough spiritual, scientific, and theological training and education at our Russian Orthodox theological schools—the Arkhangelsk Theological School, the Arkhangelsk Theological Seminary, and the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. Father John is our Orthodox pastor, and hence lies all his greatness and glory! And he himself was always deeply aware and aware of this. For he never spoke in his own name in anything and did not attribute anything to himself personally, but only to the grace of the priesthood that rested upon him, which the Holy Orthodox Church had honored him with.“Oh, brothers!” he said in his conversation with his fellow pastors, priests of the Nizhny Novgorod diocese (in 1901): “We have been given much grace by the Lord God, and if we preserve this gift of God, then we are invincible. Here, venerable fellow pastors, is how I serve for the glory of God, for the glorification of the Church of Christ and the spread of the Orthodox faith.” “The Orthodox Faith of Christ” – thus exclaims Fr. John in his inspired diary: “how many ineffable blessings are revealed in you! How you renew, purify, transform our soul and very body through faith, hope, through repentance, prayer and especially through the life-giving Mystery of Communion! How many ineffable gifts of God are in you! What a Divine life! What wondrous actions of the Life-giving Spirit!.. How many blessings are in you, holy, Orthodox faith!” "What a rich divine treasury you are! What an inexhaustible granary! What a source of living water of the Holy Spirit! What a radiant sun for all who walk in the darkness of life's night! What a source of fragrance, holiness, and incorruptibility you are! What a wondrous salt of the earth you are—for us earthly men, infected to the bone and brain with the rottenness of sin! We thank the Lord for such a heavenly, holy, vital treasure! Teach us all, O Master, to live worthy of such faith, such hope!..." ("Thoughts on the Church," p. 271). Do we see in the West, among the so-called "heterodox," anything comparable to what our ever-memorable Father John, such a shining exponent of the spirit of true Orthodoxy, such a zealous and unwavering champion of the true Orthodox faith and Church, revealed to us? Nothing of the kind! Our Father John is a phenomenon quite exceptional, out of the ordinary. But it was revealed to us by our Holy Orthodox Church, and we must always firmly know and remember this: outside of Orthodoxy such a phenomenon would simply be impossible, as Father John himself testifies to.
Father John treated everyone with love, accepted everyone, and benefited everyone—Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and pagans—and performed miracles of healing upon their requests, regardless of their faith. But he also constantly taught that the saving Truth is found only in Orthodoxy, for all other confessions "contain the Truth in untruth." "No confession of the Christian faith," Father John taught. John: “except for the Orthodox, it cannot lead a Christian to the perfection of Christian life or holiness and to the complete cleansing of sins and to incorruption, because other non-Orthodox confessions “hold the truth in unrighteousness” ( Rom. 1:18 ), have mixed vanity and lies with the Truth and do not possess those God-given means for purification, sanctification, rebirth, renewal, which the Orthodox Church possesses” (ibid., pp. 13–14).
Hear this, all you modernists, all you "ecumenists," all you liberals, who arrogantly and self-assuredly declare that "God is One" and that therefore all faiths are equal and of equal value, and that it makes no difference, therefore, which church or denomination one belongs to, so long as one "is a good person"! This is said by the greatest righteous man of our time, whose undoubted holiness and closeness to God are attested to by astonishing miracles, and whose entire astonishing life compels us to bow before his words, before his teachings, as before an incontestable, unquestionable authority!
"Outside the Church," he says, "there is no salvation, no spirit of grace" (p. 8). And where the true Church is, impartial history shows us: the True Church is the one that professes the True, uncorrupted, genuine Christian faith, coming from the Apostles themselves. "That faith (or that Christian confession)," says Fr. John: "there is the true one, which daily and incessantly destroys the all-destroying sin in a believing person, cleanses him, sanctifies, enlightens, renews, revives, strengthens, and not the one that produces enmity, persecution, torture, executions (Catholic), or which leads to false wisdom, to the dominion of corrupt reason over Divine Revelation, to the rejection of the hierarchy, the sacraments, fasts, and almost everything that the Holy Spirit, acting in the Holy Apostles and Holy Fathers, established for our salvation; not the true church, which boldly and brazenly cut off the connection with the "church of the firstborn, who are written in heaven ( Heb. 12:23 )," who pleased God, enjoying bliss in God, glorifying God and incessantly praying for us, earthly - living - and assisting us in the work of salvation with their prayers; “The true church is not the one that has boldly, insolently, and proudly broken off contact with the dead (or with the church of the underworld) and considers prayers for them invalid (Protestantism)” (pp. 50–31).
And here are Father John's own words, which should be so convincing to all modern interfaithists who seek to level all faiths, and to our would-be politicians who have already declared their intention to impose interfaithism in a future free Russia—a criminal indifference to faith under the loud and fashionable slogan of "religious tolerance" and "separation of church and state":
There are many separate Christian denominations, with different external and internal structures, with diverse opinions and teachings, often contrary to the Divine truth of the Gospel and the teachings of the Holy Apostles, the Ecumenical and Local Councils, and the Holy Fathers. They cannot all be considered true and salvific: indifference in faith, or the recognition of any faith as equally salvific, leads to unbelief or a cooling of faith, to negligence in observing the rules and statutes of the faith, to a cooling of Christians towards one another. "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired you, that he may sift you as wheat" ( Luke 22:31 ). This is what Satan has done and continues to do, that is, he has given birth to schisms and heresies. Strictly adhere to the one true faith and the Church" – so our great pastor resolutely commands us. "There is one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all" ( Eph. 4:5 ). Our Divine Service itself, which, in its beauty, prayerfulness, and profoundness, is unmatched by either Catholics or Protestants, is, according to Father John, the best and most visible testimony to all of the superiority, truth, and life-giving power of our Holy Orthodox Faith.
"Where are there such prayers, praises, thanksgivings and petitions, such wonderful services as in the Orthodox Church?" asks Father John, and he himself decisively answers: "nowhere" (p. 38).
And don't we now see abroad how many non-believers admire and are moved by our Orthodox liturgy? What fascination do so many foreigners have with our ancient church singing, our ancient iconography, as the most complete reflection of the spirit of Orthodoxy? Even the Roman Catholics, who, with the cunning intention of introducing the so-called "Eastern Rite" to ensnare the Orthodox, are often sincerely captivated by its sublime beauty and depth, which may even be fraught with quite unexpected consequences for themselves.
How clearly, well, understandably, and convincingly Father John reveals the lies of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism in his remarkable "Thoughts on the Church"!
"The most harmful thing in Christianity," he says, "is the primacy of a man in the Church, for example, the Pope, and his supposed infallibility. It is precisely in his dogma of infallibility that the greatest error lies, for the Pope is a sinful man, and it would be a disaster if he imagined himself infallible. How many enormous errors, destructive to human souls, have the Catholic Papal Church invented—in dogmas, in rituals, in canonical rules, in liturgy, in the deadening, malicious attitudes of Catholics toward the Orthodox, in blasphemies and slanders against the Orthodox Church, in insults directed at the Orthodox Church and Orthodox Christians. And the supposedly infallible Pope, his and the Jesuits’ doctrine, their spirit of lies, duplicity and all sorts of wrong means “ad majorem Dei gloriam” – for the supposedly greater glory of God – are to blame for all this” (p. 44).
Even more sharply and decisively, Father John denounces the lies of Protestantism: “Lutheranism, hiding behind the name of the Christian faith, is in reality a rejection of faith, an indulgence of sensuality, with the rejection of fasting, monasticism, or the life of virginity dedicated exclusively to the service of God, an indulgence of the falsely named human mind with its philosophical nonsense and its deification, a rejection of the divine authority of the Ecumenical Councils and the Holy Fathers, a bold break with the Universal Church and Her Head Christ – a self-proclaimed gathering hiding behind the name of the ‘church’, purified and reformed” (p. 38). “Whoever is not in the Church,” explains Father John, “is not with Christ, and will have no communion with God either here on earth or there in heaven.” Therefore, it is necessary to belong to the Church of Christ, whose head is the Almighty King, the Conqueror of hell, Jesus Christ " (p. 52). "The Orthodox Church," says Fr. John, "surpasses all non-Orthodox churches, firstly, by its truth, its Orthodoxy, preserved and won by the blood of the Apostles, hierarchs, martyrs, monks and all the saints; secondly, by the fact that it most surely guides to salvation—by an even, direct and true path; that it faithfully purifies, sanctifies, renews through the hierarchy, the Divine Services, the Sacraments, and fasts; thirdly, that it best teaches how to please God and save one's soul, best guides one to repentance, correction, prayer, thanksgiving, and glorification" (p. 38). What madness, therefore, not to cherish one's belonging to the Holy Orthodox Faith and the Church! In a series of inspired words addressed to the entire Russian people, our great pastor therefore warned the Russian people against the increasingly widespread indifference to faith, unbelief, and nihilism, threatening them with inevitable divine punishment. Alas! The Russian people did not heed their great pastor, man of prayer, righteous man, and miracle worker, and this terrible divine punishment unfolded.
"How cunning and crafty is Satan!" exclaims Father John in one of his sermons: "In order to destroy Russia, he has fanned the flames of unbelief and corruption through malicious writers and teachers, through Russian secondary and higher schools, and through the so-called intelligentsia. The state is disintegrating on the basis of unbelief, faintheartedness, cowardice, and immorality. Without the instillation of faith and the fear of God in the population of Russia, it cannot stand" (Sermon of February 19, 1906). “We had the good fortune to be born and baptized in the Kingdom of Christ – in the Orthodox Church, and we are called to be heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven, but many of the Russian intelligentsia have renounced Christ and His Church, wanting to govern themselves, to live according to their own reckless will... – and they themselves are striving and dragging Russia to destruction” (Sermon of October 5, 1906).
And have these warnings not come true?
What should we do now?
"Before it is too late," Father John calls to us: "turn, all unbelievers, to faith, to repentance, with tears and contrition of heart. Let no one be too late! Perhaps tomorrow, O man, the judgment of the Creator will follow you" (Homily of April 15, 1907).
"Brothers, friends! Love the Church: in the Church is your life, or your living water, gushing like a constant spring from the ever-flowing Source of the Holy Spirit... Oh, what a blessing is the Church! Oh, believe, believe not in words alone, but in deeds—in the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church, or the community of those saved in Christ, adorned with every virtue!"