For centenary of revolution Church calls to immortalize those who suffered for faith in Soviet years

Moscow, April 26, 2017

Photo: http://russia-insider.com Photo: http://russia-insider.com
    

Especially in this year of the centenary of the tragic Russian revolution, it is necessary to venerate the memory of and erect monuments to the New Martyrs persecuted for the Faith in the atheist Soviet years, and name streets in their honor, believes the head of Synodal Department for External Church Relations Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev), reports Interfax-Religion.

“That’s who we ought to erect monuments to, and whose names we ought to give to streets and squares, instead of artificially maintaining reverence for torturers, terrorists, and murderers, immortalized in the names of the squares and streets of many cities of our great Russia,” the metropolitan said on Wednesday in St. Petersburg at a plenary session dedicated to contemplating the events of 1917.

He noted that tens of thousands of clergy and millions of laity were victims of repressions, just in the 1930s.

136,900 Orthodox clergymen suffered repression in 1937, 85,300 of them being executed. In 1938, 28,300 were arrested, and 21,500 executed. “The total number of believers who suffered in the years of persecution is known to God alone,” Met. Hilarion said. According to him, by 1939, only about 100 out of more than 60,000 churches that had been active in 1917 were still open. Only four ruling bishops remained free.

As he noted, more than 1,760 New Martyrs and Confessors have been officially glorified by the Russian Orthodox Church, and noted that “spiritual blindness” was the main cause of the revolutionary events of 1917.

“In the pre-revolutionary period, year after year the truth of God as the foundation of the people’s life was replaced under various influences by human truth. The Gospel principle of love for God and neighbor was replaced with hedonistic and egoistic phantasms. The image of Christ as the ideal for imitation was replaced with rebels and godless figures. The fashionable ideas of the liberal wing became more popular than the Gospel. Debauchery and drunkenness became the norm of life,” he stated.   

4/26/2017

See also
A Word on the Day of the Centenary of the Russian Turmoil (+ VIDEO) A Word on the Day of the Centenary of the Russian Turmoil (+ VIDEO)
Bishop Tikhon (Shevkunov) of Egorievsk
A Word on the Day of the Centenary of the Russian Turmoil (+ VIDEO) A Word on the Day of the Centenary of the Russian Turmoil (+ VIDEO)
A sermon at the Presanctified Liturgy at the Church of the Resurrection of Christ and the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church at Sretensky Monastery, March 15, 2017
Bishop Tikhon (Shevkunov) of Egorievsk
God’s lessons are at times very heavy. God’s lessons lie in the fact that He endures the carelessness, cowardice, and infidelity of the people for a long time, but then comes the moment when the careless ones themselves and their descendants must settle their account with bitter but saving trials.
Spiritual deterioration of Russian people led to Bolshevik Revolution, faith revived at turn of XX and XXI centuries—Patriarch Kirill Spiritual deterioration of Russian people led to Bolshevik Revolution, faith revived at turn of XX and XXI centuries—Patriarch Kirill Spiritual deterioration of Russian people led to Bolshevik Revolution, faith revived at turn of XX and XXI centuries—Patriarch Kirill Spiritual deterioration of Russian people led to Bolshevik Revolution, faith revived at turn of XX and XXI centuries—Patriarch Kirill
“The main lesson we must glean from the last century is that we cannot build human life and society without God. Such societies, in the words of Holy Scripture, are ‘houses built upon the sand,’” Patriarch Kirill underlined.
A Pastoral Letter of New Priest-Martyr Sergei Mechev A Pastoral Letter of New Priest-Martyr Sergei Mechev
New Martyr Priest Sergei Mechev
A Pastoral Letter of New Priest-Martyr Sergei Mechev A Pastoral Letter of New Priest-Martyr Sergei Mechev
Written to his flock after the closing of their parish church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker on Maroseika Street in Moscow
New Martyr Priest Sergei Mechev
Let us enter, beloved ones, into the cells of our souls, into the temple of our spirit, consecrated unto the Lord at the moment of our Baptism and sanctified by Him at the time of our first Communion. This temple of ours—no one can ever destroy it, except we ourselves. In it there is both priest and penitent.
Comments
Phillip I Joseph Hanna4/30/2017 10:15 pm
Barekmor Your Eminence! I humbly bow and kiss your hand!
Finally someone saying what ought now be done - remove the reverence for atheistic traitors, torturers and persecutors and honour the true Christian martyrs of the terrible Revolution.
Christ strengthen and guide Orthodox Russia, His new light for the world!
Yours in Christ,
Phillip I Joseph Hanna
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