Jordanville, New York, March 16, 2018
Photo: wikimedia.org Today marks the tenth anniversary of the peaceful repose of His Eminence Metropolitan Laurus (Škurla), the former First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR), who labored many decades in the Lord’s vineyard.
Met. Laurus is perhaps best known for signing the Act of Canonical Communion with His Holiness Patriarch Alexei II of Moscow and All Russia in Moscow’s iconic Christ the Savior Cathedral, which reunited ROCOR with its Mother Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. ROCOR had been independently administered during the long decades of atheistic persecutions in Russia, its faithful looking ahead to the day when they could reunite with their brothers inside of Russia.
The First Hierarch passed away in his sleep in his cell at Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, New York on the feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, March 16, 2008, having attended all of the services of Clean Week and having communed of the holy Body and Blood of Christ at the Sunday Liturgy. He was 80 years old. He is buried in the crypt of the monastery’s Holy Trinity Cathedral, with other First Hierarchs of ROCOR.
Met. Laurus was born on January 1, 1928 in Ladomirová, Czechoslovakia. He began serving in the altar at the local monastery at the age of 5, and began fully participating in the life of the monastery at the age of 11. He became a novice in 1944, and moved to America together with the brothers of the monastery in 1946, joining Holy Trinity Monastery. He graduated from Holy Trinity Seminary in 1947, and was tonsured as a riassaphore monk in 1948. He was tonsured to the small schema and ordained a hierodeacon the next year, and as a hieromonk in 1954. He was elevated to the dignity of igumen in 1959 and to that of archimandrite in 1966.
Serving as the dean of students of Holy Trinity Seminary, Fr. Laurus was consecrated to the episcopacy on Sunday, August 13, 1967 at the Synodal Cathedral of the Sign in New York. He was appointed as the bishop of Manhattan and the secretary of the Synod of Bishops of ROCOR, vicar to then-First Hierarch Metropolitan Philaret of Eastern America and New York. He was elected as abbot of Holy Trinity Monastery in 1976, and was later elevated to the rank of archbishop in 1981.
He was later elected as the primate of ROCOR in October 2001. He made his first official visit to Russia in May 2004, which eventually led to ROCOR’s reunion with the Russian Church three years later.
His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine addressed a letter to His Eminence Metropolitan Hilarion, the current First Hierarch of ROCOR today, in honor of Met. Laurus’ repose, remembering him as a man of prayer, and an example of Christian virtue for all. The letter, posted on the official ROCOR site, reads:
To His Eminence Hilarion, Metropolitan of Eastern America and New York, First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia:
Your Eminence:
On this day of the Lord, we prayerfully remember the Primate of the Russian Church Abroad who passed away, Metropolitan Laurus of Eastern America and “Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation”(Hebrews 13:7). Metropolitan Laurus, who gave up his life to the hands of the Lord 10 years ago, is for us the very person and hierarch who serves as an example of the true manifestation of Christian virtue, of which the main one is love. Vladyka Laurus was overfilled with this Divine love and shown it forth upon all who he knew and spoke to. The Holy Church on this Earth is called upon to reveal to mankind an otherworldly reality, the Kingdom of the age to come. As a person of prayer and a monastic, Metropolitan Laurus, even on the cathedra of a Primate, sensed himself not a bishop, but a son of the Church who was called upon as was Righteous Joseph, to preserve the purity and the safety of the Church as the Holy Bride of Christ. He did not remember in word alone the Gospel call for unity and love among the children of the Church, but he did everything possible to confirm them, so that Brothers of one blood, in the Fatherland and in the diaspora, having been divided not only by distance but by historical memory, would be “of one heart and of one soul” (Acts 4:32).
That is why the peak of his service as bishop must be the signing of the Act of Canonical Communion in 2007 between the two parts of the Russian Orthodox Church, in the Fatherland and abroad.
“But the righteous, though they die early, will be at rest” (Wisdom of Solomon 4:7). Remembering today the 10th year after the blessed repose of the First Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad, His Eminence Metropolitan Laurus, we lift up his saintly name in our humble prayers at the altar of God and meekly ask that our Lord Jesus Christ, among Whom there are no dead, but all are living, would grant rest to his soul in the abodes of the righteous, and added him, as His faithful servant, “to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven” (Hebrews 12:23).
Eternal memory to our dear Vladyka Laurus!
With love in Christ,
+Onuphry
Metropolitan of Kiev and All Ukraine,
Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church
16 March 2018,
Kiev
