Photo: vseikony.ru
Fr. Daniel was quite a remarkable priest. He flashed among us Moscow pastors like a comet, like an autumn star cutting across the horizon—appearing and instantly vanishing, yet leaving behind a trail of light…
As a young priest, I often visited the large Sysoev family. It was nice to spend time with them, at least for an hour or two. Daniel, the oldest of the boys, was finishing high school then. I spoke with his father Alexei, an artist and director of the Radonezh Prep School, a lofty romantic and simply a very kind person. The mother of the future priest was always bustling, caring, tender-hearted... Lively, cheerful and boisterous children, inclined toward mischief and serious creative endeavors...
After that, Fr. Daniel and I saw each other rarely but memorably. I remember his joyful smile at our completely unexpected encounter in Sharm el-Sheikh, the resort on the Red Sea. We ran into each other in a Muslim town filled with merchants dressed in beige and light green full-length robes. Their clothes were quite like the cassocks that Orthodox clergy wear in Russia. Batiushka, with his characteristic charming openness, immediately recommended a fish restaurant where you could get something cheap and delicious. Matushka Yulia nodded modestly and smiled in agreement. Always sociable and ready to share news, Fr. Daniel announced with a huge smile that he’d already bought two “cassocks” from the Muslims, intending to test out the new garments back home. I remember his amazingly kind eyes, beaming with joy in the Lord… “This is what an Orthodox priest should be like,” I thought then. It’s bad when we priests look preoccupied, gloomy, when we show emotional stinginess with people, even if only for a minute.
I remember the Kursk Seminary where Fr. Daniel and I spoke to an audience of priests, with Vladyka German in attendance. This was about five years ago.1 Batiushka took the podium and spoke to us about missionary work. He seemed like a rider on a war horse. His gestures resembled blows from a saber. Batiushka chopped through the air with his hand, accentuating his vigorous, crisp, richly intonated speech. He spoke with determination, convincingly, as if anticipating objections from a possible opponent. I noticed then the breadth of his horizons and the thoroughness of his theological positions. I was struck by his effortless citation of the Old Testament prophets, one of whom had shared his name with him.
Fr. Daniel knew no spiritual compromises and didn’t want to know them. For him, comparative theology was precisely “accusatory,” as it was called in Russia two hundred years ago.
Either all or nothing; either you’re an Orthodox Christian or an accomplice of the dark forces trampled by Christ’s Resurrection! Such was the spiritual philosophy of the murdered priest of God.
I already knew then about Batiushka’s vigorous parish activities, his missionary school, and his fearless debates with those of other faiths… I also heard about the threats liberally showered upon the young rector by anonymous voices over the phone… Batiushka should have been born in Tsarist Russia, under the wing of the autocrat of All Rus’… But he lived in Moscow of the third millennium, which had long forgotten about the vocation of the Third Rome. Fr. Daniel so loved the Heavenly fatherland that in his fervor he paid little heed to the fate of the earthly fatherland. The fire burning in his chest summoned him to the celestial spheres, where he drew his listeners, eager to lead them beyond the bounds of human history as quickly as possible. Many sensed that for him, as for the Holy Apostle Paul, death would be gain: He lived by the thought of meeting Christ, the Son of the Living God.
The death of Fr. Daniel… Was it God’s allowance or His providence? A lack of caution or the beneficent finger of God? His Holiness Patriarch Kirill said it best at Fr. Daniel’s funeral, which gathered several thousand Muscovites: “The most eloquent sermon of the murdered priest Daniel Sysoev is his blood, shed in the midst of the church entrusted to him. Blood that spattered the epitrachelion only just removed from the head of a repentant sinner…”
At these words from the Patriarch, the clouds that had completely covered the sky suddenly parted, and a shaft of light poured down upon the church, where the funeral service was concluding…
They say that the murderer who entered the church that night asked: “Where’s Fr. Daniel?” He stepped forward and said: “That’s me.” And the shots rang out…
Long ago, a holy Biblical youth, sleeping by the Tabernacle of witness, heard in the depths of night the voice of God: “Samuel, Samuel!” Rising at once before the face of the Unknown, he answered: “Here I am, Lord...”
