4/11/2016
Marilyn Swezey
This story characterizes Queen Elizabeth as a person. She reacted very humanly, and she was absolutely right. She was not Orthodox and not a “second Godmother” of the baby, so she couldn't actively participate in the service.
On a pilgrimage to Russia in 1988, Vladyka unofficially served one of the first panikhidas for Tsar Nicholas II and his family in the USSR. It happened right on the 70th anniversary of their murder in Ekaterinburg, which I heard about from Vladyka’s spiritual daughter Marilyn Swezey, who was with him on that pilgrimage. As she believes, the service became a kind of prologue to the glorification of the family and faithful servants of the last Tsar, which took place twelve years later.
Rating: 9.5|Votes: 11
My interviewee has had an extremely interesting and unusual life for an American woman. Charming, intelligent, she looks some 15 years younger than she really is. And behind her there is a long life full of the hard labors of a noble, self-sacrificing person who seeks to see Divine providence in every turn of her life. Here she is: secretary of Bishop Basil (Vasily) Rodzianko, assistant to Metropolitan Jonah (Paffhausen), an expert in the Russian literature and arts, honorable parishioner of the Cathedral of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, Marilyn Pfeifer Swezey.
