WHO HATH EARS TO HEAR, LET HIM HEAR!
(Matthew 13:9)
(Translated by Eugenia Richards)
From
the editor: While looking through certain journals of our
extensive family library, I set my attention on the spiritual-moral Orthodox journal
No. 4 from April 1 – 30, 1928, “The Heavenly Bread”, published by the monastery
of the Kazan Mother of God, in the city of Harbin,
China. This remarkable journal was
published with the blessing of the Archbishop, and later Metropolitan Methody of Harbin and
I
became acquainted with Bishop Methody through the
accounts of the pious father Archimandrite Polycarp,
an elder wise in age and humble, who lived out his final days in the Holy
Trinity Monastery in
In
the fourth issue of the journal “The Heavenly Bread”, on page 35, is the
profoundly heart-felt sermon of Vladika Methody, to which the Laurus
Synod should pay particular attention as it shamefully grovels before the so-called
Moscow Patriarchate.
If
the declaration of metropolitan Sergius caused the Orthodox world to be shaken
to its foundation, then the unification of the
Protopriest
Anatoly Trepatschko
June,
2005
A WORD TO THE
REGARDING THE INTENDED APPOINTMENT TO
A BISHOP BY THE AUTHORITY OF THE
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit.
The
bright days of the Holy Pascha of Christ are approaching… We Christians know
that the three-day glorious Resurrection of Christ was preceded by the
suffering on the cross and the death of Christ.
And now, as if in likeness of our Lord, the bright days of Pascha are
preceded by the grievous days of an imminent grave ordeal. The Moscow church authority, which recognized
the soviet power as a power from God, intends to appoint its own bishop to the
Harbin see, who even here in our churches will have to proclaim the godless
soviet regime from the church ambo, as a power from God, and proclaim that “the
joys of the soviet regime must be the joys of the church, the sorrows of the
soviet regime should be the sorrows of the church as well, and every blow dealt
to the soviet regime, no matter from whence it proceeds, is a blow to the
church” (from the epistle of metropolitan Sergius, dated July 16/29, 1927)
and to recognize and be grateful to the soviet regime which “provided refuge
to the church” and provided it “one of the conquests of the revolution –
freedom from any political or state mission” (from the epistle of
metropolitan Sergius, dated June 10/May 28, 1926).
A
sorrowful sensation overcomes the soul.
A bishop who blesses the regime which has trampled all Divine and human
laws, which desecrates holy things, destroys churches turning them into places
for revelry and dens of drunken debauchery, who reddened his hands with the
martyrs blood of Hierarchs, clergy and the best sons of our Homeland, the
Russian land! A bishop
who is compelled to debase his lofty rank with servitude and servility before
the godless authority, which needs him only as an instrument of destruction of
the very faith which that bishop serves.
A
sorrowful sensation overcomes the soul.
A bishop who is forced to be hypocritical from the church ambo, to teach
faith in God and expose godlessness, and with the same mouth bless and proclaim
that the regime is from God – a regime which wages war against God with blood
and violence, and appointed that same bishop with the sole purpose of sowing
confusion and temptation into the souls of the faithful, thereby shaking and
destroying their faith.
We
will not judge that bishop, but we cannot permit our churches to become a place
for the pernicious communist plague, disguised only by the holy place and name
of a church; we cannot permit the divine services of our temples to be darkened
by prayer for blasphemers, persecutors of the faith, and torturers. We cannot permit this.
But
we will entreat the Lord, we will entreat His Most Pure Mother, that we be
spared from the oncoming dark cloud of church turmoil and temptation, and that
the Merciful Lord grant us mercy that we may greet and
pass the bright days of the Pascha of Christ in spiritual joy.
Archbishop
Methody of
March
12/25, 1928