ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE

Exarchate of Parishes of Russian
Tradition in Western Europe

The Freedom of the Spirit in the Church is Sacred

A talk given by Fr Alexis Struve at the Annual Conference of the Episcopal Vicariate, May 2007

Bishop Basil has asked me to focus on the work of Metropolitan Evlogii, the sixtieth anniversary of whose death we recently celebrated. This provided me with a great opportunity to re-read his beautiful and very profound book, Put moeï zhizni (The Path of my Life).

I would like to quote the ending:

Without the spirit of freedom in the Church there cannot be any living Church life, or any fruitful pastoral action. I would like my words about Christian freedom to go deep into the souls of my spiritual children. May they keep it in all circumstances and defend it against any attack. The freedom of the spirit in the Church is sacred.

I have kept this last sentence as a title for my presentation. This phrase not only sums up the whole work of Bishop Evlogii, but it seems to me that it also has real significances for the present times, and the struggles that Orthodoxy has to face today.

In the first part of my talk I will briefly sum up the unusual life of Metropolitan Evlogii, and then I would like to share a few thoughts about a text by Nicolas Berdyaev. Finally, encouraged by Metropolitan Evlogii’s example, I will try to think of a few possible answers to the challenges our communities are now facing.

Part I

Metropolitan Evlogii was one of the most outstanding bishops of the twentieth century. He was outstanding not because of any great conspicuous action or any great theological creation, or even any great ascetic achievement. He was outstanding because he had a natural sense of what is good for the Church, in a time which was marked by terrible catastrophes.

Basil Guéorguievski was born on 10 April 1868 into a family of priests with quite a poor background in Somovo, a little village near Tula, an industrial city about one hundred miles south of Moscow. He died on 8 August 1946 in Paris. The seventy-eight years Basil Guéorguievski spent on this earth were unusual, to say the least.

Nothing predisposed this man, who chose celibacy and episcopacy to serve his people, to become in the emigration the bishop of a diocese which would claim strongly the universality of Orthodoxy.

After seminary, he took monastic vows in 1895 and was ordained to the priesthood that same year. He was made Bishop in 1903 and appointed head of the diocese of Kholm (Chelm, now in Poland). In 1907, he took part in the second and third National Assemblies, where he met Sergei Bulgakov. He also attended the Holy Synod of the Russian Church on several occasions.

In 1918, Bishop Evlogii was imprisoned for six months by members of the Ukrainian independent movement. It was after this, having experienced the collapse of Russia, prison, and exile, that instead of yielding to the nostalgia of a past order, Bishop Evlogii began to have a totally universal vision of the Church.

He understood that exile, by setting the Church free from the state and from social pressure, gave it an opportunity to achieve fully its calling to freedom. Thanks to his efforts and his support, new forms of life and expression, both traditional and innovative, began to flourish in the Russian Church in Western Europe:

• The Saint Sergius Theological Institute became a real laboratory for new ideas. Here he practised the defence of freedom in theological thought when Father Serge Bulgakov was attacked about his theology of Sophia. Without completely agreeing with Father Sergei’s theories, Metropolitan Evlogii nevertheless protected him.
• He was a frequent guest at the large conferences of ACER (Action Chrétienne des Etudiants Russes; Christian Action of Russian Students), where the youth of the emigration learned to experience Church life in the light of a renewed theological vision and an authentically Christian approach to culture.
• He encouraged the monastic profession of Mother Maria Skobtsova, whose active monastic life, both intellectual and charitable, extended to the gift of the self in martyrdom.
• He participated actively in the ecumenical movement.
• And he maintained an open attitude to a Western Orthodoxy, receiving people like Father Lev Gillet (the ‘Monk of the Eastern Church’).

In addition to all these activities, Metropolitan Evlogii founded parishes all over Europe. He was a church builder, a great and good pastor – and he was also a builder of the Church.

All this took place, of course, against the background of jurisdictional crisis. First, there was the break with the bishops of the Russian Church Abroad (later ROCOR), which began in 1922 and became permanent in 1926. Then, in 1930, there was the break with Metropolitan Sergius, who was head of the Church in Russia. Those ruptures, which were part of the emigration process, should not be underestimated: they have divided parishes and families; they have shattered friendships. They were particularly hard for Metropolitan Evlogii because it meant cutting ties with Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), his old master at the Academy of Moscow, with whom he had a very strong link and a deep friendship, made stronger by their shared imprisonment in Galicia, and whom he respected highly.

The break with Metropolitan Serge was first of all a break with Russia itself. Metropolitan Evlogii did not criticise the Russian hierarchy. In 1930, he wrote:

We will never be able to understand how heavily the Cross weighs on our brothers’ shoulders, and more particularly on the shoulders of the Church hierarchy in Soviet Russia.

The break was first of all a consequence of the measures taken by Metropolitan Sergius against Metropolitan Evlogii because he had taken part, in Paris and London, in evenings of prayers for the persecuted Christians in Russia.

It is not a usual fate for a bishop, to be banned and suspended a divinis twice after having been summoned to the ecclesiastical court and having refused to go.

It was at that time that Metropolitan Evlogii turned to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople, asking to be received together with his diocese. Patriarch Photius accepted, giving Metropolitan Evlogii the title of Exarch.

Part II

Many analogies can be drawn between our present situation and Metropolitan Evlogii’s situation at that time. A text by Nicolas Berdyaev was recentlyly published on the web. It is called: ‘Tserkovnaia smouta i svoboda sovesti’, that is ‘Discord in the Church and freedom of conscience’. In this text, Nicolaï Berdyaev reacted to the Episcopal Council of the Russian Church Abroad convened in 1926 in Karlovtsy. That council created a rupture between the Synod of Karlovtsy and Metropolitan Evlogii in Western Europe. This text is still fully relevant today. Please allow me to quote some passages, which I believe may enlighten our exchanges during this conference.

First, Nicolas Berdyaev notes that:

we are now witnessing, in the history of the Orthodox Church, the end and liquidation not only of the whole synodal era started by Peter the Great, but also of the whole Constantinian era of Christian history, and we are witnessing the beginning of a new era. The Church must redefine its relationship to the world and to the processes taking place there. It must be free and independent from the state, from Caesar’s realm, from the things of this world, and at the same time it must favour the positive and creative evolutions that are taking place in that world, bless the movements of the world towards Christ and Christianity, and, in a different way from what it has been doing until now, greet the Prodigal Son coming back to his Father.

Together with a radically new situation, a clerical ideology was developing, opposing the theological renewal of the end of nineteenth century. This clerical ideology was based on a nostalgia for a past order, on a conception of absolute authority, on a sort of infallibility of the bishops guaranteeing the preservation of the old order. It expressed a kind of fear of the freedom of the spirit, of the freedom of choice. It condemned everything that was creative. Berdyaev even spoke about the ‘authority of the Russian bishops in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, who practised a spiritual terror’.

Yet he also writes:

The question which is now very obscure and which should be asked very accurately, is the question of knowing whether Orthodoxy recognizes or not freedom of conscience as the ground for spiritual life. We live in a time when people fear the freedom of conscience, they shy away from it, and they resent the burden of freedom, the burden of responsibility.

I believe that the question of the freedom of conscience is essential for Christianity and must be raised with the greatest clarity and the greatest radicality. Freedom should always come before authority.

Everything is decided in the life of the spirit, in the spiritual experience. The Holy Spirit does not act like the forces of nature or the social forces.

The hierarchical organisation of the Church, which is historically unavoidable, the constitution of the canons, are secondary phenomena, and not paramount. The only paramount phenomenon is the spiritual life and what is discovered in it. It is the spiritual life that keeps the Church sanctified.

The redeeming of Christ restores and enlightens the freedom of every man or woman from the inside; it establishes free conscience in him or her, proceeding from the action of the light of Christ in him or her. It is only through freedom that God’s Spirit can express itself.

By creating man and woman in His own likeness, and by giving him and her the choice of either following Him or rejecting Him, God took a significant risk: the risk of love. There is no greater love than to grant human beings freedom, because it is this way, and only this way, that people can fulfill their destinies. Without freedom human beings could not have been in God’s own likeness. Then the work of God would lose its meaning. Freedom is thus a major requirement for the Church to be not only alive but also a worthy witness to Christ’s work of restoration

I think it was in that spirit that Metropolitan Evlogii served the Church during his life, as much in Russia as in Western Europe. And the fruits of his labours are also evident in the United States, in the Middle East and in Russia. That is why I told you at the beginning of my presentation that Metropolitan Evlogii was one of the most outstanding Orthodox bishops of the twentieth century.

His work stands as an example for us in our search for answers to the challenges faced by our communities are faced with today.

Part III

Berdyaev wrote that, in this difficult time of transition experienced by the Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Evlogii was the instrument of divine providence. I do not believe in random chance. I am deeply convinced that Christ Himself has placed us where we are now because He is the one who rules His Church. Our presence in Western Europe is not temporary any longer, it has become a building ground: that Metropolitan Evlogii had foreseen.

Our Archdiocese has been, and still is, a good example of a place where communities with different traditions, and even in certain cases different cultures, coexist in unity, being at the service of Westerners received into Orthodoxy as well as of Russians and other people from different nationalities and different immigrations. I would like to quote a text adopted by the General Assembly of our diocese in 1949. While it was written after Metropolitan Evlogii’s death, it was still the result of his action.

As long as we will be able to carry a universal conscience, we will convince others to consider us as Orthodox, that is to say, to acknowledge us. … Those who want to divide the Church according to nationalities, even if those are to be found in one and the same country, or, even, according to political tendencies or private opinions, we consider them as adversaries of the sacred canons and of the Lord Himself, whose sacred Body they are tearing apart. All the people who accomplish the will of God are blessed by God… It is not Church life which should be determined by what is earthly, but what is earthly should be sanctified by what comes from the Church. Those who submit the Church to what depends on the people, or the State, or on their own opinions, sin very seriously against the Church. Are we not divided by national self-esteem, by politics, by our different opinions on contemporary events? The only way we can reach unity is by achieving the fullness and purity of Church life in the truth, in the unity of the hierarchy and in love.

If we were united in all that, nothing earthly could ever divide us…
Let us submit to God and to the sacred canons of the Church: let us gather as one Church in the countries where God has led us as well as our Orthodox brothers! Let us make every effort to form a unique Orthodox Church in Western Europe…

This text, which was adopted by the General Assembly of our diocese in 1949, circulated largely among the faithful. I myself was deeply impressed by reading it, and I consider it the image of what we should experience and proclaim today.

Today we are facing numerous challenges. I would like to mention some of them:

Our first challenge is the local Church. The future of the Archdiocese can only be conceived as part of the building of the local Church, as an opening on to the world, here and now. We are not alone. Other Orthodox communities have developed or have come to settle in this land: Greeks, Serbians, Romanians, Antiochans and so on. If the Archdiocese and also the Sourozh Diocese under Metropolitan Anthony and Bishop Basil have been forerunners of the development of a Western Orthodoxy and putting down roots here, others have played that role too.

We must engage in this work of building the local Church together, in a spirit of cooperation. It cannot be the prerogative of one group only.

We must be the witnesses to the unity which characterizes Orthodoxy; and we must become a powerhouse of new ideas. We must show the Orthodox world that already we are a local Church. It is through our testimony and a constant and open dialogue both with one another and with the Mother Churches that we will be able to move along this difficult road.

That is the second challenge I would like to mention: the challenge of our relationship with the Mother Churches. This is no news, your Vicariate has experienced it most painfully, and so has the Archdiocese. Sometimes we face tendencies towards authoritarianism and clericalism, to political influences and nationalism. Some of those responsible do not try to understand the specificity of the Orthodox communities implanted in the West; they are not ready to grant them a real autonomy or the internal freedom they are asking for. Here we are again facing forces which are working rather according to power than according to service. However, we must find a common language with our Mother Churches, while keeping in mind what Berdyaev was already saying in the twenties: ‘What matters is the unity in truth and not a truth compromised with lies’.

This is not about rejecting the Mother Church. On the contrary, our relationships with, for example, the Russian Church are important, and they can and must go deeper towards a fruitful dialogue. But as a child becomes autonomous by becoming an adult, our Church must now learn to ‘spread her own wings’. I am often telling parents who experience difficulties with their children that children are not their property and that their first duty as parents is to allow the child to become independent and to find his or her own balance and autonomy in life.

The third and last challenge concerns the unavoidable awakening of an ecclesial conscience in God’s people. We cannot, we have no right to settle for the situation as it is now, a status quo which may be comfortable but which does not offer any future perspectives. This awakening can only arise through appropriate pastoral work, by God’s people developing a greater of its responsibility regarding their future, and regarding the future of the Church. The future of the Church cannot be decided inside a closed room but in a conciliar manner.

CONCLUSION

I would like to finish with an obvious truth: we are not numerous; we do not have the right to be divided but we must work together in a fruitful debate at the service of the Lord and the Church.

Any constructive project in the Church can be similar to the path every Christian walks towards his or her Lord. We must tackle this work in the spirit of a constant conversion. This project demands of each one of us humility, renunciation, acceptance and the welcoming of the Other, with all his or her differences. And first of all it demands that we have a spirit of service and not a spirit of power, or preservation of power.

We have been lucky, and I would even say we have been blessed with the possibility of living our Church life in a situation of the Diaspora without any political, sociological or economical pressures. In spite of all the sufferings of the first emigrants, this lack of pressure has granted us freedom, creativity, openness. Because we have thus been blessed, we now have responsibilities – but are we aware of it?

Humility and renunciation must be allied to imagination, creativity, freedom. With God we find this freedom and with Him and through Him everything is possible. That is our strength!