The persecutions facing us today are subtle (for the most part), cultural pressures, but with increased legalized marginalization of traditional Christian life and morality. Now Christians are being prosecuted for saying no to sin, and for not saying yes to the demands of the lost, who want the entire world to affirm their sins and lifestyle. This will likely metastasize into open persecution in the months and years ahead.
Our brothers and sisters in the Middle East, Africa, Central and South Asia, and around the world are suffering horrific open persecution from Muslims energized by their excitement over Islam's global resurgence. A new, "great cloud of witnesses" for Christ, New Martyrs of the 21st Century under the Sword of Islam, is being raised up. You can learn about some of them through the links on the left-hand column of this blog.
Truly, we live in a new age of martyrdom, in which we must be prepared to be faithful to Jesus Christ and confess Him to the end. The martyrs who lived through earlier persecutions can help us, by their examples, by their words, and by their intercessions.
Holy Hieromartyr Seraphim (Chichagov) of Petrograd warned of the trials to come upon the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian people as early as 1910, and before he was killed by the Soviets in 1937, sought to encourage his scattered flock with these words:
“The Orthodox Church is undergoing serious trials. Whoever remains faithful will be saved. Because of the persecutions many are leaving the Church, others are even betraying it. There have been other periods of persecution in history, but they all ended in the triumph of Christianity. That is how it will be with these persecutions. They will end, and Orthodoxy will triumph once again. Now many are suffering for the faith, but they are the gold that is purified in the furnace of persecution. There will be more new martyrs suffering for the Christian Faith than there ever has been throughout the history of Christianity.”
Bishop Tikhon Shevkunov has presented us here with a powerful icon of a prophetic witness for Christ, and urges us to seek the intercessions of Hieromartyr Seraphim and all the new martyrs:
"We need to pray [to the holy new martyrs, and] especially to Holy Hieromartyr Seraphim (Chichagov) that he would enlighten our minds; that we would see life as it really is before God and not before people; that we would understand the signs of the times, and be able to make sense of the complicated, contradictory world in which we live, in which God has judged that we must live."
A Prophetic New Martyr: St. Seraphim (Chichagov)
by Bishop Tikhon (Shevkunov) of Egorievsk, Pravoslavie, December 11, 2015
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Today we commemorate a nearly unknown yet great saint,
Holy Hieromartyr Seraphim (Chichagov) of Petrograd. This
was a man born in the second half of the nineteenth
century, to an aristocratic family. He received a
brilliant education, graduated from the Page Corps, became
a well-known scholar, received a humanitarian as well as a
natural sciences education, and was part of the upper
echelons of society. He had a brilliant military career,
having fought in several wars, but he left all this and
became a priest. He did more than anyone else for the
canonization of St. Seraphim of Sarov. (1) This was his
particular service.
Holy Hieromartyr Seraphim was not only a priest (later a
bishop)—he was a true prophet.
If we turn to the new
martyrs with prayers for help—prayers to those who
live in the kingdom of heaven for those who live here on
earth—they can provide that help, because they once
lived as we do, here on earth. Thus, Holy Hieromartyr
Seraphim possessed a remarkable gift—the ability to
recognize the signs of the times.
He was able to recognize
what very many of his contemporaries could not. Even the
canonization of St. Seraphim of Sarov itself was something
he prophesied, because the majority of the clergy,
bishops, and society in general—strange as it may
seem to us—did not want to canonize St. Seraphim of
Sarov. They were perplexed, they thought, “Who is
he, and why should he be canonized?”
We who venerate
St. Seraphim as one of the warmest intercessors of our
time would have a hard time understanding why they felt
that way. But that is just how it was. Because of St.
Seraphim (Chichagov’s) position in society he was
able to talk to the Emperor and make known to him the
nature of St. Seraphim’s extraordinary ascetic
labor; and the saint was finally canonized. It would have been very difficult for those who would soon
experience the terrible period of persecutions not to have
had this great intercessor and example to follow.
In 1910, Bishop Seraphim wrote a letter to his close
friend. This was 1910; the revolution of 1905 had been
resolved, the economy and industry were flourishing,
Russia had become a powerful nation, having now recovered
from the Russo-Japanese War. It would seem that an
amazing, beautiful horizon was opening for the country,
and the people were caught up in a kind of euphoria. We
now know what was to happen only seven years hence. But
then, only a few people knew. We have the testimony of
perhaps only two or three people. One of them was Bishop
Seraphim, who wrote in that wonderful, bright year of
1910:
“Everything has fallen apart. Educated society has lost all understanding of what Christianity is. Everyday I can see before my eyes the ongoing corruption of our clergy. There is no hope at all that they will come to reason or understand their condition. Everywhere is drunkenness, debauchery, simony, extortion, and secular interests. The last remaining believers are trembling with repugnance over the condition of their clergy. And there is no one to finally realize just what brink of destruction the Church is standing on, or what is happening. The opportune time was missed. A disease of the spirit has taken over the entire state organism. The moment of recovery cannot recur, and the clergy is rushing headlong into an abyss, having no strength or desire to stop the process. Just one more year, just a little while, and there won’t even be simple folk left around us. They will all rise up and reject such insane and repulsive leaders. And what will happen to the state? It will perish along with us. It no longer makes any difference who is in the Synod, who is the procurator, what seminaries and academies there are—our agony and death are near.”
These are the words of a prophet. In those years such
words seemed crazy.
What is he saying? Such prosperity all
around, everything is wonderful, everything is on the
upswing. But holy, godly people see things with different
eyes than ours. The external signs of success mean nothing
to them; they looked at the root, at the spiritual essence
of the people—and they saw something terrible. St.
John of Kronstadt wrote of this, as did St. Theophan the
Recluse and a number of others. You can discern the state
of the people by the state of the clergy. If the clergy is
degraded then the people are also corrupt.
What was the main fault of those revolutionary events? You
can object, you can cite a number of other reasons, but I
have no doubts at all. It was the sins of our Local
Church. The Church’s weakness was the main and root
problem. Our own Local Church is at fault for what
happened in 1917. We were incapable of being on the proper
level. And the Lord allowed catastrophes and misfortunes,
so that people would come to their senses, so that they
would see just what their madness was.
In 1937 Holy Hieromartyr Seraphim, now a venerable elder,
completely unwell, suffering from dropsy, was arrested
once again. He had been imprisoned many times before, and
spent years in the camps. You would think that by this
time they would have left him in peace. He was very old
but still of sound mind. He was so sick, such a feeble old
man completely worn out by the camps, that he
couldn’t even walk to the “raven” (the
black automobile that took away arrestees) and they had to
carry him on a stretcher. They shot him a few days later
at the Butovo shooting range. He never confessed to any of
the outlandish charges. Many people, even clergy and
bishops, confessed under torture to even the most
ridiculous crimes—spying, conspiracy against the
soviet government, and so on. Holy Hieromartyr Seraphim
considered it all nothing. We have seen his interrogation
reports—he was subjected to terrible trials but he
never implicated a single person, never named a single
name, and never agreed to the accusations against him. But
his prophetic gift never left him. Perhaps this was
because of his faithfulness, his wisdom, and his courage.
Just a few months before his execution in 1937, when it
seemed that the Local Church had perished irreparably,
when there were no more than a few clergymen and bishops
left in freedom, when bishops were saying that they
didn’t believe they would ever serve another Liturgy
and that these were the last times, Holy Hieromartyr
Seraphim writes:
“The Orthodox Church is undergoing serious trials. Whoever remains faithful will be saved. Because of the persecutions many are leaving the Church, others are even betraying it. There have been other periods of persecution in history, but they all ended in the triumph of Christianity. That is how it will be with these persecutions. They will end, and Orthodoxy will triumph once again. Now many are suffering for the faith, but they are the gold that is purified in the furnace of persecution. There will be more new martyrs suffering for the Christian Faith than there ever has been throughout the history of Christianity.”
We know very little about the holy new martyrs, who were
almost our contemporaries. Therefore we do not learn from
their experience or turn to them in prayer. We need to
pray especially to Holy Hieromartyr Seraphim (Chichagov)
that he would enlighten our minds; that we would see life
as it really is before God and not before people; that we
would understand the signs of the times, and be able to
make sense of the complicated, contradictory world in
which we live, in which God has judged that we must live.
Holy Hieromartyr Seraphim, pray to God for us! Amen.
1) Bishop Seraphim (Chichagov) was the author of the Diveyevo Chronicles, a history of the St. Seraphim-Diveyevo Convent and the Life of its spiritual guide, St. Seraphim of Sarov.