Library › St Tikhon of Moscow › Instructions and Teachings

Instructions and Teachings

St Tikhon of Moscow, Russian Orthodox American Messenger, 1898–1905

The Triumph of Orthodoxy (7 March 1899)

The first Sunday in Lent is called “the Sunday of Orthodoxy,” because on this day “the Triumph of Orthodoxy” is celebrated by a special rite in all the Cathedral churches. This rite was instituted in the middle of the ninth century, in memory of the victories of the Orthodox Church over heresies, especially that of the Iconoclasts, which at that time was causing great perturbation in the Church.

But brethren, the Orthodox Church has reason not only to commemorate Orthodoxy’s former triumphs, but also to celebrate triumphs which is obtaining now, at the present day:

And in truth, should we not rejoice and render thanks unto the Lord, that He mercifully takes care of His Church, and keeps it from harm, and to this day unvanquished by foes? For it was not only in the first ages of her existence that the Church of Christ had to suffer distress of many kinds and persecutions; nor was it only at the time of the Œcumenical Councils that she was assailed by various false teachers, who would have placed their own reason before that of God. No indeed! From her first days and unto the end of time, the Church has been and remains militant; unto the end of time she will be likened to a vessel steered by her mariners on a stormy sea, which threatens every moment to wash the sailors from the decks to and swallow up the vessel. And it would seem as though, the farther the ship sails, the more furiously the waves assail her. In the first ages there were the persecutions from the outside by the heathens. And scarcely has the Church triumphed over those, when a greater danger arises from another side: disaster no longer comes from strangers, but from her own people—from false brethren, who endanger her from within. From the very midst of Christianity heresies are born one after another, sects and schisms. Of course, divine truth triumphed in the end over human error and iniquity; but the members of the Church should not, even yet, lay down their victorious arms. They must be prepared in the future, to combat, no longer the ancient heretics, but new foes: infidels, half-hearted believers, various forms of negation, and so-called representatives of mighty science. And this struggle cannot be said to be growing less embittered as time goes: hardly has the Church overcome one enemy, when another starts up to oppose her. The evil is a veritable Hydra, which, for each head that is cut off, grows a new one. When the last days come, it will put forth all its strength and will in the person of Antichrist, do desperate battle against the Church of Christ, and there will be great mourning in those days, such as had not been from the beginning of the world (Matth. 24, 31). There have been times before, when flourishing and once glorious individual churches have been impoverished and deserted, but in those latter days there will be even more fallings off. But there never has been, and we believe, trusting in the word of Christ, that there never will be, a time when the entire Church Catholic did or will vanish from the face of the earth. No—for “the foundation of God standeth sure” (II Tim. 2, 19); the Church of Christ is built upon a rock “and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matth. 16, 18). The more furiously the waves beat against this immovable Rock, the further back they recoil from it! At times the foes of the Church of Christ are on the point of celebrating their complete victory over the Church; they fancy they have finished her. But lo! the swelling waves, after striking the ship, dissolve again into the sea, and nothing more is seen of them, and there is no sign whereby to tell them from other waves: so the foes of Christ, after rising up against the Church of God, return into the nothingness out of which they came, and the ship of the Church presses onward, ever victorious. Each year, as it passes away, confirms more and more the undoubted fact that “the truth of the Lord abideth forever,” and that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church of Christ.”

How then should we not rejoice—we, the members of the Orthodox Church; and not give thanks to God for victory gained over enemies? How should we not exult, when we see how the Church of Christ,— a kingdom not of this world, unequipped, poor in strength,—not only hath not perished in the midst of the world, but hath conquered the world! How should we not triumph at the thought that in spite of manifold attacks, of violence, persecution, opposition, the Orthodox Church hath preserved entire the faith of Christ, in its pristine purity, so that our faith is the faith of the Apostles, the faith of the Fathers, the true Orthodox faith!

That our Church has preserved intact and untainted the primitive doctrine, is acknowledged by many who do not belong to it. Only they add that, in their opinion, the Orthodox Church does not in any way manifest her purity and truth,—that she does not increase and prosper upon the earth, —that, exclusively devoted to the task of preserving the primitive doctrine, she has retired into herself, cut herself off from everything else, and stays at freezing point, —that life in her is frozen, and that she has become a dead church; or at least, that she does not show the principal symptom of vitality, namely the missionary spirit.

All this may possibly be true insofar that the life of the Orthodox Church does not so much catch the eye, is not resplendent with such striking colors as the life of other religious communities, where there is more brilliancy and noise, but proportionately less of the fruition of the divine Spirit. Coming down to particulars, it is true that we have no missionary organization on so large a scale as the various “congregations” “Propagandæ fidei,” etc. of other communities, and do not spend so much money for this object. Still, the Orthodox Church is not unmindful of Christ’s commandment to go forth and preach the Gospel, nor is she by any means devoid of the missionary spirit, only the character of her missionary work is different.

It is not the Orthodox Church’s way, in propagating Christianity, to build on foundations laid by others, to preach Christianity where it has been preached before;— while other Christian communities not unfrequently reap where others had been the first to sow, and are not always disinclined to bribe or force into their “homes” sheep from their neighbours’ folds. The Orthodox Church, again, is opposed to certain methods which other missionaries do not always discountenance, will not use any illegitimate means to convert, does not make any concessions to human prejudice or human weaknesses, does not impair the purity of Gospel truth in order to secure the greatest possible number of followers, for she thinks the number of converts of less importance than the quality of their faith. Above all, the Orthodox Church performs her holy missionary work quickly, in a humble and reverent spirit, with the consciousness of man’s feebleness and of God’s power. The missionaries of other churches are at times, inclined to make themselves heard and blow their own trumpets. They keep careful records of their labors, their achievements, in order that the whole world may be informed of them and do them honor—that is why they are so widely spoken of. Not such are the methods of the Orthodox preachers of the Gospel: in going to their holy work, they do not aim at fame among men, but only at obtaining divine mercies for themselves and salvation for others. Of their success they do not inform the world, and attribute it not to themselves, but to the operation of God. As an instance in point, I will quote the following words of our great missionary, later Metropolitan Innocentius, in speaking of himself:—“Can I, speaking in all fairness, —can I claim as a merit, or consider as a deserving act, the fact of my going to America? Can I attribute personally to myself any of the good and useful things which were done during my residence, or though me, in those localities, the place of my ministrations? Certainly not; at least—I ought not to do so. God knows how much it mortifies me to read or hear anything in my praise, especially when things which were done by others, or at least not by myself alone, are ascribed to me personally. I confess I should wish, if only it were possible, that my name might never and no where be mentioned, except in the way of ordinary commemoration at services and the like.”¹ The same humility distinguishes all other Orthodox missionaries, and in their work nothing is calculated for effect, there is nothing artificial. It is probably for this reason that so little is known about our missionaries. But this reticence in no wise detracts from the greatness of their labors, which are a spectacle for angels and men. Let us take as an instance the history of our North American Mission. This history knows of such heroic endeavor as would amaze the world, all the more that the heroes gave no importance to what they did and endured, considering it all as lying in the modest line of a sacred duty. Nothing daunted or dispirited, they journeyed to the remotest, most inhospitable countries,—into which even at the present day, with the greatly improved means of communication, men are shy of venturing. There they suffer every imaginable hardship and privation, with no thought save that of bringing to Christ men ignorant of the Law. Nothing could keep them from their task: “not tribulation or distress, or persecution or the sword, nor yet famine or nakedness, or perils, nor height nor depth, as it is written, For Thy sake we are killed all the day long” (Roman. 8, 35, 36, 39). Literally “killed”: only remember the Hiero-deacon Juvenal, one of the evangelizers of the Aleuts,’ And not by men alone have our missionaries been killed, but also by the elements: remember the illustrious leaders of the Mission, Bishops Joasaph and Nestor whose lives came to an end in the Ocean’s bottomless abysms!

Can then a church, which produces such self-sacrificing champions of Christ, who have carried His Word into inaccessible wildernesses and there laid down their lives for their faith,—can such a church, I ask, be accused of lack of vitality, of inactivity, of being wanting in the missionary spirit, of not caring for the propagation of Christianity? No longer ago than last year, the Orthodox Church registered a new success in her mission: the reunion of several thousands of Nestorians, led by their pastor, Jonas, Bishop of Urumith. Is this event not to be accounted a new victory, a new “Triumph of Orthodoxy?”

Let us then, my brethren, give thanks to the Lord for all His mercies, and let us, on our side, apply our care to the preservation of the Holy Orthodox Faith and the propagation of it among those who know not the Law of God!

BISHOP TIKHON.

March the 7-th 1899.
S. Francisco.

Previous · Contents · Next