THE FRUIT of the Church is holiness. It was therefore natural for the long process of the establishment of the Orthodox Church in America to be climaxed by witness of holiness--the canonization of the holy elder Herman of Alaska. For those who participated in the ceremonies of the canonization in Alaska, as well as for those who prayed to the newly glorified saint in churches throughout the United States and Canada, this holiness was manifested in the depth of the holy elder's humility and in the strength of his faith. The act of canonization eclipsed everything else--human plans for the future, fears, accomplishments, successes and failures. All this was illumined by new light, the light of sanctity now shining above America--a light surpassing human reason and bringing the fullness of Divine Grace into the life of the Church.
In the course of its 175-year existence the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in America and Canada went through many phases of a sociological and psychological nature. It began with the missionary efforts of the Valaam monks and was at first totally involved in the Christian enlightenment of the Aleut natives and in the planting of Christian morality and Christian socio-economic foundations among them. It spread throughout the American continent and began to create new pan-Orthodox units in America, continuing to be concerned about mission among the Americans on the one hand, and organizing the first parishes for Orthodox immigrants o all national origins on the other. When the Orthodox immigrants were divided into more definite ethnic groups in which Orthodoxy began to coincide with and sometimes was even replaced by ethnic aspirations, the Church naturally began to expend much energy on the organization of our socio-ethnic "ghettos." In these ghettos all that was brought from the Old World was not developed but "preserved", beginning with recipes and ending with language, culture and provincial politics. This period, which continued for a considerable time, had an undisputed significance in the process of Church growth and development. Thanks to this period a number of important principles in the areas of liturgical life, piety, traditions, character and order were preserved. It also created a prolonged crisis which caused members of our younger generations who were leaving their ethnic and parochial ghetto and associated it with something totally contradictory to the "American way of life" to reject not only their sociological roots but Orthodoxy as well--Orthodoxy being so closely associated with sociological factors. In the last two or three decades a new current has appeared in our Church life. The desire to "conserve" traditional values, so predominant in the sociological ghetto, began to be replaced gradually by the attempt to integrate Orthodoxy into American life. These efforts were not always successful; quite often they carried with them the danger simply of replacing what is Russian, Carpatho-Russian, Ukrainian by what is American. This, in terms of its quality, threatened to be as provincial as everything that preceded it. At the same time there was a growth of the healthy tendency to accomplish the "churching of Americanism," if one may put it that way, rather than the "Americanization of Orthodoxy." There began an era of the discovery of Orthodoxy in all it untarnished value of Orthodoxy as a self-sufficient principle, to which all other principles must be subordinate. There began a rediscovery of the Church's sacramental life, in which were to be found the sources of spiritual and intellectual sustenance. At first, Orthodoxy was an "embarrassment" because it was a "foreign faith," because it was something contradictory to "American culture." Later, Orthodoxy became a source of "pride," as one can be "proud" of exotic costumes, traditions and background. Now, glory be to God, we have begun to LIVE Orthodoxy, that is, to understand fully that Orthodoxy is not a museum, not a repository, not exoticism, but LIFE.
FOR MANY long years our ecclesiastical and social interests were concentrated almost exclusively upon ourselves, upon our own problems. Even when we thought we were speaking about America our point of departure was our ethnic identity. America for us was "they" and not "we". If, as a Church, we participated in the life of the nation, this participation expressed itself first of all in the fact that we sent our children to the front, where they fought heroically for the country's freedom. As for the rest, our reactions always concentrated on negative things: we warned the country (and were justified in doing so) about political, moral and social dangers.
Although a portion of our participation was directed to creative ends, basically our participation was concentrated upon ourselves and the solution of our "internal problems." We are accustomed to this approach; it will not be easy for us to survive the crisis which has been placed before us by the course of historical and ecclesiastical events. The resolution of this crisis is the major theme of the extremely important test to which our autocephaly has called us.
It is useful to remember that in Greek the world "crisis" means "judgment". Now the meaning of this word is relevant for us in the most direct way. God's judgment is being done to us, the judgment of history and the judgment of our conscience. In the light of this judgment we will have to justify the gift which has been handed to us by the Church, the gift of maturity and independence. We wanted this and our desire has been fulfilled. Looking with gratitude to all our past, to the entire and great tradition of Russian and ecumenical Orthodoxy which we have inherited, we should see in this a good and favorable wind and not a crutch for our support nor eyeglasses through which we can look at the reality of life. In accepting autocephaly we witnessed to our maximal loyalty to the historical road of America and Canada.
In accepting autocephaly our Church accepted American and Canadian citizenship; the acceptance of citizenship always implies liberation from and rejection of any other historical and political loyalties. In turning from the 14th All-American Sobor of the Metropolia to the First Council of the Orthodox Church in America we close the last volume of our 175-year history and place it together with the other volumes on the shelf of experience and respect, simultaneously opening a fresh page of a new book of our ecclesiastical life. The title page of this book bears the inscription "Orthodox Church in America." What will appear on the pages after the title depends on us.
AND SO OUR autocephaly has placed our Church face to face with America. All those things which earlier could stand between us psychologically--"Russian heritage," our "emigre identity," "tradition" and all similar factors--have now disappeared. There is nothing that can shelter us from the reality before which God has placed us. To what extent does American life need us as a Christian spiritual force, and to what degree do we need American reality? The second part of this question is so clear that no one is asking it: American life is our life. Even those of us who have become American not by birth but by choice have lived here a very considerable portion of our life. Every day, through newspapers, through the television screen, through encounters, through our work we continually meet American life. If we are still inclined to think that this American life does not depend on us and has no relationship to us, that it is "they" and not "we" who die at the front in Vietnam, poison themselves with drugs, kill, and fall victim to killers, make the politics of the nation, get lost in search of higher values, are joyful and suffer--woe to us! For a long, long time, and especially from the moment we proclaimed ourselves the Church of America, it is WE, these are OUR children, this is OUR present and OUR future.
Incidentally, this does not even contradict all our attachment to other cultures, to other peoples and their history: everything in the world is so closely interwoven, so full of mutual responsibility, that everything occurring in America has its reflex in India, in Africa, in Russia, in the world. "I am not involved", "I do not care", "It is none of my business", was never a respectable criterion: now this formula can only be defective. It is better to resurrect the wonderful thought of Dostoyevsky according to which "everyone is guilty before all men for everything." And we add the words of Christ: "He who puts his hand to the plow and turns back is unworthy of the Kingdom of God."
There can be no doubt that America is passing through a deep crisis touching on the spiritual, social and political life of the nation. We can point out that the crisis is not exclusively an American one. It has the same manifestations--and even more radical ones--in all countries and all peoples of the world. There can be no doubt that the solution of the crisis and a constructive way out of it do not lie merely in the area of new legislation, limitation of "excessive" freedom, police control of the population.
The profound causes of the crisis are on the spiritual level; therefore its solution requires a colossal effort of the spiritual strength of the nation. Doubtless at the root of the crisis there is a wrong understanding of freedom. The error extends in two directions. Those who wish to limit freedom forget that the limitation of freedom has no end--how can we know when to stop, how can we make certain that the limitation of freedoms will not lead to a police state and concentration camps for dissenters.
Those who lean in the other direction forget (or do not want to remember) that freedom without responsibility is not freedom but arbitrariness, anarchy, nihilism. Those who struggle against the establishment do not think about the fact that "anti-system" can become a much more frightful system than the "establishment." Therefore the country is torn by the radicalism of two beliefs, both of which are intent on tearing the country apart.
In addition to all this, and notwithstanding all the horrors that are so zealously described in our press, we must remember, first of all, the great majority represented by those whom the President has called the "silent majority." These words are often repeated ironically, but they are a very good description of the mass of American people to which most of us belong and which, like a working horse, pulls the country out of moral, economic and political crises.
Secondly, among the young (and sometimes not so young) representatives of the "new culture" who give us such a fright and whom we are ready to bury in the mass grave of historical forgetfulness it is good to look for those who depart from "normal" American life for a number of reasons deserving our full attention. Due to a lack of spiritual guidance as well as because of inbred American conformity, they often take the wrong road and perish ignominiously and uselessly. It is good to scrutinize the fundamental themes, the motivations, which drive these young people out of well-to-do homes, a successful life, practical materialism. Close analysis inevitably leads us to the fact that youth is repulsed by complacent satisfaction with American well-being, by the false sense of security, by the exaggerated individualism that pushes people into loneliness and isolation, by the rationalization of even religious experience, by social injustice. These are negative themes.
The positive ones are a desire for spiritual experience, for liberation from captivity to material values, a search for spiritual reality and mystical experience, for a sacramental justification of life in all its details--love, sex, friendship, race, and so on. There is a search for the realities of life and death, which were so long concealed by our "funeral home culture" and were so cruelly revealed by the conflict in Vietnam. Youth is only partially responsible for the uncontrolled spiritualistic experimentation which has brought and is bringing so many of them to a tragic end; a great--much greater--responsibility lies on those who did not support, reveal, teach, be an example in time. We also bear responsibility, particularly because we--our Church--have long possessed first-class answers to all these questions.
WHAT CAN WE, as a Church, as the heirs of a spiritual experience of many centuries, say to contemporary young America? Even on the basis of our historical experience, on a purely negative plane, we can witness to the ease with which freedom can be lost. The trouble is that freedom, like good health, the comforts of life, or even hot water every day, is understood best when it is no longer available. We know very well what not-freedom is. What it is to be endangered when you think, to be in even greater danger when you speak, and to invite catastrophe when you set thoughts on paper. We know what it is to be unfree to believe, to pray, to go to Church when you choose. What it is to be unfree to leave your country when you wish. What it is to be unfree to organize your life as you see fit.
It is our holy duty to share our negative experience with all politically naive people, with all those who are easily caught in the net of the demonic propaganda of the other side, where man means nothing. Where "the death of one man is a tragedy--the death of ten thousand is a statistic," in the words of one ideologist on the "other side." This is not a political statement, for it concerns not only "political freedoms" but, first of all, the freedom of the spirit. This is witnessing to the real presence of the demonic in politics, in history, in sociology, of demonism which quenches the spirit and which rises against God and humanity. Therefore the power of this witness must be evangelical power, the power of Christ, always denying darkness and the devil, whatever the coloring which they adopt--even if they appear "in the image of an angel of light."
THE VOICE OF Orthodox spiritual experience will have even greater power in answering the spiritual quest of our time. For this we ourselves must realize the spiritual strength of our Church, which is not an exotic museum, but the living power of the Holy Spirit, Who breathes "wherever he wills " in this world. All contemporary problems can be answered, first of all, in the sacramental theology of the Orthodox Church. Human interrelationships (the social order), love and the family (sex), the value of the human personality (racial problems), freedom and responsibility (legislation and jurisprudence), morality (discipline), social reforms ("love thy neighbor"), suffering (purification), death (resurrection)--all these problems can be properly solved in the light of the sacramental understanding of life as organic co-operation in the Divine act of the creation of the world. The experience of spiritual life (the Jesus prayer, solitary life, monasticism, fasting, effort) is the answer to the search for spiritual life. The practice of Orthodox contemplation (hesychasm) is the answer to the thirst for mystical experience. The Divine services, particularly the Eucharist, are the answers to the thirst for sacrifice, cult, communion in love, union with God.
Our time is looking for symbols and for cult. Symbols are justified only when a genuine spiritual content stands behind them. Otherwise they turn into ritual. Ritual and idols sooner or later lead to demonology. Here is a boundless field for our preaching, for our mission in America, in Canada. This is why it is good to bring down the walls, to tear the bonds which tie us to ourselves and keep us away from serving "these little ones." These, then, in very brief form, are the tasks--responsible, important, holy tasks--which confront our Orthodox Church in America.
AND SO WE STAND--weak and uncertain as yet--before these tasks, the extent of which is very simple. It was once clearly expressed by His Grace, Bishop Dmitri, when he was asked what he considers the ultimate goal of Orthodoxy in America. Without any hesitation, His Grace said: "America must become Orthodox. If I believe that Orthodoxy is the revelation of Truth, then this, and only this, can be the purpose of its presence in America." The road leading to this goal is long. The way to holiness, to God, to the Kingdom of God, is equally long.
We have set out on a new road. Many issues, problems, projects, opportunities, difficulties, achievements are ahead of us on the road. On the agendas of our Councils old and familiar "unfinished business" will appear once again--the statute, pensions, ecumenism, charity, education and so on. It would be good, at this Council and at subsequent ones, to put in first place the questions of our spiritual growth, the deepening of our commitment to the Church, our sacramental and eucharistic rebirth, our organic entrance into the very essence of the Church, our total life in the Church.
No matter how important all other questions may be, they are among those things which will be "added" to those who first of all seek the Kingdom of God and its righteousness. In thirst for God's Truth, in hunger for the Bread of the Holy Eucharist, in the creation of God's Christian family welded together by the bonds of the love of Christ--there is found the only token of the success of our service to the Church, to America, and to humanity, the token of the justification of our autocephaly, of our membership in the Orthodox Church in America.
The Orthodox Church, February, March, April 1971.
Should you have any questions or comments please e-mail us!