Witnesses of the Easter world

"Peace to everyone!" - The first words of Christ, who appeared to the disciples after the resurrection. What happens in Russia with priests who repeat these words

Easter is coming - the main Christian holiday of the victory of life over death. It is difficult not to hear dissonance when this celebration is mixed with a preaching of hatred and murder.

The wish of the world, or rather - the gift of the world with whom the risen Christ came to his disciples, who closed in fear after his crucifix behind seven castles, contains the secret of Easter. No matter what the abyss of evil this world fails, peace and resurrection will come in the end. Such faith holds Christians from despair. It would seem that the task of hierarchs and clergy is to witness this faith, “the gospel of the world” (Eph., 6:15). The indicator of the absurdity of what is happening is that priests who perform such a calling are repressed in modern Russia. Both according to the church and civilian (sometimes criminal) lines. Interestingly, the word “martyr” into Russian translates the Greek μάρτυρας, the primary meaning of which is “witness”.

Easter intransigence

For two consecutive years, Pope Francis calls Russia and Ukraine to Easter Earth. If last year Ukraine actively supported this initiative, and Russia languidly commented on it, then the pontiff's words ignored it, referring, in particular, to their “unofficial character”.

Meanwhile, the tradition of Easter trucks has deep historical roots. In medieval Europe, where the war was considered a knightly occupation, in the event that it was conducted between Christian peoples or aristocrats, a break was taken during the great church holidays. This tradition was “canonized” by the Toulouse Cathedral of 1027, which approved the concept of the “Godga Dei”, that is, forbidden to fight during the great and “small” Easter (on any Sunday days). Later, Pope Urban II published Bull, where, under the threat of excommunication from the Church, he forbade Christians to fight among themselves for about 150 days a year - in all posts and great holidays.

“Do not resist the evil. But who will hit you in your right cheek, turn to him and the other ... Love your enemies, bless the cursing you, have a blessing who hate you and pray for those who offend you and persuad you ”( Matthew 5: 39, 44 ).

Of course, over the past 20 centuries of the history of Christianity, professional theologians have learned to interpret these commandments in the opposite sense, but such interpretations on the bowl of divine scales are negligible in comparison with the pure simplicity of the very gospel word.

Some hundred years ago, when Orthodox Russians and Catholics/Protestants-German Protestants collided, Easter truce was still in demand. Easter at the Christians of the East and West coincided in 1916, and shortly before the great day, the Russian command received a dispatch of the Germans through parliamentarians. General Vasily Cheslavsky, who commanded the Ingermanland regiment, so sets out its content :

“We are Christians, just like you. On such saints for Christians, we will not kill one another. ”

The general says: “On the first day of Easter from the enemy trenches, a group of Austrians came out, who carried bottles instead of weapons in their hands. Noticing this, the Cossacks took Easter, sausages, fat and went to meet the enemy, where joint conversation occurred. ” We note that military operations were then conducted mainly in the territory of the Russian Empire, and not a foreign state ...

Victims of their verbal sheep

During the current Great Lent preceding Easter, the Slavic court of the Krasnodar Territory fined 40 thousand under an article on the “discrediting of the army” by the Archbishop of the South Russian Victor (Pivovarova) , which serves in Slavyansk-on-Kuban. For more than 30 years, he does not belong to the Moscow Patriarchate, and San Bishop received the Russian foreign church in the “Vitaliy branch”, which did not recognize the unification with the Russian Orthodox Church. The archbishop, who is going on the ninth ten, from the very first day he pronounced in his “alternative” temple very bold sermons. The official website of the Archbishop of Victor is called "eschatology.org." The main culprit of what was happening, he irrelevantly called the Moscow Patriarchate, which not only gave the authorities a “blessing” on its actions,

But even for years she cultivated a pseudo -Christian ideology, which helped “on a spiritual level” to justify actions incompatible with the letter and spirit of the gospel.

All last year, Archbishop Victor posted his sermons on the site and sent out e -mail subscribers. There was no reaction of the censorship and legal system. The reaction followed only after one of the parishioners or random visitors to the temple reported to a preach of February 19 (according to the Orthodox calendar-a week about the Last Judgment), in which the archbishop "carried out public actions aimed at discrediting the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation." The court’s decision is unlikely to change the views of the rebellious old man, although “for technical reasons” his site has become much less updated.

The history of the priest John Burdin from the Kostroma diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church became the history of the priest. In March last year, he turned out to be the first convicted under the new article on the “discrediting of the army” by a priest in Russia: the Krasnoselsky District Court fined him by 35 thousand.

Burdin also became a victim of the denunciation of parishioners - his preaching on forgiven Sunday listened to literally a few people in the temple. The Kostroma diocese did not immediately prohibit Fr. John in the ministry, but very convincingly asked him to leave voluntarily - and he quit Zashtat. The head of the diocese, Metropolitan Ferapont (Kashin), said then

That the priests do not have the right to express “extraordinary thoughts” without the knowledge of the bishop, which include the interpretation of the commandment “Blessed Peacemakers”.

Supporters of the world, serving on the foreign parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church, are outside the reach of the Russian judicial system, therefore they are subject only to church carats. After the letter of pro-Russian activists from among the Russian emigrants of the 1990s, sent to Moscow, the Patriarch, was prohibited in the service of one of the most striking clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church, the former secretary of its Spanish diocese and now the former rector of the Church of the Nativity of Christ in Madrid, Archpriest Andrei Kordochkin . At the beginning of this year, the Tagansky court of Moscow fined the New Gazeta for an interview with Fr. Andrey.

Perhaps the most acute part of this text was the criticism of the new teachings of Patriarch Kirill about the automatic entering the paradise of the Russian military who died during his own.

The fate of five Lithuanian priests led by Archpriest Vitaly Motskus , who opposed his and criticized the position of the Moscow Patriarchate in March last year, was more safe. The manager of the Vilnius diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Innocent, banned them in the ministry, and then Patriarch Kirill deprived the “jealous of the world” of Sana, but in February of this year the Synod of the Constantinople Patrarhat recognized all these “Podorovs” non -canonical, politically motivated and accepted all five clergy in his jurisdiction in the sanctification in the dignity that they are in the dignity. They had to repressions.

The young Moscow priest John Koval , who served in Lublino, did not even pronounce the “free -thinking” sermons and did not criticize the Kremlin or the patriarchy.

To prohibit him in the ministry, he had enough of the word “peace”, which he inserted into a prayer for him, instead of the word “victory”.

Patriarch ordered this prayer to read at all parishes last fall, when partial mobilization began.

Network sufferers

As a rule, clergy in Russia are repressed “in general order” - for anti -war activity on the Internet. Soon, the year as the pre -trial detention center is Jeromonk John (Kurmoyarov) - the former cleric of the UOC MP, who then served in the Novosibirsk diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church and finally transferred to one of the “branches” of the Russian foreign church - ROCS (A), which the Moscow Patriarchate considers “Raskolnicheskaya”. O. John is charged with the “public distribution of knowingly false information about the use of the RF Armed Forces” in the form of publishing videos on YouTube at the end of February last year.

The most “criminal” of them was simply called: “Who will go to heaven and who - to hell” ... For this, they promise hieromonk for 10 years.

His colleague and ROCZ (A) colleague Hieromonk Nikandr (Pinchuk) from the Sverdlovsk region also underwent a criminal prosecution for a post on VKontakte, but was a fine. The post was removed shortly after placement - according to Fr. Nikandra, the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church for his position was criticized there.

For network protests, the case was opened on the deacon of the John-Baptist Church in Kirov Dimitry Baev , but he managed to quickly leave Russia. The Deacon account on VKontakte was blocked by the decision of the Prosecutor General’s Office, the church court promptly deprived him of the dignity, and Rosfinmonitoring was included in the list of extremists/terrorists.

... Anti -war protest in the Russian Orthodox Church reached his climax in the first days of his, after which he was blown away and has no chance of renewal.

The patriarch is official that the Russians have nothing to do with Western people, so the military conflict is inevitable to the complete victory of good (in the understanding of Cyril and the Kremlin) over evil (in their own understanding). The head of the Russian Orthodox Church reflects on what to do with 293 clerics that signed at the end of February 2022 a very careful appeal about the reconciliation of the parties and the absolute value of every human life.

The most titled signatures of this document, such as a representative of the Patriarch of Moscow under the Patriarch of Antioch, abbot Arseny (Sokolov), have already lost their posts. The official representative of the Patriarchate of Vakhtang Kipshidze called such statements to politics, "but" the church will not become part of the political opposition, <...> it is on the side of those to whom it should give its pastoral nourishment, and among these people, military personnel occupy not the last place. "

According to the OVD-Info*, in the first year, 6003 of the protocol on the “discrediting of the army” were received in the courts, while at least 503 people became suspects or accused in criminal cases with such a plot.

And the priests of the Russian Orthodox Church sometimes willingly act in such cases on the side of the prosecution - the influential cleric of the Irkutsk diocese, Archpriest Sergius Kandybin, told the FSB about the parishioner, which sympathizes with Ukraine.

In fact, the witnesses of the world in the ranks of the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church could become its “golden fund”, their words - after it all ends - could give this religious structure a chance of rehabilitation. But now no one thinks so far - any dissent “on the main issue” in the Russian Federation is more intolerable both in secular society and in the religious.

* Entered by the Russian authorities in the register of "foreign Agents".