Home page News
Metropolitan Hilarion: the feat of new martyr…

Metropolitan Hilarion: the feat of new martyrs and confessors is a spiritual treasure to be carefully preserved and revered by our Church

[gallery]

On February 10, 2013, the Day of the Assembly of Russia’s New Martyrs and Confessors, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the DECR, celebrated the Divine Liturgy in the church of Our Lady the Joy to All the Afflicted in Moscow.

 

After the service, Metropolitan Hilarion delivered a sermon, saying in particular,

 

‘We commemorate today the Assembly of Russia’s New Martyrs and Confessors – all those who martyred in the years of severe persecutions against the faith and the Church of Christ. It is a great occasion for the whole Church as we remember tragic events but at the same time celebrate because the era which continued in our country for 70 years in the 20th century also revealed to the world a great assembly of confessors and new martyrs. They preferred dying to renouncing Christ and today they pray for us and our Motherland in the triumphant heavenly Church.

 

‘The persecution started immediately after the 1917 October Revolution when the Bolsheviks took over. The persecution against the faithful was purposeful and long and excelled in cruelty all the previous persecutions against the Church including those by Roman emperors in the 1st, 2nd and 3d centuries. The theomachist regime did everything to destroy religion and the Church, her people and those who bore the grace-giving spirit of Christ that used to nourish our Motherland for centuries.

 

‘It was a brutal and bloody repression because the authorities sought to fully exterminate the Church. They proceeded from the utterly fantastic and antihuman idea that religion was a vestige of the past and should die out on its own, but if it did not die on its own it should be helped to die as soon as possible.

 

‘The Bolsheviks created an antihuman and criminal ideology to guide the rulers of our country for decades. This ideology led to millions of victims, the people of different beliefs and social status. They began with the class struggle against nobility and merchants followed by the dispossession of well-to-do peasants, then resettlement and destruction of whole ethnic communities. One destruction campaign followed the other and these criminal actions continued for several decades.

 

‘The Russian Orthodox Church was only one of the targets of that suicidal campaign waged by the authorities against their own people. But it was the Church who showed great courage and spiritual heroism, which has been imprinted in people’s memory and glorified by the Church today by canonizing Russia’s holy new martyrs and confessors.

 

‘The machine of persecution swallowed not only innocent people but also those who themselves were guilty of the crimes. Indeed, persecutors are known to become persecuted sometimes. We do not see any heroism in the actions of these people in the awareness that they were victimized by the world they themselves created. Those whom we glorify were not guilty of anything except for their faith in Christ, their service of the Church, their love of God and their efforts to guide the people of God to salvation. The people we glorify as Russia’s new martyrs and confessors are not all the victims of those terrible years but those who remained faithful to the Lord to the end, who were not broken by the machine of repression, who did not renounce Christ even under torture and in prison, who did not betray their loved ones, as was often the case.

 

‘We do not know how many they were, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions, because the whole truth about those years will never be revealed. All the archives will never be opened so that the records could reveal who remained faithful to the end and who stumbled. Besides, there are many forgeries in the transcripts of interrogation we use to restore the story of a particular new martyr. Some recorded as renouncers did not actually renounce their faith. The full story of the feat performed by the saints is known to the Lord alone. But the Church has glorified all the new martyrs and confessors, those we know, those whose feat is documented and those who are known only to God. Among them were bishops and ordinary priests and monastics. There were also a great many lay people who did not renounce Christ even under torture.

 

‘The feat performed by holy new martyrs and confessors is a spiritual treasure to be carefully preserved and revered by our Church. We do not know what times await us ahead. It is wrong to believe that the Church will now and forever enjoy welfare, peace and the good will of the powers that be, because times may change as it happens in history. Our Orthodox Church lived in very different situations and there always were those who were ready to follow to the end the path of Golgotha together with Christ. We pray today that the grace of God may never abandon our people, as it happened after a great many of them rejected the faith, Christ and the Church. We pray that this rejection may never be repeated in our history. We pray that we may hand down to our posterity the Orthodox faith we have inherited at such a dear price’.

 

DECR Communication Service

Share:
Congratulations of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill to the President of Turkey on his 70th birthday

26.02.2024

His Holiness Patriarch Kirill's condolences in connection with the murder of the monks of the Ziquala Abo Monastery in Ethiopia

24.02.2024

Address by His Holiness Patriarch Kirill at the XII Christmas Parliamentary Meetings at the Federation Council of the Russian Federation

23.01.2024

His Holiness Patriarch Kirill: Patriarch of Constantinople is not a free man

07.01.2024

Christmas Message from Patriarch KIRILL of Moscow and All Rus’

06.01.2024

His Holiness Patriarch Kirill had phone conversation with Metropolitan Ioann of Belgorod and Stary Oskol

02.01.2024

His Holiness Patriarch Kirill expresses condolences over deadly earthquake in northwest China

19.12.2023

His Holiness Patriarch Kirill congratulates Mr Abdel Fattah El-Sisi on his re-election as President of Egypt

19.12.2023

His Holiness Patriarch Kirill welcomes the opening of an exhibition dedicated to the decoration of the Church of St Sava in Belgrade

19.12.2023

His Holiness Patriarch Kirill presides over jubilee meeting of Inter-Religious Council of Russia

07.12.2023

Address by His Holiness Patriarch Kirill at jubilee meeting of Inter-Religious Council of Russia

07.12.2023

Patriarchal greetings on the occasion of 60th anniversary of the Diocese of Vienna and Austria

26.11.2023

Primate of Russian Church presents historic miracle-working Kazan Icon of the Mother of God to the faithful and celebrates Liturgy in the Kremlin Dormition Cathedral

04.11.2023

Address by His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus’ to the participants of the World Conference of Compatriots Living Abroad

01.11.2023

His Holiness Patriarch Kirill met with the Primate of the Assyrian Church of the East

31.10.2023

Metropolitan Hilarion: Many things in a person's life depend on faith

29.08.2021

Metropolitan Hilarion: The Holy Spirit is the main treasure of the Christian soul

01.08.2021

Metropolitan Hilarion: Holiness is a constant striving to imitate the Lord Jesus Christ

27.06.2021

Metropolitan Hilarion: God does not want to condemn, but to save us

07.03.2021

Metropolitan Hilarion: The Lord always grants to us the opportunity to display our talents

24.01.2021

Metropolitan Hilarion: The Lord has imbued the waters of Jordan with his divine presence to wash away human sins

19.01.2021

Metropolitan Hilarion: to repent means to change your way of life

17.01.2021

On commemoration day of St. Catherine, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk officiated at the Church of St. Catherine the Great Martyr In-the-Fields  the representation of the Orthodox Church in America

07.12.2020

Metropolitan Hilarion: We can always show compassion for people

29.11.2020

Metropolitan Hilarion celebrates on commemoration day of St. Varlaam of Khutyn at the church of ‘Joy to All the Afflicted’ icon of the Mother of God

19.11.2020

Metropolitan Hilarion: We should remember that the life of each human being is in the hands of God

06.11.2020

Metropolitan Hilarion: For God there is nothing impossible

25.10.2020

Metropoplitan Hilarion: The cross which was an instrument of dishonourable execution becomes the symbol of salvation for millions of people

27.09.2020

Metropolitan Hilarion: Eucharist is the wedding feast, to which Lord Jesus Christ invites each of us

13.09.2020

Metropolitan Hilarion: Faith alone is not enough for salvation

30.08.2020

Page is available in the following languages
Feedback

Fields marked by * are mandatory required

Send a message
Рус Укр Eng Deu Ελλ Fra Ita Бълг ქარ Срп Rom عرب