Sub specie aeternitatis (“In the perspective of eternity”)

Archimandrite Seraphim (Ivanov)

[Later Archbishop of Chicago, Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia]

Source: Православная Русь, No. 24, 1941, p. 1.

Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell (Matt. 10:28).

This is certainly not a Christmas topic, the reader might say.

What can one do — we are living through such mad times that everything is turned upside down. At the end, God willing, there will be something Christmas-related.

We have written much about the need to establish a strict hierarchy of values. And how many of our readers are still unable to do this to this day!?

Spiritual destruction is more terrifying than physical death. This axiom holds true not only for an individual person, but also for an entire people. It is better to lose national independence than to allow the soul of the people to be destroyed.

This is how Metropolitan Anthony wrote about this back in 1918:

"If one had to choose between the two, then let Russia perish, but let Rus’ be preserved; let Petrograd perish, but not the Monastery of St. Sergius; let the Russian capital perish, but not the Russian village; let the Russian universities perish and be replaced by English or Japanese ones, but let not Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Vasnetsov, and Seraphim of Sarov perish from the memory of the people..." (Dictionary to the Works of Dostoevsky, p. 29).

And a bit above (p. 28) the hierarch wrote: "Rus’ existed, grew, and shone even when it was not an independent state"... referring to the time of the Tatar yoke.

Therefore, even in our time, as sad as it may be for us to read in German newspapers about suggestions to annex Russian territory up to the Dnieper or even further to the German Reich — if this be the price of liberating the rest of Russia from godless Bolshevism — then this is not so terrible.

Let us firmly remember that for Rus’, there can be nothing worse than the satanic Judeo-Bolshevik regime. If it remains in power for even another decade, the face of the Russian people will be irreversibly changed.

Even now, through the mass extermination of the best representatives of the older generation and the re-education of the youth, the Bolsheviks have succeeded in achieving that the majority of the peoples inhabiting Russia have accepted the Soviet godless regime as their own, Stalin-Dzhugashvili as their leader and father — and this despite the fact that the Kremlin rulers have not retreated one iota from their political program, as is testified daily by Soviet radio itself.

It is not only that they have accepted it — Russian soldiers shed their blood and fight desperately to the sounds of the Internationale for the “great Stalin” and the “Soviet Fatherland.”

This is already such a psychological shift that it threatens to become ultimately fatal for the Russian people.

Let no one say that Soviet patriotism is the same as Russian patriotism, that Russian soldiers are now inspired by the examples of Peter the Great, Suvorov, and Kutuzov. All of this is vile falsification. The foundation of Suvorov’s Science of Victory was a bright and steadfast faith in God. Suvorov’s wonder-warriors were a truly Christ-loving host, and they went to conquer and to die for the House of the Most Holy Theotokos, for Holy Rus’.

Suvorov’s favorite words were: “God have mercy — we are Russians!”

All this is hidden from Stalin’s “hawk-lings,” as the Moscow spokeswoman tenderly calls Soviet pilots. They gaze indifferently at the sacred centuries-old walls of churches turned into Red Army clubs, and at times amuse themselves by shooting at the most pure image of the Mother of God.

That which was sacred to the Russian people throughout their thousand-year history is, according to all testimonies coming from there, already incomprehensible to the broad masses of contemporary Soviet youth and speaks almost nothing to their hearts.

Let us not close our eyes to the dreadful truth. Oh, of course, not everything is lost yet. The remnants of the older generation are still alive, have not yet turned into ramoliks [French ramolli — “softened,” “weakened”], and the émigrés remain. There are still those who can cleanse the minds of the new Soviet generation from godless Communist filth, and even among the latter not all have been stripped of God. But if another ten or twenty years of this dreadful satanic regime pass, the spiritual destruction of the Russian people will become irredeemable and final.

Therefore, according to our deep conviction, whoever considers himself an Russian Orthodox Christian must not and cannot desire the victory of the faithful servants of the godless: of Timoshenko, Zhukov, and Merezhkov and the like, for from over their left shoulders peeks out the demonic, vile mug of the Judeo-Communist.

Yes, it is tragic that, apparently, a significant part of the Russian people will not be able to breathe freely, and life under foreign rule may become difficult. But the Russian people were under the Tatars for 250 years and did not perish; the Serbs and Bulgarians were under the Turks for 450 years… and preserved their national identity. Though the body was stricken, the soul of the people remained alive. And so it is arranged in this world that the soul of a people can only be killed from within; from without this is impossible, unless by the complete physical extermination of the given people.

Let us therefore remember all this firmly, beloved in the Lord Russian brothers and sisters. And let us especially reflect well upon it in these days of the Nativity of Christ the Savior. For He came to plant the true faith on earth, and through it to unite the human race to eternal life.

He, and only He, accomplished the greatest good, by granting us the opportunity to transform our brief earthly life — less than eighty years — into an eternal, infinitely joyful existence.

For it was He Himself, with His divine lips, who said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6), and in another place:

“He that is not with Me is against Me; and he that gathereth not with Me scattereth abroad” (Matt. 12:30).

Shall we be indifferent to these words of the Lord?! Shall we sell our spiritual birthright for a mess of lentils — for illusory values, even if so dear to us in human terms — national ones?

Are we Christ’s, or are we not Christ’s? Let us resolve this question once and for all with all seriousness, brethren. And if we are granted the blessing to answer it in the affirmative, then nothing will frighten us. Then the triumphant Christmas hymn will resound anew for us:

“God is with us, understand this, O ye nations, and submit yourselves, for God is with us!”

“But seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matt. 6:33).