Archimandrite Seraphim (Aleksiev) and our Church Community

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary [2012] of the birth of Archimandrite Seraphim (Aleksiev) [1]

Nun [now Abbess] Seraphima (Dimitrova)

 

 

1. The spiritual connection of Archimandrite Seraphim with our holy monastery.

During the 1950s and 1960s of the now bygone century, Archimandrite Seraphim was perhaps the most popular and beloved cleric of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. Both the clergy and the laity held him in high esteem. The churchgoing people did not miss his talks and divine services. In the years after September 9, 1944, when there was both open and hidden persecution against the Church, against her ministers, and in general against Christians who led an active church life, the young Fr. Seraphim stood out by his inspired preaching of the Orthodox faith. His wonderful soul-profiting books and poems were copied by hand, on typewriters, and even by cyclostyle duplicator (of course, secretly) and were distributed among the faithful in our country. Some also sent them abroad to their relatives. Humble and meek in his dealings with others, Fr. Seraphim was firm and uncompromising in matters of the faith. This was shown most clearly when the reform of the church calendar was imposed in our country. Archimandrite Seraphim was one of the four clergymen who refused to accept it.

When in 1967 it became known that the reform would be carried out the very next year, Archimandrite Seraphim spoke on this matter with Bishop Parthenius of Levkiya and with Archimandrite Methodius (Zherev), because he was close to them—they too were spiritually connected, each to his own degree, with St. Seraphim (Sobolev). From them Archimandrite Seraphim learned that they were preparing to accept the reform.

On the part of our monastery, Mother Abbess Seraphima and Nun Seraphima had firmly resolved to preserve what St. Seraphim had bequeathed to them—to have nothing in common with Ecumenism. They also remembered his serious grounds, set forth at the Pan-Orthodox Conference in Moscow in 1948, against the new style, including its mixed form (the so-called Revised Julian Calendar, with the movable feasts according to the old style and the fixed feasts according to the new). They knew that such a mixture leads to violations of the Typikon, to the shortening, and in individual cases even to the abolition, of the Fast of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and in general it was in no way justified from the standpoint of the liturgical tradition of the Orthodox Church. The claim of the supposedly greater astronomical accuracy of the new calendar was likewise unfounded. In reality, the reform was undertaken for ecumenical rapprochement with the heterodox, but in practice it led to the distancing, confusion, and alienation of the people from church traditions.

Archimandrite Seraphim, as a faithful spiritual son of St. Seraphim, was firmly resolved to preserve his testament. Knowing what fatherly care the saint had shown for the establishment of the Protection Monastery even on his deathbed, Archimandrite Seraphim cherished our monastery, and he had a particular respect for Mother. Mother, for her part, also greatly respected and valued him. She remembered Fr. Seraphim from his student years, when, until his departure abroad as a scholarship student, they had been in the same class at the Faculty of Theology. Even then he had stood out for his deep modesty, although he was one of the most capable students. When a professor asked him a question, he answered very profoundly, but without that self-assurance which is almost always noticed in more gifted young people. Mother told us more than once about his modesty. She also told us how ardently he, as a young theologian, after his return to Bulgaria, turned to the spiritual guidance of St. Seraphim and with what complete trust he related to him.

Evidently St. Seraphim also had such trust in the young clergyman. The following incident is indicative in this respect. On March 6 (new style) / February 22 (old style), 1948, St. Seraphim performed at the Russian church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker the monastic tonsure of Mother Abbess Seraphima and of her assistant, Nun Seraphima. During the rite, he called Hieromonk Seraphim (Aleksiev) and Hierodeacon Sergius (Yazadzhiev) to hand him the monastic garments of the sisters being tonsured. Other, more senior spiritual children of the saint were present there. But St. Seraphim chose precisely those two, and this can hardly have been accidental.

In the late 1940s there was a rationing system in Bulgaria, and it was by no means easy to obtain even the most necessary things for our newly established monastery. At that time St. Seraphim entrusted certain tasks to Hieromonk Seraphim. For example, he would ask him to petition the relevant office for the issuance of ration coupons for several blankets or for several meters of black cloth… Everything then was distributed by allocation, and supplies were very difficult to obtain.

Thus, from the very beginning of our monastery, Fr. Seraphim proved to be in some sense spiritually connected with it through St. Seraphim. But this spiritual bond was shown most strongly in the difficult years following the church-calendar reform. Mother Abbess Seraphima, Archimandrite Panteleimon, Archimandrite Seraphim, and Archimandrite Sergius—these were the people who at that time showed complete unanimity in matters of faith and who, despite enormous pressure, did not agree to compromise with their conscience.

2. The exclusion of our monastery from the diocese of the Bulgarian Patriarchate and the suspension of the clergy who disagreed with the calendar reform.

On July 18, 1968, the Synod published its message to the clergy and the faithful, in which it announced the forthcoming church-calendar reform. The change of calendar was to take place beginning on December 20 (December 7 old style).

At our previous meeting here, in December of last year, mention was made of how, on December 2 (new style), 1968, on the day when the icon of the Mother of God “Consolation in Sorrows and Grief” is celebrated, we brought to the Committee the prepared letter to Patriarch Kirill, in which we informed him that in conscience we could not accept the new style. However, to the humble written request of Mother Abbess Seraphima and of our sisterhood that we be permitted to continue our liturgical life according to the church calendar (the so-called “old style”), we received a refusal. More than that, ten days later—on December 12 (new style)—in the reply that was sent to us from the Sofia Metropolis, there was cited the categorical resolution of Patriarch Kirill: “This would mean falling away from the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.”

Before long we received another similar notice. Our annual budget for 1969, sent to the Sofia Metropolis for the customary yearly approval, was returned to us with an attached letter no. 364 of February 1. The contents of this letter were as follows: “To the former abbess of the former monastery in Knyazhevo. The enclosed budget is being returned to you, since in the jurisdiction of the Holy Sofia Metropolis, no such monastery exists.”

A little time passed, and we received yet another letter, numbered 1400, dated February 17, 1969. It was sent to us by the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Patriarchate in connection with the customary supply of candles to church institutions. Its contents were as follows: “To the former women’s monastery ‘Protection of the Most Holy Theotokos,’ Knyazhevo quarter, Sofia. In accordance with the decision of the Holy Synod of February 4, 1969, protocol no. 3, we inform you that, since you have fallen away from the jurisdiction of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, you cannot receive candles for church use at the established prices for stavropegial and diocesan monasteries…”

Thus, in practice, not because of any arbitrary decision on our part, but because of the reaction of Patriarch Kirill, already in December 1968 our monastery found itself outside the administrative system of the Bulgarian Patriarchate.

Unfortunately, the church authorities began to take a series of repressive measures against us, probably in order to force us to retreat from our principled position. Our main monastery church, St. Luke the Apostle and Evangelist, was taken from us. We were deprived of the principal activity by which we supported ourselves—the painting of icons for the needs of the Synod. Then we were also deprived of the right to receive church candles. We were left without public divine services, and with that our modest church income also came to an end. The sisters who produced various church articles (Pascha decals, home iconostases, burial shrouds, decorative candles, and others) were dismissed from the Church Monopolies department of the Sofia Metropolis. The head of that department himself, Mr. Zlati Zlatev, was also dismissed because of the disagreement he expressed with the church-calendar reform. And all this happened within a very short period, in which we were unable to reorganize ourselves and secure our livelihood. It was truly very difficult, but we understood that, since we had resolved not to compromise with our conscience and with our faith, we had to endure and hold out. We hoped above all in God’s help, in the protection of the Mother of God, and in the heavenly intercession of St. Seraphim.

Strong psychological pressure was also exerted on Archimandrite Seraphim. The faithful people and the clergy loved him, and therefore his unexpected withdrawal from church life and from the Theological Academy caused agitation among many who could not understand the principled basis of his position and reduced it almost to a kind of stubbornness. At the same time, Archimandrite Sergius (Yazadzhiev) also ceased his teaching activity at the Academy, but not voluntarily (as Archimandrite Seraphim did); rather, he was removed on grounds of “unsuitability,” even though everyone knew how extensive his knowledge was in the field of the New Testament and of classical philology.

On June 17, 1969, at a session of the Holy Synod, Patriarch Kirill resorted to an even heavier sanction, imposing on the four clergymen who disagreed with the church-calendar reform—Archimandrite Panteleimon, Archimandrite Seraphim, Archimandrite Sergius, and Hieromonk Seraphim (Dmitrievsky)—a ban on serving. It was precisely then, at the hour of the Synod’s meeting, that a terrible storm broke out over Sofia and whole rivers of water ran through the streets. That evening Archimandrite Seraphim came to the monastery deeply distressed in order to tell Mother what had happened.

The clergymen placed under suspension, in a spirit of Christian humility, submitted to the punishment imposed on them, although in conscience they did not feel bound by it, because it was contrary to the canons of the Orthodox Church. Meanwhile, both Mother and Archimandrite Seraphim were seeking some way for our situation to be regularized. Fr. Seraphim and Fr. Sergius twice gave their consent before the Holy Synod to be sent to the Zographou Monastery on the Holy Mountain, but on both occasions the Greek authorities did not permit it. They accepted this as the will of God—that they should remain in Bulgaria with their brethren and sisters who were of one mind with them in the faith, and mutually support one another.

Patriarch Kirill, seeing that the pressure being exerted was yielding no result, conceived the idea of destroying the Knyazhevo monastery. He began to prepare for its closure and for our removal to the then-abandoned Gigen Monastery, where there lacked even the most elementary conditions for life and a suitable means of support for frail people, as almost all of us were.

3. Permission for divine services according to the patristic church calendar behind closed doors.

In those difficult days, the only “weapon” of Mother Abbess Seraphima and of us, the sisters of the monastery, was fervent prayer to the Lord and to the Mother of God, the Protectress of our holy monastery—prayer with repentance and with an awareness of our complete unworthiness, and with hope placed in God’s mercy. And just as at the beginning of our sorrowful path, immediately after our refusal to accept the reform of the church calendar, the icon of the Most Holy Theotokos, “Consolation in Sorrows and Grief,” was painted in the monastery in order to entreat the intercession of the Mother of God, so now Mother blessed Sister Magdalene, together with Nun Seraphima, to paint the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, that She might help us in the difficult circumstances that surrounded us on every side. Work on the icon began in July 1970 and continued until the middle of September.

Meanwhile, the repressive treatment directed against us and against our clergy who had not accepted the church-calendar reform became known beyond the borders of Bulgaria. News reached the heads of the Committee for Matters of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the Other Religious Cults—Mr. Mikhail Kyuchukov and Mr. Dimitar Todorov—that the Russian émigré charitable Tolstoy Foundation, located in the United States, had expressed readiness to take in the nuns of Knyazhevo and assume their support. This proposal was received at the monastery on August 24, 1970. At that point it became clear to the authorities that the problem of the Knyazhevo monastery and of the clergymen who had not accepted the reformed calendar might attract the attention of public circles in the Western world and, as a violation of religious rights and freedom of conscience, provoke an unwelcome reaction.

Days after that, we addressed a letter to Patriarch Kirill in which we asked permission to resume the divine services in the monastery. Otherwise, we expressed our readiness to seek another church jurisdiction where we might freely confess and practice the Orthodox faith in its fullness and purity. Because of the danger that our situation might be raised as a public issue on the international level, Patriarch Kirill was compelled to yield. Through the mediation of the Committee for Matters of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, which was interested in preventing such a scandal from arising, Patriarch Kirill gave unofficial permission for our clergy to serve in our monastery “behind closed doors.” We received this long-awaited permission on the feast of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos, September 21 (new style), 1970, days after Mother herself lit an unquenchable lamp before the now completed Kazan Icon of the Mother of God. That very day, on the eve of the feast of the holy and righteous Ancestors of God Joachim and Anna and of St. Joseph of Volokolamsk, after an interruption of more than a year, our divine services were resumed, though now under catacomb conditions. Our joy was indescribable.

It should be noted that despite the repressive attitude of the church authorities toward our clergy and toward us ourselves, and despite the fact that our monastery had been excluded from the Bulgarian Patriarchate, we, the sisters of the Knyazhevo monastery, did not break church communion with the hierarchy of the Patriarchate, and during our divine services the name of the Bulgarian Patriarch Kirill was commemorated, and after his repose in March 1971, that of Patriarch Maxim.

At the beginning of 1972, Archimandrite Panteleimon fell ill and for a long time was not in a condition to serve. Great Lent began, and Holy Week drew near. The already elderly Hieromonk Seraphim was serving alone without interruption, but with his many illnesses this was extremely exhausting for him. Then we appealed to the Holy Synod with a request for permission for Archimandrite Seraphim to take part in the divine services of our monastery. On the eve of Lazarus Saturday we received a favorable answer to our petition. We were filled with gratitude to God, and Fr. Seraphim wrote the following in his diary:

“Who is so great a God as our God! Thou art the God Who doest wonders! (Ps. 76:14–15 [LXX]) About three years ago the late Patriarch Kirill was threatening us that if, after the suspension imposed on us, we served, the Holy Synod would try and depose us. And now, by God’s great mercy, the Holy Synod itself permits me, one under suspension, to serve! And I served my first liturgy on Palm Sunday. For me this radiant feast was a true Pascha. Compunction, joy, and boundless gratitude to the Savior filled my wretched heart.”

Soon after that, Archimandrite Seraphim settled near the monastery, in the home of Mrs. Ekaterina Dyulgerova, and after some time he also received a cell in the newly built wooden monastery building, beside the church of St. Luke the Apostle and Evangelist. There he lived for more than ten years, after which he moved into the cell of the now reposed Archimandrite Panteleimon. The years he spent in the monastery he devoted to intense literary work. It was precisely there that he composed some of his finest works: Life After Life, Our Prayer, On the Lord’s Prayer, The Elders of Optina, The Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian in the Light of Patristic Teaching, as well as his major theological work—a critique of the ecumenist heresy—Why We Are Not and Why We Cannot Be Ecumenists.

In August 1972, Archimandrite Sergius also received unofficial permission to participate in the divine services of our monastery behind closed doors. His first service was on the feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord.

4. The cessation of the commemoration of Patriarch Maxim.

During the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s of the last century, the ecumenical movement was developing at an accelerated pace, and the Bulgarian Patriarchate was becoming ever more deeply bound up with it. Anxiety over all this became the reason for a special theological commission to be created at the monastery, to monitor and analyze not only current events, but above all the anti-church essence of ecumenical ideology and practice. The work of the commission proceeded under the particular care of Mother Abbess Seraphima. The commission met every Sunday, and in it took part Archimandrite Seraphim, Archimandrite Sergius, Mother Abbess Seraphima, the faithful monastery steward Zlati Zlatev, and the theology-trained classics student Rosen Siromakhov. Archimandrite Panteleimon was no longer among the living; he reposed on January 18 (new style), 1980. Naturally, the center of the theological commission was Archimandrite Seraphim. In the course of its work, he developed his grounds for rejecting the ecumenical pan-heresy, which he later set forth in the aforementioned theological work Why We Are Not and Why We Cannot Be Ecumenists, published at the end of 1992 under the title Orthodoxy and Ecumenism.

Meanwhile, on May 9, 1981, an important event occurred in the life of the small church community that had formed around our monastery. On their way back from Romania to Greece, a group of clergymen from the Greek True Orthodox Church visited our monastery. Among them were also four bishops, one of whom was Bishop Cyprian, who later became Metropolitan of Oropos and Phyle. In conversation with Archimandrite Seraphim and Mother Abbess Seraphima, he told them that, if necessary, he was ready to perform ordinations of new clergy. In the following years, Metropolitan Cyprian visited our monastery more than once during his periodic journeys to Romania and back.

In January 1982, another working meeting of the Faith and Order Commission was held in Lima, Peru, at which an important ecumenical document was adopted, entitled “BEM.” [2] In essence, it represented a dogmatic-liturgical minimum basis for the union of Christians, which was to be accepted by the member churches of the WCC during the forthcoming Sixth Assembly in Vancouver in 1983. The theological commission at the monastery became thoroughly acquainted with the contents of this document, in the drafting of which Orthodox (?) theologians had also taken part. The specially prepared ecumenical “ordo” was also made known—the so-called “Lima Liturgy”—in which the performance of intercommunion was envisaged, that is, the joint communion of representatives of the various confessions participating in the WCC, among them also the local Orthodox Churches.

With church events developing in this way, the clergy of our monastery—Archimandrite Seraphim and Archimandrite Sergius, together with Mother Abbess Seraphima (Hieromonk Seraphim was already seriously ill)—decided that it was no longer possible for them to continue their church communion with the episcopate of the Bulgarian Patriarchate, since this burdened their conscience in an impermissible way. By a concurrence of circumstances, this weighty decision was taken by them precisely before the mural of the Mother of God “The Burning Bush,” painted in those years on the outer niche of the altar apse of the Protection chapel, that She might be our Guide in the storms of the grievous times that had come upon us. This took place on May 16 (new style), 1983, when the memory of St. Theodosius of the Kiev Caves is celebrated—the very day on which, in 1950, our monastery was officially opened. From the following day, May 17 (new style), because of the exceptional situation of our monastery behind the communist “Iron Curtain” and the impossibility of direct episcopal oversight, during the divine services, instead of the name of the Bulgarian Patriarch Maxim, there began to be commemorated “every Orthodox bishop.”

It is well known that the liturgical commemoration of the bishop during divine service is an expression of full unanimity with him in matters of faith. And this means that when you commemorate the name of a bishop who by word and/or deed departs from the dogmas or canons of the Orthodox faith, you express your agreement with him and consequently become a participant in his falling away.

In that same year, 1983, after the scandalous ecumenical manifestations that took place at the Assembly in Vancouver, the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, then headed by St. Philaret (Voznesensky), pronounced an anathema against Ecumenism as an ecclesiological heresy. This once again confirmed the timeliness of our grave step.

5. The need for clergy in our holy monastery. The first ordination.

As we have already mentioned, at the beginning of 1980 the ever-memorable Archimandrite Panteleimon reposed in the Lord. In December 1984, Hieromonk Seraphim (Dmitrievsky) followed him into eternity. In our monastery, from its very founding in 1950, the entire daily cycle of divine services was celebrated every day, crowned by the holy Divine Liturgy. But the age and state of health of Archimandrite Seraphim and Archimandrite Sergius did not allow them to take upon themselves the ascetic labor of such a difficult and unceasing daily ministry. This made it necessary for secret ordinations to be prepared and carried out, so that new clergy might be brought into the liturgical life of our small Orthodox community. For this purpose, Archimandrite Seraphim and Mother Abbess Seraphima began, with the greatest conscientiousness and care, to study the history and development of the Old Calendar movement in Greece and its unhappy division into several separate groups. As a result of this study, they established that the ecclesiological position of the Synod in Resistance, with whose president, Metropolitan Cyprian, God’s providence had linked us several years earlier, was the most acceptable and the closest to our own. After the necessary preparation and training, in which Archimandrite Sergius took the most active part, the first to be ordained was the monastery’s long-time helper, Petar Radenkov, who had previously been secretly tonsured a monk with the name Ephraim. His ordination to the diaconate and the priesthood took place in our monastery, respectively on May 28 and May 30 (new style), 1985, under catacomb conditions.

In 1988, during a journey to Greece, in the monastery of Sts. Cyprian and Justina, the spiritual son of Archimandrite Seraphim, the young theologian and classics graduate Rosen Siromakhov, was also secretly ordained to the diaconate and the priesthood; he subsequently received monastic tonsure with the name Photius. Until the collapse of the communist regime, and afterward until his episcopal consecration, he served secretly in our monastery while at the same time working as a lecturer at Sofia University. Later, the monks Cassian, Theophan, and Seraphim were also secretly ordained to the diaconate and the priesthood. As hieromonks, they celebrated the daily services in our monastery under catacomb conditions. Archimandrite Seraphim and Archimandrite Sergius, for their part, celebrated the Sunday and festal services. At that time, these events were known only to a very narrow circle of people, because of the inevitable crushing blow that the authorities would have struck against our small community if they had learned of the secret ordinations.

Since Archimandrite Seraphim felt that his strength was little by little leaving him, and Mother Abbess Seraphima also was already entering advanced old age, they were concerned about how the further existence of our church community, which was gradually growing, would continue. It was becoming ever more evident that at some point it would become necessary for it to be headed by a bishop. And here we must note that both Archimandrite Seraphim and Mother Abbess Seraphima had, without any hesitation whatsoever, determined that the most suitable person to bear the heavy and responsible cross of episcopal service was the secret priest Rosen Siromakhov (later Hieromonk Photius). Metropolitan Cyprian was of the same opinion. It was being awaited that, in the course of time and with the development of church circumstances, God’s will concerning this would be manifested.

6. The grave illness of Archimandrite Seraphim. The consecration of Bishop Photius.

In the last years of his life, Archimandrite Seraphim was visited by a grave illness. The Lord willed to give yet another crown to His faithful servant, who endured the bodily and spiritual sufferings that had befallen him with great patience and humility.

Meanwhile, at the beginning of the 1990s, political changes took place. Along with them, there arose among the people in our catacomb community the hope that under the new conditions, in which there was no longer a danger of persecution and violence against conscience, the higher clergy of the Bulgarian Patriarchate would dissociate itself from the destructive factors that had until then determined its church-political line, and would begin actively to work for the revival of the faith, for a return to traditional Orthodox values, for the condemnation of Ecumenism, and for the restoration of the church calendar in liturgical life. More than three years passed, however, without any constructive changes taking place in the life of the official Bulgarian Church. For the members of our community—clergy, monastics, and laity—it became ever clearer that our expectations for positive changes were groundless, since the actions of the episcopate of the official church continued to bear the oppressive imprint placed upon it by the godless totalitarian system.

The growing spiritual needs of the community no longer allowed the episcopal consecration of Hieromonk Photius (Siromakhov) to be postponed. As is known, it was carried out at the monastery of Sts. Cyprian and Justina (Phyle, Greece) on January 17 (new style), 1993, by four bishops of the Synod in Resistance, with the participation of a bishop also from the Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Romania. When he returned to Bulgaria, Bishop Photius found Archimandrite Seraphim already on his deathbed and, having received his spiritual blessing, accompanied him on his eternal journey on January 26 (new style). At that moment all of us felt great sorrow, but also great joy: from among us there had departed a wonderful spiritual father, an uncompromising confessor of Orthodoxy, a preacher of piety, an inspired poet, and a caring spiritual guide; yet he had handed on the torch of spiritual succession to his faithful son, who had already taken upon his shoulders the heavy episcopal cross of responsibility for the faith and for those seeking salvation through it.

7. The emergence of the Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Bulgaria—a natural process under conditions of advancing apostasy from the Orthodox faith.

From the events described here, we see that the formation of our church community was the result of the striving of a small group of clergy, nuns, and laypeople to remain faithful to Church Tradition, to preserve it in its truth and fullness, and not to participate in any way in the works of Ecumenism. Ecumenism, which boasts of love and tolerance toward the heterodox and those of other faiths, but which is ready to act cruelly toward those Orthodox Christians who cherish the purity of their faith and wish to preserve it for the sake of the salvation of human souls.

Why, in celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of our unforgettable father, Archimandrite Seraphim, did we attempt also to recount in broad outline the history of our church community? Because today it is very often said in the circles of the official church and, sadly, especially in the circles of the so-called supporters of the struggle for Orthodoxy “from within,” that our community arose after the death of Archimandrite Seraphim and that he has no direct relation to its history and to its subsequent development. As has become evident from our account, this does not correspond to the truth. Already headed for 19 years by a bishop, our Orthodox community developed and grew gradually over the course of more than four decades. At its foundation lie the labors of Archimandrite Seraphim and Mother Abbess Seraphima—the people who did not compromise with their conscience for the sake of earthly well-being and earthly tranquility, but at the cost of many sorrows and hardships remained faithful to the testament of their spiritual father, St. Seraphim, and through this, faithful to our Lord Jesus Christ and to His holy Church. May we also, through their holy prayers, strive to show such saving faithfulness.

 

1. The text was compiled on the basis of an account by Nun Euphrosynia and on documents from the archive of the women’s monastery Protection of the Most Holy Theotokos in Knyazhevo, Sofia.

2. “Baptism, Eucharist, Ministry.”

 

Bulgarian source: https://bulgarian-orthodox-church.org/rr/lode/MSeraphima/aSOCC.html