I have had occasion to write that
the calamities which befell the Dynasty and Russia were God’s retribution for
their encroachments upon the Church, culminating in the mad proclamation of the
Tsar as head of the Church in 1797. Then the Lord, as before the Universal
Flood, said again within Himself: “My Spirit shall not forever be disregarded
by men, for they are flesh; yet their days shall be one hundred and twenty
years; and behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy
all flesh in which is the spirit of life under heaven. Everything that is on
the earth shall lose life” (Gen. 6:3, 17). Thus, exactly 120 years after 1797,
the all-destroying Bolshevik revolution came. All this was foreseen by
Patriarch Nikon and by the English scholar Palmer in his six-volume work on
Patriarch Nikon...
It is well known that our higher
hierarchy was kept very far from the Imperial Court; only on the occasion of
Christmas and Pascha did it appear at Court, and then only in the persons of
two metropolitans, the matter being limited to the official greeting of the
Imperial Personages. Such was the case under Emperor Nicholas I, such was the
case under Emperor Alexander II, and, what is even more surprising, such was
the case under Alexander III as well. I myself was first granted the honor of
being presented to Sovereign Nicholas II in 1906, nine years after my
consecration as bishop; and on that occasion the Sovereign said to me with a
smile and mild reproach: “It seems this is the first time we have met.”
Pobedonostsev, who in general firmly defended the Orthodox foundations of
Russian life, for some reason did not look favorably upon the appearance of
hierarchs at Court...
In one thing I must confess (or
boast): I have become convinced that our Russian clergy (the clergy, not the
Church) are incapable of conducting ecclesiastical affairs without support from
the Throne. This is something I did not think before the beginning of the
revolution, but I imagined that, once freed from the Tsar’s guardianship, the
Church, through her spiritual pastors, would be able to uphold the authority of
the holy faith. Since 1917 I have seen that this is not so. Two hundred years
of bondage of the hierarchy and clergy under the state so diminished their will
and their conviction that they came to need the support of the state, lest the
Church be turned into a small sect of voluntary martyrs amid an enormous mass
of traitors, deceivers, lovers of money, flatterers, and slanderers. Of course,
this “sect” would still have remained the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic
Church, but three-quarters of the people would have fallen away from her.
Source: Жизнеописание
Блаженнейшего Антония, Митрополита Киевского и Галицкого [The Life of
His Beatitude Anthony, Metropolitan of Kiev and Galicia], Vol. IX. pp.
228–230.
Online:
https://apologet.spb.ru/ru/%D1%86%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%8F-%D0%B6%D0%B8%D0%B7%D0%BD%D1%8C/67-%D0%B0%D0%BA%D1%82%D1%83%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B5-%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BC%D1%8B/1436-mitropolit-antonij-khrapovitskij-oshibki-monarkhii-mitropolit-antonij-khrapovitskij.html
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