Metropolitan Philaret of New York: The Guardian of the Lord’s House

Protopriest Alexei Mikrikov (+2023)

Assigned to Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, NY

Translated from the Russian by Eugenia Chisholm and verified against the original published in Volume 2791 of Nasha Strana, March 2006; there are some variances in versions published on various websites. Published in Living Orthodoxy by St. John of Kronstadt Press.

 

 

Some History

Beginning in 1945, Archimandrite Philaret (Voznesensky), subsequently the First Hierarch of ROCOR, and the entire Far East diocese, were being forced to enter the Moscow Patriarchate, since at the time the Soviet army had occupied China and established total Soviet control.

The Soviet power immediately branded all Russian émigrés “enemies of the people” and, within half a year, had arrested 50,000 people, including the young and elderly. All fifty thousand Harbin residents were transported to the USSR. Beyond Atpor Station, fourteen thousand of them were executed; the remaining thirty-six thousand were sent to concentration camps where they were starved as described in the book Father Arseny. It is assumed that they all perished in concentration camps. (Among those killed were people such as K. Rodzaevsky, together with his Fascists, as well as people from Osano who collaborated with the Japanese.) Every third young man in Harbin was seized by the Soviet forces, taken to the USSR, and annihilated in a concentration camp. The Soviet totalitarian regime annihilated them because of their Orthodoxy, for refusing to recognize the sergianist heresy, which teaches conscientious submission to the theomachists.

Overall, the Soviet regime killed around seventy million Orthodox people, destroyed more than thirty thousand churches, confiscated land and property. It committed the genocide of the Russian Orthodox people, caused civil war, blasphemed God, and ripped out the people’s faith in God through fear and terror. Who could obey such a regime in good conscience and collaborate with it?

The remaining Russian residents of Harbin were forced to accept Soviet citizenship. However, Archimandrite Philaret openly refused to do this. Also, when he served divine liturgy he never commemorated the Soviet regime. He delivered thundering sermons on truth and falsehood, after listening to which it seemed to us that these were the final days of his life. He openly served panikhidas for the murdered Tsar Nicholas II and his entire Royal Family, and said in his sermons that the most important thing about the Great Martyr Tsar was that he had the mind of Christ and therefore could not be brainwashed and did not have the perfidious spirit of anti-Christ that had gripped all of Russia. He also brought together young people for meetings at which he explained the teaching of Christ.

Father Philaret Under Torture

The city of Harbin, Manchuria had been occupied by the Japanese from 1904 to 1945. The Japanese tried with all their might to hold onto this Chinese province, since it provided enormous material advantages to Japan and gave access to the mainland, which made Japan strong in an international military-political sense. But the Russian émigrés were a problem for the Japanese because of their unique non-Asian mentality. With the aim of using young Russians for military purposes, the Japanese first attempted to stamp out that social-religious mentality of our émigrés. With this objective they positioned an idol of the goddess Amateresa across the road from the St. Nicholas Cathedral, so that Russian people arriving for services would first bow in the direction of the idol before entering the cathedral to worship God.

Metropolitan Melety reacted immediately: he issued an epistle in which he explained that it was impermissible to bow to the idol. Then the Japanese began to accuse Metropolitan Melety and the clergy of committing acts against their authority.

Archimandrite Philaret objected particularly resolutely to the Japanese. Then the Japanese seized him and began to torture him. They cut open his cheek and almost gouged out one eye, but he tolerated the torture. Then the main torturer told Father Philaret: “We have an instrument fired by electricity, through the use of which everyone has agreed to comply with our demands, and you will comply too.” (Father Philaret told me personally about this.)

The torturer brought the red-hot electrical instrument. Then Father Philaret prayed to Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker with the words: “Saint Nicholas, help me; otherwise, there may be a betrayal.” The time for torture arrived. The torturer undressed him to the waist and began to burn his back with the red-hot iron. And, oh — a miracle occurred! Father Philaret could smell the burnt flesh, but felt no pain. His soul was joyful. The torturer could not understand why he was silent and not shouting and writhing from unbearable pain. Then the torturer turned and looked at Father Philaret’s face. When he saw his face, he knew he had been defeated. He waved his arms and muttered something in his Asian language and ran away, defeated by this super-human strength of endurance.

No one could endure such sufferings without the help of Christ God. But the suffering was so intense that he was close to death. Father Philaret, who was near death, was given to his relatives to be cared for. At this point in his account he grew silent. Later on he told me: “I was in veritable hell.” But God did not allow him to die. The wounds healed; only his eye remained somewhat displaced. The Japanese no longer wished to claim the bows of the Orthodox people. Until now I had not told everything that I had heard from Father Philaret, since I thought that everyone knew about these things.

Sergianism as Paganism

As young people living in China under the Soviet regime, experiencing violence and the fear of death, we quickly understood its anti-Christ nature. We realized that if God did not stop it that it would spiritually break all the people, making them zombies and forcing them to serve world evil.

It became clear that in his 1927 Declaration Metropolitan Sergius, on the advice of flesh and blood, out of fear of losing his life, having fallen into delusion, called everyone to in conscience obey the Soviet regime and collaborate with it. If the Lord said, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36), then in his Declaration, Metropolitan Sergius was attempting to save people’s bodies, ignoring the eternal damage to their souls. This was precisely the pagan understanding of good and evil. This was precisely the betrayal and gross sin which Metropolitan Melety and Father Philaret in the Far East diocese and Father Arseny, “with many people” in Russia, feared to commit.

But in attempting to save the bodies of people according to the pagan method, Metropolitan Sergei doomed one third of Russia to the obliteration of both human bodies and souls — for through his Declaration he permitted the Soviet regime to officially classify those who did not accept it as political criminals. Is this not the greatest crime committed by the supreme church authority, before God and before the Church?

I realized that the anathema pronounced by the Holy Patriarch Tikhon against the Soviet godless authority and its collaborators is indeed God’s might condemning the Soviet regime and all its collaborators. Are not the words of Christ God, that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for these to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, applicable to the sergianists who committed this gross mistake and sin?

Then the answer to the question “what then is sergianism?” became clear to me. It is the encoding of the Orthodox consciousness with the pagan understanding of good and evil, through violence and morbid fear instilled in the population by the Soviet regime, with the aid of the supreme church authority. This is not a comforting answer, but it is one derived from the personal reality of life and the clear example of the life and service in the Russian Orthodox Church of Archimandrite Philaret.

Father Philaret and Metropolitan Melety, together with all the clergy, did not bow down before the idol of the goddess Amaterasa — but Metropolitan Sergius bowed down before the godless regime, leading all the clergy and people into error and sin.

After the Declaration the clergy changed. Father Arseny used to say: “What could the people glean from such pastors? What kind of an example are they? We raised our people poorly for we did not instill in them the deep foundation of Faith. Remember all of this! Remember it! This is why our people so quickly forgot us, their servants; they forgot the Faith and took part in the destruction of churches.” Father Philaret’s path was different. He rejected sergianism, did not collaborate with the regime… and he was esteemed as a leader of great spiritual authority by the Russian émigrés of Harbin.

An Attempt on the Life of the Confessor

Then, in October 1960, the Soviet régime, brimming with malice, decided to annihilate him through fire. This is how it happened: one night in the wee hours of Sunday, Archimandrite Philaret was awakened at about 2:00 am by a strange odor in his house, so he walked through into the parlor, in the corner of which was a storeroom. As he related, from under the door of the store-room a pungent, sharp-smelling smoke was pouring out. He went straight to the bathroom and poured water into a basin, returned to the storeroom and, having opened the door, he splashed the water in the direction of the origin of the smoke. Suddenly there was a loud explosion accompanied by intense fire. The fire burned him and the shock wave of the explosion pushed him with great force, lifting him and throwing him across the entire parlor and pushed him against the exterior door. Fortunately, the door opened outward. The impact of his flying body tore off the hinges, and he fell on the ground, deafened but alive. When he came to, he saw the house burning like a torch. Archimandrite Philaret realized that a thermic bomb had exploded which burned down the house in mere minutes.

That same night a certain Zinaida Lvovna, a member of the sisterhood of the church and Mercy House, had walked out of her home which was across the street from the church at around midnight. She saw fire trucks standing in the street near the church, but there was no fire. Such an incomprehensible and unusual accumulation of firefighting vehicles surprised her. Around two hours later, when the sound of the exploding bomb woke her, she immediately went out on the street and saw the house almost completely burned, [the remains of] which the firefighters were extinguishing. Meanwhile, Archimandrite Philaret was standing on the front steps of the church, shivering from cold, suffering from severe burns and contusion. Zinaida Lvovna immediately understood that the fire had been set by the Soviet authority with the purpose of killing Father Philaret. She quickly crossed the road and invited him into her house.

But the Chinese chief fireman, seeing that Archimandrite Philaret was alive, accused him of setting the fire and wanted to arrest him. However, the astute Zinaida Lvovna quickly turned to the Chinese authority and said: “It appears that you positioned your firetrucks in advance, knowing that a fire would break out? Who informed you in advance about the fire?”

The fire chief was at a loss for words and could not provide an answer. Meanwhile, Zinaida Lvovna and Archimandrite Philaret reached her house, in which there was a room without any windows. She situated Archimandrite Philaret in there, for she knew that the Soviet killers could penetrate a window and kill him.

The next day, Sunday, some young people came early for service, but the church was closed and the house where the rector had lived was burned to the ground. I managed to meet Zinaida Lvovna and found out from her what had happened that night. I asked for permission to see Father Philaret.

At first glance I saw Father Philaret in a state of utter physical exhaustion and pain. His burnt cheek was dark brown. But the expression in his eyes revealed firm submission to the will of God and a joyful fearlessness in service to Him and the Orthodox people. I went numb from the unexpectedness of this sight, for it was immediately obvious that he was a hair from death. Yet he avoided death by some miracle. And suddenly I hear his greeting:

“S’prazdnikom” (Greeting on the feast — tr.). He said this greeting the same way people say “Christ is Risen!” on Pascha. Tears flowed from my eyes instead of a response. I had not cried since I was a child. But here, a 20-year old grown man, I stood on my knees before him without speaking, tears streaming, and kissed his right hand.

I then understood that he, like the fourth Babylonian youth, had become a Man of Fire who did not burn up in the Chinese thermic oven of the 20th century, stoked by the theomachist Krushchev, seventy times greater than the one fired up by Nebuchadnezzar in the sixth century BC. It became clear that the grace of God had saved Father Philaret for his firm and fearless fulfillment of Holy Patriarch Tikhon’s commandment.

Two months passed. He began serving again, and within half a year was able to live independently in the mezzanine over the church. But suddenly he moved back to Zinaida Lvovna’s. We were told in confidence that one day Archimandrite Philaret had returned to his cell after service, opened the door with his key and entered. But suddenly he saw the tips of enormous shoes protruding from under the drapes. Realizing that a murderer sent by the Soviet régime stood there, he walked over to his dresser, pretending to take something from it, and quickly walked out of his cell, locking the door. After this episode a man from the Chinese police came to Zinaida Lvovna’s and asked why Archimandrite Philaret doesn’t spend the night in his cell. She immediately understood the situation and answered that he was physically weak and exhausted.

Not long afterwards, Father Philaret, through spiritual discernment, discovered a picture of satan under the altar table in the church at Mercy House. The picture was immediately removed. The Soviet authority did not know how to aggravate or mock a man with apostolic boldness and faith which made him the bearer of the invincible grace of God.

Having passed through all temptations, having passed through fire and water in the spiritual and literal sense, Archimandrite Philaret had received a gift from God: no matter who turned to him with any request, by his prayers God satisfied the request of the petitioner. After his death this gift has been magnified.

More Attempts on His Life

In 1961 Archimandrite Philaret moved to Australia, where he again entered the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. But apparently, a mitred protopriest said on November 2, 2003, he first offered his “repentance” and only then was consecrated Bishop of Brisbane. Of what did this “repentance” consist if he had never accepted the mistakes of sergianism, if he had never recognized the evil war against God by the Soviet regime as good, if he had always been faithful to the Church, the true homeland and the people?

There was a third attempt on his life in the 1970s, on Pascha, when he had already become Metropolitan and First Hierarch of ROCOR and lived in the USA. But the attempt was unsuccessful.

A fourth attempt was made on a ship, when Metropolitan Philaret was returning from France after a visit to the Lesna Convent. On the return voyage an unusual phenomenon occurred in the ship’s boiler: suddenly, in the middle of the day, such an intense fire started up in the boiler that the smoke stack became white-hot. The ship’s captain, seeing no way to diminish the intensity of the fire, which threatened to melt the smoke stack (thus fire would engulf the entire ship and devour all its passengers), came at this critical moment to Vladika Philaret and asked him to pray, for, according to his view, only God could save the ship and passengers. Vladika Philaret heard what the captain had to say and immediately began to pray to God. Between ten to twenty minutes later the smoke stack had cooled to red; within the hour it was once again black. God had granted them salvation! The captain came to Metropolitan Philaret, kissed his hand and emotionally thanked him for his prayers… Now let’s ask ourselves, how could the flame have acquired such a catastrophic intensity? Did this happen on its own? Or, just as before, was the evil hand of a KGB agent involved in order to annihilate Vladika?

Since then, almost half a century has passed. I myself have been serving in ROCOR as a priest for more than thirty years. I also have always followed my spiritual father and never commemorated the Soviet regime, nor did I collaborate with it. Therefore, I believe that I have never been under the anathema of the Holy Patriarch Tikhon. But that same mitred protopriest [who alleged Vladyka Philaret’s “repentance”] unabashedly asserts that Metropolitan Philaret and all the “Chinese émigrés” supposedly automatically fell under the anathema of St. Patriarch Tikhon because they happened to be living on territory of the Moscow Patriarchate from 1945 to 1961. How could this be — for they loved Christ God and never betrayed Him, never accepted the mistake of sergianism, and did not collaborate with the Soviet regime?

I protest such inhumane misunderstanding and condemnation. In the beginning of the 21st century do not the incorrupt relics of Metropolitan Philaret prove that God holds him as a saint for his battle against the pagan understanding of good and evil, for not agreeing with the mistake of sergianism, for not collaborating with the godless authority?

If, during the Soviet era, sergianism created a pagan mindset, after the Soviet regime ended this sergianist mindset is already turning into an anti-Christ mindset. Therefore unification must begin with a general condemnation of the error of the supreme church authority at a council of all Moscow Patriarchate and ROCOR bishops. Only after this condemnation would we be able to approach one Chalice of Christ, for oneness of mind would have been achieved.

On the Road Toward Disaster

If the union of ROCOR and the Moscow Patriarchate is made without a preliminary condemnation of the sergianist heresy and anathema against ecumenism, it will lead to a spiritual catastrophe for ROCOR, causing the anathema of St. Patriarch Tikhon to extend onto ROCOR — something which was never the case for Metropolitan Philaret. He was never a cunning slave who lost his personal grace.

If the union occurs without a preliminary condemnation of the sergianist crime and ecumenism, will not the organizers of the unification within ROCOR become co-participants and collaborators of those who crucified Christ God? Will this unification not take place under the carnivorous mockery of the dead Soviet régime and the still living enemies of Christ?

It must also be noted that the glorification of the Holy Tsar Nicholas and all the New Martyrs started in Russia from a copy of the Myrrh-gushing Icon from ROCOR — yet the MP supreme church authority did not want to glorify the Great Martyr Tsar Nicholas and the New Martyrs. The glorification only took place when the supreme church authority could no longer oppose the will of the people or the miraculous sign of the fragrant myrrh streaming from the icon of St. Tsar Nicholas and his royal family.

The Guards of the Lord’s House

Terrifying news is coming out of Russia that Patriarch Alexei II with his hierarchy wish to glorify Patriarch Sergius for his Declaration of 1927, this gross mistake and lie. A certain Sergei Fomin calls Sergius “The Guard of the Lord’s House” in a book with the same title.

Can the supreme church authority of ROCOR accept this without a loss of its own grace and falling under the anathema of St. Patriarch Tikhon? No, it cannot! This is my own conviction; I am not forcing it on anyone, but having taken on this ecclesiological mindset, I cannot reject it even until death.

The 1927 Declaration of Metropolitan Sergius, for the consciousness abroad, is an impassable abyss dividing the MP and the Church in the diaspora even until the Lord’s dread judgment. St. Patriarch Tikhon, Metropolitan Melety, Father Arseny, Father Philaret — these could be called the Guardians of the Lord’s House, but not Sergius under any circumstances.

Regarding Myself

The martyric podvig of Father Philaret had such a strong impact on me that I completely joined his belief and outlook. The number of such faithful was constantly increasing. But I will admit that the fear of pain enslaved me; I was afraid I could not withstand such torture if it happened to me. Upon arriving in Australia, I would have nightmares. It seemed that the Communists were pursuing me; I would run from them and finally wake up in horror with cold sweat on my brow. For approximately thirty seconds I could not get my bearings. But then I would remember I was in Australia and would calm down. This went on for about three years.

I understood well that I was weak and sinful and therefore was afraid to become a priest. I even thought of running away from the Holy Trinity Seminary, where I was studying. But Metropolitan Philaret learned of this. When he saw me next he said to me: “What is this I hear? Watch out, or I’ll box your ears!” Then I completed seminary. I was very fearful of entering the priesthood, which Vladika Theodosy of Australia insisted I do. Before I entered the priesthood, Vladika Philaret phoned me in Australia and blessed me. Then I calmed down.

In Australia, when I was already a priest, I met with Vladika Philaret. Again I said to him: “Vladika Philaret, I won’t endure torture, but I think I could take a bullet if God helps.” He didn’t answer. I understood that he would pray for me not to lose my faith and become a sergianist.