Archbishop Nathanael (Lvov) (+1986)
In the old Russian Lives of the
Saints and chronicles, it is often said of those whose lives are recounted by
the hagiographer: “He was a good branch from a good root.” One feels inclined
to apply these words to our First Hierarch, Metropolitan Philaret.
His father, Archpriest Fr
Nicholas Voznesensky, who later embraced monasticism and became Archbishop of
Hailar, was one of the finest, if not the finest, of all the clergy of the Far
Eastern Diocese of Manchuria, which was rich in good pastors.
A graduate of the Moscow
Theological Academy, Fr Nicholas impressed others by the depth and breadth of
his extensive theological and scholarly knowledge. He compiled the finest
textbooks on the Law of God, from which Russian young people throughout the Far
East were educated. It should be noted that in the Far East the Law of God was
taught not in an abbreviated but in an expanded form, compared with the way it
had been taught in old pre-revolutionary Russia.
Fr Nicholas Voznesensky moved to
Harbin from Blagoveshchensk, a city on the Manchurian border, as soon as power
in the Amur region passed into the hands of the Bolsheviks. In Harbin, Fr
Nicholas became rector of the large and splendid Iveron Church, which before
the Revolution had been the church of the Trans-Amur Military District.
If not already in
Blagoveshchensk, then soon after arriving in Harbin, Fr Nicholas lost his
dearly beloved wife and assumed full responsibility for raising his family—two
sons and three daughters.
Fr Nicholas’s family was
permeated by a radiant, genuinely Orthodox, deeply ecclesial spirit. The writer
of these lines was a friend of the entire family. What a rich variety of
interests occupied everyone in that household! What varied and profound subjects
were discussed around the tea table in the cozy rector’s house beside the
Iveron Church!
It was in this grace-filled
atmosphere that the boy Yura first grew up, then the student Georgy Nikolaevich
Voznesensky, who while still a young man became Father Georgy and soon
afterward Father Philaret, and who is now our First Hierarch, His Eminence Metropolitan
Philaret.
Harbin was an exceptional
phenomenon at that time. Built by Russians on Chinese territory, it remained a
typical Russian provincial city for another twenty-five years after the
Revolution. Harbin had twenty-six Orthodox churches, twenty-two of them actual
church buildings, an entire network of secondary schools, and six institutions
of higher education. By the mercy of God, Harbin continued normal
pre-revolutionary Russian life for a quarter of a century.
Even China’s recognition of the
Soviet government in 1924, the transfer of the railway into Soviet hands
together with all the rights previously enjoyed in Manchuria by the Imperial
Russian government, and the appearance in Harbin of emissaries from Moscow—all
this altered the way of life in Harbin relatively little, and only
superficially.
Most noticeable was the cessation
of material support for the Church on the part of the railway administration,
and the Soviet authorities’ takeover of some of the institutions of higher and
secondary education in Harbin and Manchuria.
There were many secondary schools
and institutions of higher education in Harbin. But Harbin lacked one thing:
there was no institution of higher theological education.
There was a Polytechnic
Institute, a Faculty of Law, a Commercial Institute, an Institute of Oriental
Languages, and a Pedagogical Institute. For a time, there was also a Faculty of
Medicine, which was closed because of insufficient funds for equipment.
But there was no theological
school. And many thought that there was no need for one—that there were no
young men in Harbin who wished to become clergymen. Yura Voznesensky was among
the very first. From his earliest childhood he loved the Church with fervent
and devoted love. From his father he heard such profound and inspired testimony
concerning the Church, grounded in broad scholarly learning. Reading the works
of the Holy Fathers attentively and lovingly, he became, in the fullest sense
of the word, thoroughly imbued with them.
He loved mathematics for its pure
and dispassionate clarity. Therefore, in the absence of a theological school,
he entered the Polytechnic Institute and graduated from it with distinction.
But his thirst for theological
knowledge remained unsatisfied.
Fr Nicholas began making
arrangements for his son to pursue theological studies outside Harbin. The
young engineer G. N. Voznesensky was accepted into an American theological
institute in Wisconsin. His admission, however, was subject to certain restrictions,
and in the end Georgy Nikolaevich had to abandon the plan.
Another young candidate for the
priesthood tried to avail himself of this opportunity, but he too was unable to
do so. Several years later, when he spoke with regret about this to the famous
Serbian hierarch and preacher, Bishop Nikolai of Ohrid, the latter said to him:
“Thank God for that... It took me eight years to unlearn what I had learned in
two years at an English theological school.”
After this failure, Fr Nicholas
began working to establish a theological school in Harbin. Indeed, the
opportunity offered by the Americans had revealed that, besides G. Voznesensky,
there were other young men in Harbin who wished to prepare themselves for
ecclesiastical service.
Eventually, Fr Nicholas
Voznesensky succeeded in establishing the Pastoral-Theological Courses, which
were immediately recognized by the Synod of Bishops as a fully accredited
institution of higher theological education, although the Manchurian government
did not recognize them as such until several years later.
Fr Nicholas was the driving force
behind these Courses. He was chairman of the Academic Council and lectured on
Holy Scripture, Church History, and Apologetics. But the other professors and
instructors of the Theological Courses were likewise distinguished and
engaging. For the most part, they were professors from the Kazan Theological
Academy. Fifteen subjects were taught at the Courses. There were fourteen
students in the first graduating class and eleven in the second. Almost without
exception, all the students pursued their studies with fervor, diligence, and
self-sacrifice.
Upon entering these Courses, G.
Voznesensky immediately distinguished himself as the best student. At that time
he was also ordained to the diaconate as a celibate—that is, without marrying
and without becoming a monk. Some time later he became a priest under the same
status.
Meanwhile, His Grace Nestor,
Bishop of Kamchatka, who was living in Harbin but was not part of the diocese
and occupied an independent position, established at that time the so-called
House of Mercy—an orphanage for children and a home for the elderly.
A splendid church was built at
the House of Mercy. There arose a need for clergy. In 1929, Bishop Nestor
tonsured as a monk one of the students of the Theological Courses, who was a
friend of Fr Georgy Voznesensky. Fr Georgy began visiting the House of Mercy
and, after some time, decided to embrace monasticism, settling there with the
hieromonk who was already living there. At his tonsure, Fr Georgy received the
name Philaret. By this act, the foundation was laid for a monastic community at
the House of Mercy.
Fr Philaret lived with his friend
in the same cell for eight years, and recently, recalling that period, he said
to the nuns of the Lesna Convent in France: “Fr N. N. and I lived for eight
years in the same cell and never once quarreled.”
The two young monks took turns
serving the daily divine services in the church, recited the prescribed
liturgical prayer rules, and read the Holy Fathers. However, they did not yet
have a proper understanding of specifically monastic services such as the
Midnight Office and Compline.
But in 1930, two monks of the
Holy Trinity Monastery, the so-called Shmakovka Monastery, fled from the
Maritime Province. This was the sacred lavra of the Far East, founded at the
very end of the nineteenth century by the great Spirit-bearing ascetics, Fathers
Sergius and Herman. The monastery was situated halfway between Khabarovsk and
Vladivostok, twenty kilometers from the Shmakovka railway station. Since the
founders of the monastery had been tonsured at Valaam, the Valaam typikon
was introduced in the monastery they founded.
The monastery had an extensive
economy, with workshops for sewing, shoemaking, metalworking, carpentry, and
blacksmithing. It had a printing press and a bindery. Through its books, the
monastery enlightened the entire Russian Far East. There was also an apiary and
a livestock yard, with a special section for breeding deer for their antlers.
There were greenhouses and nurseries where, under the direction of Abbot
Sergius, a graduate of the Higher Agronomic Institute, the monks acclimatized
for the Far East all kinds of vegetable and fruit-bearing plants from Russia.
There was a candle factory and a school. The number of monks and novices
reached as many as 300. The monastery owned 3,753 desyatinas of land,
for the most part remote, virgin, semi-tropical taiga of the Maritime Province.
Most importantly, there was a
lofty ascetic spiritual life there, toward which Orthodox souls from throughout
the Far East who desired “the ascetic life” were drawn as to a bright beacon.
Among the brethren were not only Russians, but also Orthodox Chinese, Koreans,
and several Japanese.
All of this was utterly destroyed
by the Communists in 1926. The monastery was closed, the monks dispersed, and
its economic enterprises seized and collectivized. Yet within two years nothing
remained of them: the deer died out, and the acclimatized nurseries
degenerated.
The widowed priest Fr Vasily
Bystrov—later the late Archimandrite Innokenty of the Novo-Korennaya Hermitage
in Mahopac—and the novice Brother Andrei, who had lived at the Shmakovka
Monastery, fled to Manchuria four years after its closure, seeking refuge with
Bishop Nestor, whom they knew from the bishop’s frequent visits to the
Shmakovka Monastery.
Fr Vasily and Brother Andrei, who
was soon tonsured a monk with the name Clement, settled in a room next to that
of Fr Philaret and the other hieromonk. Fr Vasily and Fr Clement introduced
into the monastic community of the House of Mercy, which had thus grown in
number, a monastic rule modeled on that of Shmakovka—that is, on the Valaam
rule.
The monks rose at 4:30 in the
morning. At 5:00 they read the Midnight Office. Then came the Liturgy, which
they served in turn. On Mondays and Tuesdays Fr Philaret served; on Wednesdays
and Thursdays, his friend; and on Fridays and Saturdays, Fr Vasily Bystrov. On
Sundays Bishop Nestor served together with all the clergy of the House of
Mercy.
In the evening, after supper, the
monks celebrated Compline. At Compline a canon was read, and during the canon
an akathist. Their spiritual zeal led these monks to seek out what other prayer
services might also be added to those already being performed.
From the end of Compline until
the completion of the Midnight Office, all conversation whatsoever was strictly
forbidden.
Spiritual fervor is always
contagious. Church-loving young men began to gather around the young monks of
the House of Mercy and were gradually drawn into monastic life. Some of them
received monastic tonsure. By the mid-1930s, the monastic community of the
House of Mercy already numbered nine monks.
Among them we should mention Fr
Philaret’s close friend, Hieromonk Methodius (in the world, Kirill Iogel), who
later became an outstanding preacher and died at a very young age. We should
also mention Fr Nil, in the world K. Nosov, a self-sacrificing young man who in
1934–35 secretly crossed into Russia on anti-Communist assignments for Harbin
patriotic organizations. He too died very young, after catching a severe chill
and contracting tuberculosis because, while returning from one of his visits to
Russia, he had been forced to remain sitting in the cold waters of the Amur
River in the month of October. We should also mention the Orthodox Chinese
priest Fr Elias, who organized a candle factory at the House of Mercy.
In 1932, Fr Philaret, together
with the scouts of the Harbin troop, set out on foot for Maoershan Station, 107
kilometers away, where a summer camp was to be established.
The troop covered this distance
in three days. On the first day they walked 40 kilometers, on the second 35,
and on the third they expected to walk 28 kilometers, because, owing to the
difference between versts and kilometers, the scouts had mistakenly been told
that the distance from Harbin to Maoershan was 103 kilometers rather than 107.
It was precisely those last extra
four kilometers that seemed especially difficult to the young men and children
making the journey. The weather was hot and dry.
For a long time there had been
neither river nor spring along the way. All the water in their canteens had
been drunk. They were tormented by unbearable thirst. Suddenly a little pool of
water came into view—a small marsh.
“Fr Philaret,” the children’s
voices cried out, “bless the water, and then we’ll drink from the puddle and
nothing will happen to us.”
Fr Philaret recited the Our
Father and blessed it as “drink for the servants of God.”
The scouts rushed to the water.
“Fr Philaret, I swallowed a
tadpole!” cried one little boy.
“It’s all right; the water is
blessed. ‘If they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them,’ it says in
Scripture,” Scout Semyon, one of the regular attendees at the monastic services
of the House of Mercy, explained sagely.
Then, during the last “extra”
kilometers before Maoershan Station, when the children were utterly exhausted,
sitting down and refusing to get up, suddenly Fr Philaret’s voice was heard, at
first softly, singing alone: “Having passed through the water as though it were
dry land, and having escaped the evil of Egypt...” The sacred words were
immediately taken up by the children, almost half of whom sang in church
choirs. A spark of renewed courage passed over their tired faces. They pulled
themselves together and, singing the sacred irmoi, made their way to Maoershan
Station, where they were met by another work party that had arrived by train.
At the camp, Fr Philaret and his
friend, with the help of the scouts, built a field church woven from branches.
There they celebrated the monastic services of the Midnight Office and Compline
every day, the All-Night Vigil on Saturdays, and the Divine Liturgy on Sundays.
They also went on long hikes with
the scouts. Especially interesting was a hike to Mount Maoershan, when they
visited an old Chinese Buddhist monastery and found a cave in which they
discovered tracks of an ancient saber-toothed tiger—a machairodus—imprinted in
the clay.
In addition to the scout camp, Fr
Philaret also provided spiritual care for a similar camp belonging to another
youth organization that was a rival of the scouts.
Not far from the scout camp there
was a large raspberry garden belonging to a Chinese merchant, who invited the
scouts into his garden and admitted them for ten cents per person. The children
could eat as many raspberries as they wished on the spot, but were not
permitted to take any away with them.
One day Fr Philaret went with the
children to the raspberry garden. Before beginning to eat the raspberries, Fr
Philaret made the sign of the Cross. The boys followed his example, and one of
the little Wolf Cubs remarked: “How good it is that the priests are with us;
before, we used to gobble up the raspberries without crossing ourselves.”
Seeing how some of the children
greedily threw themselves upon the raspberries and began quarreling over them,
Fr Philaret said:
“We are now indulging without
restraint in these delicious berries, but the ancient Holy Fathers did not
regard such things in this way. Once, admirers of a certain holy hermit brought
him as a gift a large bunch of ripe, sweet grapes. The holy father thanked
those who had brought it, but did not eat it himself; instead, he sent the
grapes to a neighboring hermit. He did the same. And all the holy fathers of
the desert acted likewise. In the end, the bunch of grapes returned to the
first hermit, and he rejoiced that all the hermits of that desert had proved so
temperate.”
“And what became of the bunch of
grapes?” one scout asked.
“I do not know, but I think the
first hermit squeezed the juice from it and used that juice, once it had become
wine, to celebrate the Liturgy,” Fr Philaret said.
“So does that mean we are not
allowed to eat raspberries?” another little boy asked disappointedly.
“No, children, eat the
raspberries and enjoy them. But do not give yourselves over to them with your
whole soul. Do not become enslaved either to raspberries or to any other food.
Eat with your mouth and stomach, but do not surrender your soul to it. I told
you about the ancient hermits, those great heroes of the spirit, not in order
to spoil your appetite for raspberries, but to remind you that our teachers and
models for life are not those who become enslaved to bodily instincts, but
those who knew how to master them—those who did not touch the delicious grapes,
although of course they wanted to eat them no less than we want to eat these
raspberries, but who knew how to subordinate their desires to the striving for
ascetic struggle and to concern for their neighbor. That is what we must learn
from them.”
* * *
To a considerable extent under
the influence of Fr Philaret, the principal reading in the community of the
House of Mercy consisted of the works of the Holy Fathers. The young monks
sought to nourish their souls with these holy teachings and radiant examples.
All the monastics of the House of
Mercy were deeply impressed by the Holy Fathers’ injunction to be as
considerate as possible toward one another. It is related that one of the
ancient monks would sometimes sit lounging back with one leg crossed over the
other, which was not in keeping with monastic decorum. Not wishing to offend
their brother by correcting him directly, yet at the same time desiring to
remedy the matter, two holy elders agreed between themselves that one of them
would sit lounging back with one leg crossed over the other in the presence of
their brother, while the other elder would rebuke him for it. They did so, and
the first monk corrected the habit that was unbecoming to the monastic bearing.
A couple of years after the
community at the House of Mercy had been established, one of its monks was once
reading a secular book. Brother Semyon, whom we have already mentioned, saw
this and was troubled. But remembering the patristic injunction concerning
considerateness, he walked around the monk who was reading for quite some time
and finally asked:
“Fr N., what are you reading?”
“Mowgli, by Kipling.”
“I too, before I began coming to
your monastery, used to read useless books.”
* * *
Not all the young men who
regularly visited the monastery of the House of Mercy became monks, but all
became closely attached to the Church.
In the mid-1930s, the Soviet
government sold the Chinese Eastern Railway to Japan. Tens of thousands of
Russians employed by the railway were dismissed from their jobs and had to
choose whether to leave for the USSR or remain unemployed in Manchuria. Among
those who remained were many young people educated in Soviet schools, where
they had been instilled with an aversion to the Church and with the conviction
that religion was incompatible with science and was a sign of backwardness.
Among these young people, the
young monks of the House of Mercy undertook various forms of work, employing
the simplest of methods.
Fr Philaret had always been very
fond of fishing. Manchuria offered exceptionally rich fishing. On days free
from services and other duties, Fr Philaret and the other young monks would
invite former Soviet youths to accompany them on fishing trips. Often, around
an evening campfire on the picturesque banks of the Sungari River or beside
small lakes beyond the river, after heart-to-heart conversations, the spiritual
eyes of these young men were opened to the fundamental truths of the Faith.
One day, three such young men,
who only recently had been Soviet youths, came to Vespers, which Fr Philaret
and his friend were serving. After the service, all five of them were supposed
to go on an overnight fishing trip. But unexpectedly, one of the parishioners
requested a memorial service after Vespers. The young men who had come would
have to wait a while longer.
“Read something here,” the monks
told them.
“What is there to read?
Everything here is just religious stuff—nothing interesting,” the young men
protested listlessly.
Fr Philaret opened the Acts of
the Apostles to chapters 27 and 28 and gave it to them to read while the
memorial service was being served. Twenty minutes later, after finishing the
service, the monks came back to the young men.
“Well, we’re ready. Let’s go
fishing.”
“Wait, let us finish reading.
This really is interesting.”
And so these young men, who had
never before seen Holy Scripture, became acquainted with it.
* * *
In addition to the daily
services, the monks of the House of Mercy carried out obediences teaching the
Law of God in the orphanage and in various secondary schools in Harbin. At the
Aksakov Girls’ Gymnasium, the students later said: “Of all the Law of God
lessons we had during those years, the only ones we remember are Fr
Philaret’s.”
After becoming a monk and
settling at the House of Mercy, Fr Philaret continued to maintain close ties
with his father, Archpriest N. Voznesensky, who also soon embraced monasticism
with the name Dimitry and became Bishop—and later Archbishop—of Hailar.
Although the House of Mercy and
the Iveron Church, where Bishop Dimitry lived, were situated at opposite ends
of the city, Fr Philaret often went to visit his father. One day, while
returning from Bishop Dimitry’s residence, Fr Philaret encountered a beggar
asking for alms for Christ’s sake. Fr Philaret had only ten cents with him—the
price of the fare from the Iveron Church to the House of Mercy.
Nevertheless, he gave the ten
cents to the beggar and set out on foot himself, a distance of some five or six
kilometers—about an hour and a half’s walk at a brisk pace. As he walked, Fr
Philaret reflected that it is said that if you give something for Christ’s
sake, it will be repaid to you a hundredfold, and yet in actual life things do
not seem to happen that way.
Upon returning to the House of
Mercy, he remembered that the wedding of two of his spiritual children had been
scheduled for that day, and that he was to perform the Crowning service for
them. The fees for occasional services at the House of Mercy were placed in a
common collection box, from which they were later distributed partly for the
support of the orphanage and the home for the elderly, and partly to the
clergy.
But on this occasion, after
placing the appropriate sum in the collection box, the newlyweds brought Fr
Philaret ten dollars, saying:
“Dear Father, please take these
ten dollars for yourself personally, as a token of our great love for you.”
Thus, only a few hours after Fr
Philaret had given ten cents to the beggar in the name of Christ, he received
exactly a hundredfold in return. Coming to his fellow monks, he said sadly:
“For today’s good deed I shall
receive nothing in the Kingdom of Heaven, since I have already received my
reward in full in this present age.”
* * *
Metropolitan Anthony was still
alive in those days. The young monks of the community at the House of Mercy
revered and loved without measure the great elder-hierarch, a Father and
Teacher of the Church. His works, especially Confession, Pastoral
Theology, and A Dictionary to the Works of Dostoevsky, were favorite
reading among these young monks. They grew up on the writings of Metropolitan
Anthony, became imbued with them as they matured spiritually, and always kept
before them the examples found in those works.
And despite the distance of more
than 10,000 kilometers, the Metropolitan managed to find these devoted admirers
of his. Fr Philaret and one of his friends wrote to Metropolitan Anthony. And
though burdened with immense labors and the gravest cares involved in presiding
over our long-suffering Church in exile, the aged Metropolitan Anthony found
time to reply to these two young monks, who at that time seemed utterly
insignificant.
Soon afterward, one of the monks
of the House of Mercy—namely, the author of this collection [editor’s note]—had
occasion to accompany Bishop Nestor on his journey to the Council of Bishops in
Yugoslavia, and there to see Metropolitan Anthony.
Metropolitan Anthony received the
young monk with heartfelt paternal love and, with warm solicitude, asked him by
name about each of the monks of the community. He questioned him with
particular care about Fr Philaret, whom he had singled out from among the
others and had come to love with special warmth. Perhaps even then, in 1933,
the great hierarch, through his grace-filled spirit, foresaw that the beacon he
had kindled in exile would pass into the hands of this very hieromonk, who at
that time was still quite young.
In one episode this became
especially clear. Shortly before his departure from Yugoslavia, while sitting
at table with Metropolitan Anthony, the monk from Manchuria asked the First
Hierarch to give him a photograph with an inscription as a keepsake. Metropolitan
Anthony readily agreed. His cell-attendant, Archimandrite Theodosius, brought a
photograph, and the Metropolitan sat down to write.
The Manchurian monk looked over
the Metropolitan’s shoulder and was stunned. Metropolitan Anthony was writing:
“To my dear and beloved Hieromonk Philaret, with heartfelt love, Metropolitan
Anthony.” Although another young hieromonk was standing right there beside him,
scarcely half a meter away, Metropolitan Anthony’s thoughts and heart were
directed toward the one whom he had come to know and single out without ever
having seen him, from a distance of some ten thousand versts.
Only Fr N.’s disappointed sigh
distracted Metropolitan Anthony from his writing. He raised his head, looked
affectionately at Fr N., who was standing over him, and said:
“Ah, yes, it is you who need the
photograph,” and, taking another copy, he wrote a similar inscription on it.
Thus, across thousands of versts,
a thread of spiritual connection was stretched between two grace-filled heads
of our holy Church Abroad: between the great hierarch Metropolitan Anthony and
our present [third—ed.] First Hierarch, the gracious, meek, and Spirit-bearing
Metropolitan Philaret.
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