Let us Continue to Walk the Royal Path

Jubilee Epistle of His Eminence Hilarion Metropolitan of Eastern America and New York First Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad

NEW YORK: November 5/18, 2020

Your Graces Broth­er-Arch­pas­tors, Hon­or­able Fathers,
Beloved Broth­ers and Sis­ters in the Lord!

I sin­cere­ly greet you with the 725th anniver­sary of the appear­ance of the mirac­u­lous Kursk-Root Icon of the Moth­er of God of the “Sign,” and with the Cen­ten­ni­al of the found­ing of the High­er Church Admin­is­tra­tion Abroad, which lat­er was trans­formed into the Syn­od of Bish­ops of the Russ­ian Church Abroad.

We are not mark­ing the events that destroyed all the foun­da­tions of Pre-Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Rus­sia, and which hit extreme­ly hard on our dear Moth­er – the Local Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church – hav­ing pushed Her, togeth­er with the whole coun­try, onto a path of great suf­fer­ing, repres­sion, mar­tyr­dom and con­fes­sion. Rather, we raise up grat­i­tude to God, Who has pre­served us under the shel­ter of our pre­cious Ortho­dox Faith, in the tra­di­tions of the glo­ri­ous Russ­ian Church. We bow down before the mem­o­ry of those ascetics, who have care­ful­ly pre­served and increased our Russ­ian eccle­si­as­ti­cal inher­i­tance in the Dias­po­ra, who have sus­tained a spir­i­tu­al flame in our peo­ple scat­tered across nations, and who have nur­tured their flock’s tal­ents in the dif­fi­cult con­di­tions abroad.

Thanks to the grace of God, as expressed in the sac­ri­fi­cial labors of our pre­de­ces­sors, the chil­dren of the Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church, dis­persed among var­i­ous nations, were not dis­solved in the for­eign mass­es, like splash­es and droplets of water are dis­solved in the ocean.  Glo­ry to God, they have not dis­ap­peared, but rather have pre­served Holy Ortho­doxy and through it our cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal tradition!

The Holy Hier­ar­ch and Won­der­work­er John, Arch­bish­op of Shang­hai and San Fran­cis­co, says:

Our spir­i­tu­al uni­ty with the Holy Russ­ian Church is insep­a­ra­ble. There is no one for whom the suf­fer­ing of the Russ­ian Church, the tram­pling-upon of Her Holi­ness, can be more painful than for us, the sons of the Russ­ian Church. We are bound to Her through the uni­ty of Her God-giv­en gifts, the names of Her Saints, who are close and com­pre­hen­si­ble to us by their way of life, their strug­gle, lan­guage and ser­vice: our dear Saints. Spir­i­tu­al­ly the Russ­ian Church is indi­vis­i­ble: She is always one and the same Russ­ian Church, no mat­ter where we are.

Our church uni­ty helps Rus­sians remain Rus­sians, not to lose our nation­al char­ac­ter, not to be deper­son­al­ized amidst oth­er nations, not to lose our gifts, not to betray our path and call­ing… In our being scat­tered through­out the whole world, we do not sub­mit to the local Church­es because we have enmi­ty towards them, but because we pre­serve the Russ­ian Church and the attrib­ut­es of the Russ­ian soul.”1from the lec­ture, About the Sig­nif­i­cance of the Russ­ian Church Abroad, deliv­ered dur­ing the open­ing of the Dioce­san Assem­bly in 1951.

Besides the preser­va­tion of the par­tic­u­lar fea­tures of the spir­it of our peo­ple, the beau­ty of the face of the Russ­ian Church and the inner mis­sion amidst its chil­dren, our fore­fa­thers gen­er­ous­ly shared the spir­i­tu­al wealth of Holy Rus­sia with the local inhab­i­tants of the lands of their sojourn, which is wit­nessed to by the numer­ous cit­i­zens from Europe, North and South Amer­i­ca, Aus­tralia and New Zealand who have dis­cov­ered the truth of Orthodoxy.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this jubilee year, not to men­tion the past Great Lent and the Feast of the Res­ur­rec­tion of Christ, have been obscured by the gen­er­al quar­an­tine con­nect­ed with the coro­n­avirus. I recall, dur­ing the most dif­fi­cult days of this destruc­tive pesti­lence, that one physi­cian, who is a parish­ioner, wrote to one of our cler­gy­man: “This pan­dem­ic should force us to think about much. It is a sig­nal from on High, so that we would begin to care for the most impor­tant thing.” And the most impor­tant thing dur­ing this tri­al is to fol­low the Roy­al Path in life, in our mutu­al rela­tions with our neigh­bor and in our ser­vice to the Church, avoid­ing pan­ic, on the one hand, and irre­spon­si­ble behav­ior, on the oth­er, while entrust­ing our­selves and oth­ers to the will of God, which is both all-good and salvif­ic. It is the car­ing and respect­ful inter­ac­tion we have for one anoth­er. It is regard for the preser­va­tion of uni­ty in our church com­mu­ni­ty, so that we can come out from this tri­al as a strong and gra­cious parish fam­i­ly, fol­low­ing the words of Blessed Augus­tine: “Most impor­tant­ly, uni­ty; sec­ond­ly, free­dom; and in all things, let there be love.”

Besides the quar­an­tine restric­tions that have influ­enced all spheres of our life, sev­er­al polit­i­cal process­es are tak­ing place that are dis­tract­ing us from what is most impor­tant. Today, it is very easy to become ensnared, to not trav­el by that path on which the Chris­t­ian is called to walk, and to mis­tak­en­ly accept a lie for the truth. We sense divi­sion through­out the entire world. In part, this is hap­pen­ing because faith has ceased to occu­py the pri­ma­ry place in life. Not only have the Chris­t­ian virtues of patience, humil­i­ty and love become scarce, but even basic moral standards.

We should remem­ber that only good­ness and a sin­cere desire to help our neigh­bor cre­ate the foun­da­tion upon which it is pos­si­ble to build some­thing vir­tu­ous and wise in our soci­ety. Any­thing else shall most cer­tain­ly fall apart.

Pur­pose in life emerges when faith in, and the striv­ing towards, God are present, along with the ideals and val­ues that are con­fessed in the Gospel of Christ. It is imper­a­tive that we learn this inde­pen­dent­ly of where we live and what views we hold. Above all, we should at least remain hon­or­able and respectable peo­ple, inter­act­ing with our neigh­bors well-man­nered­ly and humane­ly, so that when they look at us Ortho­dox, they will not be ashamed to call us their friends. This is our spir­i­tu­al and moral minimum. 

Despite this fierce time for the entire world, we do not despair, and con­tin­ue to hear­ken to the clear and deci­sive call to the strug­gle of our pre­de­ces­sors, and, more­over, of our Direc­tress, who shows us in Her Kursk-Root Icon the path for our hum­ble ser­vice in today’s world. By Her inter­ces­sions and prayers, may God help us over­come the tri­als that have befall­en us, that we, com­ing out of them, would receive strength and edification.

May God grant that the planned cel­e­bra­tions and com­mem­o­ra­tive fes­tiv­i­ties be suc­cess­ful­ly moved to next year, tim­ing them for the Cen­ten­ni­al of the First All-Dias­po­ra Coun­cil (1921) and the For­ti­eth Anniver­sary of the can­on­iza­tion of the New-Mar­tyrs and Con­fes­sors (1981). May God grant that while look­ing upon us Ortho­dox, in place of hatred and enmi­ty, with­in the hearts of the peo­ple may set­tle warmth and a desire to live in a Christ-like man­ner and to be per­fect­ed in the virtues. This is some­thing I also wish for all of us in this Jubilee Year!

Ask­ing for your holy prayers, I remain the first ser­vant of the Holy Church and your con­tin­u­ous well-wisher,

+Hilar­i­on,
Met­ro­pol­i­tan of East­ern Amer­i­ca and New York
First Hier­ar­ch of the Russ­ian Church Abroad