The two fidelities

Between the 14th and 19th century the Russian Orthodox Church was the protagonist of a missionary action that reached, with great spirit of sacrifice and love for the Gospel, peoples that inhabited the very edges of the Empire such as Lapland and the Aleutian Isles. The history of the missions of the Russian Church, down to the Council of Moscow in 1917-1918 and also during the period of persecutions, followed by the advent of the Communist regime, was reviewed during the 14th International Ecumenical Meeting, recently held in the Monastery of Bose (Italy). But what is the mission of the Russian Orthodox Church in the contemporary world? Some of the speakers at the conference described its main features. A RAILWAY CARRIAGE FOR A CHURCH . “Missionary activity – wrote ALEXEI II , Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia, in a message of good wishes sent to the meeting at Bose – has played a fundamental role in the history of our Church. Christianity spread thanks to missionary sacrifice”. “Today – declares the Patriarch of Moscow – a great process of spiritual revival is underway. It involves new challenges to which we need to respond by remaining faithful to Holy Scripture and to the tradition of the Church”. “On board a railway carriage, the church arrived in the far north of Russia, in the lands where the gulags for political prisoners were first built and inhabited by very many people live still waiting to receive the light of Christ”: the “Church in a railway carriage” is one of the projects described by Bishop IOANN POPOV of Belgorod, delegate of the Patriarchate of Moscow at the meeting. “Today – explained Popov – the Russian Orthodox Church is pursuing its mission to peoples freed from the atheist yoke, peoples full of inner conflicts and contradictions”. This gives rise to a multiplicity of methods: “catechetical, to introduce adult catechumens to the fullness of the Christian truth, after decades of state atheism which left them only the tradition of the roots of faith; apologetic, against agnostic or sectarian doctrines to combat the widespread proselytism that is exploiting people’s material needs or ignorance; ethnic and cultural, to establish a dialogue with all the ethnic and cultural components that compose the national community; and the reconciliation of memory, to heal the social tensions that still persist”. NEW TIMES FOR A NEW MISSION. “Declining birth rate, high rate of suicides, abortions, divorces, wide diffusion of unregistered marriages, a general climate of mistrust that is encountered everywhere: in state organizations, schools, families, the mass media, even in churches”: these, according to GEORGIJ KO?ETKOV, of “St. Philaret’s” Orthodox Christian Institute in Moscow, are the main problems of contemporary Russian society. “People – declared Koèetkov – don’t trust anyone, not even God: how can we overcome this paradox? In a particular way, new times for a new mission have arrived today”. The renewal of the church, according to Koèetkov, is linked to a mission that can be summed up as follows: “Presenting Orthodoxy in a way that people can understand, so that they can grasp its message: ‘God loves you'”. “The beauty of the liturgy – continued Koèetkov – must be combined with the clarity of the Word of God: people need to be able to understand the meaning of the chants and the prayers. If the liturgy is incomprehensible, so too is God”. Evangelization, according to Koèetkov, is not a question of techniques, but: “Helping each faithful to be a living person in the church, so that everyone may experience God and find the meaning of his/her own life; that’s why the involvement of the laity and the training of educators are so important”. “The problem in Russia, and not only there, is that people are used to contacts, not to communication; previously because the regime accustomed them to suspicion, and now because the market accustoms them to giving and having, and not to opening up their hearts. One method we need to pursue is to introduce people to a knowledge of God through other themes in a horizontal sense, as suggested by the alpha method in the Protestant church”. THE STYLE OF DIALOGUE. “No standard model of evangelization – emphasized Popov – can be applied to the contemporary situation. Missionary practice presupposes renewal, participation and the search for unconventional solutions”. After the “Church in a railway carriage”, announced Popov, a “Church in a truck” is being planned: “People in the far north of the country, who have never seen a church, and never set foot in a cathedral, will be given some idea of one through the sacred furnishings of a mobile church”. Especially: “Dialogue is the necessary model of conduct for mission. It is fostered not by severity, but by affability, by social sensibility, and with a clear idea of the damage caused by secularism and fundamentalism. It’s important to be able to meet everyone, to get to know each other and learn to esteem each other despite all the differences between us. ‘Only with the devil – taught St. John Chrysostom – have we nothing in common'”.