III (11)

Indeed. From everything said thus far it is, we believe, entirely clear that the Orthodox Church, even before its recognition of Saint Seraphim among the saints, and before the solemn liturgical glorification inseparably connected with that act—while permitting among individual believers opinions about him analogous to this recognition and essentially in accord with the Church’s liturgical service to him, together with their prayerful address to him—thereby clearly testifies that by its stated recognition of the devout elder Seraphim among the saints and by its begun liturgical-prayerful glorification of him, it introduces nothing essentially new—not only into the spiritual condition of Saint Seraphim himself, but also into the content of our thoughts about him and the character of our relationship to him; for in both these acts, essentially identical in kind, it is grounded not merely on similar but on the very same miraculous events and manifestations that had previously confirmed the truth of things for individual believers. If this is so, then what, one asks, does the celebration that has taken place actually signify? What is its essence, its meaning and significance?

“In the glorification of the saints by the sons of the earthly Church”—so Father Archpriest Smirnov answers this question in the cited book (p. 45)—“is expressed the recognition of an event already accomplished in the Heavenly Church, a reverent bowing before the will of the Lord who is wondrous in his saints, obedience to this will, at one and the same time both humbling our spirit before the wondrous ways of God’s providence and filling it with joy and gladness in the Lord our Savior, who grants in his saints new intercessors and advocates before his supreme throne.” The most essential element in this answer—which with remarkable theological precision and psychological subtlety marks the foundational features of the Orthodox teaching about a holy one of God and our relationship to him—consists, in our opinion, in the words: “recognition of an event already accomplished in the Heavenly Church.”

In order to clarify this fact and to understand whose and what recognition of the accomplished event is here meant, one must pay attention to the fact that, despite the essential similarity of the prayerful relationship to the Venerable One before and after his glorification, in each case it has its own distinctive features. These features consist in the following: that before the ecclesiastical glorification of Saint Seraphim, the veneration of him as a saint and prayerful relationship to him was a private matter, a personal affair of individual believers who either had personally witnessed or had even experienced upon themselves the miraculous confirmation of the truth of their relationship to him—and precisely for this reason it could not be a matter of obligation for all the remaining believers, who had either not witnessed or personally experienced such miraculous signs of Saint Seraphim’s holiness, or who in general were not incontrovertibly assured in their conscience of the authenticity of these signs. But after the Holy Synod expressed its concord with the people in the belief that had until then been the people’s faith, this latter becomes the faith of the entire Orthodox Church in Russia—in her wholeness—and therefore prayer to Saint Seraphim, which had until then been private, or so to speak personal prayer of individual believers, becomes a prayer of the universal Church, or the liturgical-ecclesiastical prayer. Henceforth doubts about the truth of things will relate no longer to the testimony of individual believers—which could be, as always may be, mistaken—but to the voice of the Church; and the conscious rejection—arising from such doubts—of the liturgical-ecclesiastical veneration of the Venerable One will already be a withdrawal from participation in the Church’s life. In other words, in the enrollment of Saint Seraphim among the saints pronounced by the Holy Synod, the voice of the Orthodox Russian Church is expressed, and in the celebration of his liturgical glorification, an act of Church life in the proper sense.

If I believe in the Church as the guardian of Christ’s truth and the treasury of the grace of the Holy Spirit, and recognize as such precisely the Eastern Greek-Russian Church, which has in fact expressed this voice and performed this “act”—that is, I recognize it specifically as Orthodox, and consequently as one, holy, catholic and apostolic, in a word, as true—then I can no longer have the same justification as before for my doubts about the holiness of the Venerable One and for withdrawing from his liturgical veneration; because, calling myself Orthodox and therefore recognizing the Orthodox Greek-Russian Church as the guide given to me by God himself in the work of salvation, I recognize in her voice the voice of that Church which is the pillar and foundation of truth, and in her life I recognize the action of the Holy Spirit by whose power my very salvation is accomplished; for to believe in the Church means not merely to recognize her as such in the mind, but to honor her as such in one’s heart and in one’s life to submit to her precepts and ordinances.

Not so much for the greater grounding of these judgments as for a more vivid and concrete presentation of them, let it be permitted to employ certain analogies—comparisons of the phenomenon under examination with others like it—making use for this purpose of that very word “canonization” by which, in theological-scholarly language, the initial act of this event or phenomenon is named.

The word “canonization” is Latin (canonisatio) and in the Roman Catholic Church is used in the sense of a papal determination concerning the Church’s enrollment of a reposed ascetic of piety among the saints and his inscription in the catalog of saints. But borrowed from there and used in the same meaning in our theological-scholarly literature as well, this word is both in its origin and in its fundamental meaning unquestionably Greek; it is derived from the Greek word kanon, which means: a rule, a plumb line, and from there further—a rule, a law, and finally—a catalog, a list, but not in general, rather a catalog or list of something strictly and precisely defined, in the sense of a norm, a rule, a law. Taken in this meaning of the word, though in various forms, it was from the very first centuries employed in the Christian Church in application to the books of Holy Scripture and to the members of the clergy.

According to the teaching of the Orthodox Church, the Bible consists of canonical and non-canonical books; the former are those which have been entered in the catalog, or list, of divinely inspired books—not on the basis of anyone’s or any kind of human reasoning, but on the direct testimony of the holy prophets and apostles themselves and on the teaching of the Church—and therefore serve as the immutable and inviolable rule of faith and life; non-canonical books, on the other hand, are those which were not entered in the catalog of sacred books by divinely inspired persons, and therefore, though included in the Bible, do not have the same obligatory significance as canonical books—the significance of an immutable and inviolable rule of faith and life. Thus the fundamental distinction of canonical books from non-canonical consists in the fact of the inscription of the former in the list of sacred books, sealed in its absolute significance by divinely inspired testimonies as divine signs. If we compare this fact of, so to speak, the canonization of holy books with the canonization of the holy ones of God—as a fact similar to it—then the essence and significance both of the very act of the canonization of a given person and of our relationship to a canonized saint will, we believe, become clearer and more vivid to us. Just as through the inscription of this or that sacred book in the canon of specifically sacred books the book did not change in its essence, did not become divinely inspired only from that moment—having not been so before—but by virtue of the divine incontestability of the very fact of its inscription in the canon our relationship to it essentially had to change; so too the canonization of this or that ascetic of faith and piety does not alter his spiritual-moral character, making him a saint from a sinner, but alters only our relationship to him. If before canonization we could refrain from honoring him as a saint and from addressing him as a saint in prayer—precisely because we did not have a testimony of that holiness invested with the authority of divine incontestability—then after canonization, and precisely because this act was performed by those to whom, we believe, the Holy Spirit himself has entrusted the guidance of our spiritual life, there cannot and must not be for us any doubt about this holiness, attested by miraculous signs whose authenticity and reliability have been affirmed by those who performed the canonization; and our relationship to the canonized one can only be liturgical and prayerful.

And if we turn to another analogy suggested to us by the word “canonization”—and compare the enrollment of a reposed ascetic among the saints implied by it, and our liturgical-prayerful relationship to him, with the ordination of chosen persons to holy orders and our relationship to them—then the conclusions drawn will become still more evident to us and the matter will, we believe, be illuminated still more broadly.

The foundational Greek word for the concept of canonization, kanon, we have said, was already in the ancient Church employed in application to the clergy or church staff; thus “sacred church ministers,” says Professor Golubinsky in his book on the canonization of saints, “were called in ancient times canonics—hoi kanonikoi—Basil the Great, canon 6; those numbered in the canon—en to kanoni exetazomenoi—First Ecumenical Council, canons 16 and 17; people of the canon—hoi tou kanonos—Fourth Ecumenical Council, canon 2 and Antioch Council, canons 2 and 11.” Explaining the significance of this designation, the professor continues: “this means that they (those called canonics) formed a special corporation of persons numbered in the church rolls”; but the reference he cites immediately after (the expression of the First Ecumenical Council ‘en to kanoni,’ the Sixth Ecumenical Council, canon 5, replaces with the expression: ‘en hieratiko katalogo’), it seems to us, gives the right to define this significance still more precisely in the sense that these persons were called canonics as being numbered in the list of specifically sacred persons, that is, those bearing holy orders. It is this holy order of theirs—granting them the right to be called canonics as conferring upon them the particular grace of the Holy Spirit by which they are called to sanctify the faithful—that has significance for us in the present case. If the sacred ministers are called canonics—people of the canon, numbered in the canon or sacred list—and are called so because, through episcopal ordination, they bear upon themselves the particular grace of the Holy Spirit by which they sanctify the faithful, then may one not draw a certain parallel with this in respect to the canonization of saints and our relationship to them? It is true that here there immediately strikes the eye the essential difference that the canonics receive through episcopal ordination a particular grace, while the holy ones of God through the act of canonization are only incontrovertibly attested as possessing a divine power inherent in them; but what matters to us is that just as the grace of the priesthood bestowed through ordination is unquestionable for us in its concrete reality, so too the act of canonization renders the holiness of the one canonized incontrovertible for us; and just as those invested with the grace of the priesthood are called to sanctify the faithful by this grace, so too the canonization of saints is welcome and dear to us because—if before the canonization of a given person not everyone knew, not everyone was assured, and not everyone had recourse to his intercession and advocacy for men before God—now this intercessory significance before God is incontrovertibly and reliably known to all, and all without any doubt can have recourse to him and pray to him.

Of course, the concept of the Russian Orthodox Church, or of the Orthodox Church in Russia, cannot be called equal in its scope to the concept of the Universal Church; for within the scope of the Universal Church, besides the Orthodox Church in Russia, there are other particular, local churches as well—namely the Constantinopolitan, the Jerusalem, the Antiochian, and the Alexandrian. But from this it does not follow that her voice, not in general but in this specific case, is not an infallible witness of truth, and that her act has no gracious significance—as many now wish, who call themselves Orthodox and yet dare not only to discuss but also to condemn both her voice and her acts. The injustice of these people, who seek new paths for their spiritual life, is revealed with particular clarity precisely in the present case; and we even think that it may have been in order to expose these presumptuous attempts that the Lord God was pleased to grant us the celebration of the glorification of Saint Seraphim that we are now experiencing.

Indeed, can one speak of the injustice and spiritual impoverishment of that Church in whose heaven spiritual luminaries are kindled—whose light illuminates the whole world, and whose warmth of gracious power warms so many despondent hearts and in general vivifies and regenerates so many human souls? Let those people turn their attention to those not tens but hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who have streamed in an unbroken procession and continue to stream toward Sarov; to the labors and privations to which they have voluntarily consigned and continue to consign themselves; let them look into their tremblingly joyful and animated faces and hearken to their ardent speeches about the holy consolations of faith they have experienced; let them gather those tears that flow at the shrine of the Venerable One; and, having weighed all this, let them say in good conscience—has the Russian Church grown poor in spiritual strength, and has it erred in its voice? Of course the Venerable One himself, whom the Lord has raised up, draws to himself these innumerable multitudes, wipes their tears, pacifies their consciences, comforts their despondent hearts, enlightens their minds, and so forth. But the wonder of it is precisely that Saint Seraphim was a son of the Orthodox Russian Church—that his all-powerful gracious strength, by which he acts upon these multitudes and before which the alluring power of the contemporary idols—those who have broken away from the Church—seems so paltry, he acquired through the labor of his whole life precisely in the spirit of the Orthodox Church; and by the example of his life and the word of his instruction he taught people to honor precisely it as the true Church and to obey its teaching and commandments, and to order their spiritual life in all its manifestations according to its ordinances and regulations. Can one say, in view of all this, that the enrollment of Saint Seraphim among the saints is a mistaken human word and not the voice of divine truth, and that the opening of his holy relics is a dead work of that empty word and not a manifestation of the all-acting power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in the Church?

Should those people say—for whom perhaps the understanding of spiritual states is not even accessible—that all this is self-deception and excitement, we shall answer them what the Apostle Philip once said to Nathanael: “Come and see” (John 1:45), and what the Lord Savior himself replied to the disciples of John, who were scandalized by him: “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the deaf hear, and the poor have good news proclaimed to them” (Matt. 11:5). We shall point to those miracles and signs that in such abundance are poured forth by God through Saint Seraphim upon all who approach him with faith and love. Of these miracles, rigorously and precisely verified in their authenticity and reliability, ninety-four are indicated in the act of the Holy Synod; in the archive of the Sarov Hermitage there are preserved not a few hundred letters about other such signs; and of course still more such miracles have not yet been recorded anywhere. Those who were in Sarov at the celebration of the opening of the holy relics were eyewitnesses of such miracles—not one, but ten and more in a single day. These miracles are being performed now as well, and we trust will not cease to be performed in the future. And what is especially wonderful: all these numerous and manifold miracles—incomprehensible and astonishing in their divinely all-powerful force even to the very unbelievers, who find no grounds to dispute their reliability—were performed both before and in still greater abundance after the opening of Saint Seraphim’s holy relics; they were and are performed not only in Sarov itself—whether at the relics themselves or at the spring—but also at a distance, hundreds and thousands of miles from Sarov, through the mere mental recollection of the Venerable One and the mere “interior” prayer addressed to him. More than that: such miracles were and are performed not only upon those who themselves pray to the Venerable One, but also upon those for whom only others pray, and who themselves are not in a condition to be aware of what is happening around them, or to desire anything, or to pray—as for example infants, the feeble-minded, the demon-possessed, and the like. Is this not the finger of God, by which the Lord himself pointed out to the council of archpastors of the Russian Church the devout elder Seraphim as one of his holy ones dwelling in the ranks of the saints, and now, after his enrollment by the Holy Synod in that rank—points out to all of us in this very enrollment his divine voice, inviolable and incontrovertible, resistance to which must be recognized as criminal resistance to manifest truth and a trampling upon the grace of the Holy Spirit dwelling in the Orthodox Church?