I am in Russia — not Rome. Why?
Because, born in the middle of the 20th century, no country has seemed more mysterious, more romantic, and, yes, more vaguely sinister, to me than Russia: Holy Russia, cultured Russia, the Russia of the Czars, of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky and Rachmaninoff, of Lenin and Stalin, and now of Putin and Medvedev, the Russia which was Russia, and then was the USSR for 70 years, and is now Russia once again.
As children in America, we were given a double image of Russia: Russia the communist stronghold, where God was prohibited as “the opiate of the people” and religious believers were persecuted and sent to work camps to freeze and die; and Russia as the “House of Mary,” the nation with more chapels dedicated to the Mother of God than all the other countries in the world put together, the nation therefore cherished by Mary, the nation whose soul and spirit would one day return to faith, and in so doing, bring a time of peace to the whole world. And this, I was told as a boy, was part of the meaning of the mysterious message of Fatima, which we were told was a message from Mary herself, to little children, chosen to hear it because their elders no longer had ears to hear.
And so I always wished to visit here, to see for myself, if there was faith in this country, and, if so, of what kind.
A Walk in Moscow at Midnight
I traveled to Russia with a colleague, Daniel Schmidt of the Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We landed in Moscow a little after noon today, made our way through the airport passport control, and were met by a driver sent to pick us up by Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev, 42, the “Foreign Minister” of the Russian Orthodox Church, our host. The driver’s name was Raphael.
Raphael took us to the Danilovsky Monastery, where we are the guests of the Russian Orthodox Church — a Church which dates to the year 988 AD, when Prince Vladimir converted to Christianity, and which since that year has been one of the constituent elements of the Russian identity and soul. (I am writing now, at four in the morning, from the lobby of the monastery hotel.)
After resting an hour, we were picked up by an old friend, Leonid Sevastianov, one of Alfeyev’s assistants, and brought to a restaurant where we had dinner with Archbishop Hilarion, Leonid, Alexei Puzakov, the conductor of the Tretyakov Gallery choir, and Vadim Yakunin, a benefactor of the Russian Orthodox Church, and a co-founder with Alfeyev of the St. Gregory Foundation, set up to support Russian Orthodox cultural and religious activity, sometimes in conjunction with Roman Catholics — one of the reasons I am here.
Alfeyev has been quite busy for half a year, since his nomination in April to his post, head of the Department of External Church Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church, which has made him the second most prominent figure in the Russian Orthodox Church hierarchy after Patriarch Kirill himself. Alfeyev was in Rome in September to meet with Pope Benedict XVI. He will be traveling to France this weekend, then to China next week, then to other countries.
“I spend 80% of my time now on the road,” he tells me.
I have worked with Alfeyev in recent years to bring concerts of Russian Orthodox music to Rome, Washington, New York, and Boston. The music, composed by Alfeyev himself and performed by Russian orchestras and choirs, includes a Passion According to St. Matthew — an extremely moving interpretation of Christ’s Passion — and a Christmas Oratorio — an astonishingly joyous celebration of Christ’s birth. (In fact, we have DVDs of these concerts available for purchase from our website.)
The goal of this “concert work” was to try to help to “bridge the gap” between Catholics and the Orthodox by means of cultural collaboration, in the hope of hastening the time of closer doctrinal and ecclesial relations between Catholics and the Orthodox worldwide.
And a second reason for my visit to Moscow, in addition to discussing future collaboration with the St. Gregory Foundation, is to attend another Russian concert here tomorrow night.
Meeting with Benedict
Our dinner passed quickly. I asked Alfeyev how his meeting with the Pope had gone. “Very well,” he said.
“I had been told that we would only have perhaps ten minutes together, but the meeting went on for one hour,” Alfeyev said. “We spoke in English. The Pope speaks perfect English.”
Alfeyev also speaks excellent English, as he studied theology and Church history for four years at Oxford in England.
Here is a very brief but interesting link, worth visiting, of a YouTube video showing moments of Alfeyev’s meeting with Pope Benedict at Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer palace, on September 18, just seven weeks ago.
As for the content of that meeting, Hilarion said he could not reveal particulars.
But Interfax has reported that “Archbishop Hilarion highlighted the importance of mutual testimony by Orthodox and Catholic believers of traditional Christian values before the secular world. He noted the identical views of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches on such matters as family, maternity, demographic crisis, euthanasia, and many other ethical problems.”
In short, what Hilarion is working on is a worldwide “alliance” between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches.
And that is another reason I am in Moscow: because I am persuaded that the Pope’s recent decision to offer “ordinariates” to Anglicans as a way to return to union with Rome may presage an offer to the Orthodox Churches of equally historic importance.
The Icon of Kazan
Hilarion has often spoken of the suffering of believers under the rule of the Soviet regime.
Just three days ago, on November 8, 2009, Hilarion was in the Russian city of Mtsensk (photo) to bring there the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God found by a German soldier in the ruined house in 1943 and returned to the Russian Orthodox Church this year.
Hilarion on Noember 8 told the story of the icon and its return to Russia. “I received the Mtsensk icon from the German Catholics, and today you are receiving it to return it to the place of its abiding. May this holy icon remind us of the tragic past of our Fatherland and be, at the same time, a source of solace, joy, and hope for a better tomorrow. Let us pray to the Mother of God beseeching Her to protect our homeland from any evil and lead us to the Heavenly Fatherland. Take this icon, Vladyka, and may it keep the flock entrusted to your care.”
No doubt, Catholics in Russia have also suffered greatly, and I have mentioned this to Hilarion on a number of occasions.
It is my conviction that the shared suffering of Catholics and Orthodox will soon persuade us that we have more in common than what separates us.
