Friday 12 December 2014

CROWNS OF BARBED WIRE

Yes, it's finally arrived!

"Crowns of Barbed Wire" will be published on Kindle next Friday 19th December ($9.99, £6.38, 8.02 Euros) A paperback version will be available from Amazon (CreateSpace) as soon as I can finish the formatting, probably early in the new year. 

For those who don't already know, the book is an introduction to Orthodox martyrs of the twentieth century. It spans the world and covers the whole century, from the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 to the murder of a Chilean priest in 1997. Each section begins with a brief historical background to the period, followed by a selection of martyrs. A final section puts the Orthodox martyrs into the context of other Christian martyrs of the century. Out of the many thousands of martyrs, I've tried to choose representative examples to build up a moving panorama of courage and faith, which I hope will offer inspiration to believers and non-believers alike.

I realize that this isn't everybody's cup of tea but, since I'm publishing the book myself, I need all the marketing help I can get. Please share this post with anyone you think might be interested (or might have friends who might be interested or whose friends might have friends .....).

Monday 25 August 2014

WANTED: EAGLE-EYED PEDANTS
First of all, apologies for the lack of postings. I haven't abandoned the blog but have been concentrating on final preparations of "Crowns of Barbed Wire," a book of twentieth century Orthodox martyrs. I'm now coming towards the end and, since I am self-publishing on Kindle, it would be extremely helpful if I can persuade some volunteers to help proof read the text.
I realize that people are usually pretty busy, so ANY help, however limited, would be appreciated. This could be as little as a page or two, ranging to a full chapter or even the whole book.
As well as looking for typos or grammatical/vocabulary errors, comments on readability (or lack thereof) would be very valuable as it is said that I can tend towards being pompous and academic!
All offers will be greatly appreciated. At the very least, it will give you the opportunity to criticize an English teacher's grammar and that must be fun.

If you want to help and don't want to comment here, there is a similar posting on my Facebook page where you can comment or leave a message. 

https://www.facebook.com/chrismooreybooks

Sunday 6 July 2014

GREEK ORTHODOX CHURCH RESISTANCE TO NAZI OCCUPATION

HELP NEEDED

Having changed my mind about carrying on with my book on Orthodox martyrs of the twentieth century, the work is nearly complete. My general procedure in the book is to write a general introduction to a section, followed by a few examples of particular people who were martyred for their faith. One of the chapters is devoted to the Orthodox Church in Greece under Nazi occupation. I think I have enough material for the general background, certainly including the courageous stand of Archbishop Damaskinos and others in protecting Jews from deportation. However, I am in urgent need of a few stories of priests or Orthodox laypeople who gave their lives because their Christian beliefs led them to defiance of the authorities. I am sure there are plenty of stories but, ironically since I live in Greece, I have not been able to find any detailed information.

What I am looking for are any of the following:

a)     Actual information: brief stories, either from other sources or from personal knowledge. Even family memories would be good as they add reality.
b)     Access to somebody else who could help.
c)      Useful internet links.
                                                           
If anyone is able to help me, I would be eternally grateful. Please post a comment or send a message to my FaceBook page: Chris Moorey Books. 


By the way, since I am self-publishing the book (initially on Kindle), in the not too distant future I will be needing a few hardy volunteers to proofread the manuscript and/or write brief reviews. Any volunteers?   

Sunday 18 May 2014

ALEXANDER MEN (1990)


Unusually among Orthodox clergy, Alexander Men was born into a Jewish family near Moscow in 1935. When he was only seven months old, however, his family converted to Christianity and became members of the underground Catacomb Church. This also was unusual because there was little benefit and much danger in becoming an unofficial Christian in the Soviet Union of the 1930s. Perhaps, therefore, the roots of Alexander's courage and individuality lay in his genes. A very bright student, he was nevertheless expelled from college in 1958 for openly espousing Christianity. This, however, only confirmed him in his commitment to becoming a priest. After graduating from Leningrad Theological Seminary, he was ordained a priest in 1960. Well read, intelligent and a powerful debater, he quickly became a popular speaker and teacher and seemed to have the knack of appealing to all classes of society; sometimes called “the apostle to the intellectuals,” he was equally comfortable with his ordinary parishioners. His open missionary and evangelizing work attracted the attention of the KGB and he was repeatedly arrested and questioned but continued his work regardless.

Between his charismatic preaching and his books, he became a well-known and popular figure even, during the communist period. Seraphim Joseph Sigrist, former Bishop of Sendai and East Japan, says of his books: “The writing is simple in a way, although an intellectual festival at times, with poets and philosophers introduced but never with a sense of display. There is an absence of ideology and even of theology in the usual sense; instead there is a presence of reality and of God.” His books ranged from the popular to the academic and his first major book, Son of Man, published in 1969 is credited with introducing Christianity to thousands of Russian citizens. Fr. Alexander's first five books were published in Belgium under a pseudonym and circulated in secret. However, even before the final collapse of the Soviet Union, he was openly setting up Christian organizations, including an Orthodox Open University, a Youth Missionary School and a charity at the Russian Children's Hospital. He set up the first Sunday School in post-soviet Russia and one of his last acts was to found the Russian Bible Society in 1990. All in all, he was a central figure in the transition period under Gorbachev and has been called the architect of Russia's religious revival.

Fr. Alexander was undoubtedly a charismatic character whose breadth of learning meant that he could communicate with and appeal to all Christians and even non-Christians. This, together with his lifelong support for ecumenical theology, meant that he was ideally placed to be a key figure in the post-Soviet Church and his influence is still strong both in Russia and worldwide. However, despite calls for his glorification as a martyr and saint, he remains a controversial figure, criticized by some for his ecumenical and populist ideas. Some of his statements were almost guaranteed to upset the more conservative clergy: “I find more meaning in the wing of a bird and in the branch of a tree than in five hundred icons. God has given us two books: the Bible and Creation.” Ironically, Fr. Daniel Sysoyev, who was himself martyred by a Muslim fanatic in 2009, claimed he was a heretic, listing nine of his beliefs which he claimed were incompatible with Orthodoxy. Fr. Alexander was certainly aware of the opposition to some of his more provocative ideas and, in effect, wrote his own epitaph: “I work now as I have always worked: with my face into the wind ... I'm only an instrument that God is using for the moment. Afterwards, things will be as God wants them.”


On September 9, 1990, Fr. Alexander was walking along a forest path near his home in Semkhoz. It was Sunday morning and he was on his way to catch the train to a nearby parish where he had celebrated the Divine Liturgy for the past twenty years. He was attacked with an axe by one or more unknown assailants and died instantly. Although a full investigation was ordered by the governments of both Michael Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, the murderer has never been identified and neither the axe nor the briefcase Fr. Alexander was carrying were ever found. Two suspects, one an alcoholic neighbour, the other a person from a nearby village known for his erratic behaviour, were arrested but both were immediately cleared by the local court. The main focus of the investigation was on two scenarios, both somewhat unlikely. It was suggested that Fr. Alexander was killed by fanatical Jews because of his own background and his success in converting many Jews to Christianity. At the same time the police were exploring the possibility that the killers were anti-Semitic fanatics or even extreme conservative Orthodox opposed to his modernist tendencies. However, it has been pointed out that in a police state, as Russia still was, it is extremely unlikely that an “ordinary” killer would escape arrest for long. The general opinion was that the KGB were most likely the culprits either officially or as a rogue act of assassination in the dying years of their power. Perhaps the truth will never be known but it does seem likely that the motive for the murder was related in some way to Fr. Alexander's position as a Christian, a priest and an activist. Whether or not he is worthy of glorification as a saint, as many believe, there is little doubt that he should be regarded as a martyr.

Thursday 8 May 2014

FATHER DIMITRY KLEPININ (1944)

Dimitry Klepinin was born in 1904 in Piatigorsk in the Caucasus. His parents were both devout Orthodox, his father Andrey a respected architect, his mother Sophia deeply involved in religious observance and charitable work. The family moved to Odessa in southern Ukraine when Dimitry was still young. In 1919, Sophia was arrested by the Cheka (Bolshevik Secret Police) but was released by a female officer who knew about her work with the poor. However, this was a warning signal and, during the Civil War, the family moved to Constantinople. Together with another family, the Zernovs, they laid the foundations for the Russian Student Christian Movement in which Dimitry was to play an important role later. They then moved to Yugoslavia where Sophia died in 1923.

When he was 15, Dimitry had been put off the Church by the unfeeling comments of a nun in Odessa when he was at a very low ebb after the arrest of his mother. However, it was his mother’s death that ironically brought him back to his faith. He wrote: “For the first time in my life, I understand the meaning of suffering, when I realized that everything I had hoped for in life had evaporated. …. I recalled the words of the Lord, ‘Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.’ I went to my mother’s grave with a heavy load of worldly sorrows, everything seeming so muddled up and forlorn, and suddenly I found the ‘light yoke’ of Christ. After this revelation, I changed the direction of my life.”

In 1925, he enrolled in St. Sergius Theological Institute in Paris, where he became heavily involved in the Russian Student Christian Movement. He graduated and then broadened his education by studying for a year at the Protestant Theological Seminary in New York. After working in copper mines in Yugoslavia for a time, he returned to Paris where he eked out an existence as a window cleaner and parquet polisher. All in all, his varied and sometimes colourful CV was an excellent preparation for the priesthood!

By the early 1930s, Dimitry felt a definite calling for the priesthood but had no vocation for the monastic life so, according to Orthodox canon law, he needed to get married before ordination. A concerted effort was made by the entire Orthodox community in Paris to find him a wife. Their efforts were crowned with success and, in 1937, he married a fellow RSCM member Tamara and was ordained the same year. In 1939, he became dean of the parish of the Protection of the Mother of God which included Mother Maria Skobtsova's refugee shelter and their lives became inextricably linked.

After the German occupation in 1940, Fr. Dimitry immediately joined in the resistance activities of Orthodox Action, collecting and distributing food parcels and finding hiding places for those fleeing the Nazis; on one occasion he sheltered a whole Jewish family in his bedroom. In addition to his resistance activities, he continued his more normal pastoral duties as a priest, once neatly combining the two by involving a recovering mental patient in his work. She recalls: “He taught me to see other people’s misery, he took me to hospitals and entrusted children to me whose parents were in hiding. Thanks to him I stopped thinking about myself and found my balance in life again.” Another former parishioner recalls the night of Easter in 1942 at the refuge in Rue de Lourmel in the darkest days of the occupation: “Outside there were restrictions, fear, war. In the church, illuminated by the light of candles, our priest, dressed in white, seemed to be carried by the wings of the wind, proclaiming with a radiant face: ‘Christ is risen!’ Our reply ‘He is risen indeed!’ tore apart the darkness.”

To help protect two of the groups most targeted by the Nazis, Fr. Dimitry issued certificates of baptism to converted Jews and Russian émigrés who had no papers. Soon, many Jews started to ask him for baptism just to protect themselves. Although he would not, of course, actually baptize anyone without a genuine commitment to Christ, he was quite willing to issue fraudulent certificates. “I think the good Christ would give me that paper if I were in their place,” he told Mother Maria, “So I must do it.” On another occasion, he said: “These unfortunate ones are my spiritual children. In all times, the Church has been a refuge for those who fell victims to barbarism.” As a practical man, he was also careful to record the names of all the “baptized” in the parish register in case the Gestapo double checked.

Eventually and inevitably, his activities became known and, on February 9th 1943, he was ordered to present himself at Gestapo headquarters. A tremendous amount of evidence had been accumulated against him and the Gestapo officer, Hoffman, was prepared for (perhaps looking forward to) a long interrogation. However, Dimitry somewhat took the wind out of his sails by immediately admitting to all his activities, while being careful not to incriminate anyone else. When he was told he would be released with a caution if he promised not to help Jews again, Dimitry replied, “I can say no such thing. I am a Christian and must act as I must.” Hoffman punched him and shouted “Jew lover! How dare you talk of helping those pigs as being a Christian duty!” Dimitry simply held out the cross he was wearing and said quietly, “Do you know this Jew?” He was interrogated for six more hours, eventually being imprisoned in the camp at Compiegne, together with Mother Maria’s son Yuri and another co-worker, Feodor Pianov.

Life in the internment camp was harsh but not unbearable. Tamara was able to send them books and vestments and Dimitry continued his work as a priest. They created a rough chapel with a handmade crucifix and chalice and hand painted icons and were able to celebrate the Divine Liturgy daily, alternating Orthodox and Catholic services. Yuri wrote in a letter to the Rue de Lourmel community: “Thanks to our daily Eucharist, our life here is quite transformed and to tell the honest truth, I have nothing to complain of. We live in brotherly love. Dima (Fr. Dimitri) … is preparing me for the priesthood. God’s will needs to be understood. After all, this attracted me all my life and in the end it was the only thing I was interested in, though my interest was stifled by Parisian life and the illusion that there might be ‘something better’ - as if there could be anything better.”

In December, the three were deported to Buchenwald in Germany and then, in January 1944, Dimitry and Yuri were transferred to Dora, 20 miles away. Dimitry’s health began to deteriorate and, although still only 39, he looked like an old man. He was finding it more and more difficult to work in the harsh conditions and eventually developed a fever which led to pneumonia. He was sent to the “death house” where he died on 10th February. Yuri had been “dispatched for treatment” (a euphemism for sentenced to death) four days earlier. Before he died, he had been able to smuggle out a final letter to the Paris community: “I am absolutely calm, even somewhat proud to share mama’s fate. I promise you I will bear everything with dignity. Whatever happens, sooner or later we shall all be together. I can say in all honesty that I am not afraid of anything any longer … I ask anyone whom I have hurt in any way to forgive me. Christ be with you!”

In 1984, Fr. Dimitry and Mother Maria were honoured at the Jewish memorial in Yad Vashem with the title “Righteous Among the Nations”. On 11th February 2004, sixty years after his death, Fr. Dimitry was added to the Synaxarion of saints, along with Mother Maria, Yuri and Ilya Fondaminsky.

For a more detailed biography of Fr. Dimitry see the article by his daughter on http://www.incommunion.org/2004/10/18/father-dimitry-klepinin/



ILYA FONDAMINSKY (1942)


Born in Moscow in 1881, Ilya studied philosophy at Heidelberg and Berlin universities. In 1905, he joined the Socialist-Revolutionary Party and became a member of its Moscow committee. After a crackdown on “subversive groups”, he fled to Paris in 1906 where he remained until returning to Moscow in April 1917 as a member of Kerensky’s Provisional Government. Now under threat from the Bolsheviks, he emigrated again to France in 1919, where he became well known as an intellectual and writer, publishing a variety of religious and philosophical journals. He helped many young writers, including Vladimir Nabokov who called him “a saintly and heroic soul who did more for Russian émigré literature than any other man.” Other friends, however, joked that, as a Jew and a Socialist Revolutionary, his chances of canonization were remote!

Although Jewish, Ilya became more and more interested in the Orthodox Church and became a close friend of Mother Maria. He would give occasional lectures at the Rue de Lourmel refuge and played a major part in the founding of Orthodox Action. He often attended Divine Liturgy but, although drawn more and more towards Orthodoxy, hesitated to be baptized. His reasons were complicated; a sense of “unworthiness” was mixed with feelings of loyalty to his wife, an unbaptized Christian who had died in 1935, all tied up with lingering reluctance to abandon entirely the faith of his fathers. In 1941, Ilya was arrested as a Jew and as a Russian “enemy” and imprisoned at Compiegne. It was in the prison camp, in a makeshift chapel that he was finally baptized and chrismated. He wrote to a friend that he now felt “ready for anything, whether life or death.”

While in the camp, he was hospitalised for treatment for a gastric ulcer and had a good chance of escaping to unoccupied France. However, he decided to stay and share the fate of those who had no choice, especially his “kinsmen according to the flesh.” A friend, the theologian Georgi Fedotov, wrote that “in his last days, he wished to live with the Christians and die with the Jews,” while Mother Maria commented that “it is out of dough like this that saints are made.” Certainly, his quiet courage and moral integrity make Ilya a shining example both of his ancestral faith and of his new Church. He was transferred to Auschwitz, where he died on 19th November 1942. He was declared a saint along with Fr. Dimitry Klepinin, Mother Maria of Paris and Yuri Skobtsov on 11th February 2004.

Sunday 4 May 2014

ST. MARIA SKOBTSOVA OF PARIS (1945)

This week, I want to begin a group of articles about the courageous group of people martyred by the Nazis for their activities in protecting the Jews of Paris. Those of you who read the extracts from Traveling Companions in April last year may recall the abbreviated story of St. Maria Skobtsova but I make no apologies for beginning with the full version of this remarkable woman's life.


A socialist intellectual and poet and previously twice married, Maria Skobtsova may well be unique among Orthodox saints. She was born Elizaveta Pilenko in 1891 into an aristocratic family in Riga, Latvia, then part of the Russian Empire. After her father’s death when she was in her teens, she lost her faith and when her mother moved the family to St. Petersburg in 1906 she became involved in a radical intellectual circle. She was also an accomplished poet and her first book of poetry, Scythian Shards, met with some success. She joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party but, although she married a Bolshevik in 1910, she was never comfortable with the extreme left. At the same time, she was beginning to be drawn back to Christianity, largely through contemplation of the humanity and suffering of Jesus: “He also died. He sweated blood. They struck his face.” By 1913 her marriage had ended and, after the October 1917 revolution, she moved with her daughter Gaiana and her mother, Sophia, to Anapa on the Black Sea.

Still involved in politics, Elizaveta was elected deputy mayor of Anapa in 1918 but when the mayor fled from the White Russian Army, she became mayor. The White Army put her on trial as a Bolshevik but the judge was a former teacher of hers, Daniel Skotsov, and she was acquitted. A little later, she and Daniel fell in love and married. In the uncertainty of the Civil War, there was little place for a moderate and, fearing the possibility of assassination either by the Bolsheviks or the White Army, Elizaveta, by now pregnant, fled the country along with her husband, mother and Gaiana. Her son Yuri was born in Georgia and, when they moved to Yugoslavia, a daughter Anastasia was born. In 1923, the family finally arrived in Paris where they were able to settle down.

By 1926, Daniel and Elizaveta’s marriage was on the rocks and the final straw was the death that year of Anastasia from influenza. Gaiana was sent to boarding school in Belgium, while Yuri went to live with his father. As she watched her daughter slipping away, Elizaveta went through a deep spiritual anguish: “Now I am aghast at my own insignificance,” she wrote. “I feel that my soul has meandered down back alleys all my life. And now I want an authentic and purified road. Not out of faith in life, but in order to justify, understand and accept death …. No amount of thought will ever result in any greater formulation than the three words, ‘Love one another,’ so long as it is love to the end and without exceptions. And then the whole of life is illumined, which is otherwise an abomination and a burden.” After the funeral, she became aware of “a new and special, broad and all-embracing motherhood” and, as she gradually recovered from the trauma of her daughter’s death and the break up of her marriage, she felt she saw a “new road before me and a new meaning in life, to be a mother for all, for all who need maternal care, assistance, or protection.”

She set about helping the many destitute Russian refugees in Paris because “each person is the very icon of God incarnate in the world.” Her bishop wanted her to take monastic vows but, in typical blunt fashion, she made conditions. She would only agree if she could live in the world and not secluded in a monastery, something quite unusual in Orthodox monasticism. She insisted that there be a “complete absence of even the subtlest barrier which might separate the heart from the world and its wounds.” The bishop agreed, an ecclesiastical divorce was granted with the agreement of Daniel and she took monastic vows in 1932, with the name Maria. Her aim was to build a new kind of “monasticism in the world.”

Maria rented a house, 77 Rue Lourmel, in Paris, which she turned into a shelter for the destitute refugees, complete with a chapel and soup kitchen. Her “cell” was a bed behind the boiler in the basement. Meanwhile, upstairs she organised meetings and lectures by eminent theologians and intellectuals. She was also involved in the formation of the Orthodox Action movement which was committed to putting the social implications of the Gospel message into action. As she said, “The meaning of the Liturgy must be translated into life. It is why Christ came into the world and why he gave us our Liturgy.” She followed this principle without compromise, leaving church services in the middle if her help was needed. In fact, the house on Rue de Lourmel was accused of being an “ecclesiastical Bohemia,” a description she might well have agreed with. Aware that her activities were not always appreciated, she summed up the position of Orthodox Action: “For church circles we are too far to the left, while for the left we are too church-minded.” I, for one believe that this was not a bad position to be in. Her activities among the poor and her writings, full of practical and compassionate theology, would alone have probably put Maria among the revered and blessed. But then the Germans invaded France and occupied Paris.

In June 1941, Russian refugees were targeted by the Gestapo and 1000 were arrested, including Ilya Fondaminsky (see later article). Maria and her chaplain Fr. Dimitry Klepinin refused to accept the ID cards issued for those of Russian origin, even though those who failed to register would be regarded as USSR citizens and thus “enemy aliens.” Although she continued her normal work, Maria now found a new cause: helping the Jews. Along with Fr. Dimitry and her son Yuri, she organised forged documents and escape routes to the unoccupied south of France and helped hide Jews from the Nazis, while smuggling food into the camps for those already rounded up. In June 1942, an edict requiring all Jews to wear a yellow star prompted her to brush off her poetic skills to write a moving poem called Israel:

Two triangles, a star,
The shield of King David, our forefather.
This is election, not offence.
The great path and not an evil.
Once more in a term fulfilled,
Once more roars the trumpet of the end;
And the fate of a great people
Once more is by the prophet proclaimed.
Thou art persecuted again, O Israel,
But what can human malice mean to thee,
who have heard the thunder from Sinai?

When some people argued that the anti-Jewish laws had nothing to do with Christians, Maria replied, “There is no such thing as a Christian problem. Don’t you realize that the battle is being waged against Christianity? If we were true Christians we would all wear the Star. The age of confessors has arrived.”

In the same month, nearly 13,000 Jews, two thirds of them children, were arrested and imprisoned in the Velodrome d’Hiver Sports Stadium for five days before transportation to Auschwitz. As a nun, Maria was allowed access to the stadium where she worked for three days, trying to comfort the children and distribute food. With the help of the local dustmen, she managed to smuggle several children out in dustbins. She was well aware that she was under Gestapo surveillance but had little fear of the future. In her diary she wrote: “There is one moment when you start burning with love and you have the inner desire to throw yourself at the feet of some other human being. This one moment is enough. Immediately you know that instead of losing you life, it is being given back to you twofold.” She told one of her colleagues that if anyone came to the shelter looking for Jews, she would show them an icon of the Mother of God.

On February 8th 1943, Maria was arrested, together with Yuri and Father Dimitry. Her mother was also interrogated and replied to the accusation that Maria was helping Jews: “My daughter is a genuine Christian, and for her there is neither Greek nor Jew,* only individuals in distress. If you were threatened by some disaster, she would help you too.” All three admitted the charges and were taken to an internment camp at Compiegne. In December, Yuri and Fr. Dimitry were transferred to Buchenwald, while Maria was sent to the women’s concentration camp at Ravensbrück north of Berlin in a sealed cattle truck. In a letter to the Paris community, Yuri wrote that, before she was taken, his mother had told him “that I must trust in her ability to bear things and in general not to worry about her. Every day (Fr. Dimitri and I) remember her at the proskomidia (prayers of preparation before the Divine Liturgy).” In Ravensbrück, her ascetic life helped her survive the privations of the camp and she did her best to continue her work of looking after those “less fortunate.” She also maintained her spiritual life by embroidering icons, using needles and thread she exchanged for her meagre ration of bread, reciting passages from the New Testament, commenting on them and even reciting some of the services from memory.

She survived almost to the end of the war but became so ill that she could no longer pass the roll call for work. As the Russian troops were approaching Berlin and gunfire could be heard in the distance, she was sent to the gas chamber on Holy Saturday. According to one witness, she actually took the place of a Jewish fellow prisoner. On Easter Sunday, Ravensbrück was liberated by the International Red Cross. A witness from the camp, Jacqueline Pery, says: “She offered herself consciously to the holocaust … Thus assisting each one of us to accept the cross ... She radiated the peace of God and communicated it to us.” The last word, however, must belong to Mother Maria: “At the Last Judgement I shall not be asked whether I was successful in my ascetic exercises, nor how many bows and prostrations I made. Instead I shall be asked, ‘Did I feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the prisoners?’ That is all I shall be asked.”**

In 1984, Mother Maria and Fr. Dimitry were honoured at the Jewish memorial in Yad Vashem with the title “Righteous Among the Nations.” On February 11th 2004, Maria was formally added to the Synaxarion of saints, along with her son Yuri, Fr. Dimitry Klepinin and Ilia Fondaminsky.


* See St. Paul “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).


** Quotations are from Pearl of Great Price: The Life of Mother Maria Skobtsova by Sergei Hackel  and Essential Writings by Mother Maria Skobtsova. See also several articles by Jim Forest on In Communion, the website of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship.

Sunday 27 April 2014

20th CENTURY ORTHODOX MARTYRS


As followers of my FaceBook page (ChrisMooreyBooks) know, for various reasons I have abandoned work on my book of Orthodox Christian martyrs of the twentieth century. Instead, I have decided to publish some of the more interesting and inspirational stories on this blog, beginning this week with Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Smyrna.

  CHRYSOSTOMOS, METROPOLITAN OF SMYRNA (1922)


Born in Triglia, Bithynia in 1867, Chrysostomos showed early promise in the Church, being appointed Metropolitan of Drama in eastern Macedonia in 1902, at the relatively early age for a bishop of 35. At that time, the area was still under Ottoman rule and his main concern was the spiritual and physical care of the majority Orthodox Greek population. He involved himself in the building of schools, churches, hospitals and even sports facilities and these actions, together with his tendency to make political statements, resulted in exile in 1907 and again in 1909. In 1910, he was elected Metropolitan of Smyrna (now called Izmir) on the east coast of Turkey. This also had a large Greek Orthodox population and, here too, he combined church duties with social and charity work* and vociferous opposition to the persecution of Turkish Christians. He organized a full day rally against the violence of the Bulgarians against the Greeks in Macedonia, which was condoned and perhaps encouraged by the Turkish government.  He spoke to diplomats and the world press, and the German ambassador in Constantinople was so impressed by his efforts that he described him as “the best of living clerics.” He was again exiled to Constantinople in 1914, not returning to Smyrna until 1919.
He returned to a city embroiled in the turmoil of the Greek-Turkish war (1919-1922). Under the Treaty of Sèvres, Smyrna was occupied by the Greek army and Chrysostomos was able to continue his pastoral work not only among the Greek Orthodox but also the Armenian and Turkish residents. He also worked towards the creation of an autonomous Greek state in the area round Smyrna, should the Greek army lose the general war in Asia Minor.  With the defeat of the Greek army in Anatolia in 1922, however, Smyrna was quickly retaken by the Turks, who set about expelling the Greek population. Chrysostomos was encouraged to flee by the English and French consuls and even the Roman Catholic archbishop begged him to leave, actually booking his passage on a ship. Chrysostomos, however, refused point blank saying, “It is the tradition of the Greek Church and the duty of the priest to stay with his congregation.”
On the 9th September, he conducted the Divine Liturgy in the cathedral, where many of the Orthodox had taken shelter. In what was to be his last sermon he said:
God is testing our faith, our courage, and our patience at this time. But God will never abandon Christians. It is in turbulent seas that the good sailor stands out, and it is during a time of tribulations that the good Christian does the same. Pray and all this will be gone. We shall again see happy days and we will pray to the Lord. Have courage as all good Christians should.
Immediately after the service, Chrysostomos was taken to the police chief who instructed him that all Greeks and Armenians should surrender their weapons and stay in their homes. He returned to the cathedral, where he read out the orders. What happened next is not entirely clear but Chrysostomos was certainly seized again by the police and probably taken to the military governor, General Noureddin Pasha. The latter was fanatically anti-Christian and, instead of following legal processes, seems to have incited a mob to abduct the bishop. The mob attacked him with such savagery that doubt has been cast on the gruesome details but there seems to be plenty of documentary evidence for their accuracy. They tore off his beard, stabbed him repeatedly and blinded him. To all this he responded by trying to say words of forgiveness and raising his hand in blessing. When one of the attackers realised what he was doing, he cut off the bishop’s hands with a sword. Eventually, Chrysostomos was dragged into an alley, where he died of his wounds.** The attack was witnessed by a group of French marines who wanted to go to his aid but were held back at gunpoint by their commanding officer who was under strict orders to remain neutral.***
Metropolitan Chrysostomos was officially canonised by the Church of Greece in 1993, with a feast day on 27 August. Later, however, the celebration was moved to the Sunday before the Elevation of the Cross, when he is remembered along with the other new martyrs of Asia Minor. Since the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch remains in Istanbul (Constantinople), for diplomatic reasons these saints are not commemorated in the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

*        Intriguingly, Chrysostomos was the founder of the original Panionios football team in Smyrna. After the expulsions of 1922, the team was reconstituted by the refugees in Nea Smyrni in Athens, where it continues to this day.
**      An interesting testimony comes from an eminent academic, G. Mylonas. As a student, he had been imprisoned with others awaiting execution. A Turkish officer came to their cell and said that he had been involved in the murder of Chrysostomos and had, in fact, shot him through the head to end his torture. He had been so impressed by the courage of the bishop and so horrified at the events he had taken part in that he freed the group of prisoners in the hope that this act might assuage his guilt and give him some peace of mind. This story comes from an article by Sarantos Kargakos in the magazine Oikonomikos Tachydromos, 8/10/92. (Translated source OrthodoxWiki)

***    To be fair to the officer, in spite of the humanitarian instincts of his men, it is doubtful if they could have done much to protect the metropolitan and would probably have perished themselves in the hysteria of the attack. My father was a young soldier in the British “peacekeeping” force in Smyrna in 1922. He told me that, whatever horrors they witnessed, the British troops were also strictly ordered not to intervene unless attacked themselves. 

Tuesday 18 March 2014

20th CENTURY MARTYRS


I am well on the way to completing my book of 20th Century Orthodox martyrs. One of the chapters is devoted to the Orthodox Church in Greece under Nazi occupation. I have enough material for general background including the courageous stand of Archbishop Damaskinos in protecting the Jews from deportation. In spite of his almost being executed, however, the Archbishop was not actually a martyr. I am in urgent need of two or three stories of priests or laypeople who actually gave their lives in defiance of the authorities and because of their Christian beliefs. The stories don’t have to be long or detailed

Can any of my readers a) help me with information on this topic
                                      b) point me to someone who can
                                      c) give me any relevant internet links?

If you are able to help, either post a comment, contact me on Facebook Page (ChrisMooreyBooks). I may be able to give you my email address on request.


Thursday 6 February 2014

SPECIAL OFFERS ON "A GLIMPSE OF HEAVEN" BEGIN THURSDAY

HELP ME TAKE "GLIMPSE" SURGING INTO AMAZON'S TOP 250,000 SELLERS!!
(Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk only)

February 06:

from 0800 PST on Amazon.com

ONLY $0.99 for 24 hours

from 0800 GMT on Amazon.co.uk

ONLY £0.99 for 24 hours



February 07: £1.99 / $2.99 for two days 
February 09: £2.99 / $4.99 for two days 
February 11: £3.99 / $6.99 for two days
February 12: Offers End at midnight
Original list price £5.46 / $9.00

Monday 6 January 2014

“A GLIMPSE OF HEAVEN” by CHRIS MOOREY - PUBLISHED TODAY

I have just finished the conversion of “A Glimpse of Heaven” to Kindle format and it has been published today. It is available on all Amazon sites at a price of $9 in the USA, about £5.46+VAT in the UK and about €6.55+VAT in Europe.


Since I am publishing it myself, I have little marketing support apart from the limited backup supplied by Amazon. Neither can I afford professional advertising. I am therefore appealing to any followers of this blog who might be interested to spread the word to as many people as possible through their own social media. It really is a great little book! Who knows, if the theory of six (or three) degrees of separation is true, I might reach the whole world in a couple of weeks (or not).

ABOUT THE BOOK: “A Glimpse of Heaven, An introduction to Greek Orthodox churches and worship” is designed for visitors to
Greece or people with a passing interest in Orthodoxy. It is deliberately written in a light, friendly style for the general reader and, although it covers some important themes and is theologically accurate, it is not intended for serious students of the subject. A reviewer of the printed version on Amazon summed it up nicely: “This quirky little book is just what it claims to be in its title. ... It's just the thing to carry with you if you plan on visiting Greece and have an interest in the Orthodox Church or simply in its architecture and iconography. As far as I'm aware there aren't any similarly concise alternatives available. The author is a convert to the Orthodox Church and relates his own experiences to put his descriptions into a context that's accessible to visitors. Recommended.”

So, if you are regular visitors to
Greece or are considering a holiday there this year and want to know a bit about our country beyond the beaches and bars, this is the book to take with you.

SPECIAL OFFER: Unfortunately, for technical reasons, I have not been able to set up the special offers for next week. Apparently, there is a 30 day lead time. However, I think the book is still good value at the list price but, if you want a real bargain, hang on till February 6.