"You will not be able to put it down"
A review of Everyday Saints, by Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov)
Archpriest Andrew Phillips
Orthodox Christianity
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| Archpriest Andrew Phillips |
Russian
literature has a long history of dealing with Church
themes. Pushkin, Leskov and Chekhov come to mind at
once. However, these themes are also central in
Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy and more recently in Pasternak
and Soloukhin, and in fact they are present in all
Russian literature, as an underpinning and uniting
background of spiritual and cultural values. What is
original about this book is that the author is not just
a very talented writer with a sensitive artist’s
heart, but he is also a monk, priest and senior
archimandrite in Moscow, the Superior of Sretensky
Monastery, Fr Tikhon Shevkunov. And, above all, what is
original is that this book has been written now, as a
monument to what has risen a generation after the death
of three generations of forced – and failed
– State atheism. In other words, this book
breathes Resurrection.
A spiritual child of the ever-memorable Elder Ioann
Krestyankin of the Pskov Caves Monastery, Fr Tikhon has
made his historic, central Moscow Monastery into a bastion
of genuine Orthodoxy, with one of the best choirs in
Russia. There is to be found a prominent seminary, with
several international students, the best Orthodox bookshop
in Moscow and probably the best and biggest Orthodox
website in Russia (www.pravoslavie.ru),
which also has an English-language section. Apart from
being a gifted writer, Fr Tikhon is also a film-maker
(‘A Byzantine Lesson’), runs the anti-alcohol
campaign in the Russian Federation, is responsible for
Church-cultural relations, and is a great friend of the
Church Outside Russia - we see him regularly.
His book, Everyday Saints, is being translated into
ten languages, the Greek edition having already appeared.
Now we have the English edition of ‘Nesvyatye
Svyatye’ (literally, ‘Unholy Saints’).
This is a bestseller in Russia, having sold the
unprecedented number of 1,100,000 paper copies and
millions of electronic copies since it appeared one year
ago. It has been read by all, believer and atheist alike,
has changed lives, and really is unputdownable, as I know
myself when I read it in one more or less continuous
eighteen-hour sitting in September 2011. Little wonder
that in Moscow it has been awarded the ‘Book of the
Year’ prize for 2012.
At 490 pages long, the book is divided into 60 chapters,
often but not always sketches of people, often but not
always clerics, but all known to the author. Amusing and
sad and edifying in turn, they are all profoundly human,
but also profoundly touched by the Divine. These are the
lives of Orthodox clerics and laypeople, a few of them
known to the author of this review, like Bishop Basil
(Rodzianko). You feel the author’s compassion, his
total lack of any judgement about his subjects. Well, he
is right to do this – we all have our weaknesses. As
the translator notes in his preface: ‘Ultimately,
though it may take a while, love and light and compassion
conquer hatred and darkness and indifference’.
This book is a compendium of lives of Church people who
lived in recent years. He describes how, despite their
obvious weaknesses, their lives were transformed by the
grace of the Holy Spirit, which, in the words of St
Seraphim of Sarov, we are called on to acquire. Probably
many Orthodox clergy know enough stories to write such a
book – but we do not because we cannot. But Fr
Tikhon does because he can. As a Russian, Fr Tikhon is no
hypocrite and has no time for that sugary pietism which so
mars the lives of Western clericalism and turns people
away from Christ. The author pulls no punches and tells
the truth: saints are not born, they started off like us,
but they became saints. All of us are spoiled by our sins
and weaknesses, however, as the Apostle Paul said to the
Orthodox in Corinth, ‘My strength is made perfect in
weakness’.
As Orthodox life is patterned by prayer, conversation with
the Living God, it consists of what the world calls
‘coincidences’, that is,
‘God-incidences’. These are the generous and
loving and providential interventions of God in our
everyday life, showing to us the presence of
saints in our midst. This is made clear in another
remarkable Church classic of Russian literature,
Heavenly Paths, by Shmelyov. But this is also clear
in Fr Tikhon’s work before us. Let us take just one
short example of his content and style, his description of
the saintly old nuns of St Seraphim’s Diveyevo, who
had been captives of the Soviet regime for over 70 years,
but had kept the faith:
‘In a ramshackle little hut on the outskirts of
Diveyevo I saw something that I could never have imagined
in my most radiant dreams. I saw alive the Church Radiant,
invincible and indefatigable, youthful and joyful in the
consciousness of its God, our Shepherd and Savior...There
is no way to capture the sublimity of this service in
words...These incredible nuns sang the entire service
virtually by heart...they had risked death or punishment
saying this service in concentration camps and prisons and
places of exile..They said it even now even after all
their sufferings, here in Diveyevo, settling into their
wretched hovels on the outskirts of the town. For them it
was nothing unusual, and yet for me I could scarcely
understand whether I was in Heaven or on earth.
These aged nuns were possessed of such incredible
spiritual strength...that it was then that I understood
that they with their faith would triumph over everything
– over our godless government despite all its power,
over the faithlessness of this world, and over death
itself, of which they had absolutely no fear’.
‘The reign of the Children of Ham has ended’.
Our life is indeed ‘a patchwork of God’s
compassion’.
In an excellent translation by Julian Henry Lowenfeld, the
book is priced at only $23.00 and ordering information is
available from Everyday-Saints.com. The profits from this
book are going towards building a Cathedral Church of the
New Martyrs and Confessors at the Lubyanka in central
Moscow (where the Soviet Secret Police Headquarters were
located – the very site where so many confessed
Orthodoxy and were martyred only a few decades ago). The
new Church is to be completed in 2017 and will contain a
museum of the New Martyrs in its basement. Here is a most
worthy cause. Here is a most worthy book. It is warmly
recommended. But I warn you now - once you have started
reading it, you will not be able to put it down.
Archpriest Andrew Phillips
Orthodox Christianity
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