October 14, 2018
MY CORNER by Boyd
Cathey
The Story of Two
Saints—One, a Symbol of the Triumph of the Rough Beast of Paganism—the Other, A
True Martyr Against Evil Incarnate
Friends,
Today I relate
to you two accounts—two stories—of canonizations of saints. Well, actually, it
would be incorrect to call them both “canonizations,” as one of them is simply
a paganized and symbolic acknowledgement, a memorialization by a major
Protestant denomination honoring a victim of what our society calls “anti-gay”
violence (but what in fact was a drug deal gone bad, ending in murder). And the
other is completely opposite—about as different as one can get: the recognition
of the holiness and merits of a real martyr who in 1918 suffered meekly for her
faith at the bottom of a cold mineshaft into which Bolsheviks had thrown her
and then tossed in hand grenades, and then, hearing religious chants coming
from out of the mine, threw brush into it and lit it afire so the persons
trapped therein would be incinerated.
Back in
1998 Matthew Sheppard, a young homosexual from Casper, Wyoming, went with two
friends he met at a bar to a secluded location to complete a drug deal. There
he was brutally murdered. And then followed a national outcry for legislation
against anti-homosexual violence.
Just
recently the American Episcopal Church agreed to entomb him with honor in
Washington’s National Cathedral, his remains to reside there with various
American heroes. And, in a very real sense, to quote the Episcopal bishop of
Washington, he is to be honored as a kind of “patron saint” to not only what
remains of that paganized and utterly castrated church, but to mainstream Christianity
as it now parades in our modern culture, stripped naked of its traditional
belief, its liturgy defiled, its sacraments despoiled, its congregants fleeing
its mostly empty buildings, and become now a stalking horse for sheer Demonic
evil intent on destroying the faith of millions.
Here is a
portion of The New York Times
coverage of this event:
Matthew Shepard Will Be Interred With Honors at the Washington National Cathedral, 20 Years After His Death
By Jacey Fortin
Oct. 11, 2018
For 20 years, the ashes of Matthew Shepard
have not been laid to rest. Mr.
Shepard’s killing in 1998, when he was a 21-year-old college
student, led to national outrage and, almost overnight, turned him into a
symbol of deadly violence against gay people. [….] Now they have found a safe
place. On Oct. 26, Mr. Shepard will be interred with honor at the Washington
National Cathedral, the neo-Gothic, Episcopal house of worship that is a
fixture of American politics and religion. “I think it’s the perfect,
appropriate place,” Dennis Shepard, Matthew’s father, said in an interview on
Thursday. “We are, as a family, happy and relieved that we now have a final
home for Matthew, a place that he himself would love.”
Two decades ago, Matthew Shepard was robbed
by two men, pistol-whipped and tied to a fence in Laramie. He later died in a
hospital. “His death was a wound on our
nation,” Mariann Edgar Budde, the “bishop” [my quotation marks] of the
Episcopal Diocese of Washington, said in an interview on Wednesday. “We are
doing our part to bring light out of that darkness and healing to those who
have been so often hurt, and sometimes hurt in the name of the church.” [….]
Mr. Shepard’s friend Jason Marsden
remembers him as a young man who was passionate about global politics and human
rights. He remembers the funeral in 1998 — how the attendees overflowed into
nearby churches, and how some people came to protest with their signs.
Now
Mr. Marsden, who works to promote his friend’s legacy as the executive director
of the Matthew Shepard Foundation, plans to be there in Washington this month
when Mr. Shepard’s ashes are interred in the crypt. “It is a noteworthy place
to be at rest, and it invites conversations about the importance of this person
and what this person represents in American history,” he said. [….]
The
cathedral regularly hosts prayer services and memorials for politicians and
presidents. It recently hosted Senator John McCain’s funeral. The ceremony on
Oct. 26 will begin with a public service in the morning, and the ashes will be
interred privately.
Bishop Budde will preside over the event
alongside the Rev. V. Gene Robinson, who became the first
openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church in 2003. Bishop
Robinson said he had been working with Mr. Shepard’s parents on issues
affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people for years. [….] Bishop
Robinson said the country had made good progress on civil rights for L.G.B.T.
people since Mr. Shepard’s killing, such as the legalization of same-sex
marriage.
Mr. Shepard’s name was on a bill, signed
into law in 2009, that expanded the definition of violent
federal hate crimes to include those committed because of a victim’s sexual
orientation. And the Washington National Cathedral has honored Mr. Shepard
before; in 2013, it hosted a
screening of “Matt Shepard Is a Friend of
Mine,” a documentary about his life and death.
But the work is far from over, Bishop
Robinson said, adding that Mr. Shepard’s death “became a symbol of the kind of
mindless, pointless violence against us for no other reason than being who we
are,” Bishop Robinson said. “It is important for us to remind ourselves that we
are still trying to come out from under that shadow.”
About 200 people have been
interred at the cathedral in Washington, including President Woodrow Wilson,
Adm. George Dewey of the United States Navy, Helen Keller and her teacher Anne
Sullivan. Mr. Shepard will be a quite welcome addition, Bishop Budde said. “A
lot has changed in the 20 years since Matthew was abducted, tied to a fence and
left to die,” Bishop Budde said.
---------------------------------------
Now, let
us turn to a real saint, a martyr for and to the Faith and a true symbol of
what the traditional Christian faith is all about, who was cruelly and
mercilessly murdered in 1918 at the height of the Bolshevik Revolution: the
Grand Duchess Elizabeth, proclaimed by the Russian Orthodox Church as a “new
Martyr” Saint Elizabeth. And whose life, merits, and final encounter with an unspeakably
brutal death illustrated the abundant virtues of her humble sainthood and her
deep comprehension of the faith she possessed.
Here are
some brief biographical notes:
Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine, later Grand Duchess
Elizabeth Feodorovna of Russia (Russian: Елизавета Фëдоровна Романова, Elizabeth Feodorovna
Romanova; canonized as Holy Martyr Elizabeth Feodorovna; was born
on 1 November 1864 as the second child of Ludwig
IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, and Princess
Alice, daughter of Queen Victoria. She was given the
names Elisabeth Alexandra Luise
Alix: "Elisabeth" after both St. Elizabeth
of Hungary (the ancestress of the House of Hesse) and her
paternal grandmother, Princess Elisabeth of Prussia, and "Luise" and
"Alix" after her parents. Elisabeth was known as "Ella"
within her family.
Though she came from one of the oldest and noblest
houses in Germany, Elisabeth and her family lived a rather modest life by royal
standards. The children swept the floors and cleaned their own rooms, while
their mother sewed dresses herself for the children. During the Austro-Prussian War, Princess Alice often took
Elisabeth with her while visiting wounded soldiers in a nearby hospital. In
this relatively happy and secure environment, Elisabeth grew up surrounded by
English domestic habits, and English became her first language. Later in life,
she would tell a friend that, within her family, she and her siblings spoke
English to their mother and German to their father….
Charming and with a very accommodating personality,
Elisabeth was considered by many historians and contemporaries to be one of the
most beautiful women in Europe at that time….
Ultimately, it was a Grand Duke of
Russia who would win Elisabeth's heart….. Sergei,
especially, was a very serious young man, intensely religious, and he found
himself attracted to Elisabeth after seeing her as a young woman for the first
time in several years….
Sergei and Elisabeth married on 15 (3) June 1884,
at the Chapel of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg; upon
her conversion to Russian Orthodoxy, she took the name Elizabeth Feodorovna. …. The new
Grand Duchess made a good first impression on her husband's family and the
Russian people. "Everyone fell in love with her from the moment she came
to Russia from her beloved Darmstadt", wrote one of Sergei's cousins….
The couple never had children of their own…. They
eventually became the foster parents of Grand
Duke Dmitry Pavlovich and Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, Sergei's niece and nephew.
Although Elisabeth was not legally required to
convert to Russian
Orthodoxy from her native Lutheran religion, she
voluntarily chose to do so in 1891…. Elisabeth was somewhat instrumental in the
marriage of her nephew-by-marriage, Tsar Nicholas II, to her youngest sister
Alix.
On 18 February 1905, her husband the Grand Duke
Sergei was assassinated in the Kremlin by the
Socialist-Revolutionary, Ivan Kalyayev. The event came as a terrible
shock to Elisabeth….According to Edvard Radzinsky:
Elizabeth spent all the days before the burial in
ceaseless prayer. On her husband's tombstone she wrote: 'Father, release them,
they know not what they do.' She understood the words of the Gospels heart and soul, and on
the eve of the funeral she demanded to be taken to the prison where Kalyayev
was being held. Brought into his cell, she asked, 'Why did you kill my
husband?' 'I killed Sergei Alexandrovich because he was a weapon of tyranny. I
was taking revenge for the people.' 'Do not listen to your pride. Repent... and
I will beg the Sovereign to give you your life. I will ask him for you. I
myself have already forgiven you.' On the eve of revolution, she had already
found a way out; forgiveness! Forgive through the impossible pain and blood --
and thereby stop it then, at the beginning, this bloody wheel. By her example,
poor Ella appealed to society, calling upon the people to live in Christian
faith. 'No!" replied Kalyayev. 'I do not repent. I must die for my deed
and I will... My death will be more useful to my cause than Sergei
Alexandrovich's death.' Kalyayev was sentenced to death. 'I am pleased with
your sentence,' he told the judges. 'I hope that you will carry it out just as
openly and publicly as I carried out the sentence of the Socialist
Revolutionary Party. Learn to look the advancing revolution right in
the face.'
Kalyayev was hanged on 23 May 1905.
In 1915 the All-Russian
Zemstvo Union was organised under her auspices to provide support
for sick and injured soldiers during the First World War.
After Sergei's death, Elisabeth wore mourning
clothes. In 1909, she sold off her magnificent collection of jewels and sold
her other luxurious possessions; even her wedding ring was not spared. With the
proceeds she opened the Convent of
Saints Martha and Mary and became its abbess.
She soon opened a hospital, a chapel, a pharmacy
and an orphanage on its grounds. Elisabeth and her nuns worked tirelessly among
the poor and the sick of Moscow. She often visited Moscow's worst slums and did
all she could to help alleviate the suffering of the poor.
For many years, Elisabeth's institution helped the
poor and the orphans in Moscow by fostering the prayer and charity of devout
women. Here, there arose a vision of a renewed diaconate for women, one that
combined intercession and action in the heart
of a disordered world.
In 1916, Elisabeth had what was to be her final
meeting with sister Alexandra, the tsarina, at Tsarskoye Selo. While the meeting took place in
private, the tutor to the tsar's children apparently recalled that the
discussion included Elisabeth expressing her concerns over the influence
that Grigori Rasputin had over Alexandra and
the imperial court, and begging her to heed the warnings of both herself and
other members of the imperial family….
In 1918, Vladimir Lenin ordered the Cheka secret police to arrest
Elisabeth. They then exiled her first to Perm, then to Yekaterinburg, where she spent a few days
and was joined by others: the Grand
Duke Sergei Mikhailovich Romanov; Princes Ioann
Konstantinovich, Konstantin
Konstantinovich, Igor
Konstantinovich and Vladimir Pavlovich Paley; Grand Duke Sergei's
secretary, Fyodor Remez; and Varvara Yakovleva, a sister from the Grand
Duchess's convent. They were all taken to Alapayevsk on 20 May 1918, where they were
housed in the Napolnaya School on the outskirts of the town.
At noon on 17 July, Cheka officer Pyotr Startsev
and a few Bolshevik workers came to the school. They took from the prisoners
whatever money they had left and announced that they would be transferred that
night to the Upper Siniachikhensky factory compound. The Red Army guards were
told to leave and Cheka men replaced them. That night the prisoners were
awakened and driven in carts on a road leading to the village of Siniachikha,
some 18 kilometres (11 miles) from Alapayevsk where there was an abandoned iron
mine with a pit 20 metres (66 feet) deep. Here they halted. The Cheka beat all
the prisoners brutally before throwing their victims into this mine pit,
Elisabeth being the first. Hand grenades were then hurled down the shaft, but
only one victim, Fyodor Remez, died as a result of the grenades.
According to the personal account of Vasily Ryabov,
one of the killers, Elisabeth and the others survived the initial fall into the
mine, prompting Ryabov to toss in a grenade after them. Following the
explosion, he claimed to have heard Elisabeth and the others singing an
Orthodox hymn from the bottom of the shaft. Unnerved, Ryabov threw down a second grenade,
but the singing continued. Finally a large quantity of brushwood was shoved
into the opening and set alight, upon which Ryabov posted a guard over the site
and departed.
Early on 18 July 1918, the leader of the Alapayevsk
Cheka, Abramov, and the head of the Yekaterinburg Regional Soviet, Beloborodov,
who had been involved in the execution of the Imperial Family, exchanged a
number of telegrams in a pre-arranged plan saying that the school had been
attacked by an "unidentified gang". A month later, Alapayevsk fell to
the White Army of Admiral Alexander Kolchak. Lenin rejoiced at Elisabeth's death, remarking that "virtue with
the crown on it is a greater enemy to the world revolution than a hundred tyrant tsars".
On 8 October 1918, White Army soldiers discovered the
remains of Elisabeth and her companions, still within the shaft where they had
been murdered. Despite having lain there for almost three months, the bodies
were in very good condition. Most were thought to have died slowly from
injuries or starvation, rather than the subsequent fire. Elisabeth had died of
wounds sustained in her fall into the mine, but before her death had still
found strength to bandage the head of the dying Prince Ioann with her wimple.
With the Red Army approaching, their
remains were removed further east and buried in the cemetery of the Russian
Orthodox Mission in Peking (now Beijing), China. Elisabeth was
ultimately taken to Jerusalem, where her body was laid to rest
in the Church of
Maria Magdalene at Gethsemane. The Russian Orthodox Mission in
Beijing was demolished in 1957 and its cemetery paved over as a parking lot in
1986.
Elisabeth was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad in 1981, and in 1992 by
the Moscow Patriarchate as Holy Martyr Elizabeth Feodorovna. Her principal shrines are the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent she founded in
Moscow, and the Saint Mary Magdalene Convent on the Mount of Olives, which she and her husband
helped build, and where her relics (along with those of Nun Barbara, her former maid) are
enshrined. She is one of the ten 20th-century martyrs from across the world who
are depicted in statues above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey, London, England,[9] and she is also
represented in the restored nave screen installed at St Albans Cathedral in April 2015.
A statue of Elisabeth was erected in the garden of
her convent after the dissolution
of the Soviet Union. Its inscription reads: "To the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna: With Repentance."
On 8 June 2009, the Prosecutor General of Russia officially
posthumously rehabilitated Elizabeth Feodorovna,
along with other Romanovs: Mikhail Alexandrovich, Sergei Mikhailovich, Ioann
Konstantinovich, Konstantin Konstantinovich and Igor Konstantinovich. "All of these people were subjected to
repression in the form of arrest, deportation and being held by the Cheka without charge," said a representative of the
office.
---------------------------------
And, lastly,
I pass along excerpts from some of the grand duchess’s writings:
LIFE PRINCIPLES OF GRAND DUCHESS ELIZABETH
Deeds and
letters are those things that in the best possible way show what kind of person
someone is. The letters of Grand
Duchess Elizabeth reveal
the principles which laid the foundation of her life and relationships with
people around her. These letters help us understand the reasons why the
high-society beauty became a saint in her lifetime. In Russia, Elizabeth
Feodorovna was renowned not only as “Europe’s most beautiful princess”, a
sister of the empress and wife of the tsar’s uncle. The country knew her as
founder of the Martha and Mary Convent, a convent of a new type. In 1918
Elizabeth Fyodorovna was on Lenin’s order thrown to an abandoned mine, hidden
in an impenetrable forest, so that no one could ever find her.
On faith: “Visual attributes
remind me of the inner part of faith”
A portion from a letter to her father, Louis IV, Grand Duke of
Hesse and Rhine (January 1, 1891):
“I
have come to this decision [to convert to the Orthodoxy] only due to my deep
faith. I feel that I should stand before God with a pure and faithful heart….
After I’ve spent six years in this country and already “found” religion, I’ve
been thinking, thinking long and hard, about everything.
“To
my surprise, I almost fully understand texts and services in Slavonic, despite
never learning the language. You say that I’m enchanted by the splendor of the
churches. But I don’t think you’re right. I’m impressed neither by anything
visual nor by the service itself, but the foundation of faith. Visual
attributes remind me of the inner part of it.”
About the revolution: “I would
rather be killed by a first accidental shot, than stay here doing nothing”
From a letter to V. F. Dzhunkovsky, adjutant of Grand Duke Sergei
Alexandrovich (1905):
“The revolution can’t finish soon, it may only sharply
deteriorate and become something chronic, which is bound to happen. It is my
duty to help poor victims of the rebellion. I would rather be killed by a first
accidental shot, than stay here doing nothing.”
From a letter to Tsar Nicholas II (December 29, 1916):
“Huge waves are going to crash down
upon us soon <…> All the classes, both lower and higher ones, even those
who are now at the war, are at the end of their rope! <…> What other
tragedies can strike us? What other miseries are in store for us?”
About forgiving enemies:
“Knowing the generous heart of my late husband, I forgive you.”
In 1905 St. Elizabeth’s husband, the Moscow
governor-general Grand Duke Sergei
Alexandrovich was assassinated with a bomb by
Social-Revolutionary terrorist Ivan Kaliaev. When Elizabeth Feodorovna heard
the explosion, detonated not far from their house, she rushed outside to
collect the dismembered remains. Then she spent hours in prayer. Some time
later she petitioned the emperor to have mercy on the assassin. She visited Kaliaev
in prison. Leaving the Gospel, she said she had forgiven him.
From a cipher telegram, written by head of the Governing Senate E.
B. Vasilyev (February 8, 1905):
“…the Grand Duchess met the assassin
in the office of Pyatnitsky unit at 8 o’clock in the evening February 7. To the
question of who she was, the Grand Duchess said, “I’m the wife of the man you
have killed. Tell me, why did you do this?” The defendant rose to answer, “I
did what I had been charged with. It’s the fault of the existing regime.” Full
of mercy, the Grand Duchess said, “Knowing the generous heart of my late
husband, I forgive you”, and blessed the assassin. Then she stayed alone with
the criminal for about twenty minutes. When the meeting was over, he said to
the officer, “The Grand Duchess is kind, and you all are cruel.”
On prayer: “I don’t know how to
pray well.”
From a letter to Duchess Z. N. Yusupova (June 23, 1908):
“Praying by the relics of St. Alexey
of Moscow made me quiet and peaceful both in heart and soul. I wish you had a
chance to come to the relics, venerate them and pray, so that peace could
embrace you, and remain in you. Hardly did I pray… Alas, I don’t know how to
pray well. I fell down, literally fell down before them, like a child to her
mother’s breast. I prayed for nothing as my heart was full of peace, I realized
that I was standing close to the saint, on whom I could rely, and with whom I
am not alone.”
About monastic vows: “I took it
as the path of salvation, not a cross”
Four years after her husband’s death,
Elizabeth Feodorovna sold all her jewelry and possessions, and the part,
belonging to the Romanovs, she gave back to them. With the proceeds she opened
the Martha and Mary Convent.
From a letter to Nicholas II (March 26, April 18, 1909)
“My new life starts in two weeks, life
blessed in the church. It seems I’m leaving my past behind, with its sins and
mistakes, hoping for loftier goals and purer existence. <…> For me,
taking monastic vows is something more serious than marriage is for a young
woman. I’m becoming engaged to Christ and his service. I give everything I have
to him and my neighbor.”
From a telegram and a letter to Saint-Petersburg Theological
Academy professor A. A. Dmitrievsky (1911):
“Some people doubt whether I decided
to make this decision by myself, without anyone’s influence. Many think that I
have taken an unbearable cross upon myself, and I shall either abandon it or
fall under the weight of it. However, I don’t take it as a cross, but as a path
full of light, pointed by God after Sergei’s death; I have seen the flashes of
this light in my soul for a long time. It’s not a transition; it’s something
that has been arising inside of me, taking shape.”
About relations with people: “I
have to do the same things as they do”
From a letter to E. N. Narishkina (1910):
“You may like many others say to me:
“Stay in your palace as a widow and do your good works ‘from-above’.” If I want
others to follow my principles I have to do things as they do, go through the
same troubles. I have to be strong enough to comfort them and inspire by my own
example. I’m neither intelligent nor gifted, I have nothing but love for
Christ, but I’m weak. We can only express our love for him and our faithfulness
by comforting people around us. Doing this we can dedicate our life to him.”
About treating ourselves: “We
should move forward slowly enough to think we’re standing still”
From a letter to Tsar Nicholas II (March 26,
1910):
“The higher we try to reach, the more
strict we are with ourselves, the more shrewdly the devil acts to make us blind
to the light of truth. <…> We should move forward slowly enough to think
we’re standing still. We must not look down on anyone… this is what we should
strive for; everything is possible with the help of God.”
Why does God allow us to
suffer?
From a letter to countess A. A. Oslufyeva (1916):
“I’m not thrilled, my friend. I’m just
sure that God who punishes us is the same God who loves us. Lately, I’ve often
been reading the Gospel; if we try to recognize the great sacrifice of God the
Father, Who gave his own Son to death and resurrected him, then we shall feel
the presence of the Holy Spirit, lightening our life. Then joy seems eternal
even at times when our poor human hearts, our tiny mind goes through troubles
that seem tremendous.”
About death: “I don’t like this
word”
From letters to Grand Duke Pavel Alexandrovich (March 31, 1905)
and Duchess Z. N. Yusupova (July 1, 1908):
“Death is a separation after all. I
don’t like this word; I think that those who pass away make a way for us, and
our prayers help them clear the path will have to go.”
Till the last minute
From the memoirs of Nun Nadezhda Zinaida Brenner in the world,
(1890-1983), who once lived in the Martha and Mary Convent:
To the question of what virtue
Elizabeth Feodorovna appreciated most, Mother Nadezhda said, “It was mercy, and
she appreciated any manifestation of it. She was merciful till the very last
minute of her life.”
From the letter of Metropolitan Anastasius (Gribanovsky, ROCOR),
concerning the “Loving memory of Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna” (July 18,
1918, Jerusalem):
The
results of excavations carried out later show that till the last minute she
[Elizabeth Feodorovna] was trying to help the Grand Dukes, wounded when falling
into the mine (she bandaged their wounds.)
And the local peasants, who watched the execution from a distance, could for a
long time hear the mysterious singing of Orthodox chants, which wafted from out
of the mine shaft.
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These,
then, are the two completely opposite ideals of holiness and martyrdom that
take the name of “Christian” in the modern world. But only one stands in the
tradition and as inheritor of the faith handed down and revealed two-thousand
years ago. Only one of these canonizations—only one of these celebrations of
martyrdom—only one of these God-created human beings--demonstrated in life…and
in death…the Christian faith of the martyrs and saints.
The other
for all the pain and brutalization he suffered is a symbol, yes, but not of the
faith and the church founded by Christ, nor he is a martyr, except as seized
upon and used by those who seek to destroy that same church.
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