On the Eve of the Nativity of Christ and the New Year
By Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky
(Delivered in 1957)
By Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky
(Delivered in 1957)
“God is with us!” Already the Orthodox Christian breathes in the life-giving stream of sacred memories. Already the soul is being filled with the festive church hymns that glorify the descent of God to earth — and the love and closeness of God are felt more keenly. In these days people will stand closer to one another in the churches, and in doing so will also draw nearer to one another in their hearts.
More vividly there come to mind the homeland and the images of the celebration of the Nativity of Christ in church, in the family, and in the life of the people. More sharply the thought of loved ones left behind there responds in the heart, and the breast sighs more deeply over all that has been painfully abandoned there to the mercy of fate.
Now we are in a foreign land. Yet we bless this sojourn abroad, where we are free in conscience and in thought. The Lord has preserved us! The sense of our personal preservation resonates with the Church’s doxology: God’s good pleasure is with us. God is with us.
But there is no complete peace in the soul. Before its eyes stands heroic Hungary, drenched in blood. In that country the joy of the feast is drowned out by another sound: “A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping; Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be comforted, because they are no more” (Matt. 2:18). By Bolshevik tanks the attempt to free herself from communist tyranny has been crushed, and Hungary weeps for the flower of her nation, torn apart by machine guns — for her youth.
And the Russian people, our own blood, still languish in the same chains, and no end is seen to the violence that has been inflicted upon them for thirty-nine years — upon the human mind, the will, and the conscience.
The church hymns of the Nativity of Christ will fade, and the yearly hand will turn to the New Year. The year 1957 marks the fortieth anniversary of the two revolutions in Russia — the February and the October.
How shall we meet this New Year, the year of a mournful jubilee?
“Over there,” in the communist camp, the New Year will begin — and, if the Lord permits, will continue throughout the year — with lavish celebrations. Much falsehood will be poured out in the speeches of the leaders of communism about the past, the present, and the future. There will be forced, hypocritical mass festivities and demonstrations imposed upon the people.
The New Year must be met differently in the anti-communist camp. Let us recall Lermontov’s 'Borodino': “And it was heard until dawn how the French rejoiced; but quiet was our open bivouac…”
If every New Year should be met with concentration and prayer, then the coming one especially so. It is difficult to struggle against entrenched customs. But it is our duty to point out the lack of seriousness and consistency among that part of our Russian society which greets the New Year with revelry. The justification that New Year celebrations are organized for charitable purposes, and that the proceeds go to the hungry and the sick, has no weight here. In the very combination of such goals and such means there is an inner contradiction. At times it is somewhat blurred; at times it strikes the eye sharply.
At one time a small book by two Soviet writers, One-Story America, was popular abroad. Its authors had no intention of praising America and spared no effort in depicting its weaknesses, contradictions, and curiosities. Among other things, they merrily recount how they stumbled upon one such curiosity: on stage appeared a ballerina. She was dancing “for the benefit of some sectarian church!!!” Unfortunately, what the Soviet commentators present as a curiosity is treated here as a normal phenomenon — even by Orthodox people, some of whom take pride in the fact that their parish collected more for charity at a dance evening than another parish did at a church service.
Yet we would all agree that it would be strange to collect money for a funeral with a cheerful song. And here the contradiction is even greater.
In the world the struggle between two forces is growing ever sharper: those with the name of God, and the satanic forces. The Lord temporarily allows the freedom of evil powers. The Lord requires of us that we awaken and rise up with the best sides of our souls. The overcoming of the evil of communism must come through that moral uplift which creates mighty strength in an entire people. World consciousness is awakening; the spirit of resistance to communist violence is strengthening; the striving for solidarity and cohesion among the nations of the free world is growing. Communism is increasingly discrediting itself in the eyes of the whole world. The hour of its fall is drawing near.
Our hope for the destruction of Bolshevism and communism is acquiring more solid foundations. By it the future is illumined. It invigorates and drives away gloom and despondency. The New Year is a year of strengthening hope.
Yet the spirits of decay have not yet been defeated in the free world. Nor have they been overcome in the emigration from Russia. Among the “minority” emigration hostility toward the Russian state continues to be inflamed; internal discord has not been overcome within the Russian émigré community itself. All this demands concentration and seriousness when we think about the future.
Along with strengthened hope, we cannot drive sorrow away from ourselves either — holy sorrow.
It was recalled to us by the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, held this year, which called upon us, Orthodox Russian people, to observe a Day of Repentance on the anniversary of the murder of the Royal Family, July 4/17, which of itself becomes the Day of Russian Sorrow. Let it be one day, but its ray cannot fail to extend far beyond the bounds of a single day, if only because society will be required to think about this day, to comprehend it, and to prepare for it in order to observe it properly. And therefore, especially this year, the reflection of this day should already reach the first day of the New Year.
In the life of a people even great joy is so often combined with sorrow; the celebration of victory is joined with the moment when heads are bared and banners lowered in mourning for the heroes who fell in war.
All the more, such a day is important and healing for us in our circumstances, far removed from the joy of victory. It should be a day of inward deepening. One day — but it must become the expression of our constant sorrow, manifold and many-sided: for the martyred Royal Family, whose image rises ever more brightly and loftily in the people’s memory, in an aura of moral purity, devotion to their people, and a martyr’s crown; for the destruction of the state; for our common shame in yielding to a handful of violent men in the days of the revolution; for the moral fall of the Russian people; for the devastation of the Church; for the millions tortured, killed, destroyed by unbearable labor and in camps of death, physically and spiritually maimed; for the unceasing sufferings in the homeland; for the loss of religious values, of the values of spiritual culture and of material goods; for the global disgrace to which the Russian people have been led — and for our own sins, which we must expiate before God in order to have a clear conscience.
Such sorrow is holy and salvific. It is like a fire that burns away what is perishable, yet purifies the noble metal.
It has pleased God’s providence that our Orthodox Russian feasts, including the New Year, are celebrated by us according to the old style. This gives us the opportunity to celebrate them “in our own way,” in accordance with our ecclesial and national self-consciousness and our spiritual needs. We live within the common cultural life of humanity. But we also have something of our own. We have our own spiritual visage, our own history, our own feasts, and our own time for them. In this which is ours, let us be of one mind, sorrowing and rejoicing together. And let us be full of hope, believing that God’s mercy in the coming year will be with us — that "God is with us.”
Source: From the book About Life, About Faith, About the Church: Collection of Articles (1946-1976), Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1976. Translation by John Sanidopoulos.
