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Epistles and Statements, 1918–1923

St Tikhon of Moscow, The Christian East, 1920–23; Emhardt, 1929

Chapter 3

By the grace of God, humble Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and of all Russia, to all faithful children of the Russian Orthodox Church.

May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Among the heavy calamities and trials which befell the world on account of our lawlessness, the greatest and most terrible is the famine which affected wide regions inhabited by many millions of people. As early as August, 1921, when rumors about the terrible calamity began to reach our ears, we, regarding it our duty to come to the aid of our suffering spiritual children, addressed a message to the heads of the several Christian communions (to the Orthodox Patriarchs, the Roman Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Bishop of New York), appealing to them, for the sake of Christian love, to make collections of money and provisions for the starving Volga region people.

At the same time, an All-Russian Committee of Aid for the Starving was organized, and money was being collected in all churches, as well as among the various groups, to be devoted to the aid of the famine-stricken. But such a Church committee was declared superfluous by the Soviet government, and all sums already collected by it were ordered to be turned over (and were turned over) to the governmental committee.

However, in December, we were requested to collect, through the instrumentality of the administrative organs of the Sacred Synod, the Supreme Ecclesiastical Council, the eparchial councils, and the diocesan and parochial councils, money and provisions to aid the starving.

Desiring to coöperate with every possible effort to aid the starving people of the Volga region, we found it possible to permit the parochial councils and societies to sacrifice, for the needs of the starving, the valuable ecclesiastical ornaments and objects which were not used for the divine services, and we announced this to the Orthodox population on February 6/19 of this year by a special proclamation which the authorities permitted to be printed and distributed among the people.

But there followed violent attacks upon the spiritual leaders of the Church by the governmental newspapers, and then the All-Russian Executive Committee, in a rescript dated February 13/26, regarding aid to the starving, ordered all valuable ecclesiastical objects, including even the consecrated vessels and similar objects used in celebration of the divine services, to be removed from the churches.

From the point of view of the Church, such an act is sacrilegious, and we esteem it our sacred duty to make known the view of the Church regarding the act and to inform our faithful children about it.

In view of the extraordinarily disastrous circumstances, we permitted the possibility of sacrificing Church objects which were not consecrated and were not used in the divine services. We exhort all faithful children of the Church even now to make such sacrifices, desiring only that they be the response of a loving heart to the needs of their neighbor, so that they may actually manifest genuine help to our suffering brethren. But we cannot approve the removal of the consecrated objects from our churches even though it were by way of a voluntary surrender, for their use for any other purpose than the divine service is prohibited by the canons of the Ecumenical Church, and is punishable as a sacrilege; in case of laymen, by excommunication; clergy by degradation from the sacerdotal rank. Given in Moscow, February 15, 1922.¹

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