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Epistles and Statements, 1918–1923
St Tikhon of Moscow, The Christian East, 1920–23; Emhardt, 1929
Chapter 5
The hidden root of our malady, of our distress and of our misfortunes, is to be found there—in the sin which presses heavily down upon us. It is sin that has made our land corrupt, that has made weak the power, alike of soul and body, of the men of Russia. It is sin that has brought it to pass that, in the words of the prophet, the Lord has taken away from us “the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread . . . the mighty man, and the man of war, the judge and the prophet, and the prudent and the ancient” (Isaiah iii, 1-3). Sin has darkened the understanding of our nation and, lo! we “grope in the dark without light and stagger like a drunken man” (Job xii, 25). Sin has kindled far and wide the flame of the passions, enmity and malice; brother has armed himself against brother; the earth is drunken with innocent blood shed by a brother’s hand, and is defiled with violence, spoliation, lechery and every filthiness.
From this same poisoned fount of sin has issued the supreme seduction of sensual earthly goods to which, forgetting the one thing needful, our nation has yielded itself. We have not renounced that temptation, as Christ, the Saviour, rejected it in the wilderness. We desired to establish heaven on earth—but without God and without His holy covenants. God is not mocked. And so we go famished and parched and naked, and the seal of the curse rests upon the toil of our nation and upon every undertaking of our hands. Sin—grievous, unrepented sin—has summoned Satan from the abyss, spewing forth blasphemy against the Lord and against His Christ, and stirring up persecution against the Church.
Ah! who shall give fountains of tears to our eyes that we may weep for our disasters and for those things which are begotten of our national sins and of our abandonment of the divine law—the dimming of the glory and the lustre of our fatherland, the beggary of our country, its destitution of spirit, the ruin of its towns and villages, the desecration of its temples and holy things, all that astounding self-destruction of a great nation which has made it the amazement and the by-word of the whole world,
Where art thou, who once wast powerful and sovereign, thou Russian, thou Orthodox nation? Can it be that thou hast altogether outlived thy strength? Thou who, like a giant, high of soul and joyous, didst run the great course appointed for thee on high, and didst proclaim peace and love and justice to all men? And now thou dost lie there humbled in the dust, trodden under foot by thy foes, burning in the fire of sin, of thy lusts and of fratricidal hatred! Wilt thou not be born again of the Spirit and arise speedily again in thy might and thy glory? Can it be that the Lord has stopped the fountains of life for thee for ever? That He has quenched thy creative force to chastise thee as the unfruitful fig tree? May that never be! The thought alone plunges us in trembling fear.
Then weep, dear brethren, my children who abide faithful to your Church and native land, weep for the great sins of your fatherland, before it perish utterly. Weep for yourselves and for those who, through their hardness of heart, have not the grace of tears. Rich and poor, wise and simple, old and young, maidens and infants, join together, clothe yourselves in sackcloth as did the men of Nineveh and beseech the mercy of God for His pity upon and His salvation of Russia.