Interior of Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow (Fyodor Klages, 1883)
Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, Deputy Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations, said that Russia needs to keep its Byzantine heritage alive in order not to be left behind by the march of history. “The Italian professor Silvio Ferrari, a prominent specialist on church and state relations, once said, ‘The Byzantine Empire fell apart because it couldn’t take in other civilisations. Rome survived as it managed to enculturate the barbarians’”, Fr Vsevolod wrote in the next instalment of his series Scraps published in the newspaper Pravoslavnaya Moskva (Orthodox Moscow).
He said that Byzantium did not vanish without a trace, “it was reincarnated in Russia. It survived to the degree as it managed to convert many peoples to its faith. In both cases, Roman and ours, it happened because society had the force to convey its faith despite the limits of state and ethnos”, Fr Vsevolod said. “This force is the Church of Christ, which realises that life of every state and nation is limited in space and time, but it strives to preach to ‘the far and the near’, even to its enemies. May the Lord make us such a force. It will make Russia ‘Byzantium without its faults’, (a Byzantium) that will never be dropped into the dustbin of history. Let it be!” Fr Vsevolod wished.
29 February 2008
Interfax-Religion
http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=4345



