A home video of this year’s fireworks show for the New Year in a Russian city (Moscow is eight hours ahead of New York).
s Novym Godom! To the New Year!
Vara and Nicky in Albany
Wednesday, 31 December 2008
Metropolitan Kirill to Offer a Molieben for the New Year at the Epiphany Cathedral in Moscow
Metropolitan Kirill Gundyaev of Smolensk and Kaliningrad (1946- ), the Patriarchal Locum Tenens
Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, the Patriarchal Locum Tenens, will serve an evening molieben tonight at the New Epiphany (Yelokhovsk) Cathedral in Moscow, which is the burial place of Patriarch Aleksei II of Moscow and All Russia, the 15th First hierarch of the MP. According to the press service of the Moscow Patriarchate, as reported by RIA-Novosti, the molieben shall begin at 17.00 Moscow time (09.00 EST 13.00 UTC). Today, moliebens for the New Year will be served in most churches of the MP. This is a special service where believers thank God for His favours in the past year and ask His blessings on the year to come for themselves, their families, and the Motherland. As a rule, moliebens for the New Year take place either immediately after the Divine Liturgy, or a few hours before midnight, or, sometimes, precisely at midnight.
“At New Year’s, normally, people reflect on the past year. For Christians, this should be a time of prayerful recollection, perhaps, asking repentance for their sins. Of course, it is a time to thank the Lord for all the good that we received in the past year and for those things we shall receive in the coming year”, Fr Mikhail Prokopenko, the head of Communications Service of the Department for External Church Relations, said to RIA-Novosti.
“This is our first New Year without Patriarch Aleksei. The Church prays for the repose of his soul and asks for God to reveal to us His Will in the election of a new patriarch. Therefore, we should join our prayers for the preservation of Church unity and peace, along with hopes of a blessed and timely election of our new patriarch, to our normal thoughts and feelings at the beginning of the New Year”, Fr Michael emphasised. In his opinion, festive holidays give believers an excellent opportunity “to remove themselves from the usual everyday cares of life in the last week of the Christmas Lent” (it ends on Christmas, 7 January, on the Julian calendar used by the MP).
In this Lenten period, the Church urges us to find time for prayer, repentance, and abstention, particularly from loud entertainment, and asks us not to eat meat, dairy products, and eggs. Fr Mikhail wished that Russians would celebrate the New Year with relatives and friends joyfully, but, “not in an alcoholic haze or in unrestrained debauchery, which is alien to Christian sobriety”. In answering a question concerning the New Year’s festal meal, Fr Mikhail noted that “modern people are able to keep the standards of the Christmas Lent”. However, when asked about champagne, he said, “We do not condemn the drinking of wine; rather, we are against its abuse”.
In the Catholic Church, as its representative in Moscow reported to RIA-Novosti, 1 January is a religious holiday, the Day of the Mother of God. Many Catholic churches will offer a midnight Mass, in which the faithful thank God for the past year and ask His blessings on the New Year, and “mark it by remembering the example of the Virgin Mary, who consented freely to the Will of God”. Most of the followers of the other traditional, non-Orthodox, Russian confessions (Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism) will also offer prayers for the welfare of their loved ones and the Motherland in the New Year, and will celebrate it at home, as a secular, but, meaningful and bright, family holiday.
31 December 2008
Olga Lipich
RIA-Novosti
http://www.rian.ru/society/20081231/158397468.html (in Russian)
Tuesday, 30 December 2008
“Family Reading”
from Portraits (Aleksandr Ivannikov, 2004)
The outgoing year, 2008, which was declared the Year of Family in Russia, came to a close with the publication of a 10-volume anthology entitled Family Reading. The ambitious project can well be regarded as a publishers’ response to a better demographic situation in the country. The outgoing Year of Family registered the birth-rate at 7 percent, which is the highest in the past 15 years. In addition, to encourage births, the anthology was designed as an alternative to television and the Internet.
from Portraits (Aleksandr Ivannikov, 2004)
One of its masterminds, Georgy Priakhin, described it as a worthy competitor. “This anthology contains literary and folk tales, from both Russia and other countries. It also provides valuable information on buried treasures, only our readers know where the treasures are buried, and it gives an extensive account of the battles of the past, God willing, there’ll be none in future. It presents travel and discovery maps and a world of wildlife with rare plants and animals. Children are thus taught to perceive both the artistic and the material”, Mr Priakhin said.
from Portraits (Aleksandr Ivannikov, 2004)
Each volume of the anthology has a title. For one, the Bremen Musicians comprises fairytales and fantasy stories by fairy tale authors from all over the world, Charles Perrault, the brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, Oscar Wilde, and George Sand. The little readers can learn to read from the anthology, for every volume is provided with an ABC. the cover and illustrations are just out of this world, featuring reproductions of works by famous artists and genre scenes, all classified into chapters such as “Your Picture Gallery” or “Round the World: from Century into Century”.
Annushka (Fr Vladimir Kolosov, 2008)
Each volume proceeds from the easy to the difficult, which comes particularly handy for parents, who find it a challenge to introduce their children into a world of literary knowledge slowly, step by step. To piece together a collection of this kind was no easy, Mr Priakhin said, but, it was worth the effort. A whole group of experts worked on it for several years. The editors of the Family Reading anthology now doubt that 10 volumes are enough to include a sufficient number of works by contemporary writers, so, the project may go on. New literary works for children may thus come to enlarge the anthology ad infinitum in future.
29 December 2008
Voice of Russia World Service
http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=37548&cid=59&p=29.12.2008 (in English)
Editor’s Note:
The photos are from a wonderful site called Orthodoxy Foto. The images may be used to illustrate Orthodox or family articles, if an attribution and a mention of the photographer is given. A beautiful site from Russia (don’t listen to the nay-sayers who tell you that the Church in Russia in corrupt… be serious!).
Fr Vsevolod Chaplin says that the Lord shall Show Us His Will in the Local Council, as He Revealed It in the Time of the Renovationist Schism
Fr Vsevolod Chaplin (1968- ), Deputy Head of the MP DECR
Moscow, 30 December 2008 (Interfax):
Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, the Deputy Chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, believed that the new Patriarch will be elected at the Local Council through the Will of God, and human plans and expectations are not all able to prejudge anything. “Now, of course, much has been said about the various candidates for the patriarchal office. The most important thing is to follow the revealed Will of God, which we always see in history, even on the most difficult questions”, he said, in response to listeners’ questions live on the radio station Radonezh. Fr Vsevolod pointed up the dogmatic disputes of the first millennium of Christianity, saying, “The Will of God is always found through the conciliar mind of the Church, which sometimes does not find the right solution immediately, but, in the end, it eventually comes to one, moreover, precisely when a real choice stands before it”.
Fr Vsevolod is convinced that “the Lord Himself leads His Church. History teaches us the truth of this. Human wisdom, human plans, and human expectations are not able to define or solve the problems facing the Church”. It is a fact that “all who have a sense of church-consciousness and faith, such as bishops, priests, and grounded laity, understand that the Lord shall show us His Will and it is our affair to obey it and to understand that we do nothing in the Church without following the Will of God.
If it were not for the will of God, there would only be only human reasoning, planning, forecasting, and techniques… in other words, the Renovationist schism would have won. After all, they had the support of the government of the time! Its rule was brutal and inflexible, and all bowed before it with the sole exception of the believers. The intelligentsia, the military, scientists… all bowed down to the Bolsheviks, except for the Church, which did not do so”, he said. Fr Vsevolod went on to say that the Renovationist schism “included many very intelligent people, boasting prominent hierarchs who were considered amongst the leading-lights of the Church, along with the support of the secular leadership, which led to them grabbing the best church-buildings.
In human terms, one would expect them to win a complete victory, but, that did not happen. The Renovationists forgot the most important goal of church life, they did not struggle to acquire eternal salvation through the true Faith, they failed to act as Christians ought”, he said. ”The true Church had far fewer famous people in its ranks, it was humbled, it was driven into prison or the labour camps, yet, it survived. Over the course of a few decades, this schism disappeared, and its surviving leaders begged forgiveness and repentance, living out the remainder of their days in obscurity and in a complete moral vacuum”, Fr Vsevolod concluded.
Interfax-Religion
http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=28121 (in Russian)
Editor’s Note:
It is interesting that Fr Vsevolod brings up the topic of the Renovationists. For those not familiar with the history, they believed in such things as a married episcopate, the possibility of remarriage for widowed priests, the abbreviation of the divine services, and the use of “lowest common denominator” modern Russian as the liturgical language. Sounds familiar, no? Indeed… it sounds EXACTLY like the tune played by SVS, Syosset, Basil Osborne, St Sergius in Paris, New Skete, Mark Stokoe, and “Orthodox Christian Laity”. This leads me to a bold statement.
If one were to look at the OCA today, if one were to read the oca.org website, one would think that Vladyki Jonas was hand-in-glove with the above-named currents. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Rossiskaya Gazeta interview is being kept from the faithful. There is no English translation on the OCA or SVS sites, and I shall say this is culpable. I translated it within hours, and they were just as capable of doing likewise. It was carried by two major Russian websites, Interfax-Religion and Pravoslavie.ru. That is, the Russian faithful were given this strong meat by Vladyki Jonas, but, the American faithful were left in the dark, deliberately, I believe.
Humanly speaking, it is no contest; the powers-that-be far overwhelm Vladyki Jonas. However, when one reads the RG interview, one sees a very traditional and very churchly bishop, not a Renovationist or Americanist phyletist. I would say the following to Vladyki Jonas, “Sir, your task is just beginning, and the task of rebuilding shall be daunting at times. There shall be no time for ’strategic plans’ or grandiose airy-fairy schemes. There can only be the repayment of debt, the replanting of the Christian faith in the place of therapeutic nihilism (SVS is particularly rife with this), and the rebuilding of the shattered confidence of the faithful. In short, sir, you must pull on your wellies and muck out the byre! It’s not very nice, it’s rather nasty and dirty, but, if it is not done, Christ’s Church shall not be able to stand again. Shall you rise to the occasion, sir, or, shall you give pleasant commencement addresses and gallivant all over the globe? The choice is yours and yours alone. I pray that you make the right choice”.
I hope that Vladyki Jonas understands that I have no animus towards him, quite the contrary. However, the time for serious work is upon us. Shall he prove sound? Time alone shall tell us…
President Medvedev Urges US President-elect Obama to Work with Russia on Global Problems
US President-elect Barack Obama (1961- ), God willing, he shall end the disastrous neocon foreign policy of Clinton and Bush II. Time shall give us his measure.
President Dmitri Medvedev invited US President-elect Barack Obama to launch a joint effort to deal with global problems. In a seasonal message to Mr Obama released by the Kremlin press service on Tuesday, Mr Medvedev said that Russia and the United States had accumulated valuable experience in cooperating on current international problems. “I am sure that, at the present time, it will be in special demand. I act on the assumption that we will, without delay, start working together along all major lines, taking into consideration the situation in the world and our countries’ interests”, Mr Medvedev said.
Mr Obama is to be inaugurated in Washington on 20 January. “You are assuming the post of the President of the United States at a trying moment. But, I am sure that despite the scale and complexity of outstanding problems, you will meet with success”, Mr Medvedev said. He added that he was sure that Russia and the United States would manage to “augment the positive experience in cooperation on the basis of pragmatism and a balance of interests”.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in mid-December that President Medvedev would meet with President Obama, shortly after his inauguration. Russia-US relations have been frayed by Washington’s plans to deploy elements of a missile shield to Central Europe, Russia’s five-day war with Georgia over South Ossetia in August, and NATO’s eastward expansion. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin recently said that he expected Russia’s relations with the United States to improve after Mr Obama takes office in January. His words were echoed by Mr Medvedev.
Mr Obama said earlier this month that he wanted to “reset” relations between Washington and an “increasingly assertive” Moscow. “We want to cooperate with them where we can, and there are a whole host of areas, particularly around non-proliferation of weapons and terrorism, where we can cooperate, but, we also have to send a clear message that they have to act in ways that are not bullying their neighbours”, Mr Obama said.
30 December 2008
RIA-Novosti
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20081230/119234336.html (in English)
Space Year Crisis-Free
Russia’s space industry is ending the year without mishaps. Although old headaches and problems are still there, things have not changed for the worse, and, in our troubled times, that is quite an achievement. Despite the crisis, Russia is leading the world in rocket launches. On 25 December, the last launch this year was carried out, a heavy Proton carrier-rocket orbited three satellites of the Glonass (Global Navigation Satellite System). The Russians made 27 launches in 2008, one more than in 2007. This is a post-Soviet record. The Americans dropped markedly behind, with 14 launches, including one unsuccessful attempt, the Falcon-1. China carried out seven space launches, including one manned. Five French Ariane-5 launch vehicles lifted off from the Kourou space centre in French Guiana. As many Russian-Ukrainian Zenit-3SL rockets blasted off from the Odyssey sea-based platform in the equatorial Pacific, operated by the Sea Launch Company. India and Japan made their space debuts, 3 to 1, respectively. Iran tried to become a space power, but, there is no proof that it put a spacecraft into Earth orbit.
In January to October, 85 satellites were injected into space, with the largest number, 35, launched by Russia. In this case, however, it acted as a traditional freighter and orbited more foreign satellites than its own. Russia leads the world in rocket launches, but, it is still using technology created fifty years ago. Its rockets are robust, but, there is a limit to everything. It seems it is time to roll out new launch vehicles. But, there is none. Let us hope we’ll see them in future. At the same time, it is hard to disagree with the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) that launch services require high technologies, of the same type that are used to develop nano-products, and Roscosmos is determined to stay ahead despite the global crisis. It is common wisdom that most efforts are needed where success is assured.
Russia’s Glonass system is a nice example of that. Its 17 satellites were joined this year by three more, launched by a Proton. There is hope that Glonass satellites will soon cover all of Russia. Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, commenting on the successful 25 December launch, said, “Personally, I do not think the space end of Glonass has any major problems left. In the next two years, we should focus on the ground framework”. Good progress was reported on the ground. The terrestrial infrastructure for space monitoring has been improved and space findings are being used with greater effectiveness. It is also gratifying that college and university students are actively joining the effort. In 2008, three Russian universities, the Siberian and Southern Federal universities and Tyumen State University, set up space monitoring centres. The technologies they are using were developed in Russia by the ScanX Engineering Technology Centre. The centres serve to observe the environment in Russia’s regions from space.
But, to be effective, they need a large number of remote-sensing satellites, which are unfortunately lacking. However, next year’s plans include launching more Earth and weather satellites. If everything goes well, Russia will acquire its own constellation of weather satellites by 2013. Given a large and upgraded fleet of rockets and spacecraft of all types, Russia may become the absolute space leader at the beginning of the next decade.
30 December 2008
Andrei Kislyakov
RIA-Novosti
http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20081230/119232238.html (in English)
Monday, 29 December 2008
Patriarch Aleksei Asked Us to Maintain the Unity of the Church, According to Metropolitan Kirill
Patriarch Aleksei Rediger of Moscow and all Russia (1929-2008), at the Reunion Liturgy of the MP and ROCOR on 17 May 2007 at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. Truly, blessed unity in action!
Moscow, 29 December 2008 (Interfax):
Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, the Patriarchal Locum Tenens, said that the late Patriarch Aleksei II asked us to “to take a special care for the unity of the Church”. In keeping with this, Vladyki Kirill said that the attempts by some to introduce discord into church life on the eve of the election of a new First Hierarch were sinful and fruitless. “We pray for the unity of the Church, especially now, on the eve of the Local Council, as some factions and elements attempt to bend people to their opinions. All of this is nothing but sin, emptiness, and froth, which the Lord shall blow away with one puff of His breath”, Metropolitan Kirill said on Sunday at the Sretensky Monastery in Moscow after the conclusion of a festal Divine Liturgy dedicated to the memory of Hieromartyr Hilarion Troitsky.
St Hilarion Troitsky (1886-1929), one of the leading figures in the restoration of the Patriarchate of Moscow and all Russia in 1917, was an outstanding theologian, a champion of church unity, and close colleague of Patriarch St Tikhon Bellavin (1865-1925, ruled 1917-25). He was one of the thousands of Orthodox faithful who suffered for the faith during the Bolshevik repressions in Russia. His motto was, “We should not sit behind the walls of our monasteries and seminaries”, so, he conducted active missionary work, including amongst the Bolsheviks, engaging them in debates on religion in the polytechnic museum, in the process, skilfully refuting the arguments of the atheists. In the end, St Hilarion was imprisoned on Solovki in the Russian North in the White Sea, then, he was sent into exile, where he died.
In the opinion of Metropolitan Kirill, the faithful of the MP are called to pray so that the Lord would send us a First Hierarch “who has a pure Faith, who would accept martyrdom, if such were to be his lot. We believe that not only our human decision, but, the Will of God, shall be accomplished at the forthcoming election of our new First Hierarch, so, we ask that the prayers of St Hilarion be with us, as they were with Patriarch St Tikhon”.
Interfax-Religion
http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=28096 (in Russian)
Editor’s Note:
I found a major lacunae in Orthodox Wiki as I was researching some of the details in this post (dates and whatnot), and I was shocked to find that Maria Skobtsova, the questionable (at best) figure from Paris, was included in “Russian saints”, but, St Hilarion Troitsky, a MUCH more substantial and holy figure was omitted. This is shameful. It makes one wonder. Shall someone remedy this lack?
Metropolitan Kirill says that Orthodox Believers Should Keep the Purity of the Faith and Share It with Those Who are Near and Far
Icon of New Hieromartyr and Confessor St Hilarion Troitsky, Bishop of Vereisk (1886-1929). The words on the scroll are, “Outside the Church, There is No Salvation”. This icon is from the chapel at Butyrki Prison in Moscow, where St Hilarion served part of his sentence. It was painted by Georgi from Istra in 2005.
Moscow, 29 December 2008 (Interfax):
Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, the Patriarchal Locum Tenens, thinks that Orthodox believers should not avoid dialogue with Christians of other confessions, as this is according to the canonical tradition of Orthodox Church, its dogma, and practise. Last Sunday, Metropolitan Kirill conducted a festal Divine Liturgy at the Sretensky Monastery in Moscow, in the presence of the relics of Holy Hieromartyr Hilarion Troitsky, who defended Orthodoxy in the early years of the atheist repression in the USSR. “It was a time when it was necessary to protect the teaching of the Church, and Vladyki Hilarion rejected the so-called ‘Branch Theory’, which claimed that all confessions are branches of one and the same tree, and salvation can be found in equal degree in all of them”, Vladyki Kirill said on Monday, in answering the questions of journalists in Moscow.
According to Metropolitan Kirill, “Our attitude to non-Orthodox confessions must be based on the mainstream elements of our theological tradition and the Holy Fathers”. He went on to say that, specifically, in following this tradition, the Archpastoral Council passed unanimously a document on the attitude of Orthodoxy to non-Orthodox confessions, which “clearly defines such behaviour”. Metropolitan Kirill noted that St Hilarion did not shun correspondence with non-Orthodox people, for example, he wrote a series of letters to Robert Gardiner, the secretary of the Commission appointed to arrange a World Conference of Christianity, the precursor of the World Council of Churches, and, “near the end of his life, Mr Gardner almost converted to Orthodoxy. Preserving and protecting the purity of Orthodox faith, we must share our Orthodox faith with those who are near and far, we should keep on doing it as St Hilarion did”, according to Metropolitan Kirill.
Interfax-Religion
http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=28106 (in Russian)
Fr Vsevolod Chaplin says that the Rejection of Christianity will lead The West to “A War of All against All”
Fr Vsevolod Chaplin (1968- ), Deputy Chairman of the MP DECR
Moscow, 29 December 2008 (Interfax):
Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, the Deputy Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations, on Saturday, on the Pravoslavnaya Entsiklopedia (Orthodox Encyclopaedia) TV programme on TV Tsentr (TV Centre), predicted that, if the West finally rejects its Christian heritage, it will face “a war of all against all”. “When the West tries to expel, to erase, every reference to Christ from the public square, it’s nothing but a sign of pathology, of a fight against their own conscience, their own tradition. It won’t surprise me, if the West loses itself entirely in this fight”. According to Fr Vsevolod, “Until now, the West has lived on the reserve of moral stability accumulated in the Middle Ages. Take this reserve away and the West will again start the war of all against all, not in the form of wars between Belgium and France, Germany and England, but, rather, between economic and political blocs, who, very probably, led us to the present economic crisis”.
He noted that, today, the oppression of Christians is a very serious problem, whilst no one even mentioned it five years ago. “There always have been people who hate the Church, and there shall always be such”, Fr Vsevolod noted. “The reasons may be different, but, the most basic factor is that a person living in sin is afraid that the Church may awaken his conscience”. In his opinion, “Christians should struggle against it not by force, not ‘with clubs and sticks’, but, by using common prayer and civil actions based on that prayer, for prayer is ’stronger than anything’. We shouldn’t try to wipe out our persecutors by reciprocal repressions; we should try to change these people. The 2,000-year experience of the Church proves it is possible to change even the most extreme persecutor of the Church, if we can show him that in hating the Church, he is not happy, not free, and not irretrievably lost in his sin, that he is subject to evil forces who twist his life as they will”, Fr Vsevolod said.
Interfax-Religion
http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=28100 (in Russian)
President Medvedev Encouraged All Russians to Participate in Sport
President Dmitri Medvedev (1965- )
President Dmitri Medvedev encouraged all Russians to be actively involved in gymnastics and sport. He urged all local governments to contribute in every way possible to the building of sport arenas, swimming pools, and football pitches.
“There is no lack of young people, yes, even amongst adults, who wish to participate in sport. If our students dream of playing in world championships and the Olympics, then, most adults and youths work out and dive into swimming pools for one purpose only, to keep up their health and keep down their weight. Lately, there are more possibilities for people to do this as the regional governments are paying more attention to the sport infrastructure”, President Medvedev emphasised.
“Now, it’s fashionable to engage in sport. People do it with pleasure, they sign up for teams, and they play for fun… this has become a need for them and this means that we now have a healthier nation. In many respects, this is due to the recent string of victories by our athletes. By doing this, the triumph of their victories is not forgotten. Those exciting plays are burned into our memory as positive moments in our lives, and we see enormous pride in Russia, our athletes, and even for our fans, which support and cheer on their favourites. Now, the most important thing is to support, in every way possible, this trend for popular sport participation. We must build all sorts of sport facilities, in spite of the present economic situation”, Mr Medvedev concluded.
In his turn, Vitaly Mutko, the Minister of Sport, promised that the entire sport programme shall be executed in a timely fashion. “Our plans for the development of physical culture and sport shall not change, and the development of mass physical culture shall receive a high priority, first of all, in schools and institutes of higher education (VUZs). By 2015, we must build about 4,000 stadia and sport centres. The present economic crisis shall not reduce the federal budget for sport. I can say the same concerning the preparation of the Olympic team for the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver and the construction of the Olympic facilities in Sochi”, Mr Mutko noted.
26 December 2008
Svetlana Andreyeva
Voice of Russia World Service
http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=rus&q=95547&cid=25&p=26.12.2008 (in Russian)
