The Baptism of Russia
Viktor Vasnetsov
1898
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Editor’s Foreword:
This isn’t a short piece, but, it’s by one of the most prominent laymen in Russia, the journalist Kirill Frolov, the head of the Union of Orthodox Citizens. The first five paragraphs can be skipped by those unfamiliar with current Russian-Ukrainian relations, and the part dealing with mission per se begins in the sixth paragraph. Frolov pulls no punches, and he’s no pantywaist. A bracing read, I say.
BMD
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The Ukrainian Orthodox Church/MP (UOC/MP), the largest Christian confession in the Ukraine, has learned how to act independently of the state, for it has no illusions regarding the “Orange” leadership. The “Orange” position is clear to all, by hook or crook they are trying to detach the Ukrainian church from the Russian church, they wish to tear away the last barrier that interferes with their intention to attempt to transform the Ukraine into an anti-Russian state. One of the latest actions of President Yushchenko was an invitation to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to visit the Ukraine. As all know, the EP has very few faithful [on its legitimate canonical territory] and it’s totally dependent on the USA. The strategy of the “Orange” cabal is to bring the EP into the church situation in the Ukraine in support of the so-called “Kiev Patriarchate” (UOC/KP) and the so-called “Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church” (UAOC). A delegation of the EP headed by Metropolitan Emmanuel of France visited the Ukraine at the invitation of the Ukrainian president, and it met with the anathematised outlaw Filaret Denisenko. Earlier, the representatives of the EP made uncanonical statements to the effect that they were going to intervene in matters concerning the canonical territory of the MP (e.g., the Ukraine), but they denied then that they were going to meet with Denisenko. Their dissimulation doesn’t fool us. There is another aspect to this meeting; it’s a call for all Orthodox to join a proposed Unia with the Roman Catholics.
After all this, Yushchenko invited Patriarch Bartholomew to come to the Ukraine at the same time that His Holiness Patriarch Aleksei is scheduled to visit. However, Bartholomew doesn’t have the right to visit the Ukraine without the permission of Patriarch Aleksei. What’s more, one must see this in the context of the EP delegation meeting with Filaret Denisenko. Shall the recognition of the UOC/KP and the UAOC by the EP undermine the sole canonical and legitimate church of the Ukraine, the UOC/MP? Shall the uncanonical invasion of the Ukraine by the EP shake the UOC/MP? It’ll have no real effect. In the 1920s, the EP and the Patriarchate of Jerusalem recognised the Bolshevik-inspired Renovationist (obnovlenstvo) schism. At that time, Turkey was the ally of the Reds and it put pressure on the EP. Patriarch St Tikhon Bellavin of Moscow wasn’t troubled at all by this. The Metropolia of Kiev was given autonomous status by the 1917-18 Sobor, it rejected the recognition of the Renovationists by the EP (as everyone in the canonical MP did), and, in the end, it conquered. The flock was loyal and remained in the canonical church.
Besides a general refusal to compromise on the main matters such as dogmas, canons, and the general unity of the MP on its legitimate canonical territory, it’s logical for the UOC/MP to answer the EP incursion by launching a “missionary counterattack”. Indeed, today, this “missionary counterattack” should be the main theme of Russian church life. For example, look at the action taken by the Sretensky Monastery during the Lent in passing out copies of the Gospels in the Moscow Metro. Also, there is the “human rights manifesto” of the MP, which shall be voted on by the Archbishop’s Council of the MP to be held from 25 to 29 June. This manifesto proclaims that Russia is autonomous in deciding what is covered by the term of “human rights”; it is not slavishly tied to Western definitions of this important term. Another example of this is the successful conclusion of the first half of the “missionary tour” of Russian and Ukrainian rock musicians along with Deacon Andrei Kuraev, a professor of theology at the MDA. Firstly, Deacon Andrei and the rockers went to the western Ukraine, the most contentious area in Russian church life, where schismatics and Uniates seized thousands of Orthodox churches. It was said that the young people there were, more or less, spiritually-deficient and anti-Russian, the area was overrun with Russophobic propaganda… all they shall do is boo and hiss and not listen to an Orthodox preacher. Yet, nevertheless…
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The Protection of the Most Holy Mother of God
Unknown Artist
Old Russian
16th century
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The appearances of the Russian rocker Yuri Shevchuk, front-man of the group DDT, the rock groups Bratya Karamazovy (The Brothers Karamazov) and Skay, along with the well-known Orthodox missionary Fr Andrei Kuraev, met with nothing but great success in the western Ukrainian cities of Lvov, Lutsk, and Rovno. In Rovno, the stadium in which the Russian rockers and Fr Andrei appeared couldn’t accommodate all of those who wanted to attend. In Lutsk, Metropolitan Nifont attended the concert, and the crowd was immense. In Lvov, the police estimated that over 15,000 people showed up to see the Russian rockers and Fr Andrei. Fr Andrei was struck by the impressions that the concerts gave him. “In Lutsk, the kids gave me flowers after the concert. They didn’t punch me in the nose and call me a ‘moskal’ (a derogatory term in the western Ukrainian dialect for Russians) priest. In Lvov, when Yuri Shevchuk said enthusiastically, ‘Russians and Ukrainians are brothers forever’, the crowd applauded”.
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Yuri Shevchuk appearing with Bratya Karamazovy
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The mayor of Ivanovo-Frankovsk banned the appearance of Shevchuk and Fr Andrei in the city, using as an excuse the pretext that the front-man of the band Bratya Karamazovy had made statements critical of Yushchenko and NATO. After this, the city of Kalush in Ivanovo-Frankovsk oblast made available a venue for the concert. On 8 May, a concert with DDT and Bratya Karamazovy took place, and Fr Andrei spoke from the stage to the audience. All the announcements at the concert were made in the Russian language, and no adverse reaction was seen to this. Besides appearing on stage with Yuri Shevchuk and the rockers, Deacon Andrei would lecture in every city, and religious books were sold at every concert. These books were aimed at a general secular audience, they explained the differences between Orthodoxy and the schismatic bodies and the heterodox confessions, and they stressed the unique nature of the Church. Priests from the western Ukrainian dioceses were also part of the concerts; they went amongst the young people to tell them that the parishes of the canonical Orthodox Church await them eagerly and they welcome them.
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DDT
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In every city where Shevchuk and Fr Andrei went, there were religious processions with a portion of the relics of Grand Prince Equal-to-the-Apostles St Vladimir, the true patron of all missionaries. He baptised Russia without delay, without empty prattle saying that “preaching to the crowd isn’t Orthodox” or “the number of Orthodox isn’t important to me”. If he had listened to voices such as we hear in our time, that we shouldn’t “give offence” to others, he would’ve banned the few Orthodox missionaries that there were in Russia at the time and there would’ve been no Baptism of Russia. Metropolitan Nifont of Lutsk and Volynia said that Deacon Andrei “is an outstanding person, who always responds to any question”. Metropolitan Nifont is no modernist. He’s a man firmly rooted in the spiritual tradition of Russian monasticism; he absorbed the fervent zeal of the Holy Trinity-St Sergius Monastery and of the famous monastery of Pochaev. Vladyki Nifont is a firm defender of the Orthodox dogma and he’s a confessor.
At the beginning of the 1990s, when President Kravchuk ginned up the so-called UOC/KP, the followers of this schismatic body committed nasty atrocities in Volynia, acting like the Banderovtsy and Melnikovtsy {Ukrainian bandit bands: editor} during World War II. In the ‘40s, 10 priests of the UOC/MP in Volynia were killed by radical nationalists because they refused to reject the Russian church. In the ‘90s, such thuggish behaviour was repeated in Volynia by supporters of the UOC/KP, they assaulted both priests and laymen of the canonical church. The authorities in Kiev refused to condemn these attacks; they were a part of the political beau monde of the time. The UOC/KP schismatics then attacked Metropolitan Nifont and then they dragged him into court. However, the Volynia diocese of the UOC/MP won a judgement against the schismatics; the court ordered the return of the cathedral seized illegally by the UOC/KP. Unfortunately, these crooks refused to carry out the court order.
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The Baptism of Russia
Mikhail Shankov
2003
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An acquaintance with these facts, no doubt, has been useful and enlightening for the front-man of DDT, Yuri Shevchuk, to see “Orange democracy” in action. Certainly, some have asked why the “dissident” Shevchuk rather than Konstantin Kinchyov {another Russian rocker, front-man of Alisa: editor} appearing on stage in this tour. I’ll attempt to answer this. Since Russia is strong and vigorous, it doesn’t fear the individual political opinions of Yuri Shevchuk. In Russia, one can express dislike of the government; some even express a noisome hatred of Russia itself. Yuri Shevchuk can’t be reproached in this. Therefore, Shevchuk’s appearance in the western Ukraine is an obvious reproach to the supporters of “Bandera democracy” {Stepan Bandera was a leader of the notorious OUN terrorist organisation, a Ukrainian al-Qaeda: editor}, people who didn’t scruple at beating priests and attacking bishops.
After the concert in Lutsk, there was an appearance in Lvov. In a city known to be the epicentre of Uniatism and the stronghold of anti-Russian sentiment, 15,000 people attentively listened to Yuri Shevchuk’s songs and to Fr Andrei’s preaching. Before the concert, there was a joint press conference with the only canonical Orthodox bishop of Lvov, Vladyki Avgustin. He’s an amazing man who’s the head of the military department of the UOC/MP as well as the head of the Lvov diocese. Would you believe it? He jumps out of airplanes together with the paratroopers! Vladyki thinks that prayer helps him when he is driving very fast, so fast, that some in the diocese are nervous. Archbishop Avgustin opened in Lvov a branch of the St Tikhon Orthodox University. Despite what some thought, “the hand of Moscow” wasn’t behind the founding of the school, rather, it was quite the contrary. However… we’ll talk about this problem later. In Carpatho-Russia, the rockers and the missionaries held an informal meeting with the national élite, along with Fr Dmitri Sidor, who’s the rector of the cathedral in Uzhgorod, the spiritual leader of the Carpatho-Russians, and the head of “The Ark of Carpatho-Russia”. Carpatho-Russians, in marked contrast to Galicians, are faithful to the canonical church. In Carpatho-Russia, there are over 600 parishes of the MP.
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Skay
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In the 1990s, the Uniates demanded the “return” of the majority of churches in Uzhgorod. Fr Dmitri established a new parish, he designed the building himself, and he built a new cathedral in the centre of Uzhgorod. It is able to accommodate some 6,000 worshippers, and there’s also a social outreach complex alongside consisting of a Carpatho-Russian museum, a charity dining room, a TV and radio broadcasting centre, and the editorial offices of the newspaper Khristianskaya Semya (The Christian Family). On Easter, the crowd can exceed 60,000 people. This shows the influence a single personality can have on history. If it were not for priests such as Fr Dmitri, Uzhgorod would be a totally Uniate city. If all priests were like Fr Dmitri, we’d be living in a truly Orthodox country now. In Vinnitsa, the concert and Fr Andrei’s preaching drew an audience of about 50,000. In Dnepropetrovsk, a wonderful bishop stepped out onto the stage, Metropolitan Irinei, who called on the crowd to join the army of Orthodox missionaries. Then, appearances in Zaporozhe, Donetsk, Lugansk, Poltava, Kharkov, and Chernigov followed swiftly. Everywhere, there were 20,000 to 30,000 spectators, and in Chernigov, there were about 50,000.
In Chernigov, Archbishop Amvrosy sprinkled holy water over the crowd from a hot-air balloon. Tens of thousands of people gathered to listen to the rockers Shevchuk and Oleg Karamazov, and to hear Deacon Andrei’s message. When Deacon Andrei stepped out on stage, the crowd broke into loud cheering. Whilst he was preaching his sermon, there was dead silence. When he was finished, the audience gave him as loud a round of applause as they gave to the rocker Shevchuk. If you wish to see how skilfully Fr Andrei interacts with his audience, you can see a videotape of the sermon on his website www.kuraev.ru Deacon Andrei commented on his activity in the newspaper Gazeta po-Donetski (The Newspaper for Donetsk) on 2 June, saying, “Our missionary tour is evidence of great changes in the Church. It received the blessings of the patriarch, Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev and all the Ukraine, the local bishops, and the local clergy. This means that the combination of a rock concert and a sermon is no longer outré; it is no longer the simple eccentricity of Deacon Andrei. The Church no longer views missionary experimentation with suspicion; it is ready to reach beyond the limits of the parish to reach out to its children”.
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The Protection of the Most Holy Mother of God
Mikhail Nesterov
1914
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He went on to say, “Also, because of such concerts, many church people are changing the way they view the world. Look at how the thousands of young children in the crowd respond to the preaching of Christ and His love. They begin to understand that the contemporary world is not a soul-less apocalypse, that there are reasons for smiling, for optimism, and for creating. They see that our society isn’t a place where one fears the end of the world. Thirdly, we see our concert tour as “people’s diplomacy”. For instance, Yuri Shevchuk, before the performance of the song The Bandits by his band DDT, explained that ‘bandits’ aren’t merely those who are in the underworld, but they’re also the sectarians who have dollars instead of God in their heads, who try to embroil our fraternal peoples in strife… I think that our tour is a response to the Galician deputy who stated that Russian was ‘the language of gangsters and grifters’. Clearly, Yuri Shevchuk isn’t a Mafioso, and I hope that I’m not part of the underworld, either. Finally, our main objective, we try to explain to the kids that if they love rock music, it isn’t a reason to hate Christianity. Being young and loving rock can be Orthodox, and the Church isn’t only for pensioners and fools”.
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DDT
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Deacon Andrei doesn’t hide his political views. Along with Yuri Shevchuk, he called on everyone to boycott the concerts of the rock group Okeana Elzy (Ocean Elsa) because the father of the front-man of the band, which is popular in both the Ukraine and Russia, is the Minister of Education in the Ukraine and is trying to ban the use of the Russian language in VUZs (Institutes of Higher Education) within three years. Fr Andrei’s message is simple, “Atheism is the opium of the people”. In the Ukraine, the irreligion of the eastern parts is supine before the passionate clamour of the Galician Uniates. In another excerpt from the newspaper interview quoted above, he made the following observations, noting, “Every time there’s an election in the Ukraine, it ends the same way. When the fiery rhetoric of the election campaign calms down, the deputies from either side of the country meet in the parliament, and, since they have to work together, they search for reasonable compromises. When one compromises, one sacrifices secondary matters for the sake of primary concerns. The Galicians from the west are concerned with ideology and nationalism, whereas the people from the east are more concerned with practical matters and business. Therefore, the victim of such compromises is usually the Russian language”. Deacon Andrei doesn’t rely on second-hand observation. He frankly observed the scene all over the Donbass, and he states clearly that until the Orthodox show the same intensity as do the Galician Uniates, they won’t defeat them.
The tour shall resume in July and it’ll go through the Crimea, the Black Sea coast, and up to Kiev, where three concerts are planned for the main square on 28 July, the feast day of St Vladimir. It wasn’t surprising that the concert tour was banned in Ivanovo-Frankovsk. However, the planned appearance in Sevastopol for 13 July is open to question. The leaders of the city government are appointed from Kiev, and the people of this Russian Hero-City are deprived of basic rights and they aren’t allowed to elect their mayor. The two main officials, S. Kunitsyn and V. Kazarin are uncooperative. The latter is supposedly a “pro-Russian politician”, but in an interview he gave to Novomu Regionu (The New Region), he cynically alleged that he invited Shevchuk and Fr Andrei to come on Easter, but they refused to come then, and he claimed they refused “any other date than 13 July”. However, everyone knows that Orthodox Christians are supposed to be in church on Easter, and, by the way, Deacon Andrei was serving in his assigned parish, St Mikhail the Archangel in Troparevo.
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Get Behind Me, Satan!
Ilya Repin
1895
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External enemies are understandable, but, they aren’t the only foes to contend with. In July, the missionary tour had to defend its back from those who attempted to compromise Deacon Andrei, cast doubts upon his Orthodoxy and service to the church, called for this tour to be cancelled, and proposed that Fr Andrei be sent to Solovki {a remote monastery in the far north, in the White Sea: editor}. Interestingly, they often worked through supporters of the separation of the UOC/MP from the Mother Church. It’s obvious that the external enemies of the Russian Orthodox Church (including its political foes abroad) study the internal life of the Church in Russia in order to hinder those who are doing Christ’s business in Russia. The Bolsheviks knew that. To recall a sorry memory, the Deputy of the Council for Religious Affairs in Brezhnev’s time was Furov, a stalwart atheist, who noted that the attraction of the church for young people was one of the most critical dangers to the policy of state atheism.
The attack against the collaboration of church, state, and society is conducted on several fronts. Furov’s method was to use people in the church in order to drive young people away from it. The secular enemies of religious education in the schools use similar tactics. They say how dangerous it is to allow the church to approach impressionable children, “who shall be converted into backward and ignorant church-goers”. This has reaction in certain church circles. So, one hears of how immoral the young people are, that they’re insubordinate to their elders, we don’t need them in church, all they do is bring in a liberal anti-church spirit, they don’t respect the established rules, they want a Vatican II in the Russian church, they want to reconcile the church with Protestants and Eastern religions, and they attempt to destroy the church with the aid of foreign missionaries. We’re not finished… there’s more still. Some say that it is wrong to have anything to do with the godless state, that society is incurably ill and degenerate, and there are extremists who refuse to carry a “satanic” RF passport, who refuse to vote in the “devilish elections”. Of course, Orthodox must not be successful in the world… oh, the horror!… nor can they be well-off and happy, for this is “a manifestation of globalisation”.
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DDT
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Is it surprising that those who would “save the church from the young people” unwittingly make common cause with those who wish to “save young people from the church?” Today, there are those, like the “Orange” emigrant Artyom Troitsky, who are enraged because the church is “poaching on their territory”, it upsets them that the church is now talking to “their” young people, commenting on “their” politics, and using “their” rock music. Personally, I remember that in the communist days everything possible was done to prevent young people from going to church. At Christmas and Easter, the cordon of Komsomol activists who blocked the entrances to the churches were strengthened, and the TV showed programmes such as Klubnichu, which were banned at other times. Don’t some church people realise that they are nothing but “guardians of Soviet morals” when they say “we must save the church from the young people?”
I say that many evils are on the consciences of the “rescuers of the church from the young people” and the “fighters of flattery of the young”. They are part of the blame for barren families and unborn children (included those killed in abortions) because they wouldn’t let the priests go out to the young people so that the kids would learn. Such sorts have killed countless souls drawn to Christ because the seekers didn’t dress in a “churchly manner” or they “didn’t look right”. There are many who are ignorant of what Orthodoxy is because their priests and other people didn’t teach them, then, they read some trashy little tract that convinces them that it is unnecessary to reach out to young people and bring them to Christ. I tell you that the number of souls killed by such “super-Orthodox” is not one, not ten, not hundreds, not thousands, but… in the millions. This is a crime against the future. There are weighty scholarly tomes that claim that the church had too many “Catholic” influences because of its history and policy, so… the Church helped prepare the February Revolution so that it could restore the patriarchate, for without it, it was not fully “canonical”… “Revolutionary” and “Catholic”, all at the same time! Objective researchers note that things actually ran quite well in the so-called “Synodal captivity” of the church, why, most of the bishops were relieved of much red-tape.
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DDT
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For us as Orthodox Christians, the church is the source of the sense and legitimacy of the state and public morals… but not vice-versa. In reality, this is what’s useful for society and the state. There must be a force that reminds us of the contrast between good and evil without encroaching on the freedom of the personality. It was Christianity that brought into the world the idea of the uniqueness of the God-created personality, its personal freedom, and its personal responsibility. As Archbishop St Hilarion Troitsky the New Martyr wrote, “If we take away Christ, people just murder each other”. Some publications appeared that alleged that there were “petitions of the clergy to the Archbishop’s Council” that exposed “insidious internal enemies” that were plotting to stage a “Second Vatican Council” in the Russian church. In similar texts, we see “protests against proposed liturgical reform”. However, the council isn’t assembled to examine this question; indeed, it isn’t even on the agenda. Therefore, the “fight against the liturgical reform” is a conflict with a non-existent enemy. It means that the non-existent threat is used to cover well-defined purposes.
What is this liturgical reform that these authors rail against so harshly? It’s an “explanation in the Russian language of the divine services”, a so-called “missionary liturgy”, developed by the missionary division of the Moscow Patriarchate. These complaints are sheer absurdity! We must explain the services in modern language, for their meaning is unclear to the overwhelming majority of the parishioners. There are those who assert that such an explanation shall destroy the “prayerful atmosphere of the liturgy”. However, according to this logic, the sermon, WHICH IS REQUIRED BY THE RULES, disrupts a “prayerful atmosphere”. According to present rules, it’s assumed that a sermon shall be preached several times in the course of a vigil service, for instance. Amongst these letters is one condemning “advances towards contemporary youth sub-cultures”. This is nothing less than an attack on the successful missionary projects of Fr Andrei Kuraev. As far as it’s possible to make out, the text of “the petition” rejects the Protestant and Catholic models of utilising elements of the “contemporary youth sub-culture” in divine services. However, not one Orthodox missionary, not even amongst the most liberal and Renovationist-influenced people in the Russian church, ever proposed such a move. We have to assume that the true targets of the rant, “the threat posed by liberalism and Renovationism”, are contemporary Orthodox missionaries.
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Skay
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Priests such as Fr Sergei Rybko and Deacon Andrei Kuraev, who preach at rock concerts, bring tens of thousands of people into the church; this was proven during the tour of Fr Andrei with the rock group DDT in the Ukraine. Furthermore, contacts with youth culture are encouraged by the letter of the regulations, and it is manifested by such things as internet activism and the spiritual care of sports teams. In a word, all activity beyond the parish gates, any contact with contemporary society, is encouraged, since that’s how we can most conveniently spread the word widely. The anti-Kuraev “spokesmen” only agreed on the fact that they think that there’s a new anthropological heresy of the “special sin” of the present generation, in an attempt to justify their apologetic insolvency. All campaigns of this sort are directed against Orthodox missionary work as such. Remember, for the longest time, the church “knocked itself out voluntarily” by using the “super-Orthodox” style insinuated by Furov, as he put it, “to take anti-church measures by using the church’s own hands”.
We hope that the Archbishop’s council ignores such talk, that it’ll protect all Orthodox missionaries, and support them in their efforts to reach contemporary society. The bishops should free the missionaries from the fear of having to justify their every move, and should refute all false accusations against them. We need many missionaries like Fr Andrei inside Russia, where Protestant communities in the east breathe down the neck of the Orthodox. However, we must watch any change of religious identity in the Far East, for it can lead to separatism. Shall the Orthodox learn the bitter lesson of the mayoral election in Kiev? In the city that was the cradle of Russian Orthodoxy, the two top vote-getters were Protestants. Moreover, both were Russian-speakers from the eastern provinces, and according to logic, they should be true sons of the UOC/MP. Simply put, the missionary paralysis of the church left a void that was filled by Protestant sectarians.
The so-called fighters against “clericalism” wish the church to “voluntarily” flee the world, cease to interact with the youth culture or intellectuals, renounce TV and the schools, reject cell phones and computers, and wish the Orthodox to burn their sinful passports. If such happens, the church in Russia shall die. However, this shall never happen to the Russian church or to the Russian state. The Kuraev missionary tour was important, but, it isn’t the only component of the fight for the unity of the Russian church. Generally, the present problems in the Ukrainian church are an accusation against both our Orthodox church and our state. Who interfered in this situation last year, and not only in the Ukraine? To top it all, the general situation for Russia was good. What “freemasons” interfered with the publishing of the writings of the Ukrainian intellectuals of the 17th through the 19th centuries, who considered themselves Russian, and stood for the unity of Russia at the risk of their lives and freedoms?
I have read of the Carpatho-Russian Russophiles and confessors of Orthodoxy, who suffered the first genocide of the 20th century (according to the UN, genocide is killing carried out on religious and national grounds). They suffered in Europe’s first concentration camp, Talerhof in Austria, set up by the Hapsburgs to persecute the Orthodox Russophiles. Why don’t we mobilise bright Orthodox intellectuals such as archpriest Nikolai Donenko from the Crimea, who studied the New Martyrs who suffered in the Ukraine, from the viewpoint of whether the Ukrainian church should be separate from the Russian, and found out that the saints were irreconcilably opposed to such a move? We complain about the Americans, who opened hundreds of non-government organisations in the Ukraine, who search for and are “purchasing” talented students through the study of school compositions and student abstracts, whose offers are seriously considered by our young people. We complain about the Uniates, who arrange immense youth pilgrimages to the false-Pochaev Monastery in Zarvanitse, who held a “patriarchal sobor” in Kiev dedicated to the youth mission, and their plot to convert the Donbass, the Crimea, and Novorossiya to the Uniate faith and to the “Orange” ideology.
What prevents us from doing more and doing it better? MISSION… is vital, it is the banner of our faith, as is our fully-informed participation in the liturgy, since Apostolicity is not the “hobby of the clergy”, it is the property of the entire church. If we have the will to do mission work, we’ll have the will to live. Mission or death… this is a fact of life; it’s harsh reality.
5 June 2008
Kirill Frolov
Russki Zhurnal (Russian Journal)
As quoted in Interfax-Religion
Voices from Russia 
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