Alexander Schmemann

6. Russian Orthodoxy (41 pages)

From Schmemann's A History of the Orthodox Church

Page 25

True Holiness.

As in ossified Byzantium in its later years, so in the Moscow kingdom, too, holiness — the breath of the Spirit, which breathes where it wills — gradually withdrew to the forests, the outskirts, the periphery. This was the era of the saints of the north, who achieved inner freedom in their struggle against wild and merciless nature: St.
Alexander of Svir, Korneli of Komel, Makari of Koliazin, Savvati, Zosima, German of Solovetsk, Antony of Sii, and Nil of Stolbensk. The list could be prolonged.
Sanctity was not scarce, and “Holy Russia” continued to grow alongside the “great power”; but they must not be confused.

Nor was the real thirst for sanctity dying out among the people. Perhaps just at this time, or very near it, when the moral level was falling and growing coarser, and outward piety and splendor were becoming divorced from their moral and theological inspiration, the only perceptible ideal within the whole of society became that of absolute holiness. The outward appearance of Christianity could be maintained, preserved, and fixed in the world, but it was obvious that “the world abides in evil” and that its Christian covering — all the splendor of life, rite, and form — could be brought to fulfillment only by complete withdrawal to some freedom beyond the limits — to the search for a new heaven and a new earth, where the truth lives. In this era of state “obligation,” fixed pattern of life, and static, oppressive “sacralness” there matured in Russia the type of the wanderer, the tramp, the eternal searcher after the Spirit and the truth, free with the freedom of complete abnegation, but achieving unity with nature and men. Behind the ceremonial, self-satisfied Russia of daily life was born another, unpatterned, “light” Russia, illumined by the vision of an ideal world, one that was loving, just, and joyous. This spiritual perfectionism did not rise up against the Church, and denied nothing in it, but on the contrary lived by the grace received from it. There developed a dangerous habit of distinguishing the “objective” element in the Church — the grace itself — from its bearers, the Church community. The Russian believed in the necessity for the priest as the performer of sacraments, but he had ceased to expect from him anything else — as for instance, instruction, leadership, or a moral example.
What could be expected of the priesthood, in view of the complete lack of schools and the priests’ growing dependence on their parish; their poverty, oppression, and crudeness? It is enough to read the rules of the Council of the Hundred Chapters about the secular clergy to become convinced of their decline in the Moscow period. The priest ceased to be the head, the father, the pastor of the community, to become a performer of services. Living souls did not seek to slake their spiritual thirst or to find spiritual leadership in the official hierarchy, but turned to elders, saints, and hermits. Indeed, the Church community disappeared from the thought of the Church itself. There remained the sinful world; within it were sources of grace, certain centers contact with which became a treasured dream. Spiritual life withdrew deeper and deeper into an underlying world; it became a mysterious underground river that never dried up in Russia, but had less and less influence on the life of the state, of society, and (in the end) of the Church itself.

The Moscow period was not an organically unified era but marks a profound break, a crisis, and a division in the history of Russian Orthodoxy.

 

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