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Summer 2006 |
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To and from Russia with Love:
The following is a heart-warming testimonial to Fr.Ilya by one of the pilgrims. Our Dear Fr. Ilya, Thank you most sincerely for our “X-treme vacation” to the cities of Russia’s Golden Ring. I am a survivor, yes, though I could not express my appreciation earlier out of sheer exhaustion, and then, because of the reflective silence that the experience generated. Be assured, all 30 of your weary disciples are profoundly grateful to you for helping us understand, as much as we are able, what was and is Russia. You took us on a pilgrimage to many places to which no tourists could have gained entrance without your powers of negotiation. It wasn’t your cassock and holy hat that brought Abbots out to dine us and present us with gifts; it was your inspired determination and infectious energy. Nor could we have possibly caught the significance of what you showed us without your learned commentary. How remarkable in one so young! Forgive me for endangering your soul with too much praise; may the travails of Holy Russia continually sober us all. Somewhere between Suzdal and Yaroslava, through the bus window, we spied cupolas in ruins against the eastern sky. As we drew nearer, there were hundreds of black birds roosting in their skeletons. It wasn’t on our itinerary, but you challenged us, ”Do you want to go see?” And, of course, we did!
There were hundreds of such churches in the vast countryside between cities. But in the cities and their environs, Russia’s mythical firebird is miraculously rising everywhere. My family and friends ask me, “What is Russia like? I have not been able to answer them except in terms of Her astounding resurrection from the horror of Bolshevik bloodletting.
On the banks of the Volkhov River, the storied “route from the Varangians to the Greeks,” our bus from St. Petersburg broke down. It was Staraya Lodaga where the purported burial mound of Oleg rests next to the 12th century Church of St. George, still sheltering its patron’s fresco. Victoriously mounted on his musically prancing steed, the Warrior Saint gently coaxes before him the subdued dragon, tethered like a naughty pet. “This medieval Russian rendering of St. George survives nowhere else,” you told us. “It expresses the Russian vision of God’s Kingdom, absent of violence and showing kindness even to its enemies.” What blurred that vision darkens us all! On our last day near Pskov at the Holy Dormition Monastery of the Caves, you led us by candle light through a winding channel cut by an ancient river. We passed single file in silence, sweetly touching the inscriptions of saints entombed in the sandstone walls on either side. At cave’s end, in the tiny chapel hewn from stone, we stood in meek wonder before the Myrrh-streaming Cross. I smeared my forehead with its miracle-working oil. You sang in Russian, then English, the Troparian of the Holy Cross, “Before Thy Cross we bow down and worship Thee, Oh Master. And Thy Holy Resurrection we glorify.”
The Kingdom of God is our only habitation, the only joy of all who mourn! With joy I mourned my grandson Alexander Joseph, taken to Christ’s breast: ‡May 22, 2005. In the final telling, only my “fellow travelers”, ironically put, can understand what you gave us on those 21 exhausting days between New York and New Rus. With time and meditation on this journey of a lifetime, we hope to be able to communicate to others what we cannot now explain to ourselves. Thank you, Beloved Reverend Father Ilya, whose youth has not been squandered on vain pursuits. Blessed, indeed, is the parish you serve! God bless you and keep you to gather your little flock for a return adventure, God willing! God, help us and have mercy on us, the willing hostages of a 30-year-old scholar-priest. You will be older then, but so will we. With Tender Respect, Fr. Ilya leads pilgrimages to the holy places of Russia, Eastern Europe and the Holy Land. Information on how you can participant is available by writing him at: frilya@verizon.net |
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Two Hexaemeron board members recently traveled to Russia to experience first-hand the glories of the great icon painting masters. The tour was expertly planned and led by Fr. Ilya Gotlinsky, pastor of Dormition of the Holy Virgin Mary Orthodox Church in Binghamton, NY.
The journey focused on churches, monasteries and museums in the cities of Russia’s celebrated Golden Ring. We began in Moscow and wove our way through Sergiev Posad, Pereslavl-Zalessky, Vladimir and Suzdal, Palekh, Yaroslavl, Rostov the Great, Vologda, Kirillov Beloozero, Ferapontovo, St. Petersburg, Staraya Ladoga, Novgorod and Pskov.
The local youths followed us to the abandoned church like haunts of a familiar grave, though they didn’t seem to know its name. They may have even been responsible for the graffiti that desecrated its frescos. “Beloved,” you said to us, standing on a pulpit of refuse in the gutted nave, “Behold your future.” We understood…a thousand years of Christianity turned to this in a mere 70 years of forced neglect, and worse, much worse. Oh Lord, help us, can American Christians expect less from our own homegrown, state-sponsored atheism? From our own children, if we fail to catechize them for the Cross?
Yet, how can I describe the enormity of the restoration effort! The toiling thousands – artisans, iconographers, monks, nuns and simple laborers rebuilding their churches on almost every city block: 400 out of the once more than 800 become active churches again in Moscow alone. Can my photographs of scaffolding surrounding hundreds of cupolas and bell towers or shooting up hundreds of feet in church interiors possibly convey the spirit of Holy Russia reclaiming Her pious majesty? What an anomaly, the wreckage left by God-haters being swept clean by young men and girls, domes being re-gilded with funds raised by withered-faced babushkas peddling holy trinkets!
You reminded us that our spiritual ancestors worshipped in the catacombs when Christianity was an illegal religion in the pre-Constantine Roman Empire. (Will this be our future…again?) Then, you sang the anthem of Orthodoxy, the prayer of fallen Byzantium, of the ravaged Third Rome and of all Christians in Diaspora: “Oh Lord, save Thy people and bless Thine inheritance. Grant victory to the Orthodox Christians over their adversaries! And by the virtue of Thy Cross, preserve Thy habitation!”