http://assumptionarticles.homestead.com/files/WHOHATHEARSTOHEAREnglishhtml.htm
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/orthodox-synod/message/19159
WHO HATH EARS TO HEAR, LET HIM HEAR!
(Matthew 13:9)
(Translated by Eugenia Richards)
From the editor: While looking through certain journals of our extensive family library, I set my attention on the spiritual-moral Orthodox journal No. 4 from April 1 – 30, 1928, “The Heavenly Bread”, published by the monastery of the Kazan Mother of God, in the city of Harbin, China. This remarkable journal was published with the blessing of the Archbishop, and later Metropolitan Methody of Harbin and Manchuria, under the editorship of Archimandrite Juvenaly.
I became acquainted with Bishop Methody through the accounts of the pious father Archimandrite Polycarp, an elder wise in age and humble, who lived out his final days in the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, New York, USA. Father Polycarp described Bishop Methody as a humble, kind, most loving, experienced, caring shepherd, the doors of whose home were open for everyone. The literary efforts of Vladika were deeply appreciated by Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky).
In the fourth issue of the journal “The Heavenly Bread”, on page 35, is the profoundly heart-felt sermon of Vladika Methody, to which the Laurus Synod should pay particular attention as it shamefully grovels before the so-called Moscow Patriarchate.
If the declaration of metropolitan Sergius caused the Orthodox world to be shaken to its foundation, then the unification of the ROCA and the Moscow Patriarchate will annihilate the Church Abroad!
Protopriest Anatoly Trepatschko
June, 2005
A WORD TO THE HARBIN FLOCK
REGARDING THE INTENDED APPOINTMENT TO HARBIN OF
A BISHOP BY THE AUTHORITY OF THE MOSCOW CHURCH
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
The bright days of the Holy Pascha of Christ are approaching… We Christians know that the three-day glorious Resurrection of Christ was preceded by the suffering on the cross and the death of Christ. And now, as if in likeness of our Lord, the bright days of Pascha are preceded by the grievous days of an imminent grave ordeal. The Moscow church authority, which recognized the soviet power as a power from God, intends to appoint its own bishop to the Harbin see, who even here in our churches will have to proclaim the godless soviet regime from the church ambo, as a power from God, and proclaim that “the joys of the soviet regime must be the joys of the church, the sorrows of the soviet regime should be the sorrows of the church as well, and every blow dealt to the soviet regime, no matter from whence it proceeds, is a blow to the church” (from the epistle of metropolitan Sergius, dated July 16/29, 1927) and to recognize and be grateful to the soviet regime which “provided refuge to the church” and provided it “one of the conquests of the revolution – freedom from any political or state mission” (from the epistle of metropolitan Sergius, dated June 10/May 28, 1926).
A sorrowful sensation overcomes the soul. A bishop who blesses the regime which has trampled all Divine and human laws, which desecrates holy things, destroys churches turning them into places for revelry and dens of drunken debauchery, who reddened his hands with the martyrs blood of Hierarchs, clergy and the best sons of our Homeland, the Russian land! A bishop who is compelled to debase his lofty rank with servitude and servility before the godless authority, which needs him only as an instrument of destruction of the very faith which that bishop serves.
A sorrowful sensation overcomes the soul. A bishop who is forced to be hypocritical from the church ambo, to teach faith in God and expose godlessness, and with the same mouth bless and proclaim that the regime is from God – a regime which wages war against God with blood and violence, and appointed that same bishop with the sole purpose of sowing confusion and temptation into the souls of the faithful, thereby shaking and destroying their faith.
We will not judge that bishop, but we cannot permit our churches to become a place for the pernicious communist plague, disguised only by the holy place and name of a church; we cannot permit the divine services of our temples to be darkened by prayer for blasphemers, persecutors of the faith, and torturers. We cannot permit this.
But we will entreat the Lord, we will entreat His Most Pure Mother, that we be spared from the oncoming dark cloud of church turmoil and temptation, and that the Merciful Lord grant us mercy that we may greet and pass the bright days of the Pascha of Christ in spiritual joy.
Archbishop Methody of Harbin and Manchuria
March 12/25, 1928
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