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St. Demetrius of Rostov
Every Church has its own special Fathers and
Teachers who leave their lasting imprint on its particular spirituality
and way of life in Christ.
For the Ukrainian Church, this is especially true
of Saint Demetrius Tuptalenko, Metropolitan of Rostov who reposed in the
eighteenth century and whose feast of the translation of his relics we
celebrate today. A member of a Kozak family, Dmytry's father donated a
large sum of money to the Church at Berestiv and where he died a monk.
Kozaks who survived their battles liked to take the monastic habit in
their later years.
On Mount Athos, the Teacher of the Jesus Prayer, St
Paisius Velichkovsky, founded the Skete of the Holy Prophet Elias, a
dependency of the formerly Ukrainian monastery of St Panteleimon, for
the Kozaks. It was here that the famous Ivan Vyshensky, about whom the
poet Ivan Franko wrote, lived out his last years.
The Kozaks were also very pious Orthodox
Christians. They were known to pray the Jesus Prayer, "Lord Jesus
Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner," while riding in
their saddles. They often memorized the 150 Psalms of David so that, in
the event they would be taken prisoner, they would be able to keep their
faith and hope alive with these inspired prayers.
St John the Ukrainian Confessor was one such Kozak
who regularly prayed the Psalms while in Turkish captivity and received
the gift of miracles from God to witness and eventually convert his
Turkish masters. These same Turks built the first Church to house his
saintly Relics!
Coming from such a strong spiritual environment,
Dmytry was himself very pious from his youth. Excelling in his studies
at the Kyivan Academy, Dmytry took monastic tonsure at the Church his
father supported so generously. He was a preacher at the Kyivan Caves
Lavra and an avid student of western theological methods, which was the
theological "Lingua franca" of the Kyivan Baroque
period.
As a pastor of souls, St Dmytry tried to raise the
level of education of priests. Once while on a pastoral visit in a
primitive Siberian village, he asked the local priest how he kept Holy
Communion, since he didn't see a "Kyvot" on his church altar.
The priest didn't know what Dmytry was talking about, he didn't even
understand what "Communion" meant! Then Dmytry's pastoral
assistant asked the priest, "Where do you keep the 'Extras'?"
At this priest smiled as he now knew what the matter was about . . .
Dmytry's enduring testament to the Orthodox church
is his Lives of the Saints. He laboured for years on them. The Ukrainian
poet Taras Shevchenko read them as a youth and included quotes from them
in his later poems.
Dmytry had a great love for the Daily Offices of
the Church which he wanted everyone, lay and clergy alike, to say every
day as a "Fitting tribute to the King of Heaven." He prayed
the Jesus Prayer constantly and Icons of him show him holding his prayer
rope as he stands before a Crucifix. He repeated the "Hail
Mary" prayer hundreds of times daily, and especially at the turn of
every hour, as was done in monasteries in France and Italy.
Dmytry had a warm devotion to the Wounds of Christ,
especially to His Wounded Side, which resembled the western devotion to
the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He was also devoted to the Immaculate
Conception of the Virgin Mary, a devotion that Ukrainians who had
studied in Paris had introduced into the Ukrainian Church of the Baroque
period.
There were even Ukrainian Orthodox brotherhoods in
honour of the Immaculate Conception of Mary who took the "Bloody
vow" namely, that they would defend to the death that Mary was
sanctified by God from the moment of Her Conception in the womb of St
Ann. This Latin doctrine was never received by the Orthodox East as the
Orthodox Church did not accept the West's view on Original Sin.
With the coming of the Union of Brest'-Litovsk at
the end of the seventeenth century, there was a rather rapid pace of
"Polonization" and "Latinization" of the Ukrainian
aristocracy, who were going over to the Roman Catholic Church in droves.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church decided to adopt the
succesful missionizing methods of the Jesuits and of western scholastic
theology. Students were sent to the west to study them. But with the
westernizing of Eastern theology there came in some undesireable
spiritual elements which remained with Orthodoxy until the present.
The Church wanted to show that her bishops and
leaders were every bit as scholarly and knowledgeable as the western
prelates and that it, too, could recast Orthodoxy in the popular
cultural terms and context of the times. St Dmytry was an excellent
example of that kind of ideal Church leader. Even Tsar Peter I admired
him deeply.
St Dmytry became a most popular Saint in Ukraine
and Russia. His relics and glorification process were looked after by
his successor, St Arsenius Matsievich who became a martyr under
Catherine and was himself declared a saint in August, AD 2000.
St Dmytry of Rostov continues to inspire countless
thousands with his writings and his saintly and prayerful example. |
