Dr. Alexander Roman alex@unicorne.org  

Recently, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Moscow Patriarchate, glorified two new Ukrainian Saints and further glorified a new miracle-working Icon of the Mother of God. One of the Saints canonized recalls a painful period of Ukrainian Church history. And it is said that the lessons of history must be learned, lest we be doomed to repeat them again.

St Amphilochius Holovatiuk, a Venerable Monk of the Pochayiv Lavra, was canonized, his icon, life and service approved. Further details will be forthcoming.

The icon of the Danyivska Mother of God at the St George's women's monastery in Chernihiv was glorified as miraculous and its feast set on the Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast.

This icon was commissioned and then blessed by St John of Kronstadt himself, and then handed down to St Seraphim Vyritsky. In 1937, Seraphim reposed before it just as his patron, St Seraphim of Sarov, had done before his icon of the "Joy of all Joys," that is, with forehead touching the icon.

In L'viv, St Nicephoros Cantacuzenos was glorified a local saint. He was the Great Protosyngellos and Exarch of the Patriarch of Constantinople to Ukraine at the difficult time of the Union of Brest-Litovsk . . .

A Greek by birth, Nicephoros a Deacon and the Rector of Hellenic Greek Studies in the 1580's.

When word got out that the Ukrainian Orthodox bishops were planning to sign a church union with Rome, it was Prince Constantine Ostrozhky himself who asked the Patriarch of Constantinople to send his Exarch immediately to Ukraine to deal with the issue.

Prince Constantine was apparently not happy about not being informed about the intentions of the bishops, a break with protocol that definitely placed him against his own episcopate in this matter.

Nicephoros arrived at the Polish border and was immediately arrested, but later escaped and went in 1596 to Ostrih.

Despite the fact that the Polish King had forbidden the attendance of "foreign" Orthodox observers at the Sobor of Brest-Litovsk, Nicephoros arrived there, together with a number of Athonite Monks and the Alexandrian Exarch, Cyril Lucaris.

The Orthodox bishops desiring union with Rome at the Sobor refused to receive or hear Nicephoros out.

Nicephoros decided to ignore them back . . . He began his own canonical Sobor with those among the clergy who supported him.

The Orthodox Sobor condemned the union with Rome and excommunicated any who would participate in such.

The Ukrainian people supported Nicephoros whom they looked upon as their hero. The bishops who signed the union with Rome saw him as an agitator who upset their plans and also as an unwelcome representative of the Patriarch of Constantinople who, a number of them felt, came to involve himself in Ukrainian Church affairs much too much for their liking.

The Polish King ordered the unwelcome Orthodox guests to return to Greece and Mt. Athos. Nicephoros alone refused to go, and chose instead to ignore the threats of the king and remain with the people.

Staying at Ostrih as a guest of Prince Constantine, Nicephoros taught at his Academy there.

He also used Ostrih as a base of operations, sending out letters and encouraging people to remain steadfast in their faith and Church.

He was then charged with spying for the Turks, a serious charge at that. He was put on trial by the King of Poland himself!

At his trial, Nicephoros put forward many arguments showing the absurdity of the charges against him, including another trumped up charge of being in "cahoots" with the mother of the Turkish Sultan!

Unable to condemn him on any charge, Nicephoros was held indefinitely for further investigations . . .

He was then taken to the Marienburg prison where, in 1599, he died of starvation.

St Nicephoros' life resembled closely that of St Maximos the Greek and St Mark of Ephesus, as well as that of St Hermogen, Patriarch of Moscow who was also starved to death.

In a day and age where religious intolerance is very much the order of the day, the life of St Nicephoros demonstrates how we must sometimes stand our ground in an atmosphere of disrespect of religious diversity and even attacks against the Church.

Such attacks appear in very subtle forms in Ukraine and elsewhere today.

Western missionary groups, feeling frustrated that their presence in Eastern Europe is seen as a foreign intrusion, have begun masquerading as "Eastern Churches" and otherwise trying to conceal their real identity, thereby hoping to win converts by open deception.

There are Protestant groups who use the Orthodox three-bar Cross, and other outward Byzantine forms along with new names for themselves so as not to shock the people.

It would seem that these see the Ukrainians and others as people "living in darkness" who need their preaching to be liberated . . .

Our Lord commanded us to remove the log from our own eyes, before attempting to remove the speck in our brother's eye.

These American-based evangelical groups would do much better if they left Eastern Europe alone and concentrated on winning back to Christ their own people, saturated in western materialism, hedonism and the other ideologies of untrammeled pleasure and religious and moral indifferentism.

And they should do this before going out to preach the benefits of their particular religion AND culture to Eastern Europeans.

Personally, I wouldn't wish the moral problems of North America on my worst enemy!

St Nicephoros was truly a man of his time. A scholar with the highest education of his century, he could have rested content to reap the material and social benefits of his position.

But he counted all this as nothing when he stood up in defence of his Church and the Ukrainian people.

Although Greek, he shared the vision of Slavic and cultural equality held by Sts. Cyril and Methodius.

Offered the chance to escape, he chose to stay among the Ukrainian people to share their lot and oppression.

As such, he stands in the line of the great Greek-Saints of the Ukrainian Church whom we adopted, and who adopted us.

May his example remind us of our patrimony and great Kyivan Christian tradition.

When it came to these, he, for one, would rather fight than switch!