Crucea.ro

 Far from being the refutation or “correction” that Fr. Seraphim Rose claims it to be, St. John’s article What Did Christ Pray For in the Garden of Gethsemane[71] reflects and develops many of the themes expressed by his mentor, Metropolitan Anthony, in his The Dogma of Re­demption:

…It was necessary for Him to redeem man from sin and death, and re-estab­lish the union of man with God. It was necessary that the sinless Savior should take upon Himself all human Sin, so that He, Who had no sins of His own, should feel the weight of the sin of all humanity and sorrow over it in such a way as was possible only for complete holiness, which clearly feels even the slightest deviation from the commandments and Will of God. It was necessary that He, in Whom Divinity and humanity were hypostatically united, should in His holy, sinless humanity experience the full horror of the distancing of man from his Creator, of the split between sinful humanity and the source of holiness and light — God. The depth of the fall of mankind must have stood before His eyes at that moment…

And now there came the time when all this was to come to pass. In a few hours the Son of Man, raised upon the cross, would draw all men to Himself by His own self-sacrifice. Before the force of His love the sinful hearts of men would not be able to stand. The love of the God-man would break the stone of men’s hearts. They would feel their own impurity and darkness, their insig­nificance; and only the stub­born haters of God would not want to be enlight­ened by the light of the Divine greatness and mercy But all those who would not reject Him Who called them, irradiated by the light of the love of the God-Man, would feel their separation from the loving Creator and would thirst to be united with Him. And invis­ibly the greatest mystery would take place — man­kind would turn to its Maker, and the merciful Lord would joyfully ac­cept those who would return from the slander of the devil to their Archetype. “Mercy and truth have met to­gether, righteousness and peace have kissed each other” (Psalm 84:10); right­eousness has pressed close from heaven, for the incarnate Truth has shone out on the cross from the earth. The hour had come when all this was about to take place.

The world did not suspect the greatness of the coming day. Before the gaze of the God-Man all that was to happen was revealed. He voluntarily sacri­ficed Himself for the salvation of the human race. And now He came for the last time to pray alone to His Heavenly Father. Here [i.e., Gethsemane!] He would ac­complish that sacrifice which would save the race of men — He would vol­untar­ily give Himself up to sufferings, giv­ing Himself over into the power of dark­ness.[72]

However, this sacrifice would not be saving if He would experience only His personal sufferings — He had to be tormented by the wounds of sin from which all mankind was suffering. The heart of the God-Man was filled with inexpressi­ble sorrow. All the sins of men, beginning from the transgression of Adam and ending with those which would be done at the moment of the sounding of the last trumpet — all the great and small sins of all men stood before His mental gaze. They were always revealed to Him as God — “all things are manifest before Him” — but now their whole weight and iniquity was experi­enced also by His human nature. His holy, sinless soul was filled with horror. He suffered as the sin­ners themselves do not suffer, whose coarse hearts do not feel how the sin of man defiles and how it separates him from the Creator. His sufferings were the greater in that He saw this coarseness and embitteredness of heart…

But so as to feel the full weight of the consequences of sin, the Son of God would voluntarily allow His human nature to feel even the horror of separa­tion from God. This terrible moment would be unendurable for His holy, sin­less be­ing. A powerful cry would break out from His lips: “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” And seeing this hour in advance, His holy soul was filled with horror and distress…

But in order that He should feel the full weight of sins, He would also be al­lowed to feel the burden of separation from the Heavenly Father. And at this moment His human will can wish to avoid the sufferings. But it will not be so. Let His human will not diverge for one second from His Divine Will. It is about this that the God-Man beseeches His Heavenly Father. If it is possible for man­kind to re-establish its unity with God without this new and terrible crime against the Son of God (cf. St. Basil the Great, Against Eunomius, book 4), then it is better that this hour should not come to pass. But if it is only in this way that mankind can be drawn to its Maker, let the good Will of God be accomplished in this case, too… If it is possible that the work of the economy should be completed without a new and terrible crime on the part of men…

And willingly drink­ing the whole cup of mental and physical sufferings to the bottom, Christ glorified God on earth; He accom­plished a work which was no less than the very cre­ation of the world. He restored the fallen nature of man, reconciled Divinity and humanity, and made men partakers of the Divine nature (II Pet. 1:4).

And in 1955, on the nineteenth anniversary of Metropolitan Anthony’s repose, St. John delivered an encomium[73] in which he declared that Metropolitan Anthony was:

A great hierarch not only of our century: in the life of the Church few have been the hierarchs as gifted as he, or who have given so much to the Church. His Holiness Barnabas, Patriarch of Serbia, while serving in the Russian Church of the Holy Trinity, in Belgrade, said that Metropolitan Anthony was a hierarch like unto the great hierarchs of antiquity. In theological circles in Serbia he was called the Athanasius of our time. He spoke, having been made wise by the Holy Spirit.

His teaching on the Trinity and on the Church, which revealed Divine Truth, sounded like something novel. But this was not some new, hitherto unknown, teaching, but rather those Truths, according to which the Church lives, ex­pressed anew, which, however, had been forgotten by many. On account of the calamities in the historical life of the Ortho­dox peoples, theological scholarship declined in those lands, and upon the re-establish­ment of schol­arship and schools, they were formed according to the patterns of other con­fessions, and were under their influence. His Beatitude Metropolitan Anthony regenerated Orthodox Theology.

He was called Athanasius the Great. … Metropolitan Anthony possessed the all-encompassing heart of Saint Basil the Great… He was an Ecumenical Hier­arch in the full sense of the word.[74].

On one occasion His Holiness Patriarch Barnabas, while present at some sol­emn assembly, said that, after the First World War, when the wave of mod­ern­ism rushed upon the Local Churches and submerged many, in Serbia that wave broke against the lofty promontory of Metropolitan Anthony, who at that time saved the Serbian Church.

… Metropolitan Anthony was not a martyr, however he was always prepared to become a martyr. But a confessor he can undoubtedly be reckoned. We do not know how the Lord has crowned His confessor. But for us he is the icon of meekness, a teacher of the faith, an image of one rightly dividing the word of truth.[75] … And now, recalling his life, his great podvig, we can in truth state that those words, chanted by the Church to the Holy Apostle John the Theo­logian, are likewise applicable to him: “he, being filled with love, also be­came filled with theology”.[76]

As can clearly be seen, this is not the perfunctory speech which one might expect a disciple to feel obliged to deliver upon the death of his teacher. The intervening nineteen years gave Saint John ample time to reflect upon the life and teachings of Met­ropolitan Anthony, and to distance himself from them, if he so desired. Yet we see no such thing occurring here. Rather, with his own lips Saint John eloquently refutes those who would now seek to convince us that he supposedly did not re­vere the memory of his teacher and mentor, Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky, and did not share his theology.[77]

Furthermore, after the publication of the first volume of the series Life and Works of Metropolitan Anthony, Archbishop Nikon received many letters of commendation, among them, one from St. John Maximovich (then the ruling Archbishop in Western Europe) in which he wrote:

Accept my heart-felt gratitude, both for sending me the first part of the Life of Metropolitan Anthony, and for its marvelous composition, which conveys not only the exterior side of his life, but the very spiritual make-up of the man. Reading this book, it is as if one comes into contact with him. May the Lord aid you in this work for the future![78]

St. John Maximovich was still alive and well when most of the subsequent volumes of The Live and Works of Metropolitan Anthony were published, including the fourth volume (1958), the fifth volume (1959), and the eighth volume (1961), which three vol­umes contain the texts of Metropolitan Anthony’s Catechism and his The Dogma of Re­demption, plus much material related to these topics. Nowhere is it recorded that St. John expressed any objections to the publication of these texts.

Gheorghe Vanau