Crucea.ro

Schema-Igumen Zosimas was born on June 28, 1862 and was given the name Philip in honour of St. Philip (June 3/16). He was tonsured into monasticism at the monastery of St. Alexander of Svir on April 23 / May 6, 1900 with the name Philaret after St. Philaret the Merciful. On May 25 / June 7, 1902 he was ordained to the priesthood. He received the schema on December 10/23, 1925 or 1926 in honour of St. Zosimas of Solovki. He went into hiding and served in secret in the flat of the Josephite Nuns Valentina (Alexandrovna Krasnolenskaya) and Marina (Nikolayevna Grabbe, born 1907, died 1971) on the Moika. Another Josephite also lived in the house: Liv Tatyana Fedorovna (born 1876, died 1967). He died on October 10/23, 1943, and was buried in Volkov cemetery.
In 1927 Schema-Igumen Zosimas wrote: “Who are the schismatics? If it is that side from which the question in dispute arose, then it will be just to call those who depart schismatics. But if it turns out that the opinions of those who introduce new views do not accord with the Gospel, then it is not those who have departed, but they who are the true schismatics, for they have broken the unity of the Church. Among them sprang up a source that muddied the pure water, and the water of Orthodox thought, and as long as it, the source, does not dry up, the evil will not be cut short.”
On February 29, 1928 Fr. Zosimas wrote: “In the new church disturbances that have arisen during the second deputyship of Metropolitan Sergius, [the deputy of] the Patriarchal Locum Tenens, many soothe their disturbed conscience that they will not sin if they offer obedience to the canonical bearer of the rights of the first-hierarch of the Russian Church. In obeying Metropolitan Sergius, they think they are obeying the Church, and our Lord and God Jesus Christ, the Head and Ruler of His Church. ‘We do not want arbitrariness and new schisms, we must obey the hierarchy. Without obedience there is no Church.’
“There is no doubting that. There must be no place for arbitrariness in the Church. But obedience itself we must not offer in an arbitrary way, but in such a way as the rules, traditions and canons of the Church teach, as it is taught by the Holy Scriptures. And the Apostle Paul was not being arbitrary when in Antioch he, the youngest of the Apostles according to time of calling and dedication, ‘not for one moment’ conceded, and did not obey, but ‘resisted’ the first of the Apostles, the first in the Church, the Apostle Peter, when he and others with him, in the conviction of the Apostle Paul, ‘did not act rightly’ according to the truth of the Gospel, but began to ‘hide’ and withdraw and, fearing the circumcised, ‘act hypocritically’.

‘But from those who seemed to be something (he is talking about the most authoritative Apostles), it makes no difference for me. God shows personal favouritism to no man’ (Galatians 2.6).
“Here is an example by which Holy Scripture teaches us that Christian obedience is not a blind following after the first-hierarch, wherever he goes.
It was not some heresy that the Apostle Paul, out of obedience to God and the truth, did not tolerate, but only the misleading behaviour of a man who was without question the first apostle of the Church, a first-hierarch appointed by the Lord Himself.
“We have cited this example not because we think to compare with the Apostle Paul the contemporary hierarchs who have refused to be in all things obedient to Metropolitan Sergius. And Metropolitan Sergius cannot, of course, suppose that he has greater infallibility and inerrancy than [… indecipherable], and demand greater obedience than the first Apostle, and consider it inadmissible to receive exhortations from, and follow the instructions of, Bishops younger than himself. All this, with a certain love and humility from both sides, would not be a schism and self-will, but the following of the truth, the pillar and ground of which is not one person, whoever he may be, and even if he is First-Hierarch, but the Church as a whole. The whole of the following life of the Church from age to age teaches us not to be seduced, as the Apostle says (Colossians 11,12), by arbitrary humility, but to be humbled and show obedience in accordance with the rule of the Church.
“Here are some examples by which the Church teaches us. “It is well-known that in the second century, when there arose disagreements with regard to the question of the time of the celebration of Pascha, the first-hierarch of the Church, Bishop Victor of Rome, tried to establish uniformity and wanted to excommunicate the Asian Churches, who did not submit to his indications. At that time not only did the Asian Churches not submit to him, but also those who agreed with him. The bishops of various provinces resisted and condemned his mode of behaviour, and taught their elder co-brother that he would do better to care about the peace and unity of the Churches than about forcibly subjecting them to his will. Among those who resisted were the ecumenical teacher of the hierarchical nature of the Church St. Irenaeus of Lyons. Resistance was offered to the first-hierarch not by a council of all the Churches, but by separate local Churches and individual bishops.
The third century is well-known because of the quarrel between St. Cyprian of Carthage and Bishop Stephen of Rome. In the end the Church did not completely accept the point of view of St. Cyprian. But the thoughts and practice of Bishops Stephen, the First-Hierarch, were also not completely accepted. He recognized as valid the baptism of people of every heresy – this has been rejected by the Church.
“The very possibility and necessity sometimes of quarrelling with the First-Hierarch of the Church was recognized by the most authoritative hierarchs of the third century (cf. the epistles of Firmilian, of Dionysius of Alexandria and others). One could continue this list from century to century, but what has been said is, it would seem, sufficient. Quarrelling with the First-Hierarch has not been recognized as ecclesiastical disobedience to God and the Church. And this not only when the matter concerned, as with St. Maximus the Confessor and Sophronius of Jerusalem, dogmatic questions, but also when – as in the case of St. Tarasius, St. Nicephorus and St. Theodore the Studite – it concerned questions of Church discipline. It is well-known that St. Theodore (not a bishop, but a monk) even temporarily broke communion with St. Nicephorus. The Church covered this break with love, as having been done out of zeal for the glory of God, and condemned neither the one nor the other.
“The quarrel was about the unlawful divorce and marriage of the emperor, which had been allowed by the Patriarch.
“Let us recall another lesson from ecclesiastical practice in recent years. Everybody understands the disobedience offered by many to His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon, their beloved hierarch, in the question of the new style, the commemoration of the authorities, and other similar questions. His Holiness covered this with love and himself finally united with the disobedient, thereby justifying their disobedience.
“On the contrary, the Bible knows many examples of obedience offered at the wrong time and forgetting God and the Truth, beginning with the obedience of Eve to the serpent, the wisest of animals, and of Adam to his wife – ‘whom Thou gavest to me’ (Genesis 3.12), as Adam justified himself before God.
“Let us cite one example. A prophet was sent to announce the will of God to Bethel to King Jeroboam, and was ordered not to stay there after carrying out the command. In this town there lived another prophet who wanted unfailingly to offer hospitality to him and feed him. The hospitable prophet, so as to convince the prophet-guest, lied to him, saying that he was calling him to his house according to God’s command. The wandering prophet believed him, obeyed, and for that obedience was punished by God with death (III Kings 13).
“The Bible knows other similar, much more complicated cases of the wrong obedience of prophets. “The history of the Church begins with the disobedience of the Apostles to the priests and the destruction of the Jewish people who remained obedient to them. O how many Christians in the twenty centuries have with sleeping conscience obediently followed their Patriarchs and Bishops, and have turned out to be not in the Church, but in self-willed assemblies, and have perished as heretics. This is known to all. Let us recall only the example of recent years. Remember how many calmed themselves and others, saying that it was necessary to show obedience; since the Patriarch was in prison, it was necessary to show obedience to Bishops Antonin, Leonid and others who remained in freedom. It is well-known that in the provinces, where some lawful bishops became renovationists, their flock, calming themselves by their obedience to their lawful, God-given Bishop, joined the Living Church.
“Let us remember that the canonicity of the [renovationist] TCA was witnessed by the present first-hierarch, Metropolitan Sergius, together with Eudocimus. At first the voices of the ‘disobedient’ were alone.
“And so there is saving obedience, and there is destructive obedience. There is disobedience to a first-hierarch which the Church approves of, and not only to a heretical first-hierarch, but also to a saint (the case with St. Theodore the Studite). What? Is everyone in the Church free to follow his conscience and reasoning, taking no account of anything else? Then how do we differ from the Protestants? The difference is not in that we must show blind obedience to men, even if they are vested with hierarchical privileges, but in the fact that we believe in the Church and in Her tradition, and we check and illumine our conscience and reasoning by the conscience and reasoning that is conciliar and ecclesiastical, but we do not abolish our conscience and reasoning. God gave us the Scriptures and examples of the lives of the God-inspired Fathers in abundance, teaching us through conciliar decisions, canonical rules, the Divine services and other means; the teaching of God has never ceased to be given through people who are pleasing to God. Only we must have ears to hear, and faith, and a sensitive conscience.
True, the Will of God and obedience to it are not immediately and easily acquired – sometimes this requires sacrifices and a rejection of that which is dear and customary for us, it requires effort, podvig, the sacrifice of self-love, etc. If obedience in itself decides nothing in the case of Metropolitan Sergius, this means that here it is necessary to seek instructions and directions in Church tradition and in the contemporary conciliar consciousness of the Church, understanding by ‘conciliar consciousness’ something deeper than the external combination of the opinions of Church people.
“Blessed from the Lord are all those who keep the purity of the Orthodox faith and piety. Pitiful and worthy of tears are those who for the sake of the conveniences of this temporal life depart from the truth, losing the hope of eternal rest with Christ, in particular the monastics. There is no justification for those who for the sake of a supposed unity of faith admit the spirit of antichristian convictions into the pure Orthodox consciousness of the holy evangelical faith.”
Again he said: “In the course of the whole Christian era not one heresiarch has introduced such destructive opinions [as Metropolitan Sergius], which besmirch the great Christian exploit of martyrdom and confession. Not one has yet called on people and taught them to rejoice at the overthrow of everything that was achieved by the Apostolic preaching, by the sufferings of the holy martyrs and confessors… What a pity that the majority of hierarchs, keeping quiet about the essence of the question, go round it, not seeing a canon directly relating to this subject, and in this way they calm their conscience. But if there is no direct canon, then there is the Holy Gospel – the foundation of all the canons.”

via Vladimir Moss

Gheorghe Vanau