The Sword Cuts Clean, But the Hand Must Reach

In Part 1, I argued that Christ speaks and severs death’s knot in a single stroke.

“Human work operates on depletion. Grace operates on something that can be perceived as an anti-economy of gift. This pattern explains why faith receives salvation rather than contributing to it. In her hand touching the garment, she grasps a sword already swinging”

After that piece, a former Calvinist reader wrote:

Your Gordian knot article is powerful, yet it is hard for me to find the exact bounds, having been a Calvinist.

The transgression and absolute emptiness of predestination as defined by Calvin and modern proponents. How do you see a difference between what you say here and the absolute predestination found there? Like why wouldn’t God just enlighten everyone if everyone could accept it / follow Him / it was simply up to His will alone?

In other words:

If God alone raises the dead, how is this doctrine different from Calvinism?

If the sword is entirely His, why doesn’t He just cut every knot?

It haunted St. Augustine when he wrestled with Pelagius. It hardened into a system in Calvin. And as I work on a paper about St. Augustine right now, I keep bumping into the edges of this same question: Does God save us with our freedom, or does He act instead of our freedom?

Monergistic resurrection, synergistic dinner

In Jairus’s house, this pattern is stark.

The girl is dead. Not sick. Not struggling. Motionless.

Christ enters, takes her by the hand, and says, “Child, arise.” She doesn’t contribute to this event. There is no negotiation, bargaining, or preparing for the moment of resurrection itself.

The act of raising her is monergistic: one energy, one actor, and one will at work. His.

But then, immediately, Christ says, “Give her something to eat” (Luke 8:55).

Now things change.

He raises her unilaterally, but he doesn’t feed her unilaterally.

Raising is God’s gift in and of itself. Eating is His gift accepted.

Grace initiates. God alone cuts the knot. God alone calls from the grave.

Freedom responds. The risen stand, walk, and eat.

The same treatment develops with the hemorrhaging woman.

Christ's power emanates without her planning, controlling, or bargaining. She does not orchestrate the miracle. She doesn’t pry open His will. She reaches, and the power is already moving.

He turns and names what has happened: “Daughter, your faith has saved you.” He doesn’t say, “Our combined effort has healed you,” but “You stand in what has been done.”

Yet she could have stayed home. She could have folded inward in shame. She could have resigned herself to twelve more years of physicians and failure.

The sword cuts cleanly, but the hand must reach out to grab it.

The Gospels juxtapose two young girls. One lies dead in Jairus’s house, is raised, and eats. One dances before Herod and then asks for the head of a prophet.

Both live in the same covenant history. One is clearly twelve, and the other is twelve by the story’s timing.

One receives life with gratitude. The other spends her freedom on participating in murder.

The difference lies in how they spend their freedom within the grace that always surrounds them.

Jairus’s daughter is raised without consent; she eats by choice.

Herodias’s daughter lives by God’s gift; she uses that life to advance death.

The Gospels are full of grace. There isn’t, sometimes, much of a response from man.

Grace heals the will

Someone might challenge:

Is grace diminished by the girl’s refusal of food or the woman’s refusal to reach? Isn’t it safer, more God-centered, to say that “He determines our response too?”

St. Maximus the Confessor distinguishes between our God-given natural will and the personal (gnomic) will. How each of us actually chooses, in time, under fear, confusion, desire, and habit

Sin damages the natural will. Our nature stumbles toward the ultimate good; it doesn’t eliminate it.

Grace restores the natural will. It rekindles in us the longing for God, which is why we were made.

Grace doesn’t subjugate, eradicate free will, or turn men into objects. Instead of taking control of the steering wheel, God fixes the engine.

So now she is eating and finally using her healed ability as God intended. When the woman reaches out, she is saying yes to what Christ is already doing.

Grace makes genuine freedom finally possible.

At this point, Calvinism brings up Romans 8: “Those whom He foreknew, He also predestined…”

Doesn’t that mean God selects some and passes over others?

Notice the order: foreknowledge precedes predestination.

Knowing isn’t the same thing as causing.

God’s knowledge of my future “yes” doesn’t force my “yes” any more than my knowledge of yesterday’s sunset caused it. This is true because He allows a union based on dominance alone instead of love. God’s knowing is perfect and timeless; it doesn’t mean my will is an illusion.

The Fathers, reading St. Paul in Greek and immersed in this Gospel pattern, don’t talk about God predestining some men to heaven and some to hell as though He were sorting a neutral mass into opposite piles.

They speak of God predestining a path:

To be conformed to the image of His Son.
To be adopted in the Son.
To be brought from death to life in Christ.

The destiny and the plan are found in Christ.

All things summed up in Christ.
Whoever will may come.

We can resist or accept that destiny, but grace never destroys our will.

Why doesn’t God just save everyone?

If God alone raises the dead, why doesn’t He raise everyone in such a way that refusal is impossible?

At that point, He would have created a world of moved objects instead of individuals. St. Maximus again: a nature without will is not a person but a thing.

Love and communion CAN’T exist without the freedom to refuse and withdraw.

This passage is precisely how Christ speaks of Jerusalem:

“How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!” (Matt. 23:37)

There is no way to read that lament as theater. Christ isn’t feigning frustration over a story He Himself inscribed in stone with no alternative.

He wanted. They would not. Period. The knot here is not in God’s will. It’s ours.

So why doesn’t He override our resistance?

Because He’s not interested in stocking heaven with hostages. Because He refuses to assault us to force a union that is no longer love, only domination.

Hell isn’t the place where grace failed to arrive. Hell is what persistent refusal does to a person in the presence of unrelenting love. And when that love is absent

The Scriptures are clear: God desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4). Peter writes that God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). These aren’t hypotheticals. They’re statements about God’s actual will. If God truly wills all to be saved, and yet some are lost, the reason must be something other than His secretly decreeing some for damnation. The reason must be that some refuse the gift persistently offered.

The tragedy of damnation is caused not by God’s refusal to break the knot, but by the individual’s refusal to live as though God had done so.

Grace is God healing a mortal race, calling every person in every moment to rise and walk. God raises the dead. Grace precedes every movement of our return.

Calvin and I disagree that God chooses a few and rejects the rest.

The Gospels won’t let me. Christ’s invitations, laments, and respect for our will are significant. The sword is His alone. The refusal to grasp it is, tragically, ours.

Christ reaches toward Judas and Peter, following their sins. One hardens into his grief; the other breaks open to Christ and is remade.

The girl stands when Christ speaks. She eats because she opens her mouth. Christ heals the woman because power goes out from Him. She confesses publicly because she chooses not to disappear back into the crowd.

Sword and hand

“If God alone raises the dead, how is this view different from Calvinism?”

Here is my answer:

God cuts the knot; He won’t move your hand for you.

The girl feeds because she’s risen. Believers strive because they’ve been made alive. The sword has already sliced through impossibility in Christ’s death and resurrection.

The sword cuts clean.

• a twelve-year hemorrhage depleting all remedies and

• a twelve-year-old girl crossing from life into death.

These rest at the threshold of man’s limits, breaking down, and divine action starts.

Faced with the Gordian knot, Alexander the Great did not try to work within its logic, to untangle its complexity. He pulled out his sword, and with one blow cut it in two. Christ uses the same categorical authority.

Infinitely more so.

He doesn’t heal the woman’s twelve-year hemorrhage by gradually restoring her health. Instead, He pronounces her whole. It’s a completed reality overwriting twelve years of medical failure. He doesn’t rush to prevent the girl’s death. He dismisses death itself as what it is: sleep. A temporary state. When mourners laugh, He puts them out and manifests life into death with two Aramaic words: talitha koum.

This pattern of categorical improbability resonates with undeniable restorative echoes in the epistle. St. Luke presents biological death and physical resurrection, while St. Last week’s Gospel and Epistle readings (Old Calendar) presented two impossible situations.

a twelve-year hemorrhage depleting all remedies and

a twelve-year-old girl crossing from life into death.

These rest at the threshold of man’s limits, breaking down, and divine action starts.

When Alexander the Great confronted the Gordian knot, he didn’t try to maneuver within its logic by unraveling its complexity. He drew his sword and carved through it with a single strike. Christ operates with this very same categorical authority.

Infinitely more so.

He doesn’t heal the woman’s twelve-year hemorrhage by gradually restoring her health. Instead, He pronounces her whole. It’s a completed reality overwriting twelve years of medical failure. He doesn’t rush to prevent the girl’s death. He dismisses death itself as what it is: sleep. A temporary state. When mourners laugh, He puts them out and manifests life into death with two Aramaic words: talitha koum.

The evident echo of this pattern of categorical impossibility is the healing of the epistle. St. Paul is talking about spiritual death and ontological regeneration; St. Luke about bodily death and physical resurrection. God doesn’t negotiate our circumstances. In one divine act, he declares that we are alive with our Savior. A clean slice with the sword.

Divine resolutions don’t adhere to earthly limitations. God doesn’t accept our definitions, limitations, or presuppositions. Why would the Artist and Creator need to follow our definitions, limitations, or presuppositions? He knows our rules; He wrote and transcended them. The ineffable moves from a reality that isn’t affected by challenges. The knot is severed. Christ abolishes death.

Human work operates on depletion. Grace operates on something that can be perceived as an anti-economy of gift. This pattern explains why faith receives salvation rather than contributing to it. In her hand touching the garment, she grasps a sword already swinging.

God brings the dead back to life (monergistic origin). Those whom Christ heals can walk freely with Him (synergistic sanctification). Grace starts things off, and obedience follows.

The order can't be changed. “By grace you have been saved through faith... not a result of works” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Immediately: “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10).

The girl eats: Grace, then obedience.

Grace inspires action: the girl rises. The woman confesses. Each from death to life.

The sword cuts clean.

And when that sword strikes, the dead rise, march and dine.

The girl arose.

St. Nikolai Velimirovic’s poem “On Fasting” from Prayers by the Lake reminds us that even this comprehensive physical fast is the beginning of true fasting. “Bodily fasting,” he explains, “is more a symbol of true fasting, very beneficial for someone who has only just begun to hope in You and, nevertheless, very difficult for someone who merely practices it.”

St. Nikolai Velimirovich encourages us to consider how our physical fast might be something more. Let’s explore his wisdom. Let’s dive into this fast of the soul, the mind, the heart, and the tongue.

With fasting I gladden my hope in You, my Lord, Who are to come again.

Fasting hastens my preparations for Your coming, the sole expectation of my days and nights.

Fasting makes my body thinner, so that what remains can more easily shine with the spirit.

While waiting for You, I wish neither to nourish myself with blood nor to take life–so that the animals may sense the joy of my expectation.

But truly, abstaining from food will not save me. Even if I were to eat only the sand from the lake, You would not come to me, unless the fasting penetrated deeper into my soul.

I have come to know through my prayer, that bodily fasting is more a symbol of true fasting, very beneficial for someone who has only just begun to hope in You, and nevertheless very difficult for someone who merely practices it.

Therefore I have brought fasting into my soul to purge her of many impudent fiances and to prepare her for You like a virgin.

And I have brought fasting into my mind, to expel from it all daydreams about worldly matters and to demolish all the air castles, fabricated from these daydreams.

I have brought fasting into my heart, so that by means of it my heart might quell all passions and worldly selfishness.

I have brought fasting into my heart, so that heavenly peace might ineffably reign over my heart, when Your stormy Spirit encounters it.

I prescribe fasting for my tongue, to break itself of the habit of idle chatter and to speak reservedly only those words that clear the way for You to come.

And I have imposed fasting on my worries so that it may blow them all away before itself like the wind that blows away the mist, lest they stand like dense fog between me and You, and lest they turn my gaze back to the world.

And fasting has brought into my soul tranquility in the face of uncreated and created realms, and humility toward men and creatures. And it has instilled in me courage, the likes of which I never knew when I was armed with every sort of worldly weapon.

What was my hope before I began to fast except merely another story told by others, which passed from mouth to mouth?

The story told by others about salvation through prayer and fasting became my own.

False fasting accompanies false hope, just as no fasting accompanies hopelessness.

But just as a wheel follows behind a wheel, so true fasting follows true hope.

Help me to fast joyfully and to hope joyously, for You, my Most Joyful Feast, are drawing near to me with Your radiant smile.

St. Nikolai’s wonderful poem explores fasting as a spiritual practice that goes far beyond mere abstention from food. The following are some key themes with some added scriptural support for what St. Nikolai presents to us:

• St. Nikoli reminds us that fasting is spiritual preparation. He begins his poem by connecting fasting to preparation for the Lord's return. St. Matthew’s Gospel 4:1-2 reminds us: "Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred." In Acts 13:2-3, we see: "As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them. And when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, they sent them away."

• St. Nikolai stresses complete fasting of the soul, mind, heart, tongue, and all concerns. This is clear from St. Matthew 6:16–18.: "Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face; That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret." Isaiah spoke about this in Isaiah 58:6-7: "Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house?"

• St. Nikolai further reminds us of the transformation we can achieve through fasting. Fasting produces tranquility, humility, and spiritual courage. In 1 Corinthians 9:27, St. Paul tells us: "But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway." Furthermore, in 2 Corinthians 6:4-5, St. Paul explains: "But in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings."

• Fasting’s genuine hope, ultimately leads us to joy. Via Luke 2:36-37: "And there was one Anna, a prophetess... And she was a widow of about fourscore and four years, which departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day." Matthew 9:15 guides us: "And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast." In the Old Testament, we uncover Zechariah 8:19: "Thus saith the LORD of hosts; The fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth, shall be to the house of Judah joy and gladness, and cheerful feasts." Moreover, let us reflect upon Psalm 34:13 for this joy: "But as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth: I humbled my soul with fasting; and my prayer returned into mine own bosom.".

We don’t just fast for our bodies; we fast in our souls, minds, hearts, tongues, and worries. It aligns with Isaiah 58 and guides us toward a fast that promotes justice and righteousness.

Christ’s bridegroom teaching in Matthew 9 reflects joy. True fasting is not morose self-denial; it is our joyful preparation for our union with Christ, “my Most Joyful Feast.” True fasting is not morose self-denial; it is our joyful preparation for our union with Christ, “my Most Joyful Feast.”

St. Nikolai’s instruction to fast as a means to spiritual courage echoed when Daniel received spiritual strength and insight through his fasting.

Much of what “educated and enlightened thought” tells us reduces Christ to a mere sage or moral example, perhaps even a fable (after all, we can’t have miracles in our enlightened age). As a society, we gravitate toward quick fixes from self-improvement gurus or TED Talk formats. Divine intervention and spiritual transformation seem reserved for those backward-thinking folks, dismissed since Descartes declared, “I think, therefore I am," setting himself against The I AM.

But St. Athanasius saw as many see today. A profound spiritual crisis confronts mankind. The question of how God can fundamentally reconcile the corruption of our very nature raises it. External reforms won’t cure our internal corrosion.

Dilemma

We are made for communion by God. We decided otherwise. St. Athanasius saw it clearly: God now had a deep wound that the law couldn’t resolve. It interpenetrated our lives on three different levels.

1. Because we lost communion with our very life’s source, we began reverting to empty nothingness. Our likeness to God diminished so drastically that we minimally resembled our Creator.

2. We were henceforth condemned to death, as Genesis prescribes. Divine justice required such punishment, both existentially and metaphysically.

3. The stain of corruption spread through mankind much like stage-four metastatic cancer parasitically destroys its host. It distorted our reason, will, and ability to contemplate God.

Divine forgiveness couldn’t resolve this triple crisis. Thank God He didn’t abandon us, His creation, to destruction at the hands of demons, but what could God do? This divine dilemma demanded a solution worthy of God’s wisdom and love.

Solution

In his Incarnation, the Eternal Logos gave the perfect answer to man’s corruption. He is the One who created all things and, by becoming flesh, healed us from within. Man's corruption was addressed in three ways:

1. As the Trinity’s Divine Image, Christ restored mankind’s defaced likeness to God back to its original iconographic state. Acting as the Divine Painter, we, as His subjects, repeatedly sit for Him as He redraws and repaints our ruined portraits. The Son’s presence heals our capacity for divine contemplation and spiritual perception as He methodically reconciles His image.

2. God didn’t send a representative. He came himself, took on our death, and broke it from the inside. Christ is fully human and fully Divine. That union is the only thing that could have closed the gap between God and us.

3. Christ wove His divinity eternally into mankind from within, serving as the metaphysical fireproofing of our souls against death. His divinity restores us from within, countering the deep corruption we wrought upon ourselves in the Garden of Eden.

Christ provides mankind with a comprehensive solution that addresses our corruption and restores our relationship with God.

Purpose?

“God became man so that man might become god,” asserts St. Athanasius. And his response isn’t simply a metaphor. This stance is the Incarnation’s reality. Christ enables us to reclaim our participation in divine life and to understand the most important aspect of the Incarnation: why did God become human? God welcomes us back to theosis and deification.

Theosis/deification doesn’t mean we become God. We are and remain limited creatures. The core is that we commune with Christ. We progressively engage in the Divine life. We are like iron in fire, gradually being formed. We remain iron, yet we grow more united to God. We are “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4) while remaining human. This Divine fire transforms us without destroying us as the Divine reconciles us.

Through prayer and the sacraments, we can become more and more like God and achieve salvation. Because our nature was made for and capable of union, freely choosing to commune with God completes us.

This relationship between God and man reshapes our planet and man’s destiny. Rather than something we try to escape, God created the material world good and designed it for transformation. Our destiny is to advance into an eternal development in the likeness of God. Every moment offers us an opportunity for genuine transformation through union with Christ.

Modern Resistance

Within our ever-more dystopian digital and technological age, we reject divine-human communion. We now have prophets of transhumanistic metamorphosis through machines. We have exchanged our transformation for optimization and our communion with the Divine for self-actualization.

We have learned to rely solely on reason thanks to enlightened "thinking." We are promised enchantments by modern scientism that are unattainable. Meaningless, hand-to-mouth consumer culture promotes quick fixes and TED Talks over a slow, deliberate transformation.

Don’t these very struggles demonstrate what mankind’s deepest hunger is? Behind every productivity app and wellness routine lurks our yearning for genuine change. And The Incarnation solves our unceasing hunger by promising us more than self-improvement until the next book or video is released. The Incarnation empowers mankind with a fundamental and elemental re-creation of human nature through union with God.

As St. Hilarion Troitsky noted, our modern and enlightened pride opposes the Incarnation because it demands humility, acknowledging our corruption and our powerlessness to save ourselves. The modern, “enlightened” self-help TED Talk debunks this assertion. It gluttonously feeds the ego. The Cartesian phrase “I think, therefore I am” contradicts the concept of The I AM. However, humility paves the way for genuine transformation in humanity. Only when we meekly admit this need can we receive divine life. Despite our resistance, St. Athanasius’s insights remain astonishingly relevant.

Relevance

St. Athanasius’s On the Incarnation stays remarkably relevant some 1700ish years after he composed it. Its salvific vision of comprehensive healing through divine-human communion challenges some ancient and modern reductionist forms of Christianity. In our nihilistic and isolated technocratic, transhumanist age, which hungers for authentic transformation while resisting divine intervention, St. Athanasius’s voice still encourages us to something higher. He presents something far greater than self-improvement. St. Athanasius’s On the Incarnation is a map to nothing less than mankind’s participation in Divine life itself.

Journey

We begin our journey by acknowledging our need for divine re-creation and reconciliation. It endures through our active participation in the means Christ laid out for sharing His life: prayer, sacraments, tradition, scripture, and community. The aim is to be remade as “partakers of divine nature.”

On The Incarnation invites us to see ourselves and our world differently. God fashioned us in his image. Christ restored that image. And by grace, He beckons us into what He is by nature. Every circumstance, every suffering, every ordinary moment becomes the place where that transformation takes place.

In the Gerasene demoniac, Satan attempts to corrupt a man through suffering. In Daniel, the conflict between angelic and demonic powers plays out behind earthly events. Mark 5 brings the secret warfare to the light of day.

The conflict is illustrated through the demoniac’s dilemma. He can't be chained. No amount of human effort to calm him works. Screams, solitude, and self-ruination paint a life devastated by demonic oppression.

In calling themselves Legion, the demons stated the problem in its true dimensions. It wasn’t one man possessed by one unclean spirit, but by a multitude. Christ didn’t struggle against the number. He ordered, and broke the grip, and released the man. No evil is too great for the power of the Son of God.

Darkness is real. Christ is greater. One death releases mankind from sin and darkness. The demoniac’s deliverance points to everything that Christ does: His ultimate eradication of every hostile power.

Scripture places this moment into a larger story. Isaiah and Micah speak of the Messiah’s rule of righteousness and peace. The Apocalypse reveals this same victory in its final form. One indication of this triumph is the exorcism of Gerasene. Christ achieves the ultimate goal of His ministry for all of creation: the total subversion of all tyrannical, malevolent forces. The Lord has already shown the enduring power of His Word.

Evil binds, deceives, and destroys. All three appear in their most violent form in the demoniac. The chains that couldn’t hold the man couldn’t free him either. Christ alone reaches what no restraint could touch. That remains true now. Whatever binds, isolates, and destroys beyond the reach of human remedy still answers to the same authority.

No one is too far gone.

He who commanded Legion still reigns, and He will finish what He started.

I’ve been reading a lot of the Old Testament lately, focusing on suffering and restoration. This preoccupation has also included looking into the violent suffering of the Russian people under the Communist yoke and the troubles they faced during the evil Bolshevik Revolution. The hardships and rebirth of God’s people in the Old Testament maintain similarities to what the Russian Orthodox Church endured during the Communist siege on faith in the 20th century.

These concepts are essential to Christians because they supply lessons that remain applicable today.

This history cautions us that we must cling fast to the understanding of God’s deliverance whenever we confront persecution, exile, and death. God renews his people through suffering. The Old Testament confirms it. The Russian Church embodied it. Orthodox thought and tradition grant us the tools to see both clearly and to learn from what we see.

Old Testament Narratives

Babylon unmade the world Israel had constructed. Their Temple fell. The people scattered. And with them went every certainty they had staked their faith on.

While exile squeezed in on every side, the prophets spoke. The prophets gave Israel three things: the truth about its failure, the promise of God’s mercy, and a reason to turn back. So was each voice cutting through it. The Holy Prophet Jeremiah foresaw the destruction of Jerusalem and the future restoration possible through a new covenant between God and His people (Jeremiah 31:31-34). Another notable example is Saint Ezekiel, who preached to the Babylonian exiles about God’s presence and spiritual revival (Ezekiel 36:22-28).

The exiles returned under Ezra and Nehemiah; this event marked a new beginning for Israel. The rebuilding of the Temple was an expression of their desire to renew their covenant with him.

People can weaponize religion against those stripped of their identity. For example, consider when Antiochus IV Epiphanes tried to Hellenize the Jewish peoples in every cultural respect, including their religion. These actions sparked the Maccabean Revolt, led by Mattathias and his sons: Judas Maccabeus, Jonathan Apphus, Simon Thassi, John Gaddi, and Eleazar Avaran;  Simon’s son, John Hyrcanus, was also among this group.

Through this story, we gain insight into men who were willing to fight and die as martyrs for what they believed in. These men chose death when they lost their hope. Notable among the martyrs is Eleazar; he chose his crown of martyrdom by refusing to eat the pork decreed by Antiochus (2 Maccabees 6-7). Hanukkah honors the Maccabees. They faced a choice: conform or resist. They resisted. That same choice runs through Scripture and to the New Martyrs.

Among the Bible’s most intriguing narratives is the Book of Job. Job, crushed under unimaginable loss, defiantly proclaims, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15). Habakkuk examines God’s ways when he sees evil triumph by saying these words: “O Lord, how long shall I cry and You will not hear?” Even in his questioning, Habakkuk finds resolution in trusting God’s justice and declares, “Yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will joy in the God of my salvation” (Habakkuk 3:18). Faith and doubt are companions rather than opposites. They are companions. These stories reveal to us people who believed anyway, in the dark, when belief cost them something.

Persecution

Demons relentlessly targeted the Russian Orthodox Church when the Russian Revolution erupted and during the Bolsheviks’ climb to power. Following the 1917 revolution, the traditional Orthodox Church of Russia faced severe repression. (These Soviets made a Potemkin village of an Orthodox church that for decades held very little in common with the Third Rome.) The Bolsheviks aimed to eradicate religion from Soviet society, driven by a dark, secularist, anti-God mission. They sought to impose a new order based on Marxist-Leninist dogma, enforcing secularism and removing religion from society.

Early Soviet laws, especially the decree on the separation of church and state and the nationalization of church property, created the template for state-sponsored persecution and violence against Orthodox believers and exposed the state-sponsored extermination of faiths and peoples.

But many brave people have left their mark as spiritual symbols in the face of constant persecution. The New Martyrs and confessors of Russia stood firm in their loyalty to Christ and His Church in the face of suffering and death, becoming powerful witnesses to the triumph of the Gospel over atheist totalitarianism.

We continue sharing stories from the Russian New Martyrs. Saint Benjamin of Petrograd stood for the sovereignty and unity of the Church against injustice and tyranny. Tragically, Bolsheviks murdered him in 1922. Another intriguing account is that of Saint (Grand Duchess) Elizabeth, a member of the Russian royal line. She chose a monastic life, founded a convent to assist those in need, and dedicated herself to charitable work. Saint Elizabeth was martyred in 1918 along with her companion, Nun Barbara.

These New Martyrs’ and Confessors’ lives are a chronicle of how the Russian Orthodox Church withstood state oppression and how faith could defeat daunting, impossible odds. The New Martyrs and Confessors remain an inspiration for many Orthodox Christians today, who regard them as our intercessors in heaven and models of holiness.

Preservation

The Soviet state refused to engage with traditional Russian Orthodox Christianity, pushing the traditions and services of the faith underground. The secret Catacomb Church emerged as accountable for preserving Orthodox praxis. Brave priests and bishops led underground communities and defined how to resist any cooperation with the Soviet monolith. During those dark times, these church leaders protected the holy rites and customs of the pious Orthodox. 

When these faithful had nowhere else to turn, they looked towards their elders. Men who absorbed others’ suffering and returned it in prayer. Saint Seraphim of Vyritsa (1866-1949) had a vision in which Saint Seraphim of Sarov predicted his future monastic life. After he had married and had children, he and his wife agreed to live separate monastic lives. At the Saint Alexander Nevsky Lavra, he mentored many monks and spiritual children until he fell asleep in the Lord in 1949.

Saint John of Kronstadt (1829–1908) ministered during a period of mounting crisis in Russia. Known for his tireless care for the poor, he faced criticism from many quarters but never wavered. He also bore witness as a prophet, naming the spiritual apostasy he believed would bring the nation to ruin. The revolution proved him right. Saint John’s spiritual lessons helped provide solace for these same people, leading up to, during, and following the overthrow of the Romanov Dynasty.

They kept the torch of Orthodox Christianity burning through their ministry and their model lives, even as the visible structures of the church crumbled around them under intense pressure.

New Beginnings

The suffering and persecution that we encounter again and again, both in the Old Testament narratives and in the stories of the New Martyrs of Russia, may lead us to meditate on the meaning of this mystery in Christian belief. Christ is the center of this mystery. It’s His suffering that guides our strength whenever we feel overwhelmed by the world’s grueling challenges.

These saints conquered it by engaging it through Christ. As Saint Paul argued, “We suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him” (Romans 8:17).

Promise

We can see that suffering is challenging to understand for Orthodox Christians, but Christianity promises us renewal and revival. God’s ultimate victory over evil & death and the establishment of His Kingdom provide the foundation for hope during turbulent times. We root our paradoxical hope in the Paschal mystery. For it is Christ’s death and resurrection that are central to Orthodox theology and spirituality, through which we come to understand suffering’s gift.

Examples of endurance and resurgence following persecution fill the Church’s history. These strong reminders arise from Christ’s own suffering. Our Savior renewed the Russian Orthodox Church. It is experiencing a prominent recovery following Soviet oppression, and we can trust in God’s steadfastness.

Remembrance and Veneration

What we learn from how our faith’s forbears resisted militant pagan or secular culture, atheism, and forced assimilation can help today’s Orthodox Christians navigate a complicated world shaped by similar pagan thought, secularism, and moral relativism. Our age values adherence to meaningless worldly standards over traditional values. We can see how the New Martyrs’ examples beckon us to deepen our commitment to our Orthodox faith, and we can ask them to guide us.

We need to understand that they, the New Martyrs, had choices to make; we also have choices to make. We have the option to uphold the timeless truths the Gospel provides. As much as the culture moves, the saints don’t. When cultural forces altered everything around them, the New Martyrs stood steadfast on what couldn’t be redefined.

Saint Luke of Simferopol (1877–1961) healed the body and tended the soul. The state took him away, brought him back, and took him from his family again. Nothing they inflicted upon him changed his direction in his life. Such examples as Saint Luke’s sacrificial love urge us toward selflessness and service in a society often focused on nihilistic individualism, that looming specter of faithless self-love without faith or community, wholly bereft of the love of salvation.

Saint Luke and many others decided to sacrifice themselves for Christ. This can push us along a path of true kenotic love where we choose to put others before ourselves. The prayers and constancy of the New Martyrs and Confessors are reminders of the unity of the faithful across the ages, wherever and whenever they lived. They inspire us as we make our way through this turbulent world.

Biblical narratives, along with these New Martyrs’ testimonies, can guide us toward God’s ultimate victory. Despite all that’s happening around us, it’s our duty, as Orthodox Christians, to pledge to meet these hopes with joy. When we experience the Gospel’s transformative power and engage in the sacraments (and firmly embrace our faith), we can actively assist and facilitate the revival of the Church’s spirituality. And in this way, we become beacons of the Lord’s boundless love and grace.

The Maccabees clung to their faith, firm in their resolves. Saints and Russia’s New Martyrs suffered greatly. Orthodoxy bids us to follow these examples. We must cling to the trust that God promises and delivers in the end. We’re called to be examples of light and hope.

We must continue to trust in God’s everlasting goodness, even when, as Job did, we don’t understand why we suffer. Habakkuk clung to God’s deep promise of justice and mercy when everything seemed lost, and chaos enveloped him. Saint John of Kronstadt and Saint Luke of Simferopol guided the Russian faithful.

We should emulate their sacrificial love and service. By adopting their examples, we, too, can carry the truth through our faithfulness, even when things become insurmountably wearying.

Kenosis.

He gave Himself, and He calls us to give ourselves. This calling is faith’s center. May God’s grace make it something we believe in and something we become.