An homily for All Saints of Russia Sunday, 7534/2026, from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Church in Winfield, PA, by Priest Paul Siewers.
There is a prayer that is a tradition in the Russian Church Abroad that is relevant to our remembering All Saints of Russia today. It goes like this: “We remember and pray for the repose of the souls of the departed Atamans, Cossack-warriors, priest-pastors, elderly, wives, children, and infants martyred at the behest of the godless Soviet regime.”
Indeed, those martyrs, known and unknown, glorified by the Church by name or not, doubtless are among All the Saints of Russia. The so-called Bolshevik yoke arguably was the largest persecution of Christians in history, and certainly the most systematic. Hundreds of thousands of priests and millions of laypeople were killed and tortured to death for their faithfulness to Christ. More than 2,000 have been canonized as confessors and martyrs. God must know many more.
The atheistic communist movement that began in the Soviet Union killed tens of millions of people in total. But its attack on the Orthodox Church was at its demonic core. 80,000 churches and monasteries were in Russia in the early 20th century, by 1939, barely a hundred parishes remained across Russia. Not one monastery or seminary was left operating, not a single bishop at liberty, just a scattered handful of monks and what was called the secret catacomb church in addition to the few temples left open under official surveillance.
Here are some examples of what the martyrs of that day suffered.
Bolsheviks in 1920 nailed Bishop Sylvester of Osmk to the floor of the church. He remained alive for a long time. Red-hot ramrods were slowly driven into his body until one pierced his heart.
Bishop Tikhon of Voronezh was crucified on the Royal Doors of the iconostasis.
Bishop Andronik of Perm was buried alive in a pit which he had been forced to dig himself.
Bishop Hermogenes of Tobolsk was tied to a ship’s wheel and drowned.
Bishop Seraphim (Chichagov) was carried on a stretcher to be executed at the Butovo firing range, as the nearly 90-year-old elder could no longer walk.
Grand Duchess Elizabeth & the nun Barbara were thrown alive into a deep mineshaft in Alapaevsk.
The God-anointed Holy Royal Martyrs were shot in a basement and their bodies bayoneted and desecrated.
Bishop Benjamin of Petrograd, along with several laymen, was shot after a show trial based on false charges related to the confiscation of church valuables.
Priest Peter Skipetrov was shot in the face in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.
Archbishop Nikon of the Trinity Sergius Lavra was stabbed & maimed to death outside of his monastery, his body was disfigured beyond recognition and beheaded.
Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev was dragged outside the walls of the Kiev Lavra, shot, and bayoneted while he gave his blessing to his executioners.
The elderly ascetic, Bishop John of Latvia, was tied to a door torn from its hinges, laid on a workbench, brutally tortured, and then set on fire while still alive.
Bishop Thaddeus of Tver was drowned in human waste.
Father Alexey Merkuryev of the Urals was murdered in front of his congregation and children.
Bishop Theophan of Solikamsk was stripped, his hair braided, a pole threaded through it, & he was slowly lowered into an icy hole in the Kama River. His body became encased in ice. But the hierarch was still alive and then he was drowned.
A group of priests and laymen had their hands tied behind their backs, their eyes blindfolded, and were ordered to walk across the ice until they fell into a hole. The torturers mockingly called them ‘divers.’
The holy prisoners of the Solovki labor camp in the cold far north had their beards and mustaches ripped out and were starved to death.
Of course throughout Russian history there are many inspiring accounts of the lives of saints before and after the Bolshevik yoke, such as St. Seraphim of Sarov, the Elders of Optina Monastery, St. Xenia, and our own St. John. But many who were not martyrs in death such as our patron had their lives strongly affected by these persecutions. Metropolitan Philaret, the first hierarch of ROCOR for many years, was tortured by the Chinese communists in the early 1960s and later as lead hierarch of the Church in exile became a world standard-bearer in Orthodoxy against the modern heresy of ecumenism.
But their struggle, like all the ascetic struggles of Christians, was a joyrful sorrow, a mystery to the world but not to believers. The early Irish in the Orthodox Church wrote of three types of martyrdom, white, red, and blue. White martyrdom is that of the lives of monastics. Red are the lives of those who give their lives for our faith. Blue is the life of dedicated everyday people who strive to carry the Cross that also is the source of our joy in the Resurrection of our Lord and His help for us. In the centuries of the Russian Orthodox tradition that bridges Russia and America, there were saints of all three kinds, and some fit into two or all of those categories. The persecution and martyrdoms of the last century are a great treasurer of sanctity, of saints in our Church family upon whom we can call for prayers and intercession in our own troubles. Holy Saints of Russia pray to God for us!
In our own day in America, we face challenges usually not of the same mettle but with a little taste of that same spirit of the Anti-Christ at work. The Orthodox Christian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who survived Soviet prison camps, warned of how some of the principles behind them are alive and at work in the technological and consumerist culture of the so-called Global West today as well.
He summarized those demonic principles as “survive at any cost” and “only material results matter.” Those two anti-Christian rules unfortunately are all too familar for many in our “free” culture today, whether openly atheist or not. “Survive at any cost” can be a motto for worldly careerism destructive of others. “Only material results matter” can be a motto for letting atheistic technology rule us, and “the ends justify the means” generally.
These tendencies are not necessarily operating in a physically violent and oppressive way as in the old Soviet Union, but they are still with us, more subtly, and thus in a way too potentially more dangerous for the spiritual life of us Orthodox Christians. Solzhenitsyn provided an antidote for such godless living, hidden or open, when he advocated that instead we “live not by lies.” That is a reminder of how Jesus called the devil the liar and the father of lies. Solzhenitsyn said that modern evil systems that deny the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, like communism or technocracy, function by what he called a spirit of the “permanent lie,” which shapes a virtual reality to which people conform, based falsely on the above-mentioned godless principles as the only axioms of reality. He gives an example of parents who, under such a system, would not pass along to their children truths they knew, for fear that knowledge of such truths could harm their children’s chances of material success, or even be used against them in future as parents by their children or others.
Elder Anatole the Younger, one of the last survivors of the famous Optina Monastery in Russia closed by the Bolsheviks, offered this prayer as an antidote for the modern spirit of anti-Christ. He prayed:
Deliver me O Lord from the deceptions of the God-hating and evil antichrist,
whose coming is at hand, and shelter me from his snares in the secret desert of Thy salvation.
Grant me, O Lord strength and courage to firmly confess Thy Most Holy Name,
that I may not abandon Thee because of the devil’s fear
and that I may not deny Thee my Saviour and redeemer,
nor Thy Holy Church. But Grant me O Lord cries and tears for my sins, and spare me O Lord
in the hour of Thy dread judgment. Amen
Brothers and sisters, the Orthodox Church is the Body of Christ, the ark and refuge for all people and indeed all the earth, and the saints of all Russia are our Church family, along with all Saints, many such as St. John bridging Russia and America in the joyful sorrow of the Christian life today. Our Lord Jesus Christ told us, when He instituted the Eucharist for us, that, “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” And he reminded us before His Ascension: “Lo I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” And all the Saints of Russia surround us here in the Divine Liturgy, a great cloud of witnesses, included in our Church family praying for us. On this coming Saturday July 4 we will celebrate the ultimate freedom given us in the Church at our feast day in honor of St. John, while also praying for the 250th anniversary of our country, that our freedom to worship may continue, and that the Orthodox mission to America of which we are an humble part may bear good fruit, in fulfillment of the prayers of all the saints, including the martyrs of Russia who suffered for our faith and our freedom in Christ, that they might spread. All ye saints, pray to God for us! Amen
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The Readings from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew for the Sunday of All Saints of Russia.
§9 [4:18-23]
At that time: Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishers. And He said unto them, ‘Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.’ And they straightway left their nets and followed Him. And going on from thence He saw two other brethren, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in a boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets. And He called them, and they immediately left the boat and their father, and followed Him. And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.
§ 10 [4:25-5:12]
At that time, there followed Jesus great multitudes of people from Galilee and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and from Judea, and from beyond the Jordan. And seeing the multitudes, He went up onto a mountain; and when He was set, His disciples came unto Him. And He opened His mouth and taught them, saying, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in Heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets who were before you.’