It Is Like Communion…

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I wanted to share with you a beautiful, powerful post by Bishop Seraphim (Sigrist) on a shrine just outside Moscow where thousands were executed by the Reds.

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5 Responses to “It Is Like Communion…”

1. 

   Erich Says:
   September 13th, 2004 at 11:28 pm

   Very interesting post. Ugh, I didn’t realize that Florensky had stayed in Russia and been executed, ironically enough at a monastery-turned-gulag. I guess I always thought that he went West when everyone else did. 10,000 in a place, too, that’s quite crazy. It’s strangely easier to talk about the millions killed in Stalin’s purges than to have a concrete location where 10,000 died. The awareness that such things happened within space and time brings it home from abstraction.

2. 

   basil Says:
   September 13th, 2004 at 11:49 pm

   Yes. That almost makes Fr. Paul a martyr, except that the Church is still a bit uneasy with his theology, I think.

3. 

   Erich Says:
   September 14th, 2004 at 9:14 am

   True enough about his theology. You know, when the Greeks missionized Russia, there was quite a bit of Greek literature that was questionable theologically. However, they only translated the stuff that towed the line quite directly. Still, the questionable stuff got out there. I think it is a shame, on some level, that Orthodox publishers in this country are often only willing to translate the type of stuff that the Greeks were willing to translate back in the day. It would great if we could have a collected works of Florensky, or any number of the religious philosophers of the day. In Russian, these guys now have thousands of pages each in publication, and they’re hot! But, sadly, we remain in the dark to most of Russian religious philosophy because it is not considered orthodox enough to merit using the limited resources that St. Vlad’s or other such places have for translation.

4. 

   basil Says:
   September 14th, 2004 at 1:22 pm

   Certainly, I would agree with you for certain thinkers — Florensky and Bulgakov particularly. I would love to read Florensky because of his emphasis on aesthetics. I think with those two it is mainly their shared “sophiology” that irks the Orthodox.

5. 

   basil Says:
   September 14th, 2004 at 1:25 pm

   BTW, there is a very short book available from SVS Press entitled The Aesthetic Face of Being about Florensky. Started to read it once, but it was not the right time.