Could Jesus Have Prevented Lazarus from Dying?

“… he said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ Jesus wept. So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’” (Jn 11: 28-37) 

Sr Vassa Larin comments on the question some were asking: 

 – And that’s precisely what I am wondering, when, so unexpectedly, I see the Lord “weep.” He could have prevented this from happening in the first place! But instead He took His time, getting to Bethany… And even now, He tarries just outside the village, for some reason, and the story is dragging on and on, described by the Evangelist John in rather excruciating detail.  Of course, we know about the light at the end of this story, but imagine the hours, then days, of the human beings involved here; of their waiting, hoping, then running out of time, and hope, – while God stalls.

So God has His schedule, which does not always correspond to mine. At times this can bring frustration, fear, or even intense grief, as in the case of the death of a loved one. Things change, and often not at the precise time, or in the exact way, I would like. Thus God allows for this suffering, great or small, but always inherent to our being in time, that is, in changeability. But note that He does enter into our suffering, with great compassion. How do I know that? Because “Jesus wept” with us. And God subjected His Son to the changeability and changes of our being in time, even unto our death, so that His Son could do for us what none of us could do for ourselves: Transfigure our suffering into light, and transfigure our death into life. This is the ultimate change He makes possible for me, in His cross and resurrection. Let me not fear change today, not the kind my Lord brings me, even if He takes His time. (Reflections with Morning Coffee: 365 Daily Devotions for Busy People, Kindle Location 4104-4117)

While it appears that death is inevitable for all and not avoidable, death isn’t the last word on our lives. Christ transfigures death so that death no longer separates us from God.  

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, “For thy sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35-39) 

If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. (Romans 14:8-9) 

Reconciled to God by Christ’s Death and Saved by His Life

Even more so then, since we are now justified by his blood, shall we be saved from wrath through him! For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more shall we be saved by his life! (Romans 5:9-10) 

St Paul tells us that we are reconciled to God through Christ’s crucifixion, but we are saved by his life – by His being resurrected to eternal life. Christ dies once for all but He lives forever. We are justified (declared innocent of the guilt of sin or made righteous) by Christ’s death so that we can rise with Him eternally in the resurrection. 

“The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God” (Romans 6:10). 

“This way, just as sin ruled in death, grace was to rule through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 5:21). 

Contemporary biblical scholarship acknowledges that Paul’s most frequently used image of salvation in Christ, namely, ‘justification’ (dikaiosune), is drawn from Paul’s Jewish law background and denotes a societal or judicial relationship, either ethical or forensic – that is, it is related to law courts, as in Deuteronomy 25:1. The righteous or upright person (dikaios) came to refer usually to one who stood acquitted or vindicated before a judge’s tribunal (Exodus 23:7; 1 Kings 8: 32). Jews also tried to achieve the status of ‘righteousness’ or ‘uprightness’ in the sight of Yahweh the Judge by observing the rules and regulations of Mosaic law (see Psalms 7:9-12).

When Paul says that Christ has ‘justified’ humans, he means that Christ has made it possible for them to stand before God’s tribunal as acquitted or innocent. The characteristically Pauline contribution to the notion of justification is his affirmation of the gratuitous and unmerited character of the justification of all humanity in Romans 3:20-26.  (Lucian Turcescu, THE TEACHINGS OF MODERN CHRISTIANITY Vol 1, p 691)

Do Not Envy the Sinner’s Success

Do not be envious of evil people, nor desire to be with them; For their heart devises violence, and their lips talk of troublemaking. (Proverbs 24:1-2)

Do not envy a person of violence and do not choose any of his ways; for the perverse person is an abomination to the LORD, but the upright are in his confidence. (Proverbs 3:31-32)

Let not your heart envy sinners, but continue in the fear of the LORD all the day. (Proverbs 23:17)

In all three of the above quotes from Proverbs we are told not to be envious of evil people, sinners or the violent. Some of us might think this is obvious wisdom for Christians and even might wonder why would we be envious of such people? The answer is because sometimes they succeed in their quests and we often envy those who succeed. We might conclude the end justifies the means and thus we envy those who are willing to use godforsaken behaviors to attain their goals. However, even if they succeed in attaining their goals through the use of evil, sin and violence, we are not to imitate them. We are not to envy their success because the means we use to do God’s will are as important as doing His will. These proverbs suggest God does not approve of our doing violence and vileness in our efforts to attain His will. Better to attempt to do God’s will and fail then to use evil and violence to attain what we believe is God’s plan.  “Beloved, do not imitate evil but imitate good. He who does good is of God; he who does evil has not seen God” (3 John 11).

St Basil the Great tells us that envy is one of the motivating forces for demons, which is why it is inappropriate for us humans.

What has driven that demon who is the source of all evil to wage war so furiously against human beings? Isn’t it envy? Through envy he was exposed as one who fights openly against God. He was angry with God because of his generosity toward humanity, but it was upon humanity that he took his vengeance, since he could not take it upon God. By acting in the same way, Cain showed that he was the first disciple of the devil, having learned from him both envy and murder, those kindred iniquities connected by Paul who said: Full of envy, murder [Romans 1:29]. So then, what did he do? He saw the honor bestowed [on Abel] by God, and he was inflamed with jealousy, and he killed the recipient of the honor in order to attack the one who had bestowed the honor. Since he could not fight against God, he resorted to slaughtering his own brother.

Let us flee this illness, brothers. It teaches us to fight against God. It is the mother of homicide, giving birth to violation of nature, ignorance of kinship, and disasters of the most irrational sort.  (ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE, p 135)

We are not to use the methods of the violent, sinners or the wicked to attain God’s will. We are not to envy these evil people when they succeed (instead pray Psalm 73:2-14). We are not to imitate them abandoning our morality or godliness to attain our goals at all costs. We are not to use their methods to attain God’s goals. We might remember the teaching that says God calls us to be faithful not successful.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:21)

The Creator and Equalizer of All

The rich and the poor have this in common, the Lord is the maker of them all. (Proverbs 22:2)

While we humans have many ways to categorize people or distinguish between different social groups (such as gender, ethnicism, race, nationality, social class, language, etc), when one strips away all of these human conventions, we are left with human beings created in God’s image and likeness. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Galatians 3:28-29).

When we stand before God’s judgment seat, none of these distinctions between people that we made, enforced and valued, will be of any importance. The Lord is the great equalizer – all will have to stand before Him to be judged, no matter what characteristics they had in life. The Lord is Creator of all people, not just Jews or Christians or believers – “a judge who is God of all” (Hebrews 12:23).

Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised on the ground of their faith and the uncircumcised through their faith. (Romans 3:29-30)

In Christ these human social distinctions and differences mean nothing for He is Creator and Judge of every person regardless of their social condition. God looks at what’s inour hearts, not what’s in our wallets.  Nor is God much interested in social constructs such as race or class or gender for the Lord loves us all equally and empowers all of us to be godlike – slow to anger, abounding in love and mercy, gracious and merciful.

For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body— Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. (1 Corinthians 12:13)

… the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe. (1 Timothy 4:10)

The Lord Blesses the Righteous

Whoever shuts his ears to the cry of the poor will also cry himself and not be heard. 

He who follows righteousness and mercy finds life, righteousness, and honor.  (Proverbs 21:13, 21)

While the Scriptures call us to be righteous, our argumentative nature places the emphasis on our being right instead. We are more eager to prove we are right than to show we are righteous.

As a race, we are much more likely to want to be right than to want to be good. However, the Gospels do not call us to be right, but to be righteous.  (Fr Meletios Webber, STEPS OF TRANSFORMATION, p 110)

The righteous are charitable, merciful, gracious, patient, kind and loving, all characteristics of our God. “You are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love..” (Nehemiah 9:17).

Interestingly enough, Jesus never once suggested to His disciples that they be right. What he did demand is that they be righteous. In listening to His words, we find that we spend almost all our energy in the wrong direction, since we generally pursue being right with every ounce of our being, but leave being good to the weak and the naive.  (Archimandrite Meletios Webber, BREAD & WATER, WINE & OIL, p 40)

Righteousness is not limited to piety, asceticism or even morality. It also means being charitable, hearing the cry of those in need and helping them. Righteousness is related to mercy as well as truth.

Water from the Rock Who is Christ

And they did not thirst when He led them through the deserts; He caused the waters to flow from the rock for them; He also split the rock, and the waters gushed out. (Isaiah 48:21) 

Theodoret of Cyrus (d. 457AD) comments on the event of God bringing water from the rock to quench the thirst of the Israelites sojourning through the desert which St Paul interprets as prefiguring baptism and communion. 

Now, I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all accepted baptism into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink (1 Corinthians 10:1-4). These events, he is saying, are a type of ours: the sea resembled the font, the cloud the grace of the Spirit, Moses the priest, the rod the cross, Israel suggesting the baptized, while the Egyptians in pursuit acted as a type of the demons and Pharaoh in person was an image of the devil; after the crossing, you see, the Israelites were freed from the power of the Egyptians, as in a type they also received manna from heaven.

The rock also resembled the Lord’s side: streams sprang up for them unexpectedly, as he brings out more clearly, They drank from a spiritual rock that followed them, remember; the rock was Christ [1 Cor 10:4]. Now his meaning is that for them it was not the rock but divine grace which ensured that the rock unexpectedly gushed floods: if the rock followed them, or water from the rock, how did they need water ever again?  (COMMENTARY ON THE LETTERS OF ST PAUL, Vol 1 p 199)

Working From Our Hearts

Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:43-45)

Christ both showed by example as well as taught us that we are to serve others. Greatness in Christ’s terms means serving others, meeting their needs and laboring for the good of others (which Christians who want to make America great should keep in mind – be great as Christ defined greatness). All the work we do is supposed to be done to the glory of God. This is why our work should come from the heart. We are not working just for ourselves, for our gain, for our income, as Christians we are always working for God and that is supposed to guide whatever labor we perform.

Any kind of work is God’s work. Every task should be performed from the heart, for it is not for people that we are laboring, but for God. God is present everywhere. The whole planet belongs to him; the entire universe is His. No matter who your boss is, whether he is a good man who manages his company well or not, we must do our work for God. For when we work for God, our hearts and minds are open, but when we do not, we say things like, ‘I won’t work for him; he’s a lazy good-for-nothing who sits all day, yet he gets paid more than me.’ This is a sign that we are not performing our task from the heart. (Elder Thaddeus, OUR THOUGHTS DETERMINE OUR LIVES, p 97)

Whether washing the disciples’ feet or dying on the cross, Christ was working for us and for our salvation. That is true of everything He did [which we hear whenever the priest pronounces the dismissal at so many feasts of Christ:  “who for us and for our salvation … ” and then he states what it is Christ did]. We should have that same mindset whenever we do any work, we should have at least in the back of our minds how we might also work for the salvation of the world.

The Apostle Zacchaeus

Today the Church commemorates the Apostle Zacchaeus, the tax collector who converted and became a disciple of Christ. In the Gospel narrative of Zacchaeus, Zacchaeus says to Jesus:

“Look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor; and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore fourfold.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham; for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” (Luke 19:8-10)

The biblical text is usually interpreted to mean that Zacchaeus at that moment repented of his previous, devious and greedy behavior and now promises to start a new, godly behavior. In other words, it is a story of a man’s conversion from wicked behavior to Christian behavior.

There is something in the text which makes me wonder if what Zacchaeus is actually telling Jesus is that he already does this good behavior, but did it secretly although knowing that his fellow Jews thought evil of him because he was a tax collector. What he is telling Jesus is not that he is changing his behavior, but only revealing the good deeds which he had humbly hidden from everyone else but was now making public. Zacchaeus accepted the calumny from his fellow Jews in order to practice his good deeds in secret fulfilling Christ’s teaching (Matthew 6:1-4). And he was rewarded as promised by Christ entering his home to eat with him.  Zacchaeus’ comments to Jesus are not in the future tense (from now on I will…) but seem to imply this is what he is already doing.

What the story is showing is that the Jews had falsely assumed Zacchaeus to be cheating tax collector, while in reality Zacchaeus is already a man after Christ’s own heart. Zacchaeus seeks out Jesus because he feels a kindred spirit with Him – Zacchaeus has as Christ taught hidden his righteousness from his fellow Jews, doing his good deeds in secret unlike the Pharisees who did good in order to be seen and admired by all. Zachaeus is surprised that Jesus knows his name and wants to dine with him in Zacchaeus’ house, perhaps wrongly assuming that even Jesus probably despises him.

Zacchaeus silently accepted being ostracized by his fellow Jews and humbly accepted their churlish calumny, but the reality is he was honest, made good any excess taxes he took, and was generous to the poor. Salvation came to Zacchaeus, not in that he was changing his behavior, but that Christ is showing to the Jews that in fact Zacchaeus is a righteous man who had been wrongly exiled by his fellow Jews and should be restored to their fellowship. Jesus is telling his fellow Jews that they misjudged Zacchaeus and instead of shunning him should welcome him as a brother. [This is somewhat like Christ revealing the hemorrhaging woman who wanting to remain anonymous secretly touched the hem of His garment. Christ points her out as a person of great faith who isn’t seeking attention or fame, just like Zacchaeus.]

From the point of view of the Jews, Zacchaeus was a lost cause since he was a tax collector. Jesus came to seek and save the lost. Jesus is welcoming Zacchaeus publicly into His sheep fold and telling the Jews around Him that they should do the same. Jesus restores not only sinners, but also those who are outcasts or wrongly ostracized. The story is about reconciliation and restoration, helping the people of God to be people of love rather than of legalistic judgmentalism. Over time the Church under monastic influence saw sin and repentance as the main theme of the Scriptures and read that into many Gospel lessons (see Eugen Pentiuc, HEARING THE SCRIPTURES, pp 15-16). Whereas in the early Church, they did read the scriptures as revealing salvation, redemption, renewal, rebirth, restoration. In some ways these are two sides of the same coin, just a difference in emphases. But it is an emphasis worth bringing to our attention. Rather than condemning people we suspect of sin, what we need to do at times is to find the way to welcome them (back) into Christ’s flock. Look at your neighbors and fellow parishioners with the eyes of faith, seeing them as they are – people created in God’s image and likeness. The Pygmalion effect is real.

The Terrible, Troubling Test

Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then He said, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” (Genesis 22:1-2)

St Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444AD) reflects on what turmoil God’s command to Abraham must have had on that poor old man. Scripture itself is uncomfortably silent about what Abraham was thinking or feeling. The situation caused consternation for ancient commentators as well (Islam rejects the legitimacy of the story as unbecoming of God). Anyone who is prolife should be very troubled by the story and what God is telling a dad to do to his God-promised and much hoped for son.

If one must describe things on a human level, I would say that the command of God for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac was burdensome and intolerable to that blessed man. For how do you suppose he was affected when ordered to do this thing? Here was a man who had reached considerable old age, endowed with a single, late-born son, deprived by age of the ability to become the father of any other children, having also a very elderly spouse (for Sarah herself was an old woman), who was commanded to slay without hesitation his much-longed-for son, his only-begotten and much-prayed-for son.

How did the old man expect his hand to be able to bring the knife down upon the boy, and thus undertake to commit the pitiable slaughter of his own offspring? Is it not reasonable to suppose that an extremely bitter and turbulent throng of thoughts unbearably ravaged the soul of that righteous man? At one time his natural affection was impelling him, while at another the divine oracle was persuading him, and it was most probably necessary for him to summon forth the unwished-for readiness to obey. Great indeed, then, is the marvel of the that righteous man, and his love of God is beyond all praise.  (GLAPHYRA ON THE PENTATEUCH Vol 1, p 159)

While St James tells us in no uncertain terms that God tempts no one (James 1:13), certainly in the Old Testament both Job and Abraham are put to the test. We may hold them both in awe for their unshakeable faithfulness to the Lord, but the stories do also cause faith problems for us. Does the God of love really command a father to kill his son? Does the God of love allow a man’s children to be killed just to test the man’s faithfulness? We do derive spiritual lessons from Scripture, but sometimes the way the stories are told and their literal reading are very problematic. Sometimes the Fathers acknowledge a literal reading of the scriptural lesson cannot be reconciled to the theological fact that God is love. They didn’t get rid of these troubling scriptures, but cautioned about what lessons we derive from them, reminding us that the scriptures are not always crystal clear but sometimes present us a mystery or they foreshadow a hidden truth which is not perfectly clear to us. They also warn us against attributing human emotions and motives to God which they felt was an insult to God. The Abraham and Isaac story foreshadows God offering His own Son on the cross and thus is not as significant as a historical story as it is spiritual and theological lesson.

Has the Russian Patriarch and Church Abandoned Christ and the Gospel?

Articles that I have read about the Russian Church document, “The Present and Future of the Russian World”, have deeply saddened me for that document portrays a Church which has abandoned its Gospel mission in favor of a nationalistic and imperial agenda. That document raises the Gospel question: “For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and lose his soul?” (Mark 8:36). The Church is supposed to equip each of its members to “attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13). That does not appear to be the goal of the Russian Church or of Patriarch Kirill as stated in its document. A good criticism of the document’s tenet is St Silouan who “was profoundly aware that evil can only be overcome by good. The use of force only leads to the substitution of one form of violence for another. . . ‘The Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them‘ (Luke 9:56). And this ought to be our one thought, too – that all should be saved’.” (THE MONK OF MOUNT ATHOS, p 92-93)

The Russian Church has veered off course and seems to have abandoned Christ’s new commandment by which the world would know that we are His disciples (John 13:35). The Russian Orthodox will be recognized as Christians only by acting in love toward their Ukrainian brothers and sisters, rather than viewing the Ukrainians as enemies to be annihilated or people to be forced into submission. St John the Theologian teaches us to “… love one another. And this is love, that we follow his commandments; this is the commandment, as you have heard from the beginning, that you follow love. For many deceivers have gone out into the world, men who will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh; such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist.” (2 John 5-7) For the Russian Patriarch to fail to practice love for his fellow Christians, his neighbors, his brothers and sisters in Christ is for him to reject Christ in the spirit of the anti-Christ.

Paul L. Gavrilyuk in his article, “When Theology Fuels the War”, writes a scathing critique of Russian Patriarch Kyrill and the Russian Church leadership for adopting the document, “The Present and Future of the Russian World.” This document proclaims that: “From the spiritual and moral point of view, the special military operation [namely the invasion of and aggressive war against Ukraine] is a Holy War, in which Russia and its people, defending the unified spiritual space of the Holy Rus’, fulfill the mission of the ‘Restraining One’ by protecting the world from the onslaught of globalism and the victory of the west that has fallen into Satanism.” Gavrilyuk says: “Apparently, by bombing Ukrainian cities Russia is engaging in the holy war and is preventing the end of the world. With the stakes being so high, any destruction, no matter how horrific, is justified; any amount of violence is acceptable in the fight of the absolute good (i.e. Russia) against the satanic evil (i.e. the west).” Patriarch Kirill “has repeatedly deployed and developed the same rhetoric of the holy war, going so far as to claim that the death of a Russian soldier in Ukraine is “a sacrifice that washes away all sins that a person has committed.” “The patriarch has turned the Russian Orthodox Church into an ideological machine of an aggressive state. None of his predecessors that claimed “loyalty” to the militaristic Soviet state could claim such a distinction. Some of them, often reluctantly, covered up the repressive actions of the regime against the believers. Patriarch Kirill, quite willingly, has supplied a political theology for a war that continues to destroy the lives and livelihoods of millions, some of whom he claims as his own flock (i.e. as the members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Moscow Patriarchate).”

Alexander Motyl in his article, “The Russian Orthodox Church Declares Holy War on Ukraine”, notes “Even Putin hasn’t called his special military operation a holy war, though Kirill’s terminological innovation, which brings to mind the Crusades and Islamic Jihad, is perfectly compatible with Putin’s language.” Motyl says in the document, “Kirill shows his true face: ‘After the completion of the SMO [the war of aggression in Ukraine], the entire territory of modern Ukraine should enter the zone of exclusive influence of Russia. The possibility of the existence in this territory of a Russophobic political regime hostile to Russia and its people, as well as a political regime controlled from an external center hostile to Russia, must be completely excluded.” Kirill’s goals have nothing to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and are nothing more that imperialistic nationalism. Kirill is claiming an empire, the very thing Satan used to tempt Jesus. “Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Begone, Satan! for it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’” (Matthew 4:8-10) Our Lord rejected Satan’s temptation, but Kirill appears to have embraced Satan and his offer for a worldly kingdom. In Luke 9:55, Christ rebuked His disciples for wanting to rain down fire from heaven upon the Samaritans. Kirill seems to be infected by that same evil spirit which possessed the two disciples for that wicked moment.

Serhii Shumylo in his devastating criticism of the Russian Patriarch, “Ordinary Fascism,” or The Russian World of Patriarch Kirill, writes that this new document contradicts a previous declaration of the Russian Church:

Every phrase of this paragraph completely contradicts the “Ten Commandments” (“you shall not kill”, “you shall not steal”, “you shall not bear false witness”, “you shall not covet “) and the Gospel ideals of love, peace, forgiveness, mutual respect, and non-violence. Indeed, any military invasions, aggression, murder, and violence cannot be termed or justified as “holy” from the standpoint of the Gospel. This is purely a pagan approach, where war was given special “sacralization” and “sanctification”, which fundamentally contradicts the teachings of Christ. It is probably no coincidence that in this document, ROC-MP, despite its pseudo-spiritual style and personal presentation by the Patriarch, there is no mention of the name of Christ or reference to the Gospel. … At the same time, this document contradicts the previously affirmed “Fundamentals of the Social Concept of the ROC”, where in the eighth chapter entitled “War and Peace,” it is noted that “war is evil”, and “killing, without which wars cannot happen, was regarded as a grave crime before God as far back as the dawn of the holy history.” (para. VIII.1), therefore “clergy and canonical ecclesiastical structures cannot assist or cooperate with the state” in matters of “political struggle”, “waging civil war or aggressive external war” (para. III.8.2), since “the Church endeavors to perform a peacemaking ministry…, also opposes the propaganda of war and violence, as well as various manifestations of hatred capable of provoking fratricidal clashes” (para. VIII.5). Thus, the justification by the leadership of ROC-MP of the aggressive war and the killing of tens of thousands of civilians in Ukraine, which they call a “holy war”, testifies to their distortion and perversion of Orthodox doctrine and disbelief in the basic tenets of Christ’s teaching.

Sister Vassa Larin writes a profound theological critique of the Russian church document, On “Heresy” and the Commemoration of Patriarch Kirill. She notes:

1. Instead of the Triune GOD, not mentioned a single time in the “Edict,” we are called to believe in a “triune people” (триединый народ);
2. Instead of CHRIST and SALVATION in Him, also not mentioned anywhere in the text, we are called to recognize the “Russian tradition, the shrines of Russian civilization and the great Russian culture” as the “highest value and meaning of life”;
3. Instead of the CROSS and the WAY OF THE CROSS, we are called to the way of aggression and to a “Holy/Sanctified War” (Священная война), a term that justifies killing in the name of the above-mentioned “triune people”; instead of the SACRIFICE of Christian “witness” or MARTYRDOM, the patriarch proclaims as something salvific and sacrificial the “sense of duty” and “fulfilling of the oath” vis-á-vis a criminal regime (in the patriarch’s sermon of 25 September 2022);
4. Instead of the way of REPENTANCE, the way of the wise or penitent thief, we are called to the way of the other, not-penitent thief who was crucified to the Lord’s other side, i.e., the way of resentment and blaming everyone and everything else (see the resentment towards Ukraine, the “global” West, the law passed in Russia against “offending the feelings of believers,” – all supported by the Russian Orthodox Church)…

“… they crucify the Son of God on their own account and hold him up to contempt” (Hebrews 6:6).

When Patriarch Kirill blesses a military war against his fellow Christians which maims and kills thousands in the name of Russian nationalism, he rejects the Gospel. The only warfare of the Church, as St John Chrysostom noted, does not make the living dead, but rather makes the dead to live.