SAINT JOB

On these Easter days, May 19, the Church remembers the last Russian emperor, Tsar Nicholas (1868–1918). This commemoration is unusual in that it marks his birthday. Probably, this date would hardly have been preserved in immediate church memory, if not for the mysterious coincidence by which the memory of the righteous Job the Long-Suffering was always celebrated on this very day in the liturgical calendar of the Church. The pious Tsar Nicholas undoubtedly knew about this coincidence. Moreover, on those fateful days, according to historical evidence, he recalled this, as if it had been revealed to him from above that this coincidence was not accidental but was fraught with a special omen.

The Church is built through the prayers of the martyrs. The sacrament of the Church - the Eucharist - was celebrated by the first Christians at the tombs of the first witnesses of Christ. Witnesses, because this is how the New Testament word “martyr” is translated from Greek. The first such martyr, a witness of biblical faith, was the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. According to the word of the Apocalypse, He is “Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, the Beginning of the Creation of God” (Rev. 3:14).

It is very important for us, Christians of recent times, to think about the meaning of the testimony of Christ’s witnesses on the historical path of the Church to the Kingdom. Preparations for the glorification of Tsar Nicholas among the saints were accompanied by discussions. There were many who objected to canonization. Some saw in these very objections a sign of dissent and confusion. However, it is not. Indeed, through the disagreements themselves, the Lord Himself, the Master of History, called on His Church, as a society of believers, to think about the meaning of holiness. For holiness, in the New Testament understanding, is what the Lord God expects from Christians.

“I believe in One God,” says the beginning of the Creed. When reading this text, it is important, nay, necessary, to stop, to take a kind of breath, before adding: “Father and Almighty”: Our Father and Almighty of all. It is enough to remember the first martyrs, especially the martyrs of the first three centuries of Christianity, to be convinced that they were killed for the One God, that is, for the monotheistic faith.

They became martyrs for testifying that there is no one besides the One, the Only God. It is known that the pagans, especially the Roman pagans, were not against Christ being part of their polytheistic pantheon. The biblical Jewish religion was considered ancient, and therefore was permitted by law. But the pagans were simply infuriated, that is, they were made obsessed by the fact that Christians, like the Jews, refused to honor all other gods. Moreover, Christians considered pagan deities to be demons. The testimony of the first martyrs, according to their lives and sufferings, is monotheism, that is, the belief that God is One and Only. Christianity is always a strict and consistent monotheism.

“I believe in one Lord Jesus,” proclaims the Creed. The martyrs of the following centuries, those who suffered from adherents of Iranian Zoroastrianism, Middle Eastern monotheism, as well as Asian and Far Eastern religions, suffered for Christ.

Already from the 7th century, the compulsion to renounce faith in the Lord Jesus - the One, Only Lord and Lord of life and death - became widespread in Africa, Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and subsequently Asia Minor and the Balkans. Previously, these countries were under the rule of Christian Emperors, but then went to new conquerors. The testimony of these martyrs was a testimony for Christ. They confessed that the Lord Jesus is the Messiah, the Savior of the World, the God who entered history, the King and God. “We proclaim Your Death, O Lord, and we confess Your Resurrection,” as it is said in the ancient liturgies.

“I believe in the Church.” The historical path of Orthodoxy over the centuries leads us to the time when humanity headed to battle with the Church. The Antichrist declared a “crossless crusade” for her. “Crush her!” declared the philosopher Voltaire. “We will show the people the last priest!” shouted the Bolsheviks. Both the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917 began first with the destruction of the Church. The holy martyrs of these times, who, however, continue, because the Church is persecuted, suffered for it. Therefore, one should not be surprised that the persecutors and tormentors did not demand that the new martyrs renounce Christ, did not expect signs and wonders, as was the case with the ancient martyrs. They didn’t care, and they killed for belonging to the Church. As a given and a sacrament, being in the Church is indelible, and therefore the atheists killed Christians for the very evidence of belonging to the visible society of believers and therefore destroyed Christians.

“I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the next century,” sound the final words of the Symbol. Today humanity itself is being questioned. “God, Christ, Church, Man”: completing this sequence of the text of the Creed, they begin to persecute Christians. It tries to ridicule, threaten, discriminate, push them to the margins of society for the very recognition of the divine dignity of human nature, of its immutability, sovereignty and. The God-given, divine-human, biblical truth about human inviolability, about man as the Image of God, is beyond doubt.

In essence, this is a debate about nature and culture, about nature, which biblical faith recognizes as immutable and sacramental, and which modernity makes the subject of manipulation and believes that it does not exist in reality but is just part of culture. This includes the ideologies of gender reassignment, transhumanism, total virtualization and digitalization, and all kinds of manipulations with human nature. In this lies the danger of godlessness and dehumanization. Therefore, now is the time to confess the authenticity of humanity. This truth is based on the confession of true humanity in Christ Jesus, which is revealed in the event of the Ascension of the Lord into Heaven, that is, the dogmatic belief that God Himself, now and forever, beats the human heart.

Man’s humanity is not “property”, but the Gift of God in Christ Jesus (cf. Rom. 6:23) - the True God and the True Man (cf. John 19:5). God will resurrect every person on the last day, will raise up all flesh in pristine glory, in the image of the Lord Jesus, the King of Glory who rose from the dead. As in the words of the Book of Job: “And I know that my Redeemer lives, and on the last day He will raise from their dust this decaying skin of mine, and I will see God in my flesh. I will see Him myself; “My eyes, not the eyes of another, will see Him” (Job 19:25-27).

Perhaps, in this last “dogmatical point of martyrdom” we come closest to understanding the image of the holiness of Tsar Nicholas. Here the voices that were heard against his glorification and spoke about the absence of a requirement for him to renounce Christ, about the ordinary secular life of the ruler, political mistakes, and so on, become unimportant. Having peered into the surviving biographical features of his life, the extreme decency, biblical nobility and authenticity of this man in Christ becomes obvious. This is an image of a person without meanness, without abuse of power, with acceptance of what God has given in the circumstances of life, up to renunciation, arrest and death.

Even when the State itself, the people in the person of certain of their representatives, moreover, to a very significant extent, the Church itself renounced him, or, at least, simply ignored his disappearance, first from the throne, and then from among the living, Nicholas left no one slandered, did not call for revenge, did not bequeath to punish or demand repentance from anyone.

According to biographers, Nicholas repeated the words of Christ about forgiveness for the crucifiers (cf. Luke 23:34), and remembered the Long-Suffering Job, on whose Memorial Day he was born. In this human authenticity of his feat, real evidence was revealed of the true divine dignity of all human existence. Nicholas renounced the Kingdom but did not renounce his humanity. This Christian refusal to be persuaded and urged to say or do anything inconsistent with the biblical conviction about man can and should be inspiring.