But deprivations do not weigh upon them as much as the misunderstanding and the relationship to them of their brothers, the representatives of the other Orthodox Churches. While the Church Abroad goes on the same path to which at one time the Chief Hierarchs of the entire Orthodox Church gave their blessing, the relationship on the part of their successors has significantly changed. Restrictions are placed upon the Church Abroad, and demands are presented to her Hierarchy and clergy that cannot be fulfiled for reasons of conscience and pastoral care.

When Russia was in her days of prosperity, she gave every support to her Orthodox brethren who were in worse circumstances, especially to those who had been subjugated by non-Orthodox rulers. It was not only the Government that directed all its efforts to this end, but the whole people took part in it as well. Prayers for them were offered both in churches and in homes. All the evening prayers, as printed in the complete prayer books, ended with the petition: “Cast down the blaspheming kingdom of the Hagarenes and subject it to Orthodox kings; confirm in right belief and raise up the horn of Orthodox Christians.” This was printed both in church service books and in prayer books for the people; anyone can verify it. The multitude of Russian people read this prayer daily in every corner of Russia right up to recent times.

Do we not all need to pray now even more for the casting down of a regime that is not merely blaspheming, but God-fighting, that has taken up arms not only against Orthodoxy, but against any kind of faith in God at all? And if prayers for this are frequently offered in the churches of other Christian confessions, should it not be the primary duty of Orthodox Christians to pray for this, and especially the sons of enslaved Russia who are outside her borders?

He who is in captivity and he who is in freedom will give in due time an answer to the Great Hierarch, the All-just Judge.

May He then say: Thou hast been faithful over a few things... enter thou into the joy of thy Lord (Matt. 25:23).

NOTE: We introduced this article as a “definition” of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, in an attempt to dispel some of the myths regarding her which are being promulgated by certain extremists, both those who oppose the present process of her rapprochement with the Moscow Patriarchate and those who are advocates of that process. The two fundamental questions to be addressed in that process are Sergianism and Ecumenism. St John hardly touches on the question of Ecumenism in this essay, because, at the time when he was writing, it was a corrosive error which had not yet deeply bitten into the life of the Orthodox Church in general, and certainly not into the Moscow Patriarchate of that period. With regard to the differing views concerning Metropolitan Sergius’ policy, Saint John’s hope that the hierarchs of the Patriarchate “will act according to the example of those at the Council of Chalcedon who declared with tears that they had given their signatures at the Robber Council under coercion,” have not been fully realised, perhaps because St John had not anticipated that the Soviet tyranny would last so long, and perhaps because two generations of leaders of the Church in Russia have now grown up knowing nothing but the way of the Sergianist accord and therefore presumably consider it to some extent normal. Thus St John’s essay does not compel us either to reject or embrace the present rapprochement process, but we hope that it will help readers understand a little better what the Church Abroad always believed herself to be. Through the prayers of St John of Shanghai, may all those entrusted with the responsibility of deciding the course of the Church with regard to the rapprochement be enlightened unto the good and the true that right may prevail.