Dear ,

Our new project, This Day in the Life of the Church, was launched just over a week ago. I have selected for you here dates about ROCOR history. Researching, writing, posting, and editing these daily communications has been demanding. Be this as it may, it has been a good experience, and I hope the readers of this “daily news” feel the same way. If you like what you see, subscribe for $3.00 a month at: https://www.patreon.com/rocorstudies.

 The campaign to support this project will run on Kickstarter until the feast of the Transfiguration. With donations from 16 donors, we have reached the $2,100 mark. I am extremely grateful for the fact that the Fund for Assistance to the Russian Church Abroad has decided to support this project with a $6,000 grant. We have $1,900 left to raise to reach $10,000, which would cover roughly $25 a day for researching, writing, and editing. The Kickstarter platform and their partner Stripe will charge roughly $900 for their services. So, to raise a net $10,000, we need to collect $11,000. Every donation counts, no matter how small. If you can, please consider supporting this work at: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1747159273/your-daily-dose-of-intellectual-and-theological-inspiration?ref=user_menu.

 Bobby Maddex recorded a ten-minute interview with me this Monday about This Day in the Life of the Church. You may listen to it on Ancient Faith Radio: https://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/features/dr_andrei_psarev_professor_at_holy_trinity_orthodox_seminary

Please share the word and subscribe at: https://www.patreon.com/rocorstudies.

Thank you for your continuing interest,

 Protodeacon Andrei Psarev, Editor

You may donate:

PayPal

Venmo@Andrei-Psarev

August 3: A Russian Sequel to the ROCOR 1921 Council

Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitskii), First Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad (+1936), “Address to the Army of the Primorie Government”

On this day in 1922, the Zemskii Sobor (Council of Local Representatives) was opened in Vladivostok. At the time, the Russian Far East was part of the territory of the former Russian Empire that was still free from Bolsheviks rule. The Zemskii Sobor with its over 200 members, including bishops and other clergy, proclaimed the restoration of the Romanov dynasty in Russia. The assembly blamed the Russian Revolution on Jewish fanatics and Russian thieves and officially banned atheism in the Far East. The Far East came under Bolshevik control the following year.

August 6: A Priest and Teacher with a Big Russian Heart

The mythrstreaming Iveron icon of the Mother of God visits the Pokrov parish in Ottawa, where Fr. George served. 1986. Photo: http://www.memorialchurch.ca

Archpriest George Skrinnikov, Instructor of Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary, passed away today in 2008. He was born in Yugoslavia before World War II into a family of White Russian refugees. After the Second World War, Fr. George came to Argentina and then to Canada, where he served in many ROCOR parishes. In 1990, when I came to the seminary in Jordanville, there was an influx of entrants from the Soviet Union. We were penniless, without family in America, and had to adapt to the culture. Fr. George taught us the Law of God and was very caring and cheerful. At the same time, he rejected the reunification of the ROCOR with the Moscow Patriarchate in 2007; his brother-in-law, Archimandrite Sergii (Kindiakoff), became a bishop under Metropolitan Vitaly, who split away from the ROCOR in 2001.

August 6: A Person Who Contributed to the ROCOR’s Liturgical Reputation

Boris Ledkovsy (in the second row at the very left) and St. Vladimir's Seminary faculty in 1958. Photo: www. svots.edu

Church composer Boris Ledkovsky passed away on this day in 1965. He grew up in a priest’s family and studied church music from his early youth in the Don region and in Moscow. Having left Russia with General Wrangel’s Russian Army in 1920, for a while, Ledkosvky sang in the Don Cossack Choir of the famed Sergei Zharov. During World War II, he was a choir director in Berlin. After the war, he became the choir director at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Sign (home to the ROCOR Synod). While Ledkovsky was part of the ROCOR rather than the North American Metropolia (now the OCA), he was nevertheless able to teach at St. Vladimir’s Seminary, which at the time was located on Manhattan’s West Side. He belongs to a pleiad of ROCOR liturgical scholars along with Bishop Gabriel (Chepur), John Gardner, and Valeria Hoecke.

The Exapostilarion of Pascha "In Flesh Thou Didst Fall Asleep"(In Church-Slavonic). Music by Boris Ledkovsky

August 8: Difficult Choices in Unprecedented Canonical Circumstances

Metropolitan Evlogy celebrates the 25th anniversary of his episcopacy at St. Alexandre Nevsky Cathedral on Rue Daru in Paris. 1928

August 9: Canonization As a Mirror of Inter-Church Divisions and Reconciliations

Bishop Laurus of Manhattan, the future first hierarch of the ROCOR in St Herman's cell on Spruce Island. c. 1970

In 1867, Bishop Paul of Novoarkhangelsk put together a record of the feats and miracles of Venerable Herman of Alaska. In 1894, Valaam Monastery published a book about Venerable Herman. In the 1930’s, Archimandrite Gerasim (Shmaltz) settled on Spruce Island, Alaska. Due to the 1935 reconciliation within the Russian diaspora church, the hierarchs of the North American Metropolia became part of the ROCOR Council of Bishops. When Bishop Alexis of Alaska was in Belgrade at the 1937 Council of Bishops, he announced that his flock “ha[d] been dreaming about Elder Herman’s glorification for a long time” (Aliaskinskaia eparkhiia,” Tserkovnaiia Zhizn’, 8 [1939] 124.).The 1939 ROCOR Council of Bishops assigned Bishop Alexis to make preparations for the canonization. When, at the Seventh All-American Council in 1946, the hierarchs of the North American Metropolitan District withdrew from the ROCOR Council of Bishops, Archimandrite Gerasim (Shmaltz) did not leave the North American Metropolia, while also remaining close to the ROCOR. Following his advice, Gleb Podmoshensky and Eugene Rose created the St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood within the ROCOR. At the meeting of the Synod of March 21, 1969, Archbishop Anthony of San Francisco raised the question of the veneration of Father Herman of Alaska, and a decision was made to conduct a survey of all of the ROCOR hierarchs regarding their attitude toward his glorification. That same year, Fr. Gerasim uncovered Elder Herman’s remains. Simultaneous preparations for Father Herman’s glorification were taking place in the North American Metropolia, as well. On April 10, 1970, the Moscow Patriarchate granted autocephaly to the North American Metropolia, and on August 9 of that year, the glorification of Father Herman by the then (already) Orthodox Church in America took place in Kodiak’s Holy Resurrection Cathedral. The Russian Church Abroad canonized Father Herman on the same day in the Holy Virgin Joy of All Who Sorrow Cathedral in San Francisco.

Relevant Link

"And Seven Years Latter I became Orthodox" - Fr. Leo on St. Herman of Alaska

Help us serve you and the Church!
With your donation we will continue to improve this Web site.

Know someone who might be interested in supporting our work?
Please forward this email to them.