Holy New Martyr Peter Metropolitan of Krutitsy was martyred on this day in 1937. The future Metropolitan Peter was born in 1862 into a priest’s family. This means he was 63 when he became the primate of the Russian Church in 1925. He had never married and became a monk in 1920. His previous “career” had been that of a church educator and functionary. He was a cheerful, gregarious person who did not have the reputation of an ascetic. However, his podvig (ministry) for the Russian Church was that he became a stone (Greek petra = Aramaic cephas "stone;" cf. Matt. 16:18), the foundation for unity connecting the bishops, clergy, and laity of the Russian Church. There is phenomenon here that rather defies comprehension, which has other parallels in our church life, as well. For example, certain Jordanville seminarians who were outgoing and ran into a moderate number of troubles with discipline have become reputable archpriests. At the same time, in 1596, the Kievan Metropolitan Michael Rohoza, who had the reputation of a man of prayer, could not prevent the episcopate from sliding into union with the Roman Catholic Church, which he also joined himself. Neither Peter Fedorovich Polianskii nor Bishop Tikhon (Bellavin) were scholars or church writers. However, they had something more valuable: faith and faithfulness (cf. Rev. 2:10). Patriarch Tikhon grasped the future Metropolitan Peter’s inner strength, and Polianskii could not say no when His Holiness called him to follow in Christ’s steps. In Metropolitan St. Peter’s own words: “I can't refuse. If I refuse, I will be a traitor to the Church, but I know I will be signing my own death warrant by agreeing.” He was thus rapidly promoted up the hierarchical ladder and assigned to the ancient see of Krutitsy (in Moscow) as Patriarchal Locum Tenens and ruling hierarch of the Moscow Region. When St. Tikhon of Moscow died on March 25/April 7, 1925, Metropolitan Peter of Krutitsy became Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne. Under normal circumstances, his job would have been to deliver the ship of the Church to the next council, which was to elect a patriarch. However, the Russian Church did not have any status as a legal entity in the Soviet Union and, therefore, could not convene a council. Metropolitan Peter’s rights were recognized by all except Archbishop Andrew of Ufa, bishops of the Russian Church in the homeland and diaspora. Until today, the church commemoration of his name serves as a criterion for canonizing new martyrs (some of them did not commemorate his deputy, Metropolitan Sergius Stragorodskii). However, it was harder for the Russian émigré bishops to respect Metropolitan Peter as they did Patriarch Tikhon, since they had only known him as Peter Fedorovich, a church bureaucrat, before the Revolution. Metropolitan Peter led the Russian Church freely (if one may call life in the Soviet Union free) for less than a year. He had an objective to follow Patriarch Tikhon’s course on proving the Church’s loyalty to the state and to reject any compromises with the Renovationist schismatics. As a result of his unwillingness to become a tool of the destruction of the Church in Soviet “hands,” St. Peter was arrested in December of 1925, and held in various forms of captivity until his martyric death in 1937. |
