On July 6, I wrote about Ivan M. Kontsevich, who settled at Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville as if it were an Optina Hermitage. Before World War Two, the famous Russian author Ivan Shmelev visited a mother ship of Holy Trinity Monastery, St. Job of Pochaev monastery in Ladomirova, East Slovakia. There, the abbot of the monastery, Archimandrite Seraphim (Ivanov), rushed to offer Shmelev a place to live, like Dostoevsky near Optina, and also a place to be buried (Shemlev politely declined and returned to Paris). Like the Kontsevichs, Adrian Rymarnko was a spiritual child of the last Optina Elders. St. Nekatry passed away in 1928 with Fr. Adrian in his presence. The fact that Fr. Adrian was ordained a deacon and a priest in 1921 is strong evidence that he wanted to serve the persecuted Church of Christ. Fr. Adrian ministered in his native Kiev and was part of the same milieu as Archbishop Leonty of Chile, about whom I wrote on July 2. Many of the Christians from these circles became new martyrs, and most, including Fr. Adrian, went through arrests and imprisonment. With the German occupation during World War Two, new opportunities surfaced to serve God openly. When the Germans withdrew from the Soviet Union, Fr. Adrian joined many who moved westward and became “fresh blood” for the Russian Church Abroad organism. Before World War Two, the first (White) Russian immigrants founded some of the ROCOR communities in the US. However, until now, most churches in the Eastern American diocese were built by the Second (post-war time) immigration. Some priests (another one I am thinking of is Fr. John Legkii) were moving to the US with their communities founded in post-war Germany. Already in Kiev, Fr. Adrian was looking after the sisters of the Pokrov Convent. In 1949, with the blessing of Archbishop Vitaly (Maksimenko), Fr. Adrian founded Novo-Diveevo Convent in Spring Valley near New York City. The involvement of a “white” (married) clergyman with the convent has remained an essential factor in Novo Diveevo’s ethos. When, in 1968, his spouse Matushka Evgeniia passed away, Fr. Adrian became a monk and, the same year, was consecrated a bishop of Rockland, a vicar of Metropolitan Philaret of Eastern America and New York, the first hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad. Somehow, Bishop Andrei was perceived as an elder. People would come and ask him questions as they did in Optina. This eldership was treated in Jordanville with slight skepticism. A confessing father of Holy Trinity Monastery, Archimandrite Kiprian (Pyzhev) would emphasize that they are old people in Jordanville, but not the elders. This attitude was inherited by his successor, Archimandrite, and now Bishop Luke (Murianka), the current rector of the monastery. The disciple of Vladyka Andrei, Fr. Alexander Feodorowski, who became his successor as an administrator of the convent’s grounds, including the most prominent Russian Orthodox cemetery in the US, has been preserving the rooms of Archbishop Andrei’s house intact as if he passed away yesterday. I thought it would make a good project for a seminarian to make an inventory of this cell, which may help better understand the inner world of another person who linked the persecuted Russian Church in the homeland and exile. |
