Lively Faith

70 million dead. This is a staggering number: a number that exceeds the whole population of France or of the United Kingdom, a number roughly double the populations of Canada or Australia. And what was the cause for this catastrophic loss of sacred human life? Was it war or famine or epidemic disease? No. It was faithfulness, faithfulness to the Lord Jesus Christ marked by a refusal to repudiate Him.

According to our best estimates, 70 million people have died as red martyrs since the first Martyr was nailed on a Cross.

"But these things happened long ago!" you say? "That was when Christians were thrown to the lions!" Well, certainly martyrs lost during the early years of the Church are dear to us. And still many more lives were lost during the Great Persecution of the third and fourth centuries. But best estimates of lives lost during that latter period are set between 3,000 to 3,500.

But 70 million! This can scarcely be believed. The mind reels. Which era is responsible for the greatest number of these deaths? we want to know. And the answer may surprise you. It is the century in which the Sisters and I will have lived the majority of our years: the twentieth century. The twentieth century alone exceeds all previous centuries combined for the spilling of the blood of Christians. And it continues unabated in the twenty-first. According to the Center for Global Christianity, in a ten-year period one million Christians have died for their faith chiefly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Muslims furiously murder Christians.

To be precise the Center defines martyr as "believers in Christ who have lost their lives prematurely, in situations of witness, as a result of human hostility."

In our own Russian Orthodox tradition, during the two-year period 1937-1938, 168,300 Russian Orthodox clergy were arrested and over 100,000 of them murdered, according to records of the Moscow Patriarchate. In all, 2,749,163 Christian believers were martyred according to official Soviet records (source: Gen. Georgy Zukov, former Minister of Defense and Marshal of the Soviet Union).

As converts to Russian Orthodoxy, the Sisters and I, long accustomed to commemorating saints of the Early Church, have been struck by the nearness of these Christian lives to our own. Many of them were still living when we were born. And their stories enable us to draw still closer to them. One was particularly significant to us, for (by virtue of a tiny relic) she reposes in our Altar. We have the privilege every day of venerating the Grand Duchess, St. Elisabeth the New Martyr, and read her story with rapt attention.

Like us, she was a Western Christian, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Marrying Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, she entered the glittering society of the Russian aristocracy. But in 1905 suddenly her fairy tale ended. Her husband was murdered by socialist revolutionaries. Following a period of mourning, in 1909 she sold her magnificent jewels and costly possessions (even her wedding ring) and departed from the Imperial Court. Tonsured as a nun, she used these funds to found the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent (Convent of Martha and Mary) and dedicated her life to prayer and to relieving suffering among the poor. She herself often visited Moscow's most degraded slums and got to know the people there personally.

With the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the government of the Tsar was toppled and all of Russia thrown into chaos. Yet, the life of the convent remained undisturbed for one year. Then in 1918 Vladimir Lenin order the Cheka (the secret police) to arrest her, and she and her friend, a novice named Barbara, were subsequently placed in custody. She ultimately was thrown into a mine shaft, more than sixty feet deep, along with Novice Barbara and others and murdered with grenades, which were also thrown down the shaft. Lenin commented. "Virtue with the crown on it is a greater enemy to the world revolution than a hundred tyrant tsars."

The furious assault for the violent (and often drunken) atheists upon a devout Russian people followed. Think of it: the Soviet Union at its height stretched twelve time zones. And yet Bolsheviks fanned out over all of Russia burning churches, destroying icons, killing priests. It was this the holy fire in which our Church — the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia — was forged. Just a year following St. Elisabeth's arrest and murder Russian Orthodox bishops began evacuation to Constantinople. Ultimately, a church coalesced for the purpose of preserving the Russian Orthodox Church to preserve it before it could become contaminated by the Soviet Union. And it continues in that preserved state today. And that group recently celebrated its centennial in the United States: the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. One hundred years!

They are the children and grandchildren of refugees from the rage of atheism. When they entered the United States, they found a country mostly tolerant to many different religions .... and one who (beginning in 1954) pledged allegiance to "one nation under God."

But by 2025, about a hundred years later, so much has changed! The values that the Bolsheviks had held aloft are now celebrated by many in the U.S. And another Lennon, John Lennon, has written their anthem:

I quake when I see those lines or hear that song. Tears stand in my eyes.

Yet, I am surrounded by the great majority of people who are inspired by those lines, who play that anthem at their weddings, at their baptisms, and other significant occasions. So often that world-without-heaven turns dark and violent. For in such a thoughtworld, no one imagines themselves to be answerable to God.

While I was visiting my Diocese's cathedral in San Francisco, dumpsters of garbage were emptied in her parking lot — outrages that the Church takes in stride preferring silence over public protest. And she counsels her priests: Do not resent. Do not react. Keep innner stillness. (I am still working on it!) She continues to live out her austere vocation without complaint. Her priests go unpaid. Her monks and nuns live in spartan poverty. And her people endure the antagonisms all Christians must bear, but they must face a double-hatred in the U.S. — the hatred of all things Russian. Yet, they take no notice. They are too busy in their prayers, too busy in their Liturgies, too busy in their lively faith to engage something so alien to Christianity.

Our Church is well practiced in the art of Christian life .... which, at the end of the day, is martyr-life. Why is that? Certainly it undeniably is a thing .... from the first Martyr on the Cross with 70 million martyrs following Him. All the Apostles, save one, died red martyrs. You see, there is something in quiet suffering that provokes the demons to lash out. There is something in beautiful chastity that the prompts the demons to defile. There is something in steadfast faith that cuts the fallen angels to the quick, for they were not faithful, and that has formed their empty, empty world.

Isn't it ironic that a dying Christian, suffering in and for the faith, is the most brilliantly alive Christian of all? Isn't this what we really mean by the phrase lively faith? And if it be not lively, then what is the point? What is the point of being a Christian? Alice von Hildebrandt said that a common form of Christian life is to be in love with the idea of Christian conversion but never managing to become converted. You see, we read the right books. We buy the right icons. We quote the right elders. But have we really even begun the Christian journey?

It is simple to do. Repent, and believe the Gospel! Take out the garbage! Take up your Cross! And follow the Master, the proto-Martyr, day after day after day after day. For it turns out, He alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.