I am not sure if this is the correct forum to post my inquiry on, but I'll start here.

I just finished reading the book, "Father Arseny, 1893-1973; Priest, Prisoner, Spiritual Father", translated from Russian by Vera Bouteneff. It is a fascinating and inspiring account of the life of an Orthodox Priest who spent many years in a Soviet Prison camp and was the spiritual father to many. He appears to have been an incredibly spirit filled individual. The book however, gives little insight into his early life and how he might have come to his level of spirtuality even prior to his imprisonment. I think this information would have been a worthwhile addition.

Irregardless, I am looking forward to reading the second book about him.

My inquiry about Father Arseny has two parts:

1-Does anyone know if the Orthodox Church is in the
process of canonizing Father Arseny a saint?
2-Is the canonization process in the Orthodox Church
similar to that found in the Catholic Church?

Thanks.

Dear JW55,

Bl. New Hieroconfessor Arseny is venerated locally and he is definitely someone who will one day join the ranks of the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of the Godless Yoke.

The Orthodox Church's process for declaring Saints is similar but then markedly different from that in the Latin West.

The RC Church looks for tangible "proofs" in the miracles ascribed to candidates, their personal holiness and the like as part of the canonization process. Hundreds of thousands of dollars can and are spent in the canonization process involving testimony from doctors with respect to healing miracles. Miracles are acknowledged when medical science doesn't have an explanatin for an instance of a healing through the intercession of a saintly candidate. To the East, this process looks too much like an "objective" one for its liking.

The Orthodox East prefers the term "glorification of Saints" as it seeks to understand if God Himself has glorified a local holy people through miracles and wonders. The Church then simply ratifies God's own judgement in the matter. Orthodox bishops, however, will scrupulously question people who experienced miracles and miracles of healing especially through the intercession of a saint. Just as in the West an all too public cult of veneration of a local saint could actually hurt that saintly candidate's Cause, in the East, it is an expression of "Vox Populi."

What are "Venerable Servants of God" in the West are simply termed "Blessed" in the East. An Orthodox saint may go through a series of canonizations reflecting an ever-growing veneration of him or her until the saint becomes a universally acknowledged one. But from when his or her local monastery or bishop glorifies the saint, until he or she becomes universally venerated - the title is still "Saint." (In fact, saints with the appellation "Blessed" are often a special class of saint, usually whose sanctity was hidden and only later testified to by others OR it could mean, as in the cases of Bl. Augustine of Hippo, Bl. Jerome and Bl. Theodoret, that the Eastern Church has issues with their theological stances and so won't give them the "full" title of "Saint" - in the Ukrainian Catholic parish where I was blessed to be a Benedictine oblate, there are icons of "Blessed Augustine" and "Blessed Jerome" as the church was painted by Orthodox iconographers!)

In the West until Pope Urban VIII who regularized canonizations in the RC Church, the titles "saint" and "blessed" were interchangeable and reflected no sense of "rank." Local RC bishops canonized their own saints, just as in the East and this was carried on even after Urban VIII reserved both canonization and beatification to Rome. When Blessed John Duns Scotus the Franciscan was beatified by Pope John Paul II, he had been venerated as such in Italy for decades, having been beatified locally by a bishop. Blessed Peter Lombard is another local saint in Italy. At Padua, there is a Blessed Anthony the Pilgrim whose canonization was refused on the grounds that "one St Anthony for Padua is enough!"

In addition, the RC Church will acknowledge beatifications if it can be shown that the veneration of the Blessed has gone on for a long time (i.e. the beatification of the English Martyrs depicted at the English College in Rome).

St John Maximovych of Shanghai and San Francisco is an interesting point that illustrates Orthodox glorifications of saints brilliantly.

He was first locally glorified in California and an icon was written for him. His veneration spread far and wide until in 1993 (?) he was glorified by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. On the date of his glorification, services were conducted in his honour in the Netherlands, Spain, Serbia, North America, France, the Philippines and around the world, but especially in the places whose peoples' lives he personally touched as the proclaimed "Apostle to the Diaspora."

And then, in the summer of this year following the reunion of ROCOR and the Russian Orthodox Church, St John was acknowledged as a universal Saint (he is venerated by Catholics and one Episcopal parish in the U.S. actually wanted to get the name of their parish changed to "St John of Shanghai" after it went on a pilgrimage to his Shrine in San Francisco!).

Orthodox monasteries can and do glorify their own monastic saints (in fact, the more than 130+ Saints of the Kyivan Caves Lavra in Ukraine were only honoured as "monastery saints" until St Peter Mohyla, Metropolitan of Kyiv, glorified them and extended their veneration to the entire Metropolia and universally.

Alex

Perhaps Father David of ROCOR can enlighten us. I would also like to know the answer. I have NEVER been so spiritually touched by a book, as that one.

In Christ,
Alice

Sorry, I don't understand the connection here. How could Metr. Petro Mohyla extend the veneration of the Saints of the Pecherska Lavra throughout the whole Orthodox Church. Surely, the Synods of the various Autocephalous Orthodox churches would have to have a say in the matter.

Dear Miller,

Yes, he glorified them for his Metropolia and notified other Orthodox jurisdictions that he had done so, recommending that they include this Choir of Saints in their own calendars. This was done universally. And this is done by the Patriarch of Moscow to this day in like manner.

During the summer, Metropolitan Vladimir glorified St Paul (Koniuskevych) Met. of Tobolsk and St Philaret of Kyiv as "universal Orthodox saints" (they have been glorified by the UOC-MP and Philaret had been glorified even earlier with the choir of All Saints of Siberia - he then issued a similar notice to other Orthodox churches to include them in their calendars.

As you know, Metropolitan Ilarion Ohienko wrote extensively about this, especially in his "Ukrainian Patrology" and "the Canonization of Saints in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church" where he notes that St John the Rusyn ("Russian" or "Ukrainian") was glorified by three Orthodox Churches, the EP, the Church of Greece and, in 1962, by the Church of Russia - implying universal recognition.

Alex

Here is what I found about Fr Arseny (whom I've been commemorating in the Proskomedia as "Hieromonk Arseny" for quite a while) written by "Mother Evfrosinia":

"The most current information on this question that I have on hand right now is from the French edition, “Pere Arsene, Passeur de la foi, consolateur des ames”, published by Les editions du Cerf in Paris in 2002. The introduction relates that the 2 books were first officially published in Russia by the Saint Tikhon Theological Institute in Moscow in 1993. According to the same introduction, the tomb stone depicted in the English translation of the book was erected in 2001 by Vera Boutenenv, the English translator, in Rostov, near the entrance to the old cemetery, as a memorial to Fr. Arseny, as the original site of his grave had been lost. Then the introduction goes on to say: (the following is my translation from the French) “In spite of the great and profound veneration that has developed in Russia and abroad, Fr. Arseny still hasn’t been canonized, because his civil identity remains unknown. Who then was Fr. Arseny? The essentials of his life and personality are revealed to us through the various accounts. But because they’re not at all systematic, many parts and aspects of his story remain unknown. We hope that new witnesses and accounts will appear who will reveal to us what we still don’t know: Fr. Arseny’s last name, which camps he was incarcerated in, and which churches he celebrated in. The name given Fr. Arseny in the first part’ “Piotr Andreevich Streltzov”, is an imaginary name. All of the names in parts I and II were purposely changed to protect these people from persecution by the State. The only name that we can be certain of is the name he received when he made his monastic vows: Arseny. According to Orthodox tradition a monk uses only his monastic name. Nevertheless, throughout his many prison terms, only his civil name, which we don’t know, appeared in official documents. For a certain time many believed that “Fr. Arseny” was a composite of several persons, but the more recent accounts of his spiritual children, who’s names we know, don’t contradict each other and tend to attest to an actual historical Fr. Arseny. “ The Introduction then summarizes facts about his early years as a priest, his prison years and terms of exile, and his subsequent life in Rostov Veliky, as related in the books.

After rereading all of this, I would say that there probably was a definite “Fr. Arseny”, this particular Confessor that lived in Rostov after his many prison terms and died in 1975. But I still think that some of the accounts are about other New Martyrs. It’s quite possible that Fr. Arseny himself related these stories to his spiritual children, and in time and from being passed on orally they got confused and attributed to Fr. Arseny himself. I’ve run across this sort of thing in lives and accounts of the New Martyrs very often. One has to realize that this is a new field, new archives and records are constantly being made public, and many accounts that are based solely on oral tradition have proved to be inaccurate. One of the reasons is probably that probably Fr. Arseny was at least at some occasion a member of the Catacomb Church. He was first imprisoned in 1927, which leads one to think that he was probably in opposition to the Declaration of Loyalty made by the future Patriarch Sergius in that year. Several of his children knew members of and participated in secret services organized by the followers of Fr. Sergey Metchev, another Confessor of the Catacomb Church. And the diocese of Rostov hasn’t come forth with any documents attesting to his years there; apparently he was never an “official” clergyman while living in Rostov.

The stories, struggles and lives of thousands of such martyrs and confessors still remain unknown throughout Russia. It will take long years of study and research before the full truth of the persecution of the faith in Russia under Communism is written."

http://www.monachos.net/forum/archive/index.php/t-1959.html

Fr David Straut

Bless, Father David,

Your post above reminds one of the laborious process it has taken to identify the person in "The Way of the Pilgrim."

The preface in the Paulist publication of this book is an exposition by a Russian scholar who painstakingly compared the style of the Way of the Pilgrim to the (often unsigned) spiritual works of others in 19th century Russia. At times, he thought that the Pilgrim was a composite of several people.

Happily, he has garnered sufficient evidence, including a personal biography that meshes with the wanderings of the Pilgrim to have identified him as Fr Arseny Troyepolsky, an ethnic Ukrainian Orthodox priest who began his priestly work stationed in the Kyivan Caves and Pochaiv Lavras (which is where he would have come into contact with the Startsy and their teachings on the unceasing prayer of the heart). He was later transferred to Siberia to Irkutsk (again the reference in the Way about St Innocent of Irkutsk and the pilgrim's travels there).

Clearly, Bl. Father Arseny the New Hieroconfessor was larger than life to those who were blessed to know him!

Alex

You are using very indefinite words. By asking various other autocephalous churches to do so does not mean that it was done.

Back in the early 60's when I was a small child either the "Twilight Zone", or "One Step Beyond" or a show of that genre had an episode based on the story of Father Arseny . It was the story the Book calls "Where Two or Three are Gathered in My Name". It involves a character referred to as Alexei, where he and Father Arseny are placed in a punishment cell for 48 hours without food or water. This is in the middle of the Siberian winter where the temperatures are -20 degrees or less. The walls of the shed were just metal and it as very narrow and small, and there was only a small bench in the cell.

Through Father Arseny's prayers they both survived without any damage to either. In the story the book states that their skin was still warm to the touch. Because of the incident Alexei was converted from an agnostic to a believer.

It was one of the stories from the show that I remembered over the years because it impressed me so much. Until a few months ago I always assumed it was just a made up story. Recently, I happened to be in an Orthodox Book store when I picked a copy of the book and read the particular chapter and made the connection. I have tried to find the episode on IMDB but not enough information was provided in the episode titles to identify which one it was.

AMAZING!!

I remember the Twilight Zone, though being very young I found it unsettling, so I didn't watch too many episodes...

That story was one of the stories in the book that has remained with me as well.
It astounds me that it was actually used on the show...one might indeed say that they (Father Arseny and companion) had entered 'the twilight zone'--but we ofcourse know what that twilight zone really is!!

In Christ,
Alice

Dear Halia,

I use indefinite words because I am not at all convinced that I am infallible!

When His Beatitude Vladimir of Kyiv glorified St Paul (Koniuskevych) of Tobolsk and St Philaret of Kyivl, he wasn't glorifying them as "saints" per se as they were already glorified as such.

He was glorifying them as universal Orthodox Saints - presumeably for the entire jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church world-wide.

In the case of the Kyiva Caves Lavra, they are indeed universally acclaimed as Orthodox Saints and, if I'm not mistaken, Sts Anthony and Theodosius are also in the Roman calendar. The Austro-Hungarian empire had them removed from the Greek-Catholic calendar, but Bl. Andrew Sheptytsky ordered them reinstated.

All Orthodox church documents relating to canonizations of saints (but not local saints) contain a directive to inform other Orthodox churches of the canonizations so that they may too include the saints in their calendars.

I've yet to hear of a jurisdiction refusing to do so.

The UOC-MP recently included St Gregory V, Patriarch of Constantinople and New Hieromartyr into its national calendar of Saints. It did so because St Gregory's drowned body was picked up by Ukrainian sailors from the Black Sea and was brought to Odessa where it was enshrined until Greece was liberated and St Gregory's relics were translated to Athens where they now rest at the National Cathedral.

Alex

Thanks for the detailed explaination of differences between Roman Catholic and Orthodox steps to sainthood. Very informative. I have never been able to to find anything about the process for the Orthodox Church.