COMERFORD WAY: Patrick Comerford’s online journal on Anglicanism, theology, spirituality, history, architecture, travel, poetry, beach walks ... and more
The ‘Eastern journey of Nicholas II’ a journey of Nicholas II was a 51 million km the included a visit to the Acropolis in Athens
Patrick Comerford
Once more I am overwhelmed by the viewing and reading figures for this blog. These figures reached a total of 51 million shortly before midnight last night (5 September 2026), passing the million mark for the third time within a week. It comes soon after reaching the 50 million early the day before (4 September 2026) and 49 million four days previously (31 August 2026). These figures passed the million mark on three other days last month: 48 million (24 August), 47 million (17 August) and 46 million (9 August).
I continue to find these viewing and reading figures overpowering at times, and this blog continues to reach volumes of readers I never expected when I first started blogging 16 years ago. At the end of last year, this blog had 21 million hits (31 December 2025). So far this year, there have been more than 30million hits or visitors in 2026 alone.
Half of all hits or reader figures have been in little more than six months, with 25.5 million hits since 28 February 2026. I first began blogging in 2010, and it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million readers. Throughout this year and last, the daily figures are overwhelming on many occasions. Of the 10 days of busiest traffic on this blog, three were this month (1, 4 and 5 September 2026), three were in May (1, 6 and 14 May 2026), three were the previous month (26, 29 and 30 April 2026), and one in March.
• 1,124,925 (1 May 2026)
• 647,187 (5 September 2026)
• 525,719 (14 May 2026)
• 509,644 (29 April 2026)
• 407,835 (4 September 2026)
• 356,335 (1 September 2026)
• 344,003 (30 April 2026)
• 323,156 (27 March 2026)
• 322,038 (26 April 2026)
• 318,835 (6 May 2026)
The daily average was about 118,700 hits a day throughout August, and has been about 400,000 a day so far this month. Yet, I recall how 10 years ago, back in 2016, the daily average was around 1,000, or 30,000 a month.
Souvenir Santas at St James’ Park … Matias Fernandez-Pardo has joined Newcastle United for a reported fee of £51 million (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
To put this new figure of 51 million into context:
Matias Fernandez-Pardo joined Newcastle United this month on a long-term contract from Lille. The 21-year-old forward arrived at St James’ Park for a reported fee of £51 million.
The figure of 51 million people is associated with an extraordinary, incredible and unbelievable claim by Trump that Vladimir Putin actually fought in World War II. In a claim that seems typical of the man’s fantasism, Trump said: ‘I talked to Putin. He lost 51 million people [in World War II] and he did fight … He fought with us in World War II and everybody hates him.’
Putin was born on 7 October 1952. Nor could Trump have ever fought in World War II – he was born on 14 June 1946, and, in any case, he had ‘bone spurs’ when it came to conscription.
More people than ever are listening to UK radio, with the latest figures reporting a record weekly audience of 51 million people.
51 million sq metres is 51,000 sq km – the size of both Bosnia Herzegovina and Costa Rica – and 51 million km is 51,000 km. The ‘Eastern journey of Nicholas II’ in 1890-1891 was a journey made by Nicholas Alexandrovich – then Tsarevich of Russia – around the greater part of Europe and Asia between October 1890 and August 1891.
His journey by rail and sea took him to Vienna, Athens, Alexandria and Egypt, and on to present-day Sri Lanka, India, Java, Singapore, Siam (Thailand) and China. The 51,000 km journey included 15,000 km by rail and 22,000 km by sea. In Japan, the future tsar survived a failed assassination attempt before travelling on to Vladivostok and back to St Petersburg.
51 million minutes, taking account of leap years, is 96 years, 352 days and 16 hours. This means that if this blog was receiving just one hit a minute, I would need to have started blogging back in late 1929.
I retired from active parish ministry about 4½ years ago, on 31 March 2022. These days, though, about 150 people on average are reading my daily prayer diary posted on this blog each morning, or more than 1,000 people each week.
This evening, as this blog passes 51 million hits, I am truly grateful to the real readers among those 51 million hits. In particular I am thankful for the faithful core group of people who join me in prayer, scripture reading and reflections each day.
Professor Scott M Kenworthy’s new biography of Patriarch Tikhon … launched in Cambridge this evening
Patrick Comerford
I an sorry to miss this evening’s launch of a new book in Cambridge, The People’s Patriarch: Tikhon Bellavin and the Orthodox Church in North America and Revolutionary Russia by Scott M Kenworthy, and published by Oxford University Press.
The book launch in Wesley House, Cambridge, this evening has been organised by the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, where I have been a student on many courses over the years, mainly in Sidney Sussex College.
This is the first scholarly and comprehensive biography of Patriarch Tikhon, and draws on documents from the Soviet leadership and secret police file that were previously inaccessible to researchers. It provides an in-depth account of a crucial period of Orthodox Christianity in North America and of Patriarch Tikhon’s vital contributions to its development. But it is also an important book at this crucial time of dissonate relationship between the Russian Church and the rest of the Orthodox world.
Professor Scott M Kenworthy is Professor of History in the History Department at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, where he also teaches for the Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, and Religious Studies programs, and is also Associate Professor of Comparative Religion.
He is the author of the prize-winning book The Heart of Russia: Trinity-Sergius, Monasticism and Society After 1825 and, with Alexander Agadjanian, Understanding World Christianity: Russia. He is a past president of the Association for the Study of Eastern Christianity and has held research fellowships in the US, Germany, Hungary and Romania.
On 28 October 1917, just days after the Bolsheviks seized power, the great Council of the Russian Orthodox Church voted to restore the patriarchate, which had been abolished by Tsar Peter the Great almost two centuries earlier in 1721. The council chose as the new patriarch Patriarch Tikhon (1865-1925), born Vasily Ivanovich Bellavin, the son of a humble village parish priest.
As the Orthodox Bishop of North America (1898-1907), Patriarch Tikhon had already started putting into practice his vision of the Church as an organic body that welcomed the participation of all believers. The Bolsheviks, who had other ideas, aimed to create a revolution that would be carried out by the state on behalf of the people. They sought to eradicate religion as superstition, to disestablish the church and to destroy it altogether.
The alternate Russia that Patriarch Tikhon represented was crushed by the superior force of the Bolsheviks. But he helped to navigate the Church through immense challenges and, in the end, the Orthodox Church outlived the Soviet experiment.
In The People’s Patriarch, Scott Kenworthy tells the story of the clash of visions for the new Russia through the lens of the humble man chosen to lead the Church, whose life exemplifies the transformations within the Orthodox Church in late Imperial Russia and its fate during the Revolution. This the first critical biography of one of the most important Orthodox Christian leaders of the 20th century, based on an exhaustive use of previously untapped primary sources, including Patriarch Tikhon’s letters and encyclicals, previously classified documents from the Bolshevik leadership and Soviet secret police, and material from a dozen archives in five countries.
Patriarch Tikhon has been overlooked by most historians of Russia and the former Soviet Union, who have seen the Russian Orthodox Church as irrelevant within an anti-religious Communist polity. This book tells his story from his humble beginnings in the Pskov province in north-west Russia, to his ordination and consecration, and then his ministry as bishop of a diocese in Poland, where he was Bishop of Lublin.
For almost a decade (1898-1907), he was a bishop in the US, where he came to appreciate democracy, the separation of Church and State, and the vital part played by the laity and parish clergy within the Church. When he was appointed Bishop of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska in 1898, he went to the US where he eventually became a naturalized American citizen. There he visited emerging Orthodox emigrant communities in cities such as New York and Chicago and in coal-mining and steel-making areas in in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
He reorganised the diocese, changed its name to the Diocese of the Aleutian Islands and North America, and he blessed the cornerstone of Saint Nicholas Cathedral, New York, in 1901. He built churches across North America, opened dialogue with Greek Orthodox churches, and took part in the consecration of Reginald Heber Weller as an Anglican bishop in Saint Paul’s Cathedral in the Episcopal Diocese of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. He returned to Russia in 1907 when he was appointed Bishop of Yaroslavl.
When he was chosen in 1917 as the eleventh Patriarch of Moscow and the first since Peter the Great abolished the patriarchate 200 years earlier, Patriarch Tikhon quoted Ezekiel prophetically: ‘How many tears and groans will I have to swallow.’
After the abdication of the tsar in March 1917, the Russian Church was freed from its subjugation to the State and became once again respected by a large section of the educated population. But the church also faced years of persecution, and lost its legal status and right to own property. Lenin launched a ferocious attack on the church in 1922, and Patriarch Tikhon was imprisoned from May 1922 until June 1923.
Patriarch Tikhon was effectively a prisoner in the Donskoi Monastery and was frequently interrogated in the Lubyanka. But on the occasions when he was allowed to take walks along the monastery walls, crowds would regularly gather below the walls to receive his blessing.
Thanks to changes in the regime and to support from abroad, particularly from Britain, Patriarch Tikhon was not put on trial or executed. On 13 April 1923, the Archbishop Randall Davidson of Canterbury and other British religious leaders, including the Chief Rabbi, issued a statement condemning religious persecution in the Soviet Union.
The British Foreign Secretary issued an ultimatum to the Soviet government on 8 May 1923, condemning ‘the definite object of destroying all religion in Russia’ and threatening to break off relations. The Soviet leadership was desperate to preserve the 1921 Anglo-Soviet Trade Treaty and to maintain good relations with Britain.
When Patriarch Tikhon died on 12 April 1925, between 30,000 and 40,000 attended his funeral in the Donskoi Monastery, many more than attended Lenin’s funeral the previous year.
Patriarch Tikhon defies definition, challengec the capitulation of many Christian leaders to the Trump regime in the US, and stands in sharp contrast to Patriarch Kirill of Moscow
Patriarch Tikhon defies definition as either a dissident or a collaborator. He endeavoured to preserve the Russian Orthodox Church while he tried to remain apolitical, and he criticised the Communist regime without opposing it.
He is a challenge to the capitulation of many Christian leaders to the Trump regime in the US. During his time as a bishop in the US, he came to appreciate democracy, plurality and diversity, and the separation of Church and State.
He also stands in sharp contrast to the present head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, with his intimate relationship with the Putin regime, his autocratic approach to church leadership, and his persistent attempts to sow divisions within the Orthodox churches.
The Orthodox Public Affairs Committee (OPAC) said earlier this week: ‘Rather than serving as a prophetic voice for peace, reconciliation, and the sanctity of every human life, Patriarch Kirill has repeatedly offered religious justification for Russia’s unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine. He has portrayed the invasion as a sacred struggle, blessed those waging war, and increasingly intertwined the mission of the Russian Orthodox Church with the geopolitical ambitions of the Kremlin.’
Patriarch Kirill’s recent statements are disturbing and troubling. He has described Russia’s nuclear arsenal as a manifestation of God's ‘grace and mercy’ and he has claimed that the creation of the Soviet atomic bomb came about through divine providence and the prayers of Saint Seraphim of Sarov (1754-1833), a Russian saint known for his life of contemplation and kindness.
His invocation of one of Orthodoxy’s most beloved saints in defence of nuclear weapons that are capable of unimaginable destruction is a profound distortion of the Christian faith. The Gospel proclaims peace, reconciliation, and the sacred dignity of every human person and must never be used to sanctify war, imperial conquest, or nuclear intimidation.
For more than four years, the Ukrainian people have endured the horrors of an unprovoked war with extraordinary courage, resilience, and unwavering faith. Families have been torn apart, cities have been reduced to rubble, and countless innocent lives have been changed forever.
In response, the Saint Nicholas National Shrine recently presented its Beacon of Hope Award to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the people of Ukraine, recognising their courage, sacrifice, and resilience.
The National Shrine of Saint Nicholas was established to bear witness to the Light of Christ in the midst of darkness. It stands at the World Trade Centre as a place of prayer, remembrance and healing, and a reminder that evil and hatred will never have the final word. The US is about to mark the 25th anniversary of the ‘9/11’ attacks on 11 September 2001, the shrine is a ‘beacon of hope’ to all who suffer from violence, war, terrorism, and despair.
The shrine’s decision to honour President Zelenskyy and the people of Ukraine has been criticised by Patriarch Kirill’s apologists, who have claimed that Ukraine is persecuting Christianity and ‘shutting down churches’.
Saint Nicholas National Shrine was consecrated in memory of lives lost to terrorism 25 years ago, and remains a reminder to the world, like Patriarch Tikhon, that the Light of Christ continues to shine in the darkness, and the darkness shall never overcome it.
The Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies is on Jesus Lane, Cambridge, beside Jesus College and Wesley House and across the street from Westcott House and Sidney Sussex College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Saint Athanasius was a 17th century saint who was born in Rethymnon and who was twice Patriarch of Constantinople on two brief occasions, in 1634 and 1652. His story is entwined and entangled with Ottoman intrigue, that saw patriarchs removed, returned, deposed, exiled and even strangled at the whim of capricious sultans. Many Patriarchs held office for a few days and no more, while others returned to the throne, two, three, four and five times, and in one case six times.
I was reminded on Friday of these intrigues and the persecutions and traumas that faced the church in Orthodox Church over the centuries after my friend Alexandra Kaouki (Αλεξανδρα Καουκι), the foremost icon writer in Rethymnon, posted an icon she had completed in 2011 of Saint Athanasius.
Saint Athanasius Patellarios ((Άγιος Αθανάσιος ο Πατελάρος), commonly known as Saint Athanasius of Lubny or the Wonderworker, was the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople for two brief periods, in 1634 and again in 1652, and had also been the Metropolitan of Thessaloniki.
He was born Ἀλέξιος Πατελλάριος (Alexios Patellarios) ca in 1597 in the village of Axos, in the hills above Panormos, east of Rethymnon, when Crete was under Venetian rule. His ancestors were Greek noble family with ancestry dating back to the Byzantine imperial house of Palaiologos. His father Georgios was a scientist and publisher, and his elder brother Eustaphios became a physician.
Saint Athanasius studied at Arkadi Monastery, near Rethymnon and his home village of Axos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
He studied at Arkadi Monastery, near Rethymnon, where his studies included studied rhetoric, grammar and poetry, mathematics and astronomy, music and literature, theology and philosophy, sciences and languages (Greek, Latin, Italian, Arabic and Hebrew). He lived at Arkadi until he was 26 and then, after his parents died, he shared his property among the poor and with the name Ananias was became a novice in a monastery in Thessaloniki.
From Thessaloniki, he moved to the Monastery of Esphigmenou on Mount Athos, then travelled on to monasteries in Jerusalem, Palestine and Mount Sinai, and was tonsured with the name Athanasius.
When he returned to Thessaloniki he was ordained priest and worked as a missionary among the Vlachs and the Moldovians. At times, he returned to Mount Athos in search of solitude.
His work drew him to the attention of the controversial Patriarch Cyril I (Lukaris) of Constantinople (1621-1623), who appointed him a preacher of the patriarchal throne. He became the Metropolitan of Thessaloniki in 1622, and remained there as bishop until 1634 when he was chosen as the Ecumenical Patriarch in controversial circumstances.
The Church of Saint Gregory Palamas has been the cathedral of Thessaloniki since the end of the 16th century … Saint Athansius became the Metropolitan of Thessaloniki in 1622 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Cyril I, who was also from Crete, was a controversial patriarch, known for his supposed attempts to reform the Eastern Orthodox Church along Calvinist lines, although those attempts were rejected and his actions, motivations and opinions are still debated.
Cyril I, who had been the Patriarch of Alexandria as Cyril III, was the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople on six occasions, constantly deposed, banished or forced to resign several times at the instigation of both his Orthodox opponents and the French and Austrian ambassadors. He was the Patriarch for 21 days in October 1612; for 29 months from 4 November 1620 to 12 April 1623; for about 10 years from 22 September 1623 to 4 October 1633; for 4½ months from 11 October 1633 to 25 February 1634; for 11 months from April 1634 to March 1635; and, finally, for 15 months from March 1637 to 20 June 1638.
When Cyril I was deposed for a fourth time in 1634, he was succeeded by Saint Athanasius, who lasted as Patriarch for little more than month, and Cyril returned to the patriarchal throne for a fifth time.
Cyril Lucaris was born in Candia, present-day Iraklion, in Crete in 1572, and travelled throughout Europe, studying theology in Venice, Wittenberg and Padua, and in Geneva, where he was influenced by Calvinism and Reformed theology and developed great antipathy for Roman Catholicism. During that time, he may also have been the Rector of Ostroh Academy, in present-day Ukraine. In 1596 he was sent to Poland by Patriarch Meletius I of Constantinople to lead Orthodox opposition to the Union of Brest, a proposed union of Kiev with Rome.
He became the Patriarch of Alexandria at the age of 29 in 1601. Apart from his first brief time as Patriarch of Constantinople in 1612, he remained in Alexandria for 20 years until he became the Patriarch of Constantinople for the second time.
As Patriarch, Cyril I adopted a theology that was heavily influenced by Reformation theology. Faced with Turkish oppression on the one hand, and on the other by Jesuit missionaries working among Orthodox people, he recognised the need for schools teaching Orthodoxy and the Greek language, and founded a theological seminary on Mount Athos and a Greek printing press in Constantinople. However, the French government protested when the press began publishing anti-Catholic pamphlets and the Ottoman authorities forced it to close.
In his efforts to reform the Eastern Orthodox Church along Calvinist lines, Cyril I sent young Greek theologians to study in Switzerland, the Netherlands and England. He was particularly interested in the Church of England, corresponded with William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, and sent Metrophanes Kritopoulos, a future Patriarch of Alexandria (1636-1639), to study at Balliol College, Oxford.
His Confessio or the Eastern Confession of the Christian Faith, was published in Geneva in two Latin editions In 1629, with four French, one German and one English edition, and a Greek edition in 1633.
Saint Athansios moved to the Monastery of Esphigmenou on Mount Athos at an early stage in his life (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Cyril I was deposed by the sultan for a fourth time on 25 February 1634, and was imprisoned on the island of Tenedos. He was succeeded by Athanasius III, who assumed the Patriarchal throne on the Feast of the Annunciation, 25 March 1634. But he was Patriarch only for less than 40 days until April 1634, and he was deposed in intrigues that brought Cyril I back to the throne.
After he was deposed, Saint Athanasius was exiled to the island of Rhodes. He then lived in solitude on Mount Athos for over a year, fasting and praying at a that later became the Skete of the Prophet Elijah, near the Pantocrator Monastery.
For a time, Saint Athanasius lived in Ancona and Venice in Italy, where the Pope tried him to induce him to become a Catholic, promising to make him a cardinal.
Meanwhile, Cyril I, who had returned to Constantinople and replaced Athanasius as Patriarch, remained in office for only 11 months, and was deposed yet again in March 1635. Cyril returned as patriarch for his sixth and final time in March 1637 but was deposed on 20 June 1638. When Sultan Murad IV was to setting out for the Persian War, the Patriarch was accused of a design to stir up the Cossacks. To avoid trouble during his absence, the Sultan had him strangled by the Janissaries on 27 June 1638 aboard a ship in the Bosporus, and his body was thrown into the sea. The Council of Constantinople in September 1638 anathematised both Cyril I and his Eastern Confession.
Meanwhile Athanasius became Bishop of Thessaloniki once again in 1638. Because of a problem with paying metropolitan taxes, he was imprisoned and but was released through the intercession of Tsar Mikhail Romanov.
Athanasius was invited to Moscow in 1643, but on the way he fell ill in Moldova. He stayed there and founded there the monastery of Saint Nicholas near Galaţi, where he remained until 1651, returning often to Mount Athos where he hoped to spend his last days.
However, at the beginning of 1651 he returned to Constantinople. When Patriarch Cyril III was deposed in June 1652 after eight days, Athanasius was called back as Patriarch and was enthroned once again on 25 May was again enthroned. But on this occasions he remained patriarch for only 15 days. He found he was not acceptable to either the Muslims or the Catholics in the city, and in his sermon at his final Patriarchal service he denounced papal claims to universal jurisdiction over the whole Church.
After two weeks, he stepped down as Patriarch of Constantinople in favour of Metropolitan Paisius of Laureia, who remained in office as Patriarch Paisius I for only nine months, from July 1652 to April 1653.
After he was deposed a second time, Athanasius returned to Thessaloniki once again and renewed his connections with Mount Athos, expressing the hope that he could live out his life there.
Saint Athanasius visited Russia in April 1653, and he was met with honour in Moscow by Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich and Patriarch Nikon (1652-1658) who donated generously to his monastery. He left to return to Galaţi in December 1653, but on the journey he fell ill and stayed at the Monastery of Transfiguration Mhar near Lubny in Ukraine in February 1654. When he died on 5 April at the Mhar Monastery, Abbot Petronios and the monks buried the former patriarch in a sitting position, according to the Greek custom for a bishop.
Saint Athanasius was recognised as a saint by the Russian Church on 1 February 1662 and his feast day was 2 May, the feast of Saint Athanasius the Great. His relics were later moved to Cathedral of the Annunciation in Kharkiv in Ukraine. Today the Mhar Monastery is part of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, affiliated to the Moscow Patriarchate, while the Annunciation Cathedral is the main Orthodox church of Kharkiv and the seat of the Kharkiv and Bohodukhiv Eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate).
A part of the saint’s relics, said to be a fragment of a finger, was brought to his home village of Axos near Rethymnon in 1993, and is kept in the Church of the Saint Athanasius Patellarios, built in 2008. The day the relic was moved, 21 August, is kept as his feast day in Crete. Alexandra Kaouki shared her icon of Saint Athanasius last Friday (21 August) to mark that feast day in Crete.
As for Cyril I – the controversial patriarch whose career is intertwined with the life story of Saint Athanasius – his body was recovered from the Bosphorus and was buried in Nicomedia, and after many years was brought back to Constantinople. He has been reappraised in recent decades, and the overwhelming majority of Greek and Russian Orthodox scholars today deny the authenticity of the Eastern Confession. This recent rehabilitation has led to the canonisation of Cyril I by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria in 2009 and by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in 2022.
The Church of the Four Martyrs in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
There is widening chasm between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Church of Russia today, and it is in danger of becoming a real schism. On the surface, these problems centre around the attitude of the two churches to the competing claims of Orthodox churches in Ukraine at a time of war in Ukraine. But at its heart this is a deeper conflict about the attitude of the Patriarchate of Moscow towards the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
Moscow has refused to take part in many Pan-Orthodox initiatives, including the synod in Kolymbari in Crete ten years ago (19-26 June 2016) and has since continued to undermine the Ecumenical Patriarchate in intrigues and conflicts that have drawn in other Orthodox churches, including those in Greece, Romania and Alexandria.
An example of how divisions within Orthodoxy have been exploited by the Patriarchate of Moscow has been seen in recent days with the visit to Moscow by Metropolitan Nektarios of Corfu with relics of Saint Spyridon. The bishop’s decision to concelebrate with Patriarch Kirill of Moscow has caused controversy within the Orthodox Church of Greece, with church circles in Greece describing the visit as a ‘coup’ and questioning why the bishop celebrated with a patriarch who does not commemorate Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens, the head of the Church of Greece.
The Moscow Patriarchate suspended Eucharistic communion with the Church of Greece in October 2019 after the Church of Greece recognised the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine. Metropolitan has been criticised for praising and presenting honours and medals to Patriarch Kirill who supports Russia’s war in Ukraine. There are in Greece that visit is being exploited by Moscow for its own purposes.
The life of Saint Athanasius is a reminder that there is nothing new in these conflicts and intrigues and that they stretch back many centuries. But there is also a reminder in the story of this one saint from Rethymnon of the thread that links together all these churches, including Constantinople, Greece, Crete, Alexandria, Romania, Ukraine and Russia.
The Cathedral of the Presentation of the Theotokos in Rethymnon … Saint Athanasius is commemorated in Crete on 21 August (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Saint Seraphim’s Pilgrim Chapel is a former railway station in Little Walsingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)
Patrick Comerford
During my recent stay in Walsingham earlier this month, when I was a guest speaker at the Ecumenical Pilgrimage, I visited about a dozen or so churches and chapels in the area Saint Seraphim’s Pilgrim Chapel is a unique heritage site in the North Norfolk pilgrimage village, incorporating a traditional Orthodox chapel in the Byzantium style, a quiet garden, an icon gallery and a railway heritage display. The chapel is almost hidden away from the main pilgrim sites in Walsingham, on Station Road, at the highest point in the village, in the former railway station that closed in 1964.
Walsingham Railway Station was on the Wells and Fakenham Railway, later part of the Great Eastern Railway. It opened on 1 December 1857, more than half a century before the pilgrimages to Walsingham were revived. The station served the villages of Great Walsingham and Little Walsingham, and in time the line to Walsingham became known as the ‘pilgrim line’. But it closed on 5 October 1964, a victim of the Beeching cuts, when 2,000 stations and over 5,000 miles of track were closed.
The story of Saint Seraphim’s began 60 years ago when Father Mark Meyrick (later known as Faither David) and Leon Liddament came to Walsingham on 6 December 1966. They were part of the newly-formed Missionary Brotherhood of Saint Seraphim, influenced by the teachings of Saint Seraphim of Sarov (1754-1833), a Russian saint known for a life of contemplation and kindness.
Father David was born Mark Meyrick (1930-1993), the son of the Anglican Rector of Codford Saint Peter with Codford Saint Mary, Wiltshire. He had an unexpected experience at Saint Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, the Russian Cathedral in Paris, at Christmas 1952. He was received into the Orthodox Church in 1963, and was later ordained deacon and priest by Archbishop Nikodem (Nagaieff).
He came to Walsingham in 1966 to take charge of the small Orthodox chapel in the Anglican Shrine Church, at the invitation of Canon Colin Stephenson. But he found the chapel in disrepair and began looking for a better location for a church. They rented the old railway station, moved their few belongings to it in an old taxi, and got to work transforming it into an Orthodox chapel. The fabric was left almost as it was in the railway days, with the addition of an onion dome and cross on the roof.
After Father Mark and the Brotherhood of Saint Seraphim had transformed the station, the small chapel was blessed by Archbishop Nikodem in August 1967 and dedicated to Saint Seraphim of Sarov. After the blessing, the archbishop led the procession down the Anglican shrine, where the Akathist hymn to the Mother of God was sung.
When the former Poet Laureate John Betjeman, who loved Walsingham, saw the transformed station, he wrote, ‘Now is the Orient come to East Anglia!’
The Russian-style dome and cross above the entrance to Saint Seraphim’s Chapel in Little Walsingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)
Father Mark left the ROCOR in 1978 for the Moscow Patriarchate under Metropolitan Antony of Sourozh because of what he saw as the ROCOR’s increasingly exclusivist and anti-ecumenical stance. He was tonsured as a monk in 1980, becoming Archimandrite David.
Father David tried to live a life of Orthodoxy that was rooted in England. He and his small community held their services mainly in English, and in their hymns and icons they explored the lives of the saints of Britain and Ireland, such as Saint Columba and Saint Alban. Father David died in 1993; Leon Liddament died in 2010.
Saint Seraphim’s has a distinctive collection of icons in the chapel and the icon gallery, including many by Father David and Leon Liddament. Their work was commissioned by churches and individuals all over the world and closer to home. Their work can also be seen in Walsingham in the Catholic Shrine’s Chapel of Reconciliation, the Orthodox Chapel in the Anglican Shrine and the Church of the Holy Transfiguration in Great Walsingham.
They used traditional methods of egg tempera painting and developed their own distinctive styles. They drew their inspiration from both Greek and Russian traditions, and also incorporated Celtic ornamentation.
The iconostasis or icon screen inside Saint Seraphim’s Chapel in Little Walsingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)
The dome on the roof is a symbol of the flame of prayer from the people. There is a heritage display in the porch, including a brief history of the station.
Inside the chapel, the iconostasis or icon screen shows Christ and the Mother of God on either side of the royal doors, the four Gospel writers are below the icon of the Annunciation, while the Archangel Michael and Archangel Gabriel guard the way into the altar. Saint Seraphim is on the right-hand side and Saint Nicholas on the left, behind the candle holders. The cross on the right-hand wall is reminder to pray for the departed.
Saint Seraphim’s Chapel is open daily to all visitors from 9 am to 5 pm, although it closes at dusk in winter. The chapel holds services twice a year, on the winter and summer feasts of Saint Seraphim, 2 January and 19 July.
Next to the chapel is a small museum dedicated to Orthodox iconography, one of the few icon museums in the UK. It has a large collection of original icons, many painted by the Walsingham iconographers. Tours of the chapel’s icons are available by appointment and includes entry to the icon museum, the quiet garden and railway display.
The Quiet Garden is the old railway workers’ garden and has been converted into a reflective space that offers a calming and reflective space for pilgrims, visitors and the local community. It was opened to the public in June 2015 by Jonathan Meyrick, Bishop of Lynn. Volunteers care for the garden, which is open every day from 9 am to dusk.
A cross and icons inside Saint Seraphim’s Chapel, Little Walsingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)
Saint Seraphim’s Trust wishes to build on the tradition of Orthodox icon painting of Father David and Leon Liddament. The trust was formed in 2005 and bought the building from the local council in 2008. The trust aims to keep the chapel open daily for visitors and to restore the property, including the railway platform and the garden.
The trust seeks to make Saint Seraphim’s a space for the study and practice of iconography, reflecting the life and work of Saint Seraphim of Sarov through publications, literature and icons. It also aims to make its rich icon, railway and pilgrimage heritage available through exhibitions, displays and activities in the chapel museum and gallery.
During my brief visit to Saint Seraphim’s, I missed Mariamni and Marcus Plested, who have spent a sabbatical at Saint Seraphim’s, running weekend courses and residential workshops.
The University of St Andrews appointed Professor Marcus Plested as the new 1643 Chair of Divinity last month. He is not only the first Orthodox theologian to hold this position, but he is popbaly the first Orthodox scholar appointed to a senior theology post in the university’s 613-year history.
Marcus Plested has played a significant role in Orthodox-Catholic engagement. I got to know him when he was the Vice-Principal of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies and lecturing at the Faculty of Divinity in Cambridge on IOCS courses at Sidney Sussex College. He later moved to the US, where he has been Professor of Greek Patristic and Byzantine Theology at Marquette University.
There is also a Greek Orthodox parish in nearby Great Walsingham. The Parish of the Transfiguration is part of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Thyateira, with the Divine Liturgy in English at 10:30 on Sundays, served by Father Christopher Knight and Father Patrick Hodson.
The Chapel of the Mother of God of the Lifegiving Spring continues to be housed in the Anglican Shrine in Walsingham and is affiliated to the Diocese of Sourozh in the Moscow Patriarchate. Father Stephen Platt, the priest appointed to the chapel, is the Rector of the Parish of Saint Nicholas in Oxford, where he lives. He travels to Walsingham twice a month to serve the Divine Liturgy in the chapel in the Shrine Church. During the pilgrimage earlier this month, Father Stephen led us once agin singing the Akathist hymn to the Mother of God in the shrine church.
Saint Seraphim’s Trust seeks to build on the tradition of Orthodox icon painting of Father David Meyrick and Leon Liddament (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)
Alexandra Kauoki working on a new icon of Saint Tikhon in Retymnon in Crete
Patrick Comerford
The Ecumenical Patriarchate announced ;ast week that that the Holy and Sacred Synod under the presidency of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has decided unanimously to include two monks of Mount Athos in the canon of saints of the Church: Elder Tikhon, who lived an ascetic life at the Holy Stavronikita Cell of the Precious Cross in the Skete of Kapsala, attached to Stavronikita; and Father George, also known as Hadji-Georgis, who was from Cappadocia and died in Constantinople.
The two Athonite monks were canonised last week (11 February). I first learned of the life of the saintly Athonite monk Saint Tikhon on courses in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, organised by the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, which is now based at Jesus College, and during visits to Saint John’s Monastery in Tolleshunt Knights, Essex.
Saint Tikhon is one of the key influential thinkers in Orthodox spirituality in recent decades, and his biography by Saint Paisos has introduced him to theologians and spiritual writers far beyond the Orthodox world.
Saint Tikhon was born Timotheos Golenkov in 1884 in the village of Novaya Mikhailovka, in present-day Volgograd in Russia, into a devout family. From a young age he wanted to dedicate his life to God. Despite his parents’ concerns, he went on pilgrimages to more than 200 monasteries throughout Russia, then to Mount Sinai and the Holy Land, and finally settled on Mount Athos at the age of 24.
He received the monastic tonsure with the name Tikhon in the cell of Saint Nicholas at Burazeri, near Karyes. For 15 years, he lived an ascetic life in Karoulia, an area in the extreme south end of Mount Athos that is known for its wilderness, harsh conditions, and the austere life of its hermits.
He then moved to one of the cells of Stavronikita Monastery at Kapsala, where his humility and asceticism led many people to seek him out for advice and spiritual consolation. He eventually agreed to be ordained a priest so he could offer sacramental confession as a father-confessor. He continued to live a life of humility and prayer, especially the Jesus Prayer, and built a small church in honour of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.
He usually celebrated the Divine Liturgy every Sunday, though he always kept the Precious Gifts in his cell and took Communion daily. It is said that during the Liturgy people would see the his face transformed, and his eyes seemed to be radiating light in the dark. He frequently visited Esphigmenou Monastery to hear the confessions of the monks there.
Some of Saint Tikhon’s sayings include:
‘Good habits are virtues, and bad habits are passions.’
‘Let a monk not connect with animals because they will win his mind and heart and the monk will waste his love on animals instead of giving it wholeheartedly to God.’
‘The prayer, Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon me! is the pure wheat.’
‘A good, obedient monk will be able to acquire the habit of unceasingly repeating the Jesus Prayer.’
‘If you don’t exercise caution while reading the Gospel, you may fall into delusion like Origen.’
‘Better three prostrations with humility than 1,000 prostrations with arrogance. Only humility will save us! Few people have acquired humility of mind and it is almost impossible to find them!’
Saint Tikhon lived his final days lived in seclusion, alone and in complete devotion to prayer. He is known particularly as the spiritual father of Saint Paisios (1924-1994), and had a profound influence on his spiritual formation of his spiritual path.
Saint Paisios received the Great and Angelic Schema from Saint Tikhon at the Hermitage of the Holy Cross, of the monastery of Stavronikita on 11 January 1966. Saint Tikhon died on 10/23 September 1968. Saint Paisios, who was with Father Tikhon in his last days, buried him, became his successor in his hermitage cell, and later wrote his life, which was published after Saint Paisios’s death, emphasising Saint Tikhon’s humility and holiness.
Wider interest in Saint Tikhon has grown since the canonisation of Saint Paisios the Athonite, his most famous disciple, in 2015. But in recent years, Russian church and state authorities have tried to use the memory of Saint Tikhon in their continuing attacks on the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
The Russian Justice Minister, Alexander Konovalov, supported an initiative within the Russian Church to canonise Saint Tikhon as a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church. He claimed, ‘In 1,000 years of the presence of Russian monks on Mount Athos, only one of the Russian ascetics has been glorified by the Church of Constantinople – Saint Silouan the Athonite.’
However, the Ecumenical Patriarchate alone is responsible for canonising a monk of Mount Athos. Indeed, the Church and the Holy Mountain of Athos are not concerned whether someone is Greek, Romanian or Russian, and are concerned only whether someone is a saint, and has canonised Saint Silouan the Athonite, Saint Sophrony (Sakharov), who founded the monastic community of Saint John the Baptist in Essex, and now Sait Tikhon.
Saint Paisios of Mount Athos, who was born Arsenios Eznepides in Cappadocia, was canonised by the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate on 13 January 2015. He was the biographer of Elder Hadji-Georgis the Athonite, who was also canonised last week (11 February 2026).
During the past week or so, my friend the iconographer Alexandra Kauoki has been working in Retymnon in Crete on a new icon of Saint Tikhon in advance of his canonisation, including the halo. On the day of his canonisation, she said: «Άγιε Τύχων, πρέσβευε υπέρ όλου του κόσμου», ‘Saint Tikhon, intercede for the whole world.’
Irving Berlin, author of ‘God Bless America … the cover of ‘Write On, Irving Berlin!’ by Leslie Kimmelman, illustrated by David C Gardner
Patrick Comerford
In sleepless moments in the early hours yesterday, I ended up doing an old ‘Quick crossword’ from the Guardian over three years ago (Quick crossword No 16,120, 6 January 2022). One of the clues near the end was:
‘17 Russian-born American songwriter, d. 1989 (6)’
In sleepless nights, I constantly pray ‘God Bless America.’ In the two months since Trump was sworn into office on 20 January 2025, we have seen a convicted felon, an economic migrant from South Africa and a self-styled hillbilly replace the rule of law with the diktats of a despot, tear up international conventions, threaten to invade their neighbours, undermine their allies, and cosy up to an invading despot who has brought Europe closer to the brink of war than it has ever been since 1945.
In his campaigns, Trump has hijacked the songs and music of many artists, including Leonard Cohen, Abba, Adele, Andrew Lloyd Weber, Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, the Rolling Stones, Guns N Roses, Luciano Pavarotti, Neil Young, Queen, Sinéad O’Connor, Blondie, Sheryl Crow, Lionel Richie, Elvis Costello and Village People.
His use of music without permission has become the subject of satire, with The Onion claiming the estate of Irving Berlin is suing Trump for his glockenspiel rendition of ‘God Bless America’.
Irving Berlin (1888-1989) was born Israel Isidore Beilin (ישראל איזידור ביילין) in the former Russian empire. His songs and music form a large part of the Great American Songbook, and his many honours included Academy, Grammy and Tony awards, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite once said he ‘helped write the story of this country, capturing the best of who we are and the dreams that shape our lives.’
Irving Berlin was born Israel Isidore Beilin (ישראל איזידור ביילין) in the Russian Empire on 11 May 1888, one of eight children of Moses Beilin (1848-1901) and Lena Lipkin Beilin (1850-1922). Although the family came from the shtetl of Tolochin, present-day Talachyn in Belarus, the songwriter was probably born in Tyumen, Siberia. His father was a cantor and took his family there to work in a synagogue.
Soon after his birth, the family returned From Tyumen to Tolochin. One of his few memories of those first five years in Russia was sitting on a blanket by the side of a road, watching the family home being burned down by Cossacks. By dawn, the house was in ashes.
The family fled Tolochin to Antwerp and left Europe on the SS Rhynland and arrived at Ellis Island on 14 September 1893. There the family were put in a pen until immigration officials declared them fit to be allowed into New York, and their name was changed from Beilin was changed to Baline.
They were one Jewish family among the hundreds of thousands who fled to the US in the late 19th and early 20th century, escaping antisemitism, racism, pogroms, discrimination and poverty – families such as those of George and Ira Gershwin, Al Jolson, Louis B Mayer of MGM and the Warner brothers.
But Moses Baline could not find work as a cantor and took a job at a kosher meat market, giving Hebrew lessons in the evening to make ends meet. While young Izzy Baline was at school he sang in a synagogue choir. He was eight when he began selling newspapers to support his family, his mother worked as a midwife, three of his sisters worked wrapping cigars, and his older brother worked making shorts in a sweatshop.
Shortly after his son’s bar mitzvah, Moses Baline died in 1901, leaving a widow and a family of young children. Izzy left school at 13, worked as a singing waiter, and then at 14 moved into one of the lodging house for homeless boys in the Bowery, before he foundi work with a music publisher at the age of 18 and got a job as a singing waiter in Chinatown.
He taught himself to play the piano, and started to publish his first songs under the name ‘I. Berlin’. He soon became one of the most prolific songwriters of all time.
The cover of ‘Irving Berlin: The Immigrant Boy Who Made America Sing’ by Nancy Churnin and illustrated by James Rey Sanchez
His first big success, ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’ (1911), sparked an international dance craze and made him a wealthy man at a young age. He had 20 original Broadway shows, 15 original Hollywood films – including Easter Parade (1948) and Holiday Inn (1942), which introduced ‘White Christmas’ – and 1,500 songs, including 232 Top 10 hits, with 25 reaching No 1.
After a whirlwind romance, he married 20-year-old Dorothy Goetz in February 1912. But she contracted typhoid fever on their honeymoon in Havana and died on 17 July.
He married his second wife, the writer Ellin Mackay, a Catholic from an Irish family, in a civil ceremony in 1926. Ellin wanted to be married by a priest, but he refused. His daughter later explained, ‘The cantor’s son does not forget who his people are.’
Their marriage was bitterly opposed by her billionaire father Clarence Mackay was furious that his daughter had married a Jewish refugee and disinherited her. She was dropped from the social registry, but her sister who dated a Nazi diplomat remained in good standing.
Ellin later decided that their three daughters should get to know their father’s Jewish heritage and, toward that end she joined a Manhattan Reform synagogue and took their children to a Passover seder and Yom Kippur services.
Another enduring song is ‘White Christmas.’ His three-week old son Irving jr died from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) on Christmas Day 1928, which helps to explain the song’s strong undertone of melancholy. The song has sold over 50 million records and remains the highest top single selling song in recording history.
There is some irony that a ‘nice Jewish boy’ wrote songs such as ‘White Christmas’ and ‘Easter Parade’. But Irving Berlin insisted that Christmas was an all-American holiday in which Jews could take part without betraying their faith, with Christmas a celebration of the winter season and Easter a festival of spring fashion.
Irving Berlin was drafted into the army near the end of World War I in 1917. That year he wrote ‘God Bless America,’ although it was not recorded until 1938. He later said the song title was inspired by his mother who, despite a life of hardship and poverty, often exclaimed ‘G-d bless America’, saying it ‘with emotion which was almost exultation.’
His original lyrics were:
God bless America, land that I love
Stand beside her, and guide her,
to the right with a light from above.
Make her victorious on land and foam,
God bless America, my home sweet home.
Berlin revived the song shortly before World War II. But he wanted a song about peace, and changed the militaristic sounding ‘make her victorious on land and foam’ to the now familiar words ‘from the mountains, to the prairie, to the ocean, white with foam.’
Moreover, the term ‘to the right’ had developed political associations that he wanted to avoid, so he changed the lyric to ‘through the night with a light from above.’
‘God Bless America’ had its debut the day after Kristallnacht in Germany in November 1938. It was first performed by Kate Smith when Berlin gave it to her to sing as a patriotic song marking the 20th anniversary of Armistice Day. The song’s introduction, which Kate Smith sang, is rarely heard today:
While the storm clouds gather from across the sea,
let us swear allegiance to the land that’s free.
Let us all be grateful for a land so fair,
as we raise our voices in a solemn prayer.
Those lyrics seem so relevant so poignant these days.
‘God Bless America’ became a second anthem when the US entered World War II. But its popularity was not without controversy and antisemites and xenophobes were outraged that a Jew had written the song.
The German American Bund, a pro-nazi front, claimed it was part of a Jewish conspiracy and a manifestation of the mindset of ‘the refugee horde.’ Followers of the antisemitic and pro-nazi broadcaster Father Charles Coughlin regarded singing the song as ‘a provocation of violence’. The Ku Klux Klan called for its boycott.
Irving Berlin refused to profit from patriotism, and signed over all the rights and royalties to ‘God Bless America’ in perpetuity to the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America. Since then, the song has generated many millions of dollars.
During World War II, he became involved in wartime musicals and shows for the army. Berlin insisted on integrated casts and staff, and hired African Americans to work on his play This is the Army. It became the first integrated division army unit in US history, and he wrote a song specifically to be sung by his black actors – as opposed to being sung by blackface singers – ‘That’s What the Well-Dressed Man in Harlem Will Wear’.
The play became a film of the same name in 1943, starring Ronald Reagan. Kate Smith also sang ‘God Bless America’ against a backdrop of anxious families apprehensive about the war.
It was deliberate action that strongly contrasts today with the Pentagon’s continuing purge of web content that is deemed to be related to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEI) programmes, including pages about Jackie Robinson’s military career, the Native American code talkers, the heroes who raised the flag at Iwa Jima and – for some days – the page dedicated to Major General Calvin Charles Rogers.
There is deep personal significance in the number he wrote in 1925, ‘Don’t Send Me Back to Petrograd,’ about the 1924 American quota law. The National Origins Act effectively barred eastern Europeans from immigrating to the US during World War II and was not repealed until 1965. The singer pleads, ‘Now that I’m over here, they won’t let me stay ... Please don’t send me away’ – a sentiment that certainly resonates today.
Although Irving Berlin married a Christian and was often described as an agnostic, he continued to identify as a Jew and supported Jewish charities. He was honoured by the National Conference of Christians and Jews in 1944 for ‘advancing the aims of the conference to eliminate religious and racial conflict’, and he was honoured by the Young Men’s Hebrew Association (YMHA) in 1949 as one of the 12 ‘most outstanding Americans of Jewish faith’.
Irving Berlin died on 22 September 1989 at 101. Twelve years later, ‘God Bless America’ took on a new significance in the US after 9-11 in 2001, when it became the spontaneous symbol of national unity and collective mourning after members of Congress stood together singing it on the steps of the Capitol.
Yet Donald Trump forgot the words of ‘God Bless America’ during an event at the White House in 2018. Seven years later, he panders to a dictatorial and war-mongering Russian despot, defies court orders, ignores democratic processes, deports refugee children, welcomes an Irish rapist into the Oval Office and fulminates racist bile and hatred.
I wonder whether he and his cabal ever stop to think the migrant child who escaped prejudice, racism, antisemitism and violence and became the author of ‘God Bless America’, one of the greatest American anthems and how it celebrates liberty and democracy, diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.
Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום
Speaking at a protest against Trump’s policies outside the US Embassy in Dublin during his previous presidency
Today [24 February 2025] marks the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Two years ago, as the first anniversary of the invasion loomed, Charlotte and I visited church-supported projects in Budapest and Helsinki working with Ukrainian refugees in the Hungarian and Finnish capitals.
We were there on behalf of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel, and we travelled with Rebecca Boardman from USPG and Amber Jackson from the Diocese in Europe.
In anticipation of that first anniversary, this ‘Rite & Reason’ column was published in The Irish Times on Monday 20 February 2023:
Invasion of Ukraine has both united and divided churches
A Ukrainian refugee among choirs singing in a square in central Budapest (Photograph Charlotte Hunter)
Orthodox churches
in Russia and Ukraine
are divided while
churches in countries
bordering the war
share a common mission
Rite & Reason
Patrick Comerford
The first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine looms on Friday. The war has deepened the rift separating the Orthodox churches in Russia and Ukraine, and has caused further divisions within the Orthodox churches inside Ukraine.
However, the response of churches to the refugee crisis in countries bordering Ukraine and Russia has strengthened ecumenical partnerships, giving many of those churches a new understanding of sharing a common witness and mission.
For six years I was a trustee of USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), one of the oldest Anglican mission agencies. In recent weeks, USPG invited me to visit the Anglican churches in Hungary and Finland to see how they are responding to the crisis and to the needs of refugees.
Hungary has a long border with Ukraine, and people have long memories of the cold war era, including the Soviet role in suppressing the Hungarian revolution in 1956. Fr Frank Hegedűs, the Anglican priest in Budapest, is a former board member of Next Step Hungary, where volunteers help 500-600 people at weekends, providing food, meals and clothing.
With support and funding from USPG and the Anglican Diocese in Europe, Fr Frank and his parishioners at St Margaret’s Church are working with support groups like Ukrainian Space and with other churches, including the Jesuit Refugee Service and St Columba’s, the small (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland in Budapest.
This ecumenical co-operation has helped the Jesuits to provide accommodation, furnish a chapel and develop community space in Uzhhorod inside Ukraine. Ukrainian Space is providing a day-care and after-school programme in Budapest for Ukrainian children.
Finland was occupied by Russia throughout the 19th century, was invaded by the Soviet Union in the 20th century, and now shares a 1,300 km border with Russia. The Anglican Church in Finland was formed by refugees who fled St Petersburg during the Russian Revolution, and who were forced to flee further west again during the Winter War.
The Anglican priest in Helsinki, Fr Tuomas Mäkipää, brought us to visit the Vallila Help Centre, where Eeva (she prefers that her surname not be used) and a team of volunteers respond to the urgent, daily needs of Ukrainian refugees. A grant from USPG and the Anglican Diocese in Europe funds her work as the Humanitarian Aid Co-ordinator.
The centre was up and running a week after the invasion of Ukraine and has become a shared space for several relief organisations and an information and assistance point for Ukrainian and Russian refugees. It began providing food for 140 families, but this number has reached more than 3,360 families.
Four of us – Rebecca Boardman, Charlotte Hunter and myself from USPG, and Amber Jackson from the Diocese in Europe – spent a morning working with Eeva’s volunteers, packing bags and essential food for distribution among 100 Ukrainian families.
One Ukrainian refugee, Natalia (42), who also asked that her surname not be used, told us how she fled to Finland, leaving her husband behind to look after elderly people in their apartment block. He was not involved in the fighting, but was killed by Russian troops after they took over the empty apartments in their block. Natalia has been back for his funeral, but now does not know whether she can ever return home again.
Fr Tuomas works closely with the Lutheran Church and the Finnish Orthodox Church. In Holy Trinity Church, the oldest Orthodox church in Helsinki, Fr Heikki Huttunen celebrates the liturgy in Finnish, Church Slavonic and Russian, reflecting the diversity of his people and the conflicts that are redefining their identities.
“We are the closest church to these Ukrainians,” he says, “and we should be the first to open our arms to welcome them.” Vassili Goutsoul of the Ukrainian Association in Finland admits that in the first few months of the crisis everyone expected the situation to have stabilised by now. In a similar vein, Ákos Surányi of Menedékház, a refugee facility in Budapest, says: “No one expected the war to go on for this long.”
I asked Fr Frank how many families hoped to return from Budapest when the war ends. “They have nothing to go back for,” he says with sadness in his eyes. “They have lost not just their homes, but their entire towns and cities.”
Fr Tuomas says the response to the crisis has transformed the mission and outlook of his churches in Helsinki, and they are starting to learn the impact of what they are doing.
Sarah Tahvanainen, a Cambridge theology graduate, is administrator of St Nicholas’s Anglican Church in Helsinki. She sees the present crisis as “a gifted time” and “an opportunity to put faith into practice, an opportunity to show love and compassion. It’s faith in action.”
Rev Canon Prof Patrick Comerford is a Church of Ireland priest and a former Irish Times journalist now living in retirement in the Diocese of Oxford
Vladimir Nikolaievich Lossky (1903-1958) was among the more influential Orthodox theologians of the mid-20th century
Patrick Comerford
We have been in Ordinary Time, that time between Candlemas and Lent, which begins tomorrow, Ash Wednesday (14 February 2024). Today is known in many places as Shrove Tuesday.
Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Tuesday is traditionally a day for self-examination and repentance, for thinking about amendment of life and spiritual growth, asking for God’s help in these areas. The term Shrove Tuesday comes from the word shrive, meaning ‘absolve’.
But popular practices on this day have also involved indulging in sweet and fatty food that might be given up during the 40 days of fasting in Lent, represented, of course, by pancakes. The term Mardi Gras is French for ‘Fat Tuesday’, referring to the practice of the last night of eating richer, fatty foods before Lent begins. On Shrove Tuesday, many churches burn the palms from the previous year’s Palm Sunday to make the ashes for use on Ash Wednesday.
We spent two days in Paris last week, and so, during these 11 days in Ordinary Time, my reflections each morning have drawn on the lives of 11 French saints and spiritual writers.
When this series of reflections began, I admitted how am often uncomfortable with many aspects of French spirituality, and that I need to broaden my reading in French spirituality. So, I turned to 11 figures or writers you might not otherwise expect. They have included men and women, Jews and Christians, immigrants and emigrants, monks and philosophers, Catholics and Protestants, and even a few Anglicans.
Before the day begins, I am taking some quiet time early this morning for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:
1, A reflection on a French saint or writer in spirituality;
2, today’s Gospel reading;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.
The house on Rue Saint-Louis en l'Île in Paris where Vladimir Lossky lived from 1947 to 1958 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
French saints and writers, 11: Vladimir Nikolaievich Lossky (1903-1958)
Vladimir Nikolaievich Lossky (1903-1958) was a Russian Orthodox theologian who lived and worked in exile in Paris. He emphasised theosis as the main principle of Orthodox Christianity.
Vladimir Nikolaievich Lossky was born on 8 June (OS 26 May) 1903 in Göttingen, Germany. His father, Nikolai Lossky, was a professor of philosophy in Saint Petersburg. He enrolled as a student at the Faculty of Arts at Petrograd University in 1919. In the spring of 1922, he was profoundly struck when he witnessed the trial that led to Metropolitan Benjamin (Kazansky) of St Petersburg being executed by a Soviet firing squad. Metropolitan Benjamin was canonised by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1992.
Lossky was expelled from Soviet Russia with his entire family In November 1922. He continued his studies first in Prague and then at the Sorbonne when he settled in Paris in 1924. He graduated in mediaeval philosophy in 1927. He married Madeleine Shapiro in 1928.
Lossky was a member of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique from 1942 to 1958. He was the first dean of the St Dionysius Institute in Paris, where he taught dogmatic theology and ecclesiastical history until 1953, and, from 1953 to 1958, and then professor of dogmatic theology at the Orthodox Institute of St Irene at rue Pétel in Paris from 1953 to 1958.
He was a member of the Brotherhood of Saint Photius and the ecumenical Fellowship of Saint Alban and Saint Sergius. His best-known work is Essai sur la theologie mystique de l’Église d’orient (1944), published in English as The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (1957). His great friend and fellow exile, the Russian theologian Georges Florovsky (1893-1979), termed Lossky’s Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church a ‘neopatristic synthesis.’
Lossky and Florovsky both lived and worked in exile in Paris and Sergei Bulgakov, Justin Popović and Dumitru Stăniloae, they are among the more influential Eastern Orthodox theologians of the mid-20th century.
Lossky died of a heart attack on 7 February 1958 in Paris.
Although Lossky was Russian, he was concerned to address the people among whom he lived, and so most of his work was written and published in French. He emphasised θέωσις (theosis) as the main principle of Orthodox Christianity, and his main theological concern was exegesis of mystical theology in Christian traditions.
He argues that Orthodox theologians maintain the mystical dimension of theology in a more integrated way than those of the Catholic and Reformed traditions after the East-West Schism because Western theologians had misunderstood Greek terms such as οὐσία (ousia), ὑπόστᾰσις (hypostasis), θέωσις (theosis) and θεωρία (theoria).
To illustrate his argument, he cites the Philokalia and The Ladder of Divine Ascent by John Klimakos, as well as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Gregory of Nyssa, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory Nazianzen, and Gregory Palamas.
At a conference organised by the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge ten years ago, the Revd Dr Andrew Louth lectured on ‘Vladimir Lossky and the notion of mystical theology,’ while the late Metropolitan Kallistos Ware gave a lecture on ‘Florovsky, Lossky and the notion of Mystical Theology.’ The conference in Sidney Sussex College, was discussing the ‘Horizons and Limitations of Russian Religious Philosophy.’
The Revd Dr Andrew Louth is Emeritus Professor of Patristic and Byzantine Studies in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Durham. He placed Lossky within the context of contemporary writers on mysticism, including Evelyn Underhill, who rooted her mysticism in the sacramental life of the Church, Baron von Hügel, and the Catholic modernists in France. He also reminded us that in 1975 Archbishop Rowan Williams wrote his DPhil thesis at Oxford, ‘The theology of Vladimir Nikolaievich Lossky: an exposition and critique.’
But Lossky also spent much of his time working on the writings on mysticism by Meister Eckhart, and his doctoral dissertation on Eckhart was published shortly after his untimely death. Lossky found many affinities between the thinking of the Dominican friar and Orthodox mystics.
For Lossky, Christian mysticism and dogmatic theology are one and the same, and mysticism is Orthodox dogma par excellence. He wrote:
‘The eastern tradition has never made a sharp distinction between mysticism and theology; between personal experience of the divine mysteries and the dogma affirmed by the Church… To put it another way, we must live the dogma expressing a revealed truth, which appears to us as an unfathomable mystery, in such a fashion that instead of assimilating the mystery to our mode of understanding, we should, on the contrary, look for a profound change, an inner transformation of the spirit, enabling us to experience it mystically… There is, therefore, no Christian mystery without theology; but, above all, there is no theology without mysticism… Mysticism is … the perfecting and crown of all theology: as theology par excellence.’
Father Andrew went on to say: ‘Mysticism and theology relate as experience and theory. But experience of what? Ultimately of God.’
But that is not where Lossky begins, he said. He begins by speaking of ‘personal experience of the divine mysteries,’ the term ‘mysteries’ being – not exactly ambiguous, but with at least two connotations – meaning both the sacraments of the Church, and also mysterious truths about the Godhead.
The mysterious truths about God – his existence as a Trinity of love, his creation of the world, his care for the world and his redemption of it, pre‐eminently in the Incarnation – are truths that we experience and celebrate in the Divine Mysteries, or the Sacraments of the Church. It is this that gives Lossky’s presentation such a different orientation from what is normally associated with mysticism in the West: it is not detached from dogma, but rooted in the dogmatic truths of the Christian tradition; it is not indifferent to Church organisation, hierarchy and sacraments, but rooted in the structured life of the Church.
It is not individualistic – indeed individualism is seen to be the deepest flaw in Western Christianity – but rooted in the experience of the Eucharistic community, the Church.
The writings of Lossky also informed the late Metropolitan Kallistos Ware when he spoke about ‘Florovsky, Lossky and the notion of Mystical Theology.’ He knew both Florovsky and Lossky personally, took them as his mentors while he was at Oxford, and stayed with the Lossky family. Metropolitan Kallistos was the President of the IOCS, and was a much-loved lecturer at the IOCS summer school in Cambridge each year.
Georges Vasilievich Florovsky (1893-1979) was born in Odessa, the son of a priest. He spent his working life in Paris (1920-1948) as Professor of Patristics and later Professor of Dogmatics, and – after failing to secure an appointment at Oxford – in the US (1948-1979), where he was a professor at Saint Vladimir’s, Harvard and Princeton. His pupils included Metropolitan John Zizioulas.
Florovsky was particularly concerned that modern Christian theology might receive inspiration from the lively intellectual debates of the patristic traditions of the undivided Church rather than from later Scholastic or Reformation categories of thought.
Lossky was committed to the Moscow Patriarchate, attaching great importance to links with the persecuted mother church, and disapproved of other Russians loyalties. On the other hand, Florovsky was among the Russians who belonged to the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
Florovsky often spoke without notes, something Lossky would never have done at a major public meeting. Florovsky disagreed strongly with Bulgakov, including their ideas on limited inter-communion with Anglicans, but never did so publicly. His major work is Ways of Russian Theology. His collected works are available in a 14-volume collection published between 1972 and 1989.
Metropolitan placed Lossky and Florovsky within the context of two 20th century movements in Orthodox theology, Russian religious renaissance and the neopatristic school.
Florovsky is the mastermind of the movement for a return to the Church Fathers. His vision of the neopatristic synthesis became the main paradigm of Orthodox theology.
His evolving interpretation of Russian religious thought, particularly Vladimir Solovyov and Sergius Bulgakov, informed his approach to patristic sources.
Florovsky’s neopatristic theology is often contrasted with the modernist philosophies of Pavel Florensky, Sergius Bulgakov, and other representatives of the Russian Religious Renaissance. He critically appropriated the main themes of the Russian Religious Renaissance, including theological antinomies, the meaning of history, and the nature of personhood, and the distinctive features of Florovsky’s neopatristic theology – Christological focus, ‘ecclesial experience,’ personalism, and Christian Hellenism – are best understood against the background of the Russian religious renaissance.
Bulgakov’s sophiology provides a polemical subtext for Florovsky’s theology of creation, and Florovsky’s theology is marked out by his use of the patristic norm in application to modern Russian theology.
Florovsky was concerned with a living tradition, and Metropolitan Kallistos summarised his thinking as not being ‘Back to the Fathers’ but as ‘Forward with the Fathers.’ He suggested that to follow the Fathers is not to quote them but to acquire their mind, where theology and prayer become one.
He also traced Florovsky’s influence on Anglican-Orthodox dialogue, his advocacy of Christian Hellenism and the debate about whether he had neglected the heritage of the Latin, Syrian and Coptic Fathers, and his role in the ecumenical movement. He understood that the canonical limits of the Church, as understood in Orthodoxy, are not the same as the charismatic limits of the Church.
A plaque on the house where Vladimir Lossky lived in Paris reads: ‘Expelled from Russia in 1922, with his philosopher father. In love with France, mediaevalist, became a naturalised French citizen in 1939. Member of the Resistance. He moved into this building in 1947 and died here in 1958.’
The plaque on the house on Rue Saint-Louis en l'Île where Vladimir Lossky lived from 1947 to 1958 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
Mark 8: 14-21 (NRSVA):
14 Now the disciples had forgotten to bring any bread; and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. 15 And he cautioned them, saying, ‘Watch out – beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.’ 16 They said to one another, ‘It is because we have no bread.’ 17 And becoming aware of it, Jesus said to them, ‘Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? 18 Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? And do you not remember? 19 When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?’ They said to him, ‘Twelve.’ 20 ‘And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?’ And they said to him, ‘Seven.’ 21 Then he said to them, ‘Do you not yet understand?’
Vladimir Lossky’s best-known work, ‘The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church’, was published in French in 1944 and in English in 1957
Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 13 February 2024):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Ash Wednesday Reflection.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday by the Revd Jessie Anand, Chaplain, USPG.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (13 February 2024) invites us to pray in these words:
Heavenly Father, help us prepare for the holy season of Lent. Allow our focus to be fully on You and the Cross.
The Collect:
Almighty Father,
whose Son was revealed in majesty
before he suffered death upon the cross:
give us grace to perceive his glory,
that we may be strengthened to suffer with him
and be changed into his likeness, from glory to glory;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Holy God,
we see your glory in the face of Jesus Christ:
may we who are partakers at his table
reflect his life in word and deed,
that all the world may know his power to change and save.
This we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Holy God,
you know the disorder of our sinful lives:
set straight our crooked hearts,
and bend our wills to love your goodness and your glory
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
