From the Pastor: Together With Christ
Years ago I read the fascinating account of the Russian family who fled their home in a village in Siberia during the 1930s persecutions by Joseph Stalin. They hid in a wilderness area in a makeshift hut 150 miles from the nearest settlement. In 1978 they were discovered by Russian petroleum geologists. The story was beautifully told in Smithsonian Magazine, September. 28, 2013. I reread it today. The six members of the Karp Lykov family, isolated for 40 years, did not even know that World War II had begun and ended! And how deep their suffering must have been!
How disgustingly soft I must be, to have thought of that amazing story of immense suffering after being confined in an American city by one mere day (or perhaps two!) of Siberian winter temps and ice. I suppose instead of condemning myself I could recall one of the main gifts of Christian teaching and faith: empathy that ties us closely to the suffering of others, and to the good of others, the gift that prompts a reliable sense of oneness with the circumstances of others in trouble, past, present, and future. ("Weep with those who weep. Rejoice with those who rejoice.")
Though that concern is of course an ethical one, in our faith such concern goes even deeper. It goes to God's gift of self to live with, dwell and share life with us. "The Word became flesh, and" human as well as divine, to share our joys and sorrows, and even our suffering. The Word lives yet with us, "full of grace and truth." However isolated we may feel—or actually be in life!—the incarnate Word leads us to care for others, and to know we are cared for, beyond the church as well as inside the church. The life of the tragic Lykov family, but also their strength, bravery, and ancient Orthodox Christian faith, in subsisting for 40 years in the Siberian forest, has been yet one more lesson for me. Our many sisters and brothers and fathers and mothers in the Church have taught us about that life that never dies in Christ. Grace and peace be with you all—also the shared warmth and light of the Holy Spirit in these days of trouble and pain in so many places in the world.