A new Rus, on the pattern of the old, will be raised up on the bones of the martyrs, as on a strong foundation; strong in her faith in Christ God and the Holy Trinity; and she will be in accordance with the covenant of the holy prince Vladimir – as one Church.
Prophecy of St John of Kronstadthttp://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/restorat.htm Archpriest Andrew from the UK writes:
Inside Russia, the renovationists, or modernists, were sponsored by the Communists in order to destroy the Church from within. They were defeated. Of course, other parts of the Orthodox world outside the Church in Russia have also always supported an uncompromised Orthodoxy, whether in Serbia and Montenegro, in Georgia and Jerusalem, or on the Holy Mountain of Athos. In all these ‘keys to the kingdom’, there have always been those who understood the importance of keeping Orthodoxy unblemished. However, today, the younger generation in many other Local Orthodox Churches are beginning to bring others to repentance, steering others back to Orthodox ecclesiology, the calendar and other traditions...
However, in the isolationist, modernist axis of Istanbul and Paris there is still stubborn resistance. Those bastions of modernism, the first to go modernist, taking advantage of the Bolshevik coup d’etat in 1917, will no doubt be the last to repent. They look not to the future, but to the past. Similarly, there are those at the other extreme, also frequently elderly, who still look to the past. As yet, they cannot see the wood for the trees and continue to resist Russian-led Orthodox unity and integrity. This is because, dwelling in the past, they look more to the compromises of the past than to the repentance of the present and the hope for the future.
The repentance of the Russian Church for the errors of Sergianism, the canonisation of the Imperial and New Martyrs and the humility of ROCOR in coming to the patriarchal throne and apologising for past wrongs, and embracing the repentance of the MP has opened the way to a worldwide evangelical resurgence of Orthodoxy. From a new Russian Orthodox cathedral and missionary seminary in Paris, to the OCA handing Australian parishes to ROCOR, to more than a dozen parishes of the ROCOR Indonesian Orthodox Church, the signs of new life are there.
Such leadership of the Russian Church is not at the expense of fraternal relations with other Orthodox Churches, but perhaps reflects that the Russian Church has the majority of believers - and is spread in almost all countries of the earth, worshiping not just in Slavonic, but in English, Indonesian, Korean, Chinese and French.
The unity of ROCOR and the MP was inconceivable 20 years ago. Who knows what the next years will bring under the leadership of Patriarch Kirill? May God grant that the prophecy of the greatest Russian saint to precede the Bolshevik revolution, St. John of Kronstadt come true.
