Приговор при свечах / Judgment in candlelight - Владимир Анатольевич Арсентьев

tsarist rule quite distant from truth and reconcilement, they exploit the deep folk belief in the redeeming power of innocent suffering. However, ritual as a custom, a symbol, tradition, history, order, legend, myth, and religion is one of the leverages of Christianity. “Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice’” (Matt. 9:13). God does not need your sacrifices if you deny mercy to your neighbor[232] (John Chrysostom).

Paul the Apostle says, “For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves” (Acts 20:29–30).

The voluminous Christian catechism of the Eastern Orthodox Catholic Church, composed by Filaret (Drozdov), metropolitan of Moscow, at the instruction of the Synod in 1823, stipulates that justifying an inherently guilty person or convicting an inherently innocent one is a crime and a violation of God’s sixth commandment that prohibits any murdering or killing. Murder includes cases when a rich person allows a poor one to die of hunger, or when someone exhausts their subordinates by excessive work or cruel punishment, thus hastening their death.[233]

Bondage is characterized by total limitation of one’s human rights, freedom, body inviolability, as well as forced labor, time-unlimited or unspecified compulsory work, sexual unfreedom, and exploitation as property. All this exhausts the person and hastens their death, so it is equal to murder.

In 1763—64, church and monastery estates with the population of about one million male persons were secularized,[234] given Russia’s total population of nineteen million. When Arseniy (Matseyevich), metropolitan of Rostov, strongly protested against the seizure of church lands, he was defrocked and exiled.

According to the canon of the Universal Church, founded by Lord Jesus Christ in Jerusalem in the first part of the first century, the above crimes (murder) – in case of repentance – are punishable either by defrocking (Basil 32) or by 20 years of excommunication (Basil 56). Otherwise, those acts entail damnation, because “no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (1 John 3:15). In particular, Apostolic Canon 66 provides for anathema, while Canon 22 of the Synod of Ankyra imposes lifetime excommunication from the Holy Communion. Canons 7, 8, 11, 43, 52, 55, and 57 of St. Basil the Great provide insight into the crime in question and its consequences.

“Those who appear to be victims of their own passions not only do not shudder at the thought of the punishment provided by the sacred Canons, but have actually dared to laugh them to scorn. For they distort themselves, and in conformity with their venomous nature they forge their will awry; in order that thanks to the magnanimity of their venom, according to St. Gregory the Theologian, not only may the evil be kept from affecting their responsibility, but may even be thought something divine” (Protodeutera 10).

“Let us not, therefore, deign to perish along with such persons, but, filled with fear of the heavy judgment, and keeping before our eyes the fearful day of the Lord’s retribution, let us not willingly choose to perish for the sins of others, and along with them. For if the terrible sufferings of the Lord had not chastened us, nor had such great and grievous blows knocked some sense into us and brought us to realization of the fact that it was on account of our iniquity that the Lord abandoned us, and delivered us into the hands of the barbarians, and the people were led away as captives of their foes, and were delivered to dispersion, because those who bore the name of Christ round the world dared to do these outlandish things: if they neither became aware nor even understood that it was on account of these things that the wrath of God overtook us, what common ground is left us to have words with them? Nevertheless, we ought to protest to them night and day and publicly and privately; but we ought to guard against being carried away by their cunning arguments and crafty tricks, while we pray indeed to win them, and to have them rescued from the snare of the Evil One: but if we are unable to accomplish this, let us make serious endeavors at least to save our own souls from everlasting damnation” (Basil 85).

These rules are collected in the Book of Canons that was printed in Russia from 1839 until 1893 instead of the Slavic Kormchaia – comparable to the Greek Pidalion or the Byzantian Nomocanon. A reprint of the 1893 edition was published in 1993 thanks to the international Russian Orthodox Church. In 2016, I self-published the Book of Canons in modern orthography.[235] The second version, which I also self-published, came out in 2018 and had a seal of censorship of the Russian Orthodox Church on it.[236] Thus, the unique Book of Canons found its new ecclesiastical and scholarly life in the 21st century, printed in modern Russian orthography.

Besides, in 2016, I self-published a systematic index of the sacred Canons from that book, combined to a practicable extent with a collection of the permanent Divine Commandments.[237] The next version, published in 2017, was approved by the seal of the Russian Orthodox Church.[238]

The purpose of these works in canon law are to demonstrate that the Holy Scripture is the highest instance – the only source of truth that explains the world and the human in it from that truth’s point of view. It particularly does so through the system of holy canons of the Universal Church – a legal system based on the Gospels. In other words, those works of mine aim to demonstrate the rules of life according to the Gospels, because the canons promote unity of faith, balance, and uniform application of the law of God. For this reason, one has an opportunity to make a value-based