Orthodox bishop has hopes for spiritual renewal

He speaks of a "window of opportunity" for faith in today's Russia. And as His Grace, Bishop Seraphim Joseph Sigrist, describes it, this window is opening on a world where there can be "no turning back," a world of change and challenge for the Russian Orthodox Church.

He got to Russia by way of Japan -- and New York City, where he was born. He was ordained a priest of the (Russian) Orthodox Church in America in 1969 after studies at St. Vladimir's Seminary in Crestwood, New York.

His first assignment took him to northern Japan where he worked for 19 years as a missionary. In 1971, he was consecrated as Bishop of Sendai and East Japan. Bishop Seraphim describes the small Orthodox Church there as "all-Japanese," headed by Japanese bishops. Having worked himself out of a job, as missionaries everywhere aim to do, he returned to America in 1986.

Now based in Pleasantville, New York, he teaches in the graduate division of Drew University in the area of Eastern Christian studies. He is also active in publishing efforts of the Orthodox Patristic Society.

Russian sojourns

Since the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1989, Bishop Seraphim has also been a frequent visitor to Russia, serving as a spiritual advisor to a youth group of the Moscow-based Hosanna Community and involved in evangelization for the Church.

Though his colloquial Russian requires an interpreter, he said that as an Orthodox bishop, he has never felt like an outsider there.

He sees the challenge for his church is one of "rebaptizing the nation." For while the Orthodox Church could celebrate Divine Liturgy openly during the Soviet period, seminary enrollment was severely limited and evangelization illegal.

House meetings

The Church's answer -- teaching small groups in "house meetings" -- is reaping dividends today. Some of the most educated people in the nation were among the "students," Bishop Seraphim explains, and now this "intelligentsia is a riches for the Church."

Physicians, poets, astrophysicists, biochemists and journalists attached to the larger parishes of Moscow and St. Petersburg are now themselves teaching for the Church, sharing "their gift of vision," he said.

They form the backbone for a distinctively Russian form of adult catechesis: the open universities for the Church. "There," Bishop Seraphim explained, "ordinary citizens can study theological questions, the Bible, and religious issues like Church history, lives of the saints, biblical studies and apologetics."

Renewal

While there are "tremendous numbers of baptisms," the church in Russia has a long way to go toward true renewal, he continued.

Even re-opening church buildings that had been closed for decades is an "ambitious task because so many people have no means of supporting a neighborhood church," he said, nor are there enough priests to meet the growing needs.

Nobody imagines restoring the Orthodox Church in Russia "to the way it was," Bishop Seraphim said. Such a task would be "impossible." The challenge "is to find new ways to bring the Gospel to people today."

Search for holiness

If Christians are willing to preach the Gospel, however, there are countless people who will find what they are looking for in the church, Bishop Seraphim believes.

"People are looking for something," he said, quoting St. Augustine's famous adage about hearts never resting till they rest in God. "And what people are seeking will not be found in western materialism."

People are seeking holiness, he insists, not only in Russia but all over the world. It is a fact pivotal to the church worldwide, he said, for "holiness is the very heart of the Church."

Division and unity

"We live with the history of the church as we have created it," Bishop Seraphim said to the Orthodox-Catholic Peoples' Dialogue, referring to Christian unity. He believes that "a church that is holy is worthy of being united."

And while many knowledgeable people see real unity as a long way off, nothing is impossible with God, Bishop Seraphim emphasizes.

"We ourselves have been called so often by God and have responded only in part," Bishop Seraphim said. "But still He is calling to us. The Church can discover itself again. The journey toward each other is really the journey to God."

(10-31-96) [[In-content Ad]]