Stepping into the XXI century

LET THE TIME OF UNIVERSAL JOY, CONCORD AND HAPPINESS COME!

A word
From metropolitan Vladimir
of St. Petersburg and Ladoga

        Our civilization is entering a new year, a new century and a new millenium since the Birth of Christ. The Christian world is going to celebrate the anniversary, first of all, with a prayer. This time, people of other denominations will join us in our celebrations. For instance, news arrived that Yasir Arafat visited Bethlehem, thus calling the attention of the community, first of all, of the Arabic community, Christians as well as Moslems, to the forthcoming jubilee celebrations.
        We, Christians, had long ago started preparations for the Holy Feast. The general public and the diocese of St. Petersburg and its region took an active part in these preparations. A jubilee commission was set up, which worked out the program. Unfortunately, most events will merely be of secular character: historical, cultural, artistic, theatrical, musical, and athletic. Therefore, we, the believers and the representative of our church's community, enriched the program spiritually, by incorporating in it prayers, reverence to holy places connected with the birth and life of the Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ.
        We were very pleased to witness a great reviving in our diocese, when the governor of St. Petersburg, Vladimir Yakovlev last year headed a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. For that purpose an entire airliner seating 300-350 passengers was chartered. A large group of pilgrims included clergymen, believers of different denominations, atheists, city administration officials, simple people, members of the scientific and artistic communities, in short people from all walks of life. All of them obtained great spiritual satisfaction, they were both amazed at and happy about what they had seen and learned during their journey. When they returned, I talked to many of them and nobody remained indifferent to visiting Holy places on the eve of the 2000th anniversary of the epoch-making event. It served a remarkable beginning for the celebrations of the jubilee.
        We continue to maintain international relationship between Christians. Since early ages, pilgrimages from Russia to the Holy Land have been considered honorary, respectful and popular. The Russian government rendered significant assistance to pilgrims and Orthodox Arabs, helping them to consolidate in their faith. On the means of the Russian Orthodox Church and Russia, hotels, schools and even Sunday schools for Arab children were built in Palestine. In 1965 and 1966, when I was the Patriarch's representative in Damascus, I met grandchildren and their grandmothers who had long time ago studied in those Russian schools. They still remember the words of prayers and teach their grandchildren to read "Our Father" in Old Church Slavonic.
        We have maintained good ties and deep roots in the Middle East. Naturally, pilgrimages from our country to Holy places will be carried out during the entire year, because jubilee celebrations will last to the end of the year 2000.
        We, too, hope to visit many Holy places to worship sanctuaries of the Cradle of Christianity, connected with the Birth of Christ, his life and his redeeming mission on Earth. We also hope that our Orthodox brothers in faith from abroad will visit us to share the joy of the feast and to pray together on Russian soil.
        In view of the jubilee celebrations a special committee was formed at the Patriarchy consisting of many subcommittees, such as a church committee, historical, economic, missionary and other committees. In early 2000 the first volume of a multi-volume Theological Encyclopaedia will be ready for publication. We will hold conferences, set up exhibitions, including exhibitions of Russian church art and of children's art devoted to the historic anniversary. We plan to host anniversary meetings and musical performances. We do hope that all Petersburgers and all Russians will take part in the celebrations.
        We have lived through the twentieth century and we are bidding farewell to it. For many peoples of other countries and, especially, for us, the peoples of Russia, it was a century of awful suffering, wars, revolutions, hardship, vain searches for new ways, reformations, unrealized dreams and projects. This very hard century carried away into non-existence numerous historical monuments, sacred places and cultural values. It led to the loss of a great number of people, who were the pick of Russian society, the pick of the Russian intelligentsia. We are saying farewell to the 20th century with feelings of pain and sadness, because it was a century of so many terribly difficult experiences, sorrows, tears and bereavements.
        All of this is especially well known to Petersburgers because right after the October revolution began a Bolshevik "perestroika"-the process of "re-educating the working people." In those days about 500 clergymen were executed in Petrograd. God knows how many hundreds of thousands of defenders and citizens perished in the days of the fascist siege of Leningrad! It is impossible to enumerate the victims of Stalin's terror and of the "Leningrad case" frame-up.
        The sad list of innocent victims is endless, and we mourn as we look back. On the other hand, we have full right to rejoice that at the end of the 20th century we are entering a peaceful and calm flow of normal human life. At the moment, we do have considerable economic difficulties. This is apparently inevitable. Today we are experiencing what the English people experienced 400 years ago, the Germans, say, 300 years ago and the Americans - 200 years ago.
        The main thing for us is that peace reigns on Earth and that our economy gets back up on its own two feet. We hope and pray that clever, competent, experienced and honest people come to power. Today, there are more and more such people.         We are saying good-bye to the old year and entering the new millenium with joy because we have taken the course of democratization and freedom. Believers have acquired such freedom they could barely have dared to dream of centuries ago. This freedom of conscience we Orthodox believers regard as God's blessing and a reward for our penitence, our prayers, our endurance and our humility.
        I wish to believe and I do believe that, beginning with the first century of the third millenium, our country and our people will take the course of peaceful creation, improvement of financial well-being and prosperity, consolidation of peace, democracy and freedom, observance of human rights. All of this will come true if people realize the need for revising certain values, for changing their attitudes to each other, if they comprehend the impossibility of perpetual enmity and fighting. We need to look for and find ways to cooperation and fraternal unity in communication, in daily rounds, in life and in existence.
        Let tolerance, mercy, fraternity, love and mutual support triumph! If these ideas and feelings inculcate into human hearts, an era of universal joy, concord and happiness will reign over the 21st century and over the third millenium of Christianity.