[Peterli]

Firmly confessing the Orthodox Faith, he resisted the atheistic Nazi regime

I don't think that one can characterize the Nazi regime as "atheistic". Atheism was not a tenant of the government (as it was with Soviet Communism). However one could safely say that whatever religious justifications that came out of the Nazi government for the atrocities committed were seriously twisted.

Today is the day given for St Alexander's glorification and here is a sermon by Archbishop Kyrill of San Francisco on the newly revealed martyr.



The Newly Glorified St Alexander (Schmorell) of Munich

In the Name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit: Amen.

Today the Church rejoices, and today is a day on which we all should rejoice; for to the assembly of the Saints has been added a new name, in the person of the New Martyr Alexander (Schmorell) of Munich, whom our Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia has canonized during today's Divine Services. Though St. Alexander's holiness is not new, and he has not been 'made' a saint today but was a saint in his life and has interceded for the world since his martyric death, today we recognize him in the dyptichs, and future generations shall hold him up as an example of true faith and piety.

But why has the Church done this? What has been witnessed and perceived in the life of this man who lived only 26 years on this earth, that has compelled the Church no longer to remain silent about his life and witness but to glorify his memory in this manner?

In a word: faith. In the life of St. Alexander, we find a unique example of what it means for a man to be inspired by the Orthodox faith -*‐-*‐ not merely adhering to it as a fragment of cultural identity or subscribing to it in intellectual terms, but being so firmly established and supported by an unbending faith in God that no challenge, however great, however seemingly insurmountable, could not be risen up to and overcome by God's power.

The New Martyr Alexander lived in tumultuous times. His life began in persecution: born in 1917, his family fled to Germany only a few years later. And as his life began, so would it continue. Having escaped the Bolshevicks, they soon found themselves under the sway of a new oppression in the form of National Socialism, better known as the Nazi movement. But as Alexander grew, he knew he had to resist. The young Alexander, having become a student, became one of the founders of a group that took the name 'White Rose' and went on -*‐-*‐over the course of only a few short years -*‐-*‐ to become one of the most important resistance movements in Germany (and Alexander himself wrote the only public protest against the Holocoust that would ever be printed in Germany during the war).His group's activities in producing pamphlets earned them great fame, these pamphlets ultimately being reprinted and dropped by the Allies over German cities; but it also earned attention from the State, which in due course arrested Alexander and after a brief mockery of a trial, beheaded him on July 13,1943.

But our holy Mother Church does not glorify men because they were politically active; and to die unjustly does not make one a martyr. So how is it that today we proclaim Alexander aSaint and a father among the New Martyrs of the Church?

From his youth, St. Alexander lived a life of piety -*‐-*‐ attending the Divine Services, even taking religion classes in Munich. And then, when the innocence of youth was stripped from him by the horrors taking place in the world around him, it was his faith in God above all that inspired his political activities. St. Alexander explicitly, expressly saw the affairs of the world in spiritual terms: the political situation overtaking Germany and Europe was not simply a matter of governments and ideologies, but a conflict between the Will of God and the powers of the devil. As he wrote in one of his pamphlets: "We must struggle against the Nazi terrorist state with rational means, but whosoever today still doubts the reality and existence of demonic powers, has failed by a wide margin to understand ... the background of this war."

It was not men against which Alexander resisted; it was the devil. While some in his day, and perhaps some in our own, might look at his life and see principally political activity, St. Alexander saw his every action as an attempt to bring man into a communion with God's Will, rejecting and turning away from those worldly forces that had become captive to satan and the demons.

Listen to these words, written by the Saint and published by him in one of his 'political' pamphlets: "Everywhere and at all times, demons have been lurking in the dark, waiting for the moment when man is weak, when of his own volition he leaves his place in the order of Creation as founded for him by God in freedom, when he yields to the force of evil and separates himself from the powers of a higher order; and after voluntarily taking the first step, he is driven on to the next and the next at a furiously accelerating rate. [...] But everywhere and at all times of greatest trial men have appeared -*-* prophets and saints -*-* who cherished their freedom, who preached the One God and who with His help brought the people to a reversal of their downward course. Man is free, to be sure; but without the true God he is defenseless against the power of evil. He is like a rudderless ship, at the mercy of the storm; an infant without his mother; a cloud dissolving into the air."

These are the words of a man driven not by political zeal or a humanist sense of social action, but by an unwavering faith in the power of God to overcome evil, and a strong awareness that it is spiritual darkness and the activity of the devil that generates terror among human society.

Such was St. Alexander's expression of the Truth in the context of his resistance during the War; but when we look more closely at his life we see that this 'public' faith was but the fruit of a heart that at all times rested in the love of God -*‐-*‐ a love born of struggle.

Unjustly imprisoned in 1943 by the Nazi government, St. Alexander wrote a series of letters to his family. In one of those letters he writes: "The many misfortunes I have suffered were necessary [...] in order for my eyes to be opened. I am grateful for everything, and I thank God that I have been given the opportunity to understand what He has been leading me to. [...] What did I know of true belief until now? Of true and deep belief? Of the first, last and only truth -*-* about God." In his last letter, written to his family on the morning of his martyrdom, St. Alexander wrote: "One thought above all I would put into our hearts: Do not forget God!" Brothers and sisters, these are the words, and this is the life, of a Saint precious in the eyes of God; one of those, in the words of the Holy Apostle St. Paul, "of whom the world was not worthy."

When we look to the process of glorification of a Saint in the Church, one of the main criteria is the piety of the man -*‐-*‐ his zeal for the complete fulfillment of Christ's commandments; that he is a Christian above all else. In the case of some Saints we look also to the testimony of miracles (though there have been saints who were not miracle-*‐ workers); in the case of others we behold the testimony of incorrupt relics (though there have been many saints, such as St. Seraphim, whose relics were not incorrupt); but in the case of a martyr we look to that podvig of his life that leads him to bear ultimate witness for the Truth of Christ, and the manner in which he meets his end.

In St. Alexander, we see a man who, despite his youth, saw the whole world in terms of God's truth -*‐-*‐ proclaimed in holy men, trounced in men of evil who fell under the devil's sway. We see a man whose every act was intentionally, deliberately an act of faith and an act of his Christian confession. And we see a man who, persecuted and hunted down for his unyielding confession of the truth and resistance to evil, met his death with a peaceful heart, certain that in this manner he would be drawn more fully into God's embrace, and with his final breath urging others to remember the One God who has the power to save.

What a precious thing -*‐-*‐ and one so little known to the world at large -*‐-*‐ that one of the principal voices against the horrors of the inhuman war in Europe, was a voice driven by the holiness of the Orthodox confession!

Let us today, then, rejoice. God rejoices in His Saints, and so too must we; and this morning we have a true cause of rejoicing.

Holy Father Alexander of Munich, newly Glorified among the choir of the Saints, do not cease to intercede with a loving God on behalf of our souls. Amen!

+Archbishop Kyrill
21 January/3 February 2012