"They Will By No Means Follow a Stranger..."
Feastday of St. Volodymyr the Great
Galatians 1:11-19; John 10:1-9
The Lord Jesus Christ said,
“they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.”
(John 10:5)
Christianity in Ukraine, or in the territory of present-day Ukraine, has been spreading gradually since the apostolic times, since the preaching of the Apostle Andrew the First-Called.
There were Christians among the poor, ordinary labourers, merchants, military militia, princes, and boyars. According to some chronicles, in 867 Prince Askold was baptized and named St. Nicholas. Since then, the Church of St. Nicholas on Askold's grave has existed in one form or another.
Prince Ihor, when he signed a treaty with the Greeks in 945, as the chronicler recalls in "Rus' baptized" swore an oath in the church of St. Elijah in Kyiv.
In 955, Princess Olha was baptized... Boyar Fedir was martyred for Christ...
Prince Sviatoslav, Olha's son, though not baptized himself, was tolerant of Christians:
“If anyone wants to be baptized, I will not rebuke him.”
From the study of historical facts, we come to the conclusion that Christianity in Kyivan Rus’ spread gradually, and when Great Prince Volodymyr of Kyiv decided to accept the faith of Christ, there were probably already many Christians in his domain among the people of Kyiv.
The ruler, the head of the state, has to always reconcile even his own heartfelt desires with the state of affairs, the circumstances of life in his country. This was the case with Volodymyr - when he accepted Christianity, it was a turning point in the spread of Christianity in Kyivan Rus’. Having embraced the faith of Christ, Volodymyr called on his people to accept that faith, and, as history shows, many people, looking up to the prince, accepted the faith of Christ, although they may not have understood it in detail yet.
Some narrow-minded people primitivize historical facts and say that people were subject to authority and could only accept the faith of Christ out of fear. A deeper study of the circumstances of the adoption of Christianity by Kyivan Rus’ convinces us that:
a) Many people had long known about the basic principles of the faith of Christ.
b) People followed Volodymyr because they trusted him, he was their ruler, and people were convinced that he meant well by them.
If a conqueror, a foreign ruler, came and imposed his faith by force, people would not have accepted it. This clarifies why their own people accepted Christianity almost without resistance, while various conquered tribes on the outskirts of the state resisted--there were cases of violence and cruelty during the spread of Christianity.
This is very consistent with Christ's definition of a good shepherd:
“they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.”
(John 10:5).
The assertion "Whose power it is, his is the faith" has been reversed in the history of our nation: a ruler, in order to have the trust of our people, had to profess the faith of the majority of his subjects.
Lithuanian princes, having conquered Ukrainian and Belarusian lands, adopted the Orthodox faith, the Belarusian-Ukrainian language, and the customs of the people among whom they lived. By doing so, the Lithuanian princes easily conquered the Belarusian and Ukrainian lands without much difficulty and without major wars.
It was not the peoples but the ruling princes who were denationalized; they became Belarusian or Ukrainian princes by faith, language, culture, and customs, and thus such princes enjoyed support among the peoples they ruled. Even the official language of the Lithuanian state, as historical documents show, became Belarusian-Ukrainian.
When the Grand Duke of Lithuania Vytautas (1350-1430) adopted the Roman Catholic faith (Lithuania was then united in a union with Poland by way of marriage between Jogailo and Jadwiga), and tried to force the Roman Catholic faith on his Ukrainian and Belarusian subjects, nothing came of it -- our peoples did not accept an alien faith, and the prince who changed his faith became a stranger to them.
When the Ukrainian prince under Polish rule, Jeremiah Vishnevetsky (1612-1651) -- his mother, Raina, a cousin of the famous Metropolitan Petro Mohyla, defended and actively worked for the observance and development of the Orthodox Church -- adopted Roman Catholicism and wanted to force the people under his rule (he held 56 towns and villages on the Left Bank, a castle in Lubny) to become Roman Catholic, the people resisted. Jeremiah (Jarema) Vyshnevetsky became the executioner of his people, had to flee from the rebellious Orthodox people in Poland, because he had become a stranger to his people, betrayed them.
Poland, its rulers, for several centuries tried to prove by fire and sword, by violence, that when they have state power, the subjects must recognize their faith, but the majority of our people did not accept this doctrine. Our people remained mostly Orthodox.
For centuries, the Ukrainian people have kept and preserved as the greatest treasure of the soul their True, Orthodox Christian Faith, which was adopted by their own Great Prince Volodymyr, so that this faith and this Orthodox Church may be the sources of salvation for our people.
We believe that our Orthodox faith and our Church are the eternal institutions of our salvation. Faith and the Church are not objects of fashion; they cannot be changed to adapt to circumstances, because they are based on truth, the unchanging truth of God for the salvation of our souls and for the salvation of the collective soul of our people.
Our ancient chronicle says that when a mass baptism took place in the Pochayna River, a tributary of the Dnipro River in Kyiv, Volodymyr prayed that God would strengthen the people's "right and pure faith," that is, true, Orthodox faith, not corrupted by human reasoning.
Let us also pray that “the Great God, who created heaven and earth” may preserve and strengthen among us the “right and pure faith” in Christ Jesus, the Saviour of the souls of our people.
Amen.
Very Rev. Fr. Taras Slavchenko
Taras Slavchenko was born on March 8, 1918 in Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk region in Ukraine. After graduating from school and the Pedagogical College, he entered the language and literature faculty of the Scientific Pedagogical Institute. Having successfully completed it in 1938, he served as a teacher in a secondary school.
