Sfinţi, martiri şi închisorile comuniste
Saints, martyrs and communist prisons

Summary/Abstract: To be a saint is not an abstract, moral concept. It does not mean that one was good in the eyes of the secular world. It does not mean that one was politically correct. To be a saint is concretely to participate in the uncreated and deifying energy of God. Those who are deified are saints. They have become holy. Moreover, Christians know that martyrs are those who have died for their belief in Christ, and thus become saints. A martyr’s death washes away all sins and renders one a saint, just as the thief on the cross became a saint by confessing Christ. This presentation explores ways in which the secular world purposefully distorts such Traditional Christian understandings, so as socially and politically to undermine Orthodox Christianity. For example, in the United States and Western Europe, politically correct speech has re-conceptualized the concept of a “saint” in terms of the secular good. “Sanctity” is no longer appreciated in terms of submission to God, but rather as living a life compatible with secular moral judgments regarding human rights and social justice. Such a recasting of Christian discourse fails to regard a ‘saint’ as “one who has been deified and become holy” and, instead, attributes ‘sanctity’ to one who is good in a secular sense of goodness. Such a distortion of Christian language encourages Orthodox Christians to treat as “saints” and “martyrs” many who have rejected Christ and His Church. It admonishes Christians not to glorify as saints those who clearly died a martyr’s death for Christ, perhaps because such individuals made what the Church recognizes as misguided choices, but who nevertheless died for confessing the faith. Among the saints, for example, one must remember the millions of Orthodox Christian priests, monks and laity that the Soviet Union brutally tortured and killed, precisely because they were Orthodox Christians. How should the Church understand their deaths? Orthodox Christians who suffered and died under international socialism confessing the faith died a martyr’s death. Through martyrdom for Christ, they have become saints. They are to be glorified.

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