The Catalog of Good Deeds

The story of the cut off hand

The base of Icon of the Mother of God of “The Three Hands” is a traditional image of the Mother of God Hodegetria. Infant Christ is pictured sitting on the right hand, and the left one is raised and is pointing at the Son. There are several version, which explains the appearance of the third hand.

The most popular one is connected with the name of Saint John of Damascus. The saint came into conflict with the Byzantine emperor-heretic Leo III the Isaurian for honoring the holy icons during the iconoclasm. John was a friend of the mighty caliph from the Umayyad clan, and the emperor Isaurian decided to defame him. He ordered to imitate John’s handwriting and to write a fake letter, in which John appeals the Byzantine Empire to attack Damask. When the caliph received that letter he was furious and ordered to cut off John’s right hand in spite of all his previous achievements. The cut off hand was hanged at the market place in the city.

When John got his hand back, he began to pray in front of the icon of the Mother of God and asked Her to heal his hand, which had served for many years in the name of God and Christianity and had written many texts defending the Holy Icons. After his hand was miraculously healed, St. John placed a silver right hand on the icon in memory of the miracle. John’s vow was really simple: to serve God and the Holy Theotokos and to glorify Them. The following words of joy were attributed to him: “Your holy hand healed the cut off one of mine, and it will destroy all your enemies and all of these who trample the holy images of You and Your Mother. These who defile the icons will be crushed in Your honor”.

The abbot from Athos

The story about the healing of Saint John of Damascus was wide-spread in the area of the Holy Mount Athos, as well as the other and even more ancient stories. There is a story about an icon-painter from the Serbian monastery - Hilandar. The icon-painter was working on the icon of the Mother of God and an image of the third hand kept appearing. He attempted to erase the hand twice. Then he saw the Mother of God in his sleep, and She ordered him to leave the image as it is – “for the purpose of wonder-working, but not by human hand”. It is an interesting fact, that the icon was kept in the Hilandar Monastery since ancient times (and it is still there), but on this very icon the hand is in the form of a silver decoration. Many researchers say it dates back to the 14th century and is considered to have been brought from Serbia. There is no precise information about it, but this theory accords with tradition. At the same time the variants of the tradition differ: one version says the icons was tied to the donkey’s back, which came once to the gates of the Hilandar Monastery from Serbia, where the Muslims took power. There is also a story about the miracle: when the monks were arguing about who should become new father superior, the icon moved itself from the altar to the abbot’s place showing that the Mother of God is the prioress of the monastery, Herself!

There is a unique image of the Mother of God in the White church of the village Caran (1340-1342). Lady Mary is painted in full growth wearing a long blue tunic. She takes Christ with the right hand and pointing at Him with two left ones. The late copy of the icon of Hilandar became the main relic of the Troyan Monastery in Bulgaria. The feature of this icon is that it has not one but three silver hands covering the painted ones.

The sacred image with an inscription

People in Russia began to glorify the Icon of the Mother of God of “The Three Hands” quite late. In the second part of the 17th century, patriarch Nikon strived to turn Moscow into the center of the orthodoxy and brought many of Greek relics. Among them was also the icon of the Mother of God of Iveron, which later became one of the most revered in Russia. The patriarch asked to send several copies of the Icon of the Mother of God of “The Three Hands” from Hilandar. One was ordered for Princess Maria Ilyinichna, the second one was brought in 1661 and was placed in the New Jerusalem Monastery. It is well-known, that the unusual icon confused people. In the beginning of the 18th century a special inscription with the story of the icon was placed near the image. It told the story about the icon-painter and the picture of the third hand, but it told nothing about St. John of Damascus.

It seems that the icon and the copies were widespread mostly in Moscow. One of them was kept in the Danilov Monastery, the other one, painted in 1718 by icon-painters Artemiy Fedorov and Afanasiy Ivanov, was brought to the Beloberezhskaya Poustinia. The icon from this monastery was well known for its miracles and was popular among the pilgrims. The third hand on this icon was painted as a real one which seemed to appear from under the garments. The same iconography was noted on the other icons and drawings of the 18-19th centuries. It is possible that these icons bothered the Holy Synod of the Russian Church, and the icon was listed as “one contradicting nature, history and truth”. Different stories make the icon-painters paint the third hand in different ways. While the story about John of Damascus told about a silver decorative hand, the traditional story about the icon-painter allowed to paint all three hands in a similar manner.

Despite all the contradictions in the legends about the icon and its further story, we can understand the sense of this unusual iconography with the help of its troparion. According to the text, the Mother of God takes the Son with two hands, but the third one symbolizes protection for all praying people. Here is the full troparion:

From Palestine, the godly-minded Sava / brought us your venerable icon, O holy Bride of God, / which is known as the icon “Of the Three Hands”; / and now, since the monks of Hilandar possess it as their boast, / they send up hymns of praise and thanksgiving, / crying out in exultation: / Rejoice, O full of grace!

Translated by the Catalog of Good Deeds

The Illness and the Cure

Christianity without repentance is hypocritical, a mockery, even dangerous. It claims what is not rightfully ours, forgiveness without a change of heart. It can only do this in a formal sort of way since such attitudes are based on there being nothing to forgive in the first place. It therefore opposes the truth about ourselves and the significance of what God has done, is doing and will do for us.

As St. John says in his First Letter, Chapter 1:- 5 This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. ⁶ If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. ⁷ But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. ⁸ If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. ⁹ If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. ¹⁰ If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.

I don't know about you but I would rather not call God a "liar." As St. Paul says in his Letter to the Romans, Chapter 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God ...

However, many people just don't think of themselves in this way. In their own understanding their actions and thoughts are neither good nor bad, neither perfect nor imperfect. In so far as these things are thought about at all, a soul is revealed that just muddles along, confident that it is normal and ordinary; neither in the need of the forgiveness of God nor the faith that goes with that. Sin is what evil people do. It doesn't touch me.

There is absolutely nothing anyone else can do about this except to make clear to that person that no one who is impure shall see God, [Matthew 5:8]. Purification, forgiveness, the cutting out of the root of sin, not just the weeds that grow on the surface of things; this only comes about through repentance and we cannot do that for anyone else nor even bring them to the point of wanting to do it for themselves. Only God can disturb a soul sufficiently so as to prompt the first tentative steps towards repentance. We might aid that as His servants, but only in so far as we, with all humility, count ourselves the first amongst sinners since as our Lord taught, we are not to judge. The deep soul surgery that is the mother of true repentance, only God can do that as the soul begins, painfully, slowly to open itself up to new and unwelcome truths about itself as a prelude to genuine forgiveness and new life.

The word most frequently used in the New Testament for repentance is "metanoia." It means an "about turn" ... a revolution in our attitudes arising from a change of mind and heart and a return to God. When we repent in this way we gain both self knowledge and self mastery by the grace of God and we are well on the way to recovery. Avoid the issue, however, close our eyes and stop up our ears to the truth and we are dead already. Turn to God and live; such might be a simple summary of the gospel message.

What We Need to Do

I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, ... [Luke 15:18]

The Orthodox Church has a very practical, loving and healing ministry for all the believers ... confession, the great healing sacrament. If you have come across confession before, either as an idea or in practice, you may be thinking about "sin lists," artificial or pathological guilt, judgementalism, formalism and the like. Nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to the Orthodox practice of confession before (not "to") a priest. The priest in the prayers says:- "I am only a witness ... " ... and so he is. The penitent stands before the icon of the Lord and His Cross and he unburdens his soul to the Saviour. Our Lord Jesus Christ only looks back with Infinite Love and Compassion and He heals that soul with his forgiveness and strengthens the change of heart with his grace. The person walks about of confession a free man or woman. The priest is there to facilitate the confession, gently prompting or maybe correcting distorted understandings but always allowing the person to talk more freely and honestly to God. All the Orthodox spiritual literature about confession speaks of it as "medicine" ... not in quasi legal terms at all. That person's relationship with God has to be put right, not just once but regularly for we all sin continually, far too readily in fact not to need confession.

Confession is not the whole story when it comes to repentance. Repentance has to be seen in the context of wider spiritual guidance. We need that guidance because we sometimes deceive ourselves through sin and we then fail to think and act for the highest good of ourselves and others. There is a proverb in the legal profession going back centuries:- "Whosoever is his own counsel has a fool for his client." The same applies in the spiritual life. Orthodox Christians have (if they can) spiritual fathers and mothers who will provide such wise and good counsel based on their ability to listen to their charges, their own hearts and God. It is often more difficult, obviously, to find such a person in non-Orthodox societies but it is always worth the effort if such a person may be found.

Key Principle

Repentance is the gateway to life, freedom and God. Knowing how to repent comes through experience and good counsel.

Key Question

How do I see myself before God? How do I see God before myself?

Source: http://www.orthodoxresource.co.uk/christianlife/repentance.htm

1. A monument to St. Elisabeth in London

Martyr Grand Duchess Elisabeth is often called an Orthodox princess of the whole Europe. The saint was born in the family of Great Dutch Ludvig IV of Hesse-Darmstadt and Princess Alice, the daughter of Victoria, the Queen of England. In childhood, the Saint faced the death of her brother and mother. Her whole life was similar to the way of the cross…

In 1998, the statue of St. Elisabeth was erected in London, on the wall of the Westminster Abbey – one of the main churches of the Anglican Church – just near the statues of other martyrs of the 20^th century.

2. A monument to St. Elisabeth in Usovo

Matushka Elisabeth welcomes everyone who comes to Usovo, a small village that lies not far from Moscow. A bronze statue stands on the grounds of the church in honor of the Image of Christ Not-made-by-hand, which was rebuilt in 2010.

Usovo was an estate of Grand Dutch Sergey Alexandrovich, whose wife Elisabeth became. On April 25, 1895, when she was baptized, Emperor Alexander III himself blessed her with the image of Christ Not-made-by-hand. Maybe, that is why the Duchess cared so much about this church in Usovo. She liked the estate itself as well.

After the death of Dutch Sergey Alexandrovich, the Duchess sold off all her possessions, devoted all her time to charity, established The Martha and Mary Convent in Moscow and became the Mother Superior there.

She granted the estate in Usovo to her niece – Grand Dutch Dmitri Pavlovich. After the revolution the Soviet government would turn the estate into a holiday center, while the church was closed in 1932 and would remain closed for many decades.

3. A monument to St. Elisabeth in Moscow

Another monument to St. Elisabeth is placed on the territory of The Martha and Mary Convent, located in the center of Moscow. Countless deeds of mercy performed by St. Elisabeth are not forgotten here. Today there is a home-care service, a rehabilitation center for physically challenged children, a charitable canteen and an orphanage for girls.

The monument itself was put up in 1990 near the church of the Intercession. It is interesting that the monument was erected even before the building of the convent was returned back to the Russian Orthodox Church.

4. St. Elisabeth in Kazakhstan

In 2014, a similar statue of St. Elisabeth appeared in Kazakhstan. The statue from bronze was placed near the only one church in honor of the Royal Martyrs in the whole country, which is in the Karabulak village, Almata region.

5. A monument to St. Elisabeth in Alapaevsk

One summer a monument to St. Elisabeth appeared in the city of Alapaevsk. The sculpture in honor of the martydom of the Saint was put up in the square near the Holy Trinity Cathedral. The Saint holds a cross and a lily flower , which symbolizes purity and faith in God.

St. Elisabeth Convent

July, 2017

Saint Olga, Equal of the Apostles, was the wife of the Kievan Great Prince Igor. The struggle of Christianity with paganism under Igor and Olga, who reigned after Oleg (+ 912), entered into a new phase. The Church of Christ in the years following the reign of Igor (+ 945) became a remarkable spiritual and political force in the Russian realm. The preserved text of a treaty of Igor with the Greeks in the year 944 gives indication of this: it was included by the chronicler in the “Tale of Bygone Years,” under the entry recording the events of the year 6453 (945).

The peace treaty had to be sworn to by both the religious communities of Kiev: “Baptized Rus”, i.e. the Christian, took place in the cathedral church of the holy Prophet of God Elias (July 20); “Unbaptized Rus”, i.e. the pagans, in turn swore their oath on their weapons in the sanctuary of Perun the Thunderer. The fact, that Christians are included in the document in the first place, indicates their significant spiritual influence in the life of Kievan Rus.

Evidently at the moment when the treaty of 944 was being drawn up at Constantinople, there were people in power in Kiev sympathetic to Christianity, who recognized the historical inevitability of involving Rus into the life-creating Christian culture. To this trend possibly belonged even prince Igor himself, whose official position did not permit him personally to go over to the new faith, nor at that time of deciding the issue concerning the Baptism of the whole country with the consequent dispersal throughout it of Orthodox Church hierarchs. The treaty therefore was drawn up in the circumspect manner of expression, which would not hinder the prince to ratify it in either the form of a pagan oath, or in the form of a Christian oath.

But when the Byzantine emissaries arrived in Kiev, conditions along the River Dneipr had essentially changed. A pagan opposition had clearly emerged, at the head of which stood the Varangian voevoda (military-leader) Svenel’d (or Sveinald) and his son Mstislav (Mtsisha) to whom Igor had given holdings in the Drevlyani lands.

Strong also at Kiev was the influence of the Khazar Jews, who could not but be displeased with the thought of the triumph of Orthodoxy in the Russian Land.

Unable to overcome the customary inertia, Igor remained a pagan and he concluded the treaty in the pagan manner, swearing an oath on his sword. He refused the grace of Baptism and was punished for his unbelief. A year later, in 945, rebellious pagans murdered him in the Drevlyanian land, cut down betwixt two trees. But the days of paganism and the lifestyle of the Slavic tribes basic to it were already numbered. The burden of government fell upon the widow of Igor -- the Kiev Great-princess Olga, and her three-year-old son Svyatoslav.

The name of the future enlightener of the Russian Land and of her native region is first to be met with in the “Tale of Bygone Years,” in the phrase where it speaks about the marriage of Igor: “and they brought him a wife from Pskov, by the name of Olga.” She belonged, so specifies the Joakimov Chronicle, to the lineage of the Izborsk princes, -- one of the obscure ancient-Russian princely dynasties, of which in Rus during the 10th-11th Centuries there numbered no less than twenty, but who were all displaced by the Rurikovichi or merged otherwise with them through marriage. Some of them were of local Slavic descent, others -- Varangian new-comers. It is known, that the Scandinavian Viking “koenigs” (kinglets) called to become princes in the Russian cities -- invariably assimilated to the Russian language, and often, they soon became genuinely Russian with Russian names and lifestyle, world-outlook and even physical appearance of attire.

Thus, Igor’s wife also had the Varangian name “Helga,” which in Russian is pronounced Olga. The feminine name Olga corresponds to the masculine name “Oleg” (Helgi), which means “holy” [from Germanic “heilig” for “holy”]. Although the pagan understanding of holiness was quite different from the Christian, it also presupposed within a man a particular frame of reference, of chastity and sobriety of mind, and of insight. The fact that people called Oleg the Wise-Seer (“Veschi”) and Olga the Wise (“Mudra”) shows the spiritual significance of names.

Rather later traditions regard her a native of a village named Vybuta, several kilometers from Pskov up along the River Velika. They still not so long ago used to point out at the river the Olga Bridge, the ancient fording place, Where Olga was met by Igor. The Pskov geographic features have preserved several names connected with this great descendent of Pskov: the village of Ol’zhinets and Ol’gino Pole (Olga Field); the Olga Gateway, one of the branches of the River Velika; Olga Hill and the Olga Cross near Lake Pskov; and the Olga Stone at the village of Vybuta.

The beginning of the independent rule of Princess Olga is connected in the chronicles with the narrative about her terrible revenge on the Drevlyani, who murdered Igor. Having sworn their oaths on their swords and believing “only in their swords”, the pagans were doomed by the judgment of God to also perish by the sword (Mt. 26: 52). Worshipping fire among the other primal elements, they found their own doom in the fire. And the Lord chose Olga to fulfill the fiery chastisement.

The struggle for the unity of Rus, for the subordination to the Kievan center of mutually divisive and hostile tribes and principalities paved the way towards the ultimate victory of Christianity in the Russian Land. For Olga, though still a pagan, the Kiev Christian Church and its Heavenly patron saint the holy Prophet of God Elias [in icons depicted upon a fiery chariot] stood as a flaming faith and prayer of a fire come down from the heavens, and her victory over the Drevlyani—despite the severe harshness of her victory, was a victory of Christian constructive powers in the Russian realm over the powers of a paganism, dark and destructive.

The God-wise Olga entered into history as a great builder of the civil life and culture of Kievan Rus. The chronicles are filled with accounts of her incessant “goings” throughout the Russian land with the aim of the well-being and improvement of the civil and domestic manner of life of her subjects. Having consolidated the inner strengthening of the might of the Kiev great-princely throne, thereby weakening the influence of the hodge-podge of petty local princes in Rus, Olga centralized the whole of state rule with the help of the system of “pogosti” (administrative trade centers). In the year 946 she went with her son and retinue through the Drevlyani land, “imposing tribute and taxes”, noting the villages, inns and hunting places, liable for inclusion in the Kiev great-princely holdings. The next year she went to Novgorod, establishing administrative centers along the Rivers Msta and Luga, everywhere leaving visible traces of her activity. “Her lovischa (hunting preserves) were throughout all the land, the boundary signs, her places and administrative centers, wrote the chronicler, and her sleighs stand at Pskov to this very day, as are her directed places for snaring of birds along the Dneipr and the Desna Rivers; and her village of Ol’zhicha stands to the present day.”

The “pogosti” established by Olga, as financial-administrative and law-court centers, represented sturdy props of great-princely power in these places.

Being first of all, and in the actual sense of the word, centers of trade and exchange (the merchant as “guest”) gathered together and became organized around the settlements (and in place of the “humanly arbitrary” gathering of tribute and taxes, there now existed uniformity and order with the “pogosti” system). Olga’s “pogosti” became an important network of the ethnic and cultural unification of the Russian nation.

Later on, when Olga had become a Christian, they began to erect the first churches at the “pogosti”; from the time of the Baptism of Rus the “pogost” and church (parish) became inseparably associated. (It was only afterwards with the existence of cemeteries alongside churches that there developed the current meaning of the Russian word “pogost” to nowadays signify “parish graveyard”.)

Princess Olga exerted much effort to fortify the defensive might of the land. The cities were built up and strengthened, Vyshgorod (or Detintsa, Kroma) they enclosed with stone and oak walls (battlements), and they bristled them with ramparts and pallisades. Knowing how hostile many were to the idea of strengthening the princely power and the unification of Rus, the princess herself lived constantly “on the hill” over the Dneipr, behind the trusty battlements of Kievan Vyshgorod (“Verkhna-gorod” or “Upper-city”), surrounded by her faithful retainers. Two thirds of the gathered tribute, as the chroniclers testify, she gave over for the use of the Kiev “veche” (city-council), and the remaining one third went “to Olga, for Vyshgorod” -- for the needs of building fortifications. And to the time period of Olga, historians note the establishment of the first state frontiers of Russia -- to the west, with Poland. Heroic outposts to the south guarded the peaceful fields of the Kievans from the peoples of the Wild Plains. Foreigners hastened to Gardarika (“the land of cities”), as they called Rus, with merchandise and craftwares. Swedes, Danes, Germans all eagerly entered as mercenaries into the Russian army. The foreign connections of Kiev spread. This furthered the developement of construction with stone in the city, the beginnings of which was initiated under Olga. The first stone edifices of Kiev -- the city palace and Olga’s upper enclosure -- were discovered by archaeologists only but in this century. (The palace, or more properly its foundations and remains of the walls were found in excavations during the years 1971-1972).

But it was not only the strengthening of the civil realm and the improvement of domestic norms of the manner of life for people that attracted the attention of the wise princess. Even more urgent for her was the fundamental transformation of the religious life of Rus, the spiritual transfiguration of the Russian nation. Rus had become a great power. Only two European realms could compare with it during these years in significance and might: in Eastern Europe -- the ancient Byzantine empire, and in the West the kingdom of Saxony.

The experience of both empires, connected with the exaltation in spirit of Christian teaching, with the religious basis of life, showed clearly, that the way to the future greatness of Rus lay not through military means, but first of all and primarily through spiritual conquering and attainment. Having entrusted Kiev to her teenage son Svyatoslav, and seeking grace and truth, Great-princess Olga in the Summer of 954 set off with a great fleet to Constantinople. This was a peaceful “expedition”, combining the tasks of religious pilgrimage and diplomatic mission, but the political considerations demanded that it become simultaneously a display of the military might of Rus on the Black Sea, which would remind the haughty “Romaioi” [Byzantine Greeks] of the victorious campaigns of Askold and Oleg, who in the year 907 advanced in their shields “to the very gates of Constantinople.”

The result was attained. The appearance of the Russian fleet in the Bosphorus created the necessary effect for the developing of Russo-Byzantine dialogue. In turn, the southern capital struck the stern daughter of the north with its variety of beauty and grandeur of architecture, and its jumbled mixture of pagans and peoples from all over the world. But a great impression was produced by the wealth of Christian churches and the holy things preserved in them. Constantinople, “the city of the imperial Caesar,” the Byzantine Empire, strove in everything to be worthy of the Mother of God, to Whom the city was dedicated by Saint Constantine the Great (May 21) in 330 (see May 11). The Russian princess attended services in the finest churches of Constantinople: at Hagia Sophia, at Blachernae, and others.

In her heart the wise Olga found the desire for holy Orthodoxy, and she made the decision to become a Christian. The sacrament of Baptism was made over her by the Constantinople Patriarch Theophylactus (933-956), and her godfather was the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitos (912-959). At Baptism she was given the name Helen in honor of the holy Equal of the Apostles Helen (May 21), the mother of Saint Constantine, and she also had been the discoverer of the Venerable Wood of the Cross of the Lord. In an edifying word spoken at the conclusion of the rite, the Patriarch said: “Blessed are you among Russian women, for you have forsaken the darkness and have loved the Light. The Russian people shall bless you in all the future generations, from your grandson and great-grandson to your furthermost descendants.” He instructed her in the truths of the Faith, the churchly rules and the rule of prayer, he explained the commands about fasting, chastity and charity. “She, however,” says the Monk Nestor, “bowed her head and stood, literally like a sponge absorbing water, listening to the teaching, and bowing down to the Patriarch, she said, “By your prayers, O Master, let me be preserved from the wiles of enemies”.

It is in precisely this way, with a slightly bowed head, that Saint Olga is depicted on one of the frescoes of the Kiev Sophia cathedral, and likewise on a Byzantine miniature contemporary to her, in a manuscript portrait of the Chronicles of John Scilitius in the Madrid National Library. The Greek inscription, accompanying the miniature, terms Olga “Archontissa (i.e. ruler) of Rus,” “a woman, Helga by name, who came to the emperor Constantine and was baptized”. The princess is depicted in special head attire, “as a newly-baptized Christian and venerable deaconess of the Russian Church.” Beside her in the same attire of the newly-baptized -- is Malusha (+ 1001), the future mother of the Equal of the Apostles Saint Vladimir (July 15).

For one who had originally so disliked the Russians as did the emperor Constantine Porphyrigenitos, it was no trivial matter for him to become the godfather to the “Archontissa of Rus”. In the Russian chronicles are preserved narratives about this, how resolutely and on an equal footing Olga conversed with the emperor, amazing the Greeks by her spiritual depth and wisdom of governance, and displaying that the Russian nation was quite capable of accepting and assimilating the highest attainments of the Greek religious genius, the finest fruition of Byzantine spirituality and culture. And thus by a peaceful path Saint Olga succeeded in “taking Constantinople”, something which no other military leader before her had ever been able to do. According to the witness of the chronicles, the emperor himself had to admit, that Olga “had given him the slip” (had outwitted him), and the popular mind, jumbling together into one the traditions about Oleg the Wise and Olga the Wise, sealed in its memory this spiritual victory in the bylina or folk-legend entitled “Concerning the Taking of Constantinople by Princess Olga”.

In his work “About the Ceremonies of the Byzantine Court,” which has survived to the present day in just one copy, Constantine Porphyrigenitos has left us a detailed description of the ceremony surrounding the stay of Saint Olga at Constantinople. He describes a triumphant reception in the famed Magnaura palace, beneathe the singing of bronze birds and the roars of copper lions, where Olga appeared with an impressive retinue of 108 men (not counting the men of Svyatoslav’s company). And there took place negotiations in the narrower confines of the chambers of the empress, and then a state dinner in the hall of Justinian. And here during the course of events, there providentially met together at one table the four “majestic ladies”: the grandmother and the mother of holy Equal of the Apostles Saint Vladimir (Saint Olga and her companion Malusha), and the grandmother and the mother of Saint Vladimir’s future spouse Anna (the empress Helen and her daughter-in-law Theophano). Slightly more than half a century would pass, and at the Desyatin church of the Most Holy Theotokos at Kiev would stand aside each other the marble tombs of Saint Olga, Saint Vladimir and “Blessed Anna”.

During the time of one of these receptions, as Constantine Porphyrogenitos relates, the Russian princess was presented a golden plate inset with jewels. Saint Olga offered it to the vestry of the Sophia cathedral, where at the beginning of the thirteenth century it was seen and described by the Russian diplomat Dobrynya Yadeikovich (who afterwards was to become the Novgorod archbishop Anthony): “The large golden official plate of Olga of Russia, when she took it as tribute, having come to Constantinople; upon the plate be precious stones, and upon it is written in these stones the name Christ”.

Moreover, the wily emperor, after reporting such details as would underscore how “Olga had given him the slip”, also presents a difficult riddle for historians of the Russian Church. This is it: Saint Nestor the Chronicler relates in the “Tale of Bygone Years” that the Baptism of Olga took place in the Biblical year 6463 (955 or 954), and this corresponds to the account of the Byzantine chronicles of Kedrinos. Another Russian Church writer of the eleventh century, Yakov Mnikh, in his work “Eulogy and Laudation to Vladimir... and how Vladimir’s Grandmother Olga was Baptized”, speaks about the death of the holy princess (+ 969) and he notes that she lived as a Christian for fifteen years, and he places the actual date of Baptism as the year 954, which corresponds within several months to the date indicated by Nestor. In contrast to this, describing for us the stay of Olga at Constantinople and providing the precise dates of the receptions given in her honor, Constantine Porphyrogenitos has us to understand in no uncertain terms that all this occurred in the year 957.

To reconcile the cited chronicles, on the one hand, with the testimony of Constantine on the other hand, Russian Church historians are led to suppose one of two things: either Saint Olga made a second journey to Constantinople in the year 957 to continue negotiations with the emperor, or she was not baptized at Constantinople, having previously been baptized at Kiev in 954, and that she was merely making a pilgrimage to Byzantium, since she was already a Christian. The first supposition is the more credible.

As for the immediate diplomatic outcome of the negotiations, there were basic matters for Saint Olga that had been left unsettled. She had gained success on questions concerning Russian trade within the territories of the Byzantine Empire, and also the reconfirmation of the peace accord with Byzantium, concluded by Igor in the year 944. But she had not been able to sway the emperor on two issues of importance to Rus: the dynastic marriage of Svyatoslav with a Byzantine princess, and the conditions for restoring an Orthodox metropolitan to Kiev as had existed at the time of Askold. The evidently inadequate outcome of her mission is detected in her answer, when she had already returned home, which was given to emissaries sent out by the emperor. To the emperor’s inquiry about promised military aid, StOlga curtly replied through the emissaries: “If you had spent time with me at Pochaina, as I did at the Court, then I would send the soldiers to help you.”

Amidst all this, in spite of her failed attempts at establishing the Church hierarchy within Rus, Saint Olga, after becoming a Christian, zealously devoted herself to efforts of Christian evangelization among the pagans, and also church construction: “demanding the distressing of demons and the beginning of life for Christ Jesus”. She built churches: of Saint Nicholas and the church of the Holy Wisdom at Kiev, of the Annunciation of the Most Holy Theotokos at Vytebsk, and of the Holy Life-Creating Trinity at Pskov. Pskov from that period has been called in the chronicles the Domicile of the Holy Trinity. The church, built by Olga at the River Velika at a spot pointed out to her from on high, according to the chronicler, by a “light-beam of the Thrice-Radiant Divinity”, stood for more than one and an half centuries. In the year 1137 holy Prince Vsevolod-Gabriel (February 11) replaced this wooden temple with one made of stone, which in turn in 1363 was rebuilt and replaced finally with the presently existing Trinity cathedral.

Another very important monument of Russian “Monument Theology”, as Church architecture frequently is termed, connected with the name of Saint Olga, is the temple of the Wisdom of God at Kiev, which was started soon after her return from Constantinople, and consecrated on May 11, 960. This day was afterwards observed in the Russian Church as a special Church feastday.

In the Mesyatseslov (calendar supplement)of a parchment Epistle-book from 1307, under May 11 is written: “On this day the consecration of Saint Sophia took place at Kiev in the year 6460.” The date is indicated in the so-called “Antiochian” rather than generally-accepted Constantinople chronology, and it corresponds to the year 960 from the Birth of Christ.

It was no mere coincidence that Saint Olga received in Baptism the name of Saint Helen, who found the Venerable Wood of the Cross at Jerusalem (March 6). The foremost sacred item in the newly built Kiev Sophia temple was a piece of the Holy Cross, brought by this new Helen from Constantinople, and received by her in blessing from the Constantinople Patriarch. The Cross, by tradition, was hewn out from an entire piece of the Life-Creating Wood of the Lord. Upon the Cross-Wood was inscribed: “The Holy Cross for the Regeneration of the Russian Land, Received by Noble Princess Olga.”

Saint Olga did much to memorialize the first Russian confessors of the Name of Christ: over the grave of Askold the Saint Nicholas church was built, where according to certain accounts, she herself was afterwards interred. Over the grave of Dir was built the afore-mentioned Sophia cathedral, which stood for half a century and burned in the year 1017. On this spot Yaroslav the Wise later on built a church of Saint Irene in 1050, but the sacred items of Olga’s Sophia temple were transferred into a stone church of the same name now standing as the Kiev Sophia, started in 1017 and consecrated about the year 1030. In the Prologue of the thirteenth century, it says about the Olga Cross: “for It is now at Kiev in Saint Sophia in the altar on the right side.” The plundering of Kiev’s holy things, which after the Mongols was continued by the Lithuanians who captured the city in 1341, did not spare even this. Under Jagiello in the period of the Liublin Unia, which in 1384 united Poland and Lithuania into one state, the Olga Cross was snatched from the Sophia cathedral and carried off by the Catholics to Lublin. Its further fate is unknown.

But even in Olga’s time there were at Kiev among the nobles and retainers no few people who, in the words of Solomon, “hated Wisdom”, and also Saint Olga, for having built Wisdom’s temple. Zealots of the old paganism became all the more emboldened, viewing with hope the coming of age of Svyatoslav, who decidedly spurned the urgings of his mother to accept Christianity, and even becoming angry with her over this. It was necessary to hurry with the intended matter of the Baptism of Rus. The deceit of Byzantium, at the time not wanting to promote Christianity in Rus, played into the hands of the pagans. In search of a solution, Saint Olga looked to the west. No contradiction here yet existed. Saint Olga (+ 969) belonged still to the undivided Church (i.e. before the Great Schism of 1054), and she had scant possibility to study the theological points involved between the Greek and Latin Creeds. The opposition of West and East presented itself to her first of all as a political rivalry, of secondary importance in comparison with her task, the establishment of the Russian Church and the Christian enlightenment of Rus.

Under the year 959, the German chronicler named “the Continuant of Reginon,” records: “to the king came emissaries of Helen, queen of the Russes, who was baptized in Constantinople, and who sought for their nation to have bishop and prieSts” King Otto, the future founder of the German Empire, willingly acceded to Olga’s request, but he urged that the matter not be decided in haste. It was only on Nativity of the following year 960, that there was established a Russian bishop Libutius, from the monastery brethren of Anatolius Alban am Mainz. But he soon died (March 15, 961). In his place was ordained Adalbert of Trier, whom Otto “generously furnishing all needs” finally sent to Russia. It is difficult to say what would have happened, had the king not delayed for so long a while, but when in 962 when Adalbert showed up at Kiev, he “did not succeed in the matter for which he had been sent, and did consider his efforts to be in vain.” Furthermore, on the return journey “certain of his companions were murdered, and the bishop himself did not escape mortal danger.”

It turned out that after the passage of years, as Olga indeed had foreseen, matters at Kiev had twisted ultimately in favor of paganism, and Rus having become neither Orthodox nor Catholic, had second thoughts about accepting Christianity. The pagan reaction thus produced was so strong, that not only did the German missionaries suffer, but also some of the Kiev Christians who had been baptized with Olga at Constantinople. By order of Svyatoslav, Saint Olga’s nephew Gleb was killed and some of the churches built by her were destroyed. It seems reasonable, that this transpired not without Byzantium’s secret diplomacy: given the possibility of a strengthened Rus in alliance with Otto, the Greeks would have preferred to support the pagans, with the consequent intrigues against Olga and various disorders.

The collapse of the mission of Adalbert had providential significance for the future Russian Orthodox Church, escaping papal dominion. Saint Olga was obliged to accede to the humiliation and to withdraw fully into matters of personal piety, handing over the reigns of governance to her pagan-son Svyatoslav. Because of her former role, all the difficult matters were referred over to her in her wisdom of governance. When Svyatoslav absented himself from Kiev on military campaigns and wars, the governance of the realm was again entrusted to his mother. But the question about the Baptism of Rus was for a while taken off the agenda, and this was ultimately bitter for Saint Olga, who regarded the good news of the Gospel of Christ as the chief matter in her life.

She meekly endured the sorrow and grief, attempting to help her son in civil and military affairs, and to guide matters with heroic intent. The victories of the Russian army were a consolation for her, particularly the destruction of an old enemy of the Russian state—the Khazar kaganate. Twice, in the years 965 and 969, the armies of Svyatoslav went through the lands of “the foolish Khazars,” forever shattering the might of the Jewish rulers of Priazovia and lower Povolzhia. A subsequent powerful blow was struck at the Mahometan Volga Bulgars, and then in turn came the Danube Bulgars. Eighteen years were spent on the Danube with the Kiev military forces. Olga was alone and in worry: it was as though, absorbed by military matters in the Balkans, Svyatoslav had forgotten about Kiev.

In the Spring of 969 the Pechenegs besieged Kiev: “and it was impossible to lead out the horses to water, for the Pechenegs stood at the Lybeda.” The Russian army was far away, at the Danube. Having sent off messengers to her son, Saint Olga herself headed the defense of the capital. When he received the news, Svyatoslav rode quickly to Kiev, and “he hugged his mother and his children and was distressed, with what had happened with them from the Pechenegs.” But after routing the nomads, the warrior prince began anew to say to his mother: “It does not please me to sit at Kiev, for I wish to live at Pereslavl’ on the Dunaj (Danube) since that is the center of my lands.”

Svyatoslav dreamed of creating a vast Russian holding from the Danube to the Volga, which would unite all Rus, Bulgaria, Serbia, the Near Black Sea region and Priazovia (Azov region), and extend his borders to those of Constantinople itself. Olga the Wise understood however, that all the bravery and daring of the Russian companies could not compare against the ancient Byzantine Empire, and that the venture of Svyatoslav would fail. But the son would not heed the admonitions of his mother. Saint Olga thereupon said, “You see that I am ill. Why do you want to forsake me? After you bury me, then go wherever you wish.”

Her days were numbered, and her burdens and sorrows sapped her strength. On July 11, 969 Saint Olga died: “and with great lament they mourned her, her son and grandsons and all the people.” In her final years, amidst the triumph of paganism, she had to have a priest by her secretly, so she would not evoke new outbursts of pagan fanaticism. But before death, having found anew her former firmness and resolve, she forbade them to make over her the pagan celebration of the dead, and she gave final instructions to bury her openly in accord with Orthodox ritual. Presbyter Gregory, who was with her at Constantinople in 957, fulfilled her request.

Saint Olga lived, died, and was buried as a Christian. “And thus having lived and well having glorified God in Trinity, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, having worshipped in the blessed faith, she ended her life in the peace of Christ Jesus, our Lord.” As her prophetic testament to succeeding generations, with deep Christian humility she confessed her faith concerning her nation: “God’s will be done! If it pleases God to have mercy upon my native Russian Land, then they shall turn their hearts to God, just as I have received this gift.”

God glorified the holy toiler of Orthodoxy, the “initiator of faith” in the Russian Land, by means of miracles and incorrupt relics. Yakov Mnikh (+ 1072), a hundred years after her death, wrote in his work “Memory and Laudation to Vladimir”: “God has glorified the body of His servant Olga, and her venerable body remains incorrupt to this day.”

Saint Olga glorified God with good deeds in all things, and God glorified her. Under holy Prince Vladimir, ascribed by some as occurring in the year 1007, the relics of Saint Olga were transferred into the Desyatin church of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos and placed within a special sarcophagus, such as was customary to enclose the relics of saints in the Orthodox East. “And hear ye concerning a certain miracle about her: the grave of stone is small in the church of the Holy Mother of God, this church built by the blessed Prince Vladimir, and in the grave is the blessed Olga. And an opening was made in the tomb to behold Olga’s body lying there whole.” But not everyone was given to see this miracle of the incorrupt relics of the saint: “For whoever came with faith, the aperture opened up, and there the venerable body could be seen lying intact, and one would marvel at such a miracle -- the body lying there for so many years without decay. Worthy of all praise is this venerable body: resting in the grave whole, as though sleeping. But for those who did not approach in faith, the grave aperture would not open up, and they would not see this venerable body, but only the grave.”

Thus even after death Saint Olga espoused life eternal and resurrection, filling believers with joy and confounding non-believers. She was, in the words of Saint Nestor the Chronicler, “a precursor in the Christian land, like the dawn before sunrise or the twilight before the light.”

The holy Equal of the Apostles Great Prince Vladimir, himself giving thanks to God on the day of the Baptism of Rus, witnessed before his countrymen concerning Saint Olga with the remarkable words: “The sons of Rus bless you, and also the generations of your descendants.”

Source: https://oca.org/saints/lives/2016/07/11/102003-st-olga-the-princess-of-russia-in-holy-baptism-called-helen