ST. ANDREW AND THE MIRACULOUS ISLE OF VALAAM
A JOURNAL OF ORTHODOX FAITH AND CULTURE
Road to Emmaus
The Road to Emmaus staff hopes that you find our journal inspiring and useful. While we offer our past articles on-line free of charge, we would warmly appreciate your help in covering the costs of producing this non-profit journal, so that we may continue to bring you quality articles on Orthodox Christianity, past and present, around the world.
Thank you for your support.
by St. Ignaty Brianchaninov
The 19th-century writer and ascetic, St. Ignaty Brianchaninov (+1867), one of Russia’s most respected and esteemed theologians, visited Valaam Monastery in 1846 and later wrote about the island, asserting his own conviction of St. Andrew’s early presence. Following is an excerpt from the Russian original, now in the archives of New Valaamo Monastery in Finland.
Their sound has gone forth unto all the earth and their words to the ends of the world.” This is what Scripture witnesses about the apostles’ journeys. Their work does not belong to just one people but to all mankind; their care, the love of their hearts was not attracted by higher education, an advanced civil system, nor earthly power, but by the trouble that fallen man found himself in, whether he be Scythian or Barbarian, Greek or Jewish. Why then could not Holy Apostle Andrew have come to our forefathers, the Slavs and their Scandinavian neighbors? Why could he not have visited a
place blessed for people to worship at, and planted there the true knowledge of God and true worship? Why can’t we admit that God Himself inspired this lofty, holy intention in the apostle and gave him the strength to fulfill it. A wild, unknown, remote land and a difficult journey are not reason strong enough to reject the tradition. Only a short while after the apostolic era huge armies walked along these roads, so why could not the apostle have also walked here, led by the hand of God and by his own apostolic zeal?
We also have a tradition, not so distant, but an exact and purely historical one: monastic life on Valaam and Eastern Christianity began to flourish in that land much earlier and with greater vigour than a traveler might think who came there for a short and superficial sojourn. One has to look closely, to spare some time to listen carefully to the accounts of both Valaam monks and local people
in order to single out those things worth inscribing on the tablets of history… 57
All photos courtesy Monk Savvaty:
http://www.foto.orthodoxy.ru
TEXT IN ENGLISH
Dear visitors of our web-site of the monastery Lepavina! Due to a high number of visits of our website, I am honoured to take the responsibility to describe you in English different events from Serbian Orthodox Church and monastery Lepavina. We would like to inform you that we will be also putting on our web-site some texts in English on different subjects from other Orthodox websites. I deeply hope and believe that our Lord will help me in that!
With God’s blessing, from monastery Lepavina Archimandrite Gavrilo.