57. Учреждение миссий

The missionary activity of the Russian Church during the synodal period continued successfully mainly in the Kazan region and the areas adjacent to it. Of the Kazan saints, Metropolitans Tikhon, who opened a school for foreign children at his own expense, and Luka Konashevich, were especially distinguished by their zeal for the spread and establishment of the faith. Currently, the work of missionary preaching in the Kazan region is led by the Kazan Brotherhood of St. Gurias, opened in 1867. The vast expanses of Siberia, inhabited by numerous tribes, especially provided a wide field for the missionary activity of the Church in recent centuries. These are the most remarkable preachers of the faith in this region. Tobolsk Metropolitan Philofey Leshchinsky. He summoned learned monks from Kyiv and sent them to preach to the Mongols bordering Siberia. He himself traveled from end to end throughout his vast diocese, which was mostly still in the darkness of paganism. In 1711, due to serious illness, he refused the department and accepted the schema with the name Theodore. Feeling relieved, he again turned to missionary work and, not embarrassed by the affairs of managing the diocese, devoted himself entirely to the work of Christian preaching: he baptized hundreds of Tatars, Ostyaks, Voguls, appointed priests for them, and built churches. In total, he converted up to 40,000 foreigners to faith and built 37 churches. The saint reposed in 1721. Saint Innocent, Bishop of Irkutsk, tonsure of the Kyiv Lavra and a student of the academy there. Emperor Peter in 1721 intended him to head the Beijing mission with the rank of bishop, but the Chinese Bogdykhan did not agree to allow the mission to his capital. During the protracted negotiations with China, Innocent lived in Irkutsk and subsequently was a bishop here from 1727 to 1731. During all this time, he worked hard to preach among Siberian foreigners. At the Irkutsk Ascension Monastery, at his own expense, he set up a school where future missionaries studied Mongolian and Chinese. His apostolic exploits and holy life are glorified by the incorruption of his relics. Archimandrite Makariy Glukharev was the founder and head of the Altai mission (in the Biysk and Kuznetsk districts of the Tobolsk, now Tomsk diocese). With truly apostolic zeal, sparing neither strength nor health, he worked here for about 14 years, from 1830 to 1844, giving all his funds to the benefit of the newly baptized. He translated many prayers, the Gospels of Matthew and John, and selected passages from other sacred books into Altai. He spent the last years of his working life in the Volkhov monastery of the Oryol diocese, where he died on May 18, 1850. Archpriest John Veniaminov. The son of a poor clerk and an orphan from an early age, he was educated at the Irkutsk Seminary. An apparently accidental circumstance diverted him from continuing his education at the academy, where his superiors intended him, and the young theologian first received the position of deacon at the Irkutsk Annunciation Church, and then here in 1821 he was appointed a priest. Two years after this, in 1823, voluntarily, obeying an irresistible attraction from above, priest Veniaminov and his family went 5,000 miles to the island of Unalaska for Christian preaching. Here he stayed for ten years, patiently enduring labors and hardships of all kinds; He studied the Aleut language and translated the Gospel and prayers into this language, established a school and a church. Then, in 1834, Veniaminov moved to the island of Sithu and here, having studied the Koloshe language, preached the holy faith to them. In 1839, due to the needs of his mission, Archpriest Veniaminov went to St. Petersburg; here the news of the death of his wife was received. Having accepted monasticism with the name Innocent (in honor of St. Innocent of Irkutsk), he was ordained Bishop of Kamchatka in December 1840. From the island. Sith Eminence Innocent moved to Yakutsk in 1853. Here he studied the Yakut language, translated the Gospel, liturgy and prayers into it and confirmed up to 300,000 Yakuts in the faith. In 1857, Archbishop Innocent moved to the Amur, to the city of Blagoveshchensk (so named after his former parish church), where he converted several thousand half-wild Mongols to Christianity. Such extraordinary works drew general attention to him, and after the death of Metropolitan Philaret, he was called as a most honored hierarch and ascetic to occupy the department. In the rank of Metropolitan of Moscow, he completed the great feat of his life, developing a new charter for the Orthodox missionary society. According to this charter, its main administration, the Council, was moved to Moscow, and Metropolitan Innokenty was appointed chairman of the society. He died in 1879. Currently, within Siberia, with the assistance of the Missionary Society, there are missions: Altai (Tomsk Diocese), Kyrgyz (Omsk Diocese), Obdorsk (Tobolsk Diocese), Krasnoyarsk (Yenisei Diocese), Irkutsk, Transbaikal, Vladivostok, Yakutsk, Blagoveshchensk, etc. Missions are divided into camps under which they are established schools for foreign children. In addition to the Siberian missions, under the care of the Missionary Society there are a number of missions in European Russia, founded on the model of the Siberian ones and with the goal of enlightening local foreigners with the Orthodox faith, such as: Kalmyks, Kyrgyz, Cheremis, Voguls, Bashkirs, Tatars, etc. These missions are named after the dioceses in which they are founded and operate: Astrakhan, Stavropol, Perm, Orenburg, Ekaterinburg, etc. From Siberia, the evangelical preaching continued its journey to neighboring countries - China and Japan. The light of the Orthodox faith was brought to China by Russian captives at the end of the 17th century. They settled in a special settlement near Beijing and built a stone church. At their request, at the beginning of the 18th century, a mission was sent from Tobolsk to China with Archimandrite Hilarion at its head; but the activities of this mission were mainly aimed at maintaining faith among the descendants of Russian captives. Cases of Chinese conversion were rare. In order to strengthen the resources of the Chinese mission, capable young people were called to St. Petersburg from various dioceses to teach the Chinese language. Through their works, the most necessary passages from liturgical books, the catechism of Metropolitan Philaret, etc. have been translated into this language. But in general, the number of Chinese converted to Christianity is still small. Orthodoxy is spreading more successfully in Japan. It was planted here through the works of Archbishop Nikolai Kasatkin, who died on February 3, 1912. From a young age, he devoted himself to the apostolic calling, and immediately after completing his academic course in 1860, he took the place of rector of the church at the Russian consulate in Hakodate. Since then, for over 50 years, he has worked tirelessly to spread and establish Orthodoxy in Japan. In 1870, at his request, a mission was established here, of which he was appointed head, first, in 1870, with the rank of archimandrite, then from 1880 - bishop and archbishop. Having begun his missionary work under extremely difficult conditions, when the adoption of Christianity was punishable by death, he had the consolation of seeing how the conditions of Japanese social life gradually changed for the better, and the word of God grew and multiplied and bore abundant fruit in the hearts of young Christians of the Japanese Church. For greater success of missionary activity, missionaries were formed from the Japanese themselves, of whom Pavel Sawabe, a former priest, is especially famous. Working tirelessly himself, translating liturgical and sacred books into Japanese, preaching, traveling throughout the cities and towns of Japan, Archbishop Nicholas was able to inspire his closest collaborators with the same holy zeal. In 1891, a magnificent church in honor of the Resurrection of Christ was consecrated in the capital of Japan, Tokyo. Currently, the number of Orthodox Japanese is over 30 thousand people. In Tokyo there is an Orthodox theological seminary for the training of priests and preachers from natural Japanese, as well as a women's theological school, and several spiritual magazines are published. Christian preaching also had significant successes in the Caucasus. Here the missionaries had to partly restore the Christianity that had existed there, and partly reintroduce it among the various Caucasian tribes. At the suggestion of the Georgian Archbishop Joseph, the Holy Synod in 1745 sent a mission to the Caucasus under the command of Archimandrite Pachomius, which converted more than 2,000 people to Christianity within 25 years. The new mission, appointed by the Synod in 1771 under the command of the learned Archpriest Lebedev, enlightened more than 6,000 Ossetians over the course of 20 years. But the mission’s activities began to develop especially successfully from 1814 with the active participation of the Georgian Exarch Theophylact. Under him, more than 40 thousand people were converted, more than 40 churches were built, liturgical books began to be printed in the Ossetian language. With the conquest of the Caucasus in 1859, the missionary activity of the Church in this region began to develop even more. In 1860, a society for the restoration of Orthodox Christianity in the Caucasus was established in Tiflis. With the assistance of this society, many ancient churches in the Caucasus were restored, many were rebuilt, schools were opened and monastic monasteries were established. The North American Orthodox mission began at the end of the 18th century by the monks of the Valaam Monastery. Through their labors, Orthodoxy was planted in the former Russian North American possessions - in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands - among the semi-wild Aleuts, Eskimos, Koloshes, etc. Later, the famous missionary of the 19th century, Innokenty Veniaminov (see above), worked tirelessly and fruitfully on the same islands. Through his labors, a special diocese was organized here. With the transfer of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands to the possession of the United States, this diocese found itself outside of Russia and received the name Aleutian and North American. In the last years of the 19th century, the Orthodox Church in America began to be abundantly replenished with immigrants, mainly Ugro-Russians and Galicians. Uniates by faith, they in America began to return en masse to the Orthodox faith of their fathers, from which the cunning of the Jesuits had once driven them away. Quite a few Serbs and other Slavs, as well as Greeks and Syro-Arabs, also became part of the diocese. There are now over 60 schools in North America. The administration is headed by an archbishop residing in New York. Two suffragan bishops are subordinate to him. A theological seminary was established to train priests from local natives. Almost all parishes have brotherhoods - for the sake of bringing the Orthodox together and providing them with mutual material and moral support. You might be interested in: