Your Eminences and Graces! Dear fathers, brothers and sisters!
I cordially congratulate all of you on the great feast — the commemoration of the holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Grand Prince Vladimir, the Baptizer of Rus’. And, as a certain tradition has been established in recent decades, on this same day we celebrate and remember the greatest event in the history of our people — the Baptism of Rus’.
Holy Prince Vladimir embraced the new faith with all his heart. If you read secular historians, the fact of Prince Vladimir’s baptism in Korsun is usually surrounded by various political and ideological causes and preconditions. Supposedly he needed to secure powerful allies, to try to enter the cultural space of Byzantium, to do this and that which would be useful for both Prince Vladimir and his country — and that is why he was baptized.
But we should remember who Prince Vladimir was. He was a convinced pagan; he had bound his whole life to the pagan faith; on his soul were dozens of ruined human lives — tortured, beheaded… Blood binds a person to his convictions like nothing else. Let us look at the history of the 20th century. Did any of those who committed lawlessness out of conviction, who killed others, repent just like that, under the influence of being offered something in exchange for their terrible bloody past? No one truly repented. Look at the footage of the Nuremberg trials — are those repentant criminals? They met the prosecutors’ speeches with smiles; they repented of nothing; they were convinced their cause was right.
And Prince Vladimir? Why did he repent, and under what influence did this happen? There was no Nuremberg trial of him, nor could there have been; no one accused him of anything; he could have lived peacefully with the great glory of a mighty ruler of Rus’. But he crosses out his past, renounces this glory, repents by himself, without anyone’s help, of everything he had done, and in Korsun receives holy baptism. And then, having felt with all his heart the power of God’s grace, he decides to baptize all his people, and indeed accomplishes this astonishing deed. It would seem that everything was against logic, against the customs of the time, against the character of Prince Vladimir himself — and this first miracle led to the greatest change in the life of the prince himself and of the whole country.
And the second miracle of God. For centuries people had lived worshiping idols, pagan gods. Now we look condescendingly at all these statues, at the images of the wooden Perun — from the height of the 21st century, knowing all the subsequent history. But if we were placed in that atmosphere when everyone worshiped Perun — and surely some miracles happened from him, so that it never occurred to anyone to doubt the might of the Russian god! People prayed before his statues for victory! And when they returned victorious, they offered sacrifices to Perun, including living human bodies! What powerful religious conviction there was! And what happens? Having been baptized, the prince baptizes the whole people almost without real resistance.
Again, secular researchers of that era may find their own human explanations. But let us ask ourselves: was it possible to turn sharply, overnight, the entire social and political life, the life of the state and the personal life of people, as Grand Prince Vladimir succeeded in doing? Of course, the Baptism of Rus’ was a great grace-filled gift of God, and grace “heals what is infirm and completes what is lacking.” And where Prince Vladimir perhaps lacked ability, understanding and power, the power of grace enlightened and strengthened him, and he baptized his people practically without any use of force.
The Baptism of Rus’, to use modern language, was undoubtedly a revolutionary event. Moreover, in its consequences it cannot be compared with any subsequent revolution, because Baptism radically changed the life of the people, their culture and their system of values. We know how the most formidable revolution of the early 20th century in our country tried to change the system of values and to destroy the Orthodox faith. But in the 21st century, in the restored Cathedral of Christ the Savior, we recall the dreams of the revolutionaries with a certain condescending smile, because nothing came of them, and a well-organized, powerful political campaign accompanied by violence did not uproot the Orthodox faith from our people.
Indeed, the grafting of the baptized Russian people onto the grace-filled body of the Universal Church became the greatest spiritual force, which, I am deeply convinced, helps our people pass through such difficult twists and turns of their historical path, preserve the faith of Prince Vladimir, be strengthened in that faith and raise the following generations of our people in it. Everything that has happened to us from the time of the Baptism to this day is a vivid and very convincing argument that human history is made not only by man, not only by his mind, his will and his strength, but that God’s grace, present in human history and without altering human freedom itself, influences the human race in such a way that faith lives and acts despite the fierce struggle against it. Who has not encroached on the moral foundations of human life — revolutionaries and agnostic philosophers alike — who has not questioned the “outdated” moral code of human life together as presented in the Word of God! How many efforts there were, yet nothing came of them, and in the end everyone lives according to conscience, in which this Divine moral code is reflected. And if conscience burns out, then the Lord sometimes uses force, if a person is not completely lost, to return him to the path of truth.
Today we celebrate an event of special significance, which has not lost its meaning or its power even to this day. We are all heirs of Prince Vladimir; we are all his disciples. Our Russian Orthodox Church, martyr and confessor, which sealed with its blood its faithfulness to St. Vladimir’s choice, continues humbly to carry out its ministry today. But we greatly need, each of us individually and all together, our whole Church, help from above. And today is a special day when we offer our prayers for our Fatherland, for our people, for our Church, for the authorities and armed forces, for everything that preserves our national life and protects our Homeland — Russia.
I congratulate you all on this significant feast. Through the prayers of the holy right-believing Equal-to-the-Apostles Grand Prince Vladimir, may the Lord bless the further historical path of our Homeland and the further historical movement of our people along this path. And a special prayer — that faithfulness to Prince Vladimir, faithfulness to the path he chose, faithfulness to the Orthodox faith and to the Church of God may never leave our people. God forbid that we should depart from this path, determined by the will of Prince Vladimir, by his wisdom and, of course, by Divine Providence. Amen.
Press Service of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus’