Through my work in Magadan and my recent travels throughout the Far East and parts of Siberia, I have been taken on an adventure in faith.
To anyone who comes here with an open mind and heart, it becomes readily apparent that what has been preached to us since our childhood is actually true. The Gospels and Epistles are really the "Good News." They are the history not only of the first Christian communities, but also of those presently in Russia.
I have found that these inspired works are really our "owner's manual," a "how-to" book. It is not just a book of prayer, but a guide, a formula that always works.
The Catholic community in the city of Magadan is like many others in Siberia and the Far East. The city is one of Stalin's "children." It was established in 1939 as an administrative and supply base for the Gulags. Magadan began as a sterile city, one of solid concrete; and seeds that fell on this territory died.
Until recently, no church of any sort existed here. Presently in this city of 150,000, there is a small Orthodox temple open, and a Seventh-Day Adventist church under construction. Other religious communities, including the Catholics, are confined to rented quarters or apartments.
With no former religious tradition as a community, how does one begin? Fr. Austin Mohrbacher, the first Catholic missionary priest to begin work in the Far East [in more than a half century], began with two suitcases and the support of five or six people interested in the Catholic faith. There were only one or two baptized Catholics known to be here at the time. He simply began to preach to those that cared to listen.
God sent Fr. Austin the people he needed to begin work. People previously in no way connected to any sort of church gathered at Fr. Austin's side. In the course of nearly two years, the Catholic Church of the Nativity of Christ has had many people come and investigate.
Presently 100-150 are part of our community, and some 50-70 faithfully attend Sunday Mass. Our community is one of neophytes. Their level of knowledge is that of our young children in the States.
Russia's children will be her way out of this religious, economic, and political calamity. It will take at least a full generation to bring normality back to life here.
Children are actually leading their parents into faith. Generally people not previously baptized and over 30 years old have a really hard time coming to faith in God. The system of values that they were taught and had lived under all their lives has been internalized. The Soviet educational system was very effective in the formation of sterile socialists. If it wasn't successful at producing socialists, it surely succeeded in creating robots. Many an atheist is struggling to shake this unbelief from his or her soul.
Children are leading this awakening, as in the case of Kirill, a 9-year-old boy. His first contact with our church was a little over a year and a half ago. His school teacher, Irina, one of our parishioners, gave her students a class project of helping her distribute humanitarian aid from the Church. Kirill was one of many who agreed to help on one of his days off. Then he came to Mass one time and really admired how beautifully the choir sang. He came several more times to listen to the choir. His interest began to grow in the church and not just in its choir. He liked the Mass as whole and wanted to learn more.
He started coming to our little Sunday school and asked questions. Teresa Chen, my fellow missionary, saw his interest and took him under her wing. She prepared him for the sacrament of Baptism and became his godmother.
Kirill got his mother's consent readily, but his father held out... Kirill came to Mass every Sunday. Not long and his mother came--just to watch. It took about a year, but she became the second in the family to be baptized. Her second son Igor, 16, is now also studying in preparation for Baptism. Perhaps it will not be long before the father comes in and sees the light!
It is definitely all backwards, however. "I assure you, unless you change and become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of God" (Mt. 18,3).
[Janez Sever, raised near Milwaukee, is a lay volunteer from the Anchorage archdiocese. A West Point graduate and former army officer, he has served in Magadan since September 1992.]
Fourteen of the 34 priests in Siberia gathered in Novosibirsk Mar. 17-18 for two days of prayer led by Salvatorian Fr. Ignatius Paulius from Irkutsk. The following day Archbishop Francesco Colasuonno, nuncio to Russia, led a cornerstone laying ceremony for the new Cathedral of the Transfiguration which Bishop Werth is having built in the center of the city. Msgr. Johannes Boersch, vicar general of the Apostolic Administration of Kazakhstan and Central Asia, was also in attendance. The cornerstone is a stone taken from the tomb of St. Peter the Apostle in Rome and consecrated by Pope John Paul II. (See page two for Bp. Werth's sermon).
Pavel Vavalin, 22, took up residency at the Franciscan friary in Novosibirsk at the beginning of March, after finishing a year of postulancy in Lithuania. He will make his novitiate in Assisi, Italy.
A letter from Fr. Rudolf Kohlstrung, Caritas director for the Asian part of Russia, recently read in the two Catholic churches in Novosibirsk, asked for information about those needing help in the community, and for volunteers to assist Caritas in responding to the problems.
Word reached Hays last week, via two visitors from Marx (former Katharinenstadt), along the Volga River in the Apostolic Administration of Moscow, that the new church building begun there by then-Father Joseph Werth in 1991 is expected to be under roof in June and dedicated in August.
An exploratory team of Sisters of St. Agnes, with headquarters in Fond du Lac WI, expects to visit Siberia in May or June to study possibilities of their congregation's accepting a mission there.
A full-page article by Giampaolo Mattei on the hopes of the Catholic Church in Siberia appears in the March 24 issue of the English edition of L'Osservatore Romano.
Our church in Novosibirsk, for which the cornerstone shall be laid today, is also a symbol of the living Church, spread over all the earth, about which Jesus said: "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." The cornerstone being laid today is taken from St. Peter's Basilica, from the tomb of Peter in Rome. So in a special way the words that Jesus spoke are being realized in our central cathedral in Siberia: "On this rock I will build my Church."
Where the central department store stands today in Novosibirsk, once stood another Catholic church, which was closed after the revolution and completely demolished in the '60s. Ten other churches in Siberia fell to the same fate. Great works made by human hands disappeared without a trace.
The living Church, however, endured in our people, through all the tests of the faith in this severe land. The Catholic Church has been erected by the hands of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and placed on a strong stone--on Peter. This event inspired the faithful with courage and confidence, even in very desperate times. Our belonging to the holy universal Church is today a reason for our happiness and thankfulness. This feeling of belonging to the Church is strengthened by Peter through his heirs, the Popes.
He raised up his voice in defense of his flock already in the 1920s. He continuously reminded rulers of the communist totalitarian system of the persecution of and discrimination against believers. As soon as it was possible, Pope John Paul II sent his representative to our country, his nuncio, and restored the structure of the Church in what was then the U.S.S.R. The presence of his Excellency, Archbishop Francesco Colasuonno at today's ceremony is yet another sign of our unity with the Holy See and our association with the Holy Church. We children of the Church will always gratefully remember that in the foundation of our Siberian cathedral lies a stone from St. Peter's Basilica in Rome lovingly consecrated by Pope John Paul II.
At the same time, we must never be content with merely thinking about the unity of the Church and the unity of all God's children. Let us often pray and ask God to remove the hostility and alienation from the relations between Christians. Together the people of the former Soviet Union experienced the trials of the last seven decades, together they endured persecution for the holy faith. Let us now rejoice together in our common victory. May we quickly use our freedom of faith, which is a gift from above, to absorb all the rich knowledge and practices of the Christian faith; let us take part in a principle course of catechism, better familiarize ourselves with the Bible, study church history, habituate ourselves to prayer, attend Mass, take part in the sacraments, and follow the commandments, I am strongly convinced that the better a Christian will know his or her faith and live according to it, the sooner there will a Christian world. Only that, and not a faceless synthesis-- mix of all religious confessions, will lead to Christian unity.
The building of a Catholic cathedral in Novosibirsk and the general presence of the Catholic Church in Siberia does not signify a challenge to the Orthodox Church or other Christian confessions. The Orthodox Church holds a special position in Russia. She has a large flock and a many-centuries-old tradition and history.
Catholic Christians have lived in this land alongside Orthodox Christians, and over a considerable period of time, we have established our own history and traditions. With deep understanding, we appreciate the problems faced today by the Orthodox Church after the reign for many years of militant atheism, but we also expect such understanding for the Catholic Church in Siberia. After all, under atheism every Catholic church was destroyed or closed, and every Catholic priest abolished or expelled. The rebirth of our churches should bring nothing but joy to one another.
Still, even if this church, like many others, is subjected to the effects of time, nature, or historical cataclysms, or if it turns to dust and disappears from the face of the earth, nevertheless we will firmly believe that the Church of Christ will stand, built on the first of the apostles, St. Peter On this hopeful foundation we wish to build our future: earthly and eternal.
[This sermon was given on the occasion of the cornerstone laying, Mar. 19,1993.]
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