Day of Remembrance for the Paris New Martyrs: Mother Maria Skobtsova, Father Dmitry Klepinin, Ilya Fondaminsky, Yura Skobtsov.
Every time you try to write about them, you realize anew how difficult it is. All four are so unconventional, so different, that they do not fit into the literary etiquette of narratives about saints. They are even alien to the hagiographic canon and the ideas about holiness that have developed in the Christian environment.
A cigarette in one hand, a cross in the other. They are saints who remind us that Christianity is not “spiritual comfort,” self-mortification, a shop for religious antiquities, a club for lovers of sophisticated theology, a competition between church structures and jurisdictions, or a set of pious habits, but rather “co-participation, co-suffering, co-crucifixion.“ In the words of Mother Maria, ”anarchy” that destroys earthly hierarchies, which are so convenient to cling to, a wind rushing through an open door. Their holiness is a challenge, an antidote, a rebellion, a heap of uncomfortable questions. A very uncomfortable, untamable holiness that rejects all attempts to encase it in “golden robes” — and at the same time, a very biblical holiness. The biblical kadosh, i.e., holy, means “set apart,” “separated,” living “not like other people,” not better, but radically different. This is a prophetic, eschatological radicalism.
The day of their commemoration, which coincides with the day of their canonization, falls on the day of remembrance of the prophet Elijah in the church calendar. Whether this coincidence is accidental or intentional remains to be seen, but in any case, the calendar’s connection with the day of the fiery prophet brings us back to the fiery Christianity of Mary, the mother of Jesus: “Christianity is fire, or it is not,” and so it will be until the very “fiery end.” Or perhaps this coincidence of dates reminds us of the fiery and merciful path of the Jewish Christian Ilya Fondaminsky, who prophesied the victory over totalitarian “satanocracy” and actively sympathized, among others, with those whom “decent people” turned away from. In that, he was very similar to his Jewish heavenly patron.
Since the canonization of the Parisian new martyrs, a significant iconography has developed around them. Of all the known icons, I like the one by Olga Poloukhine that is not the most aesthetically perfect, but very accurate theologically. In it, all four are engaged in their usual activities: Mother Maria feeds the guests and lodgers of Lurmel, Father Dmitry listens to the words of an invisible interlocutor, Ilya Isidorovich Fondaminsky writes or edits something, and Yura Skobtsov is about to open a book.
They work in eternity, as they are accustomed to doing here on Earth. Which is what we wish for ourselves.
