Why God allows the desecration of churches: an exiled saint answers
When believers lose their shrines, it seems as though God has turned away from them. Saint John Chrysostom, who wrote epistles while in exile, saw it differently.
We begin this conversation at a time when, once again, churches in Ukraine are being seized and sealed off somewhere, and some of our acquaintances, bewildered, ask: Where is God when such lawlessness is taking place? It is difficult to answer this immediately; we do not possess enough spiritual discernment. It would be better first to listen to a holy man who was twice driven out of the Byzantine capital and who wrote about this openly, without unnecessary sentimentality.
In 404 AD, John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, had just been condemned by an unjust council and driven out of the imperial capital. Left behind him were house arrest, separation from his flock, and accusations fabricated by his enemies. In April, an imperial decree was issued ordering the archbishop’s second exile – allegedly for unlawfully reclaiming his see after the council’s sentence had been pronounced – and in June of the same year he was sent to the Armenian city of Cucusus.
This small town lay at the very edge of the known world of that time, where there were no theological libraries or cathedral ambo, and the harsh mountain climate with its sharp temperature fluctuations became a constant trial for the saint. Ahead of him lay yet another exile to Pityus, to which he would be sent three years later and which he would never reach alive.
We sit before the Ecumenical Teacher to ask him directly: why did God allow this to happen? Why did He not protect His house, His flock, His bishop?
"What do you call the house of God?"
– Your Eminence, here is a question that people often ask us today. Monasteries and churches are being closed. Communities are being dispersed. A believing person at such a moment feels abandoned. If God is almighty, why does He allow such things to be done to His house?
Saint John answers with a question of his own:
– Let me ask you as well, my brother, what do you call the house of God? The vaults of a church? The dome beneath which it is comfortable to pray? Or the people who within those walls become not merely participants in divine worship, but the living Body of Christ? When I was taken away from Constantinople, I saw my flock weeping in the streets, women clinging to the hems of my garments. But I already knew then: I was not being taken away from the Church. The Church remains wherever faith in Christ is preserved.
– But your cathedral city burned in a fire afterward. Does that not look like a defeat? It seems as though God had simply turned away both from you and your flock.
The saint gently instructs:
– I once wrote about this to my spiritual daughter, the deaconess Olympias, while I was already in exile. She was in despair, seeing the storm that had descended upon the Church, and she asked me the same question you are asking. I answered her in this way: "We see that the sea is violently rising from its very depths; some sailors are floating dead upon the surface of the waters, others have sunk to the bottom; the planks of the ship are coming loose, the sails are being torn apart, and the masts are breaking."
I did not give false hope to the grieving woman. I did not tell her: do not be afraid, the storm is not real, everything will be fine. I said something else: God is stronger than any storm.
The unquenchable furnace
– Your Eminence, if God can stop a storm with a single gesture — why does He now delay? Why does He not save the Church from desecration at once, before it is finally torn apart?
Saint John answers calmly:
– If He does not do this from the very beginning and not immediately, it is because this is His usual way: He does not put an end to dangers at the outset but rather when they have grown stronger and reached their uttermost limits, and when the majority have already lost all hope – it is then that He finally works a wondrous and unexpected miracle. Remember the three youths in the Babylonian furnace. God could have prevented their captivity. He could have stopped the king's wrath before the furnace was heated beyond measure. But He did not do so. Do you remember why?
– In order to manifest the miracle in its fullness?
- Precisely. He permitted the youths to be delivered into the hands of foreigners, the furnace to be kindled to an unspeakable degree, the king's wrath to burn more fiercely than the furnace, their hands and feet to be tightly bound, and finally for them to be cast into the fire; and when all who saw them had despaired of their salvation, it was then that the work of God the Maker appeared unexpectedly. God did not save them from the fire. He saved them in the fire. The furnace became a temple.
So even now God gives holy places over to the flames. But He will never destroy our souls, unless we ourselves turn away from Him.
We feel uneasy. Deep down, we want the saint to say: do not worry, the churches will be returned to you, everything will be as before. Instead, he says something much harder to accept — and, it seems, more honest.
Good Friday looked like the defeat of God
– Your Eminence, but is not the loss of a sacred place a defeat of faith? Are not churches built for prayer?
The saint answers thus:
– Christ became a wanderer and a refugee while still in the cradle, taken away to a foreign land; and when He grew up, enmity against Him began to arise from every side — He was called a Samaritan, a deceiver, a sorcerer, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. And even His closest disciples, seeing Him bound, fled — one betrayed Him, another denied Him, a third ran away. If you judge victory or defeat solely by the visible outcome of events, you will always feel desperate.
Good Friday looked like the final defeat of God. Only on Sunday did it become clear that in reality it had been His victory.
– So You mean to say that we simply do not see the full picture of present events?
The Ecumenical Teacher adds:
- I mean to say something more. All these losses have a limit beyond which they cannot go. They cannot take your faith from you unless you yourself surrender it to desecration.
In the same ship as the flock
– Your Eminence, were you yourself not afraid? After all, you were writing letters of consolation from exile, where you yourself were without shelter, without your flock, in a foreign and cold land.
Saint John answers with feeling:
– Was I afraid? Do you think I wrote these lines only as a distant observer of the storm raging far away from me? No, I wrote them while sitting in the same ship as my spiritual children.
I knew from personal experience what I was writing to Olympias about when I asked her not to dwell only on the sorrowful things. Later, I wrote to her that, whatever may happen, we must give thanks to God for all things. These words expressed something in which I myself firmly believed, because I had no other choice.
– And was that enough? Was that one thought enough to endure?
- It was not the thought that was enough, the saint clarifies. It was He to Whom that thought was directed that was enough.
I could have told myself a thousand times "be strong," and that would have been mere pagan stoicism. I was certain that God would save His faithful ones in the midst of the storm.
We conclude this conversation without unnecessary pathos, because Saint John Chrysostom did not preach for the sake of fine words. He has given us a task: looking upon emptied churches, not to think that our faith has been destroyed along with them. We do not know when the storm that has today fallen upon our Church will end. But we now know that one should not ask God "Why did You allow this?" but only implore Him: "Do not leave me alone in these trials!"
