A Tale of Two Cities (Lk. 7:36ff.)

Moscow reminded me this time of New York in the middle of winter. Not the New York you visit when you come from Omaha or Portland — the glamor of Manhattan — but Brooklyn (or the Bronx) on a tentatively sunny day several days after the last two-inch snow­fall, as things turn gray. Had I been left to myself, I would no doubt have entered into the Soviet Disney World of museums, palaces, churches, and monasteries, which rarely fails to trigger the Dr. Zhivago scenes in the travel­er’s mental video cassette, and which makes a trip to what would otherwise look like the Bronx something of magic. I confess to suc­cumbing to some of this “magic.”

But this time I had an acquaintance in Moscow who introduced me to a circle of young believers. We gathered one evening in an apartment. While frost brittled outside, children performed a skit around the Christmas tree, the adults sat around the kitchen table for many hours, the talk wandered hither and yon, but circled in gradually, dis­cretely, on this Western visitor who is a Cath­olic priest. They were children of the Soviet “vanguard,” many from Jewish families whose parents had been loyal Communists, but they had needed something more than the sordid world of everyday business. This they found in the Church. Not uncritically (these were no novices). Not even romantically, insofar as it is possible for people in the Slavic world not to appear romantic to Westerners. They pray much, they work for the Church, they try to share their lives. They are hungry for theolo­gy, starved for books; but they have their liturgical books, their holy men, and their own minds and hearts. But I am not trying to write generally about Christians in the Soviet Union; Keston College, among others, is doing that magnificently.

No, I want to write about Misha, one of this group; Misha, husband and father (dot­ing, bubbling, stumbling almost in affection); Misha our host, a technological wizard with the sort of library one finds in professorial homes in the States, a fine mind and an even better heart. Misha asked about the Dutch Catholics — could it be true the things they had heard? The issues — women priests, ho­mosexuality, abortion “rights” — all seemed so utterly bizarre, so topsy-turvy in the warm glow of that Orthodox kitchen.

Misha offered to give me a tour of Mos­cow the next day. We went to his church for one of the Christmas-week liturgies; we toured a monastery. As the day wore on, we became ever closer as we talked about our faith. He was aware of the Fatima message, and Medjugorje, which gave him further hope. But in the end he did not especially believe in any special mission for Mother Russia — for he felt that being a Christian in Russia was probably not all that different from being a Christian anywhere else. A mass of materialis­tic indifference, a people who had basically forgotten about God — though Misha still might suffer what seemed to him vestigial unpleasantness, the life of a Christian seemed to him to be that of a waiting minority, whether in the Soviet Union or the United States.

We talked a long good-bye as snow began falling again. He was so thrilled — he had never met a Catholic before in his life. We ex­changed addresses, and then — and this is what I remember most vividly — he asked if he might kiss me. (I hasten to note that in Russia, male family members and friends normally kiss one another.) And so, like fig­ures in a Russian novel, he kissed my cheeks, beamed at me, and walked off in the after­noon glow.

Later I traveled to Cologne in West Germany to meet with a professor of mine. There is a Catholic dormitory there with for­eign students, and at lunch I met a young American Catholic, Steve. Walking the mine­field of American Church issues, it soon be­came clear that Steve was what one can only call a “company man.” He subscribed to the views of what the religious establishment so hopefully calls the “Catholic consensus.” Though he had friends who dissented (i.e., who followed the Pope), there seemed to be no clouds on his particular horizon. Our con­versation was pleasant. Somewhere into Latin America, lunch ended, and we went our ways. Before we did, this young fellow re­sponded to my extended hand with an abrazzo.

But later, when I saw him playing vol­leyball, he waved a half-hearted hello. We did not talk.

As I watched the volleyball game, much came back to me. I remembered how impor­tant it is in America to be a “team player.” One who is a team player may even be grant­ed the highest of accolades: “He’s a nice guy.”

It is there that I differ from Steve, assimi­lated American Catholic that he is, so very dif­ferent from Misha, my Russian Orthodox Jew­ish friend. Imagine what images fill Misha’s mind as he thinks of the happenings in his world over the past century! What a dramatic turn he has made from the nonbelief of his Communist, ruling-class parents!

Steve has had to make no such dramatic volte-face. If he attacks the official wrongs of American society, he will be given laurels by the religious establishment. His view of life is based on being a good “team player.” Should there be any differences, one “grins and bears it.” Above all, one must be pleasant — and not spend too much time in solitude.

I think of the hug Steve gave me, and it makes me sad. You can bow to each other at the kiss of peace, you can shake hands and look each other in the eyes, but an embrace of two corpses with no meeting of the spirit — how very typical of our beefy, smiling team!

There is much to bemoan in our land far beyond the mere maldistribution of vast mate­rial wealth — but who is the Solzhenitsyn of our Gulag of shopping malls? Think of the madness, the heartache that fills the middle class of our country — and then consider what truly prophetic voices there are in this wasteland.

Of course, we have prophets, true ones and false ones. The prophetic witness, though, that crowns them all is perhaps that which was offered by Misha in Moscow — who kissed me as observers strolled by. His hard-won faith, flowering in love, has surely saved him — he walks away in peace.

As for Steve, the nice guy, playing ball, invoking Christ: I wonder. How very fragile a being a successful man is! And being a busy member of a team, how could such a one ever hear the voice of God, who, after all, is a fierce, a passionate, a gentle, a jealous, and a terrible lover — but not necessarily a “nice guy”?