The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad standeth as an inseparable part of the two-thousand-year-old Eastern Apostolic Church, known also as the “Orthodox.” The Orthodox Church—its very name proclaimeth its conservative truth. We hold with steadfast conviction that the sacred tradition of understanding the Christian faith and glorifying the Name of God our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, as handed down by the Eastern Holy Fathers, is the true and undefiled Apostolic Faith.
We were compelled to depart from Russia amidst the revolutionary tempests of the early twentieth century, that we might preserve our faith, our shrines, and our very lives. The two Russian Revolutions that followed one upon the other—first the so-called “bourgeois” and then the so-called “socialist”—were unyielding in their hostility toward conservative Christianity. The sacred canons of the Church (church laws) demanded that we establish ecclesiastical life despite the trials of exile and the scattering of our people across the face of the earth. Thus, in the year 1921, in exile, through the fraternal hospitality of the Serbian people, the graciousness of Alexander I (Karageorgevich), King of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, and the benevolence of Patriarch Dimitrije of Serbia, in accordance with the renowned Decree №362 of His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon of Russia, the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad was established as the canonical jurisdiction for the Russian diaspora.
Yet our exile is endured far longer than a single lifetime. In time, our people began to settle, to form families, and to bring forth children in the lands whither their arduous fate as emigrants had carried them. It became manifest that the Russian diaspora continued to grow and would wax yet further with successive “waves” of emigration, as we have come to call them. Paradoxically, the great exodus of Russian Orthodox faithful continueth even unto this day.
Heirs of the holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Vladimir the Great, the holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Olga, and the ancient saints of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Halychyna, Tver, Moscow, Vladimir, Volhynia, Ostroh, Pereyaslavl, Novgorod, Karpathy and many other Russian lands, together with the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, are constrained to abandon their native places, for they can no longer live and pray therein.
It is not ours to judge who is doing right or who is doing wrong, nor to discern the reasons why any find themselves here. For such matters, there is the Judgment of God, from which none shall escape.
Our task is to keep the doors of Russian churches open, that every Russian soul may have a place to glorify God, to repent of sins, to commune with their kin, and to instruct their children in the faith, language, and culture of their forebears.
Our task is to aid our fellow believers in adapting to life in unfamiliar lands.
Our task is to share the thousand-year treasury of the Christian spiritual experience of the Russian people with all who show interest in the countries of our present sojourning.
Our task is to pray for peace and tranquility for Christians in the lands from whence we departed in exile and in the nations that have now truly become our own.
The Holy Resurrection Church standeth as the sole church in the city of Winnipeg and province of Manitoba that preserveth canonical and spiritual unity with the fullness of the Russian Church—with all our fellow believers across the face of the earth and with the entire thousand-year assembly of Russian Saints, our sacred intercessors, advocates, and petitioners before the Lord God for the salvation of our souls.
Our church is a spiritual home and our hearts are open to all who, with faith and love for God, desire to study and confess Apostolic Christianity, to live in spiritual peace and therein preserve their souls, and to obtain the intercession of the Russian Saints for their own salvation.
We care not what tongue thou speakest, so long as thy soul glorifieth Christ Jesus, and if this be for thee more precious than all else upon this earth.