St. Adalina+ of Siberia

By Vsevolod Lytkin

Adalina was a Volga German by origin.

When she was a small girl, in the early 1940s, her entire family was deported to Siberia. All Russian Germans were sent to Siberia and northern Kazakhstan by order of Joseph Stalin. Soldiers would come to their houses and give them an hour to pack up their belongings, and then there would be long weeks in freight cars towards cold Siberia.

Many families were separated back then, for example, a father could be sent into a concentration camp, and a mother and children could simply be brought to some remote village and thrown out of the truck, and then their lives would depend on the hospitality of the locals. But Adalina was lucky: in the late 1940s, her parents were able to find each other.

Life was hard and full of hardships, but she kept the faith passed down from her parents. It is so important to instill the Christian faith in children from infancy, to tell them about Christ, and to regularly bring them to church! But Adalina did not have such an opportunity until the mid-nineties, when the time of religious freedom came in our country. And as soon as the Lutheran parish was opened in the town of Novokuznetsk, where she lived, Adalina immediately ran there and from then on she was in church every Sunday.

Adalina at St. James Parish in Novokuznetsk - in the front row on the left, with the purple shawl.

She died recently. At her funeral, I said that is very difficult to talk about death. This is one of the taboos that exists in our human society. People are afraid to talk about death because it seems to them that by talking about it, they will "call it on," bring it upon themselves. But the Church is not afraid to talk about death. Because the Church knows that you and I, we all are only pilgrims on this earth. We will walk along it - some faster, some slower - and leave. And only one hope remains for us; it is the hope that the Church is not afraid to talk about death for a reason.

The Church knows that death was defeated by Jesus Christ. That the Lord died for us and rose again, so that we might have a part in His resurrection. So that we too might rise from the dead. We just have to believe. Not abstractly, as the pagans "believe," but believe in Jesus Christ, and that means being baptized and always striving to where He is – to the Church, to the altar, to Holy Communion. Just as our sister Adalina was always striving to attend church services. Let her now pray for all of us from Heaven!

And our Lord Jesus Christ said: "Whoever eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." These are His words, and He will not renounce His words.

Note: In the photo above Adalina's grave in a cemetery in the middle of deep snow.

Bishop Vsevolod is the bishop of the Siberian Evangelical Lutheran Church.

St. James Parish, Novokuznetsk