My Monsters

Olga of Kiev by • MONS •

Summer Vespers, Week Four

A Reading from the Prophet Isaiah

When you stretch out your hands,
    I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
    I will not listen;
    your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
    remove the evil of your doings
    from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
     learn to do good;
seek justice,
    rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
    plead for the widow.

Come now, let us argue it out,
    says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
    they shall be like snow;
though they are red like crimson,
    they shall become like wool.
If you are willing and obedient,
    you shall eat the good of the land;
but if you refuse and rebel,
    you shall be devoured by the sword;
    for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Homily:

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

I’m cheating a bit tonight. Up until now, each summer saint that we’ve discussed at this midweek vespers series has been selected straight from the sanctoral cycle: they are the literal saints of the week. Not so this evening. Tonight I’m looking ahead to July, when the Church calendar celebrates Sts Olga, Vladimir, and Olav—three of the bloodiest Christians ever canonized.

This was from way back, when Russia was still Kiev. A thousand years ago the Vikings of Sweden used to sail east, capturing Slavic peoples to sell as slaves. Suffering depredations from without and discord from within, a group of Slavic tribes requested that Rurik—a veteran of Byzantium’s infamous Viking mercenaries, the Varangian Guard—come protect them and reign as their prince. Thus was born the Kievan Rus. And the Rurikid dynasty would go on to rule the Russian Empire as Tsars for the next 700 years.

Rurik’s son Igor, who succeeded his father as prince, met a rather gristly end at the hands of a tribe called the Drevlians. You needn’t worry about the name—it won’t be around for long—for Igor left behind him a Varangian widow named Olga. And Olga, it seems, had been rather fond of her husband. So fond of him, in fact, that she burned alive every Drevlian she met. Every one of them. All of them. We are told that she torched entire villages, hundreds of people. Some say thousands.

She went on to become a wise and sober ruler, who in the fullness of time accepted Christian Baptism at Byzantium, with the Emperor himself standing as her godfather. She brought back with her priests, icons, and the Holy Scriptures. Today she is remembered in the East not only as a canonized saint but as “Equal to the Apostles” for her work in spreading the faith. Her feast day is 11 July.

Olga had a son, Sviatoslav, who remained an obstinate pagan to his dying day. But he in turn had a son named Vladimir the Great. And Vlad took after his grandmother in more ways than one. War broke out in what was by now the Grand Duchy of Kiev, a war between brothers. Vlad was the last man standing, a slayer of siblings, burner of towns, known even amongst the Vikings for his immorality and barbarism. He was a born killer.

Yet like so many bad men, he found himself transformed by the love of a good woman. The Emperor at that time married his daughter off to Vlad in an attempt to keep the Rus at bay. And Princess Anne proved herself wise, kind, gentle, and pious. She reformed her husband, had him baptized, led him to build churches and schools, to rule justly, fairly. He was a Christian now, because of her. And it seems that back then even born killers and Vikings took that seriously. His feast day is 15 July.

And then there’s one last Viking whom I simply could not let pass without mention, and that’s King St Olav Digre Haraldsson, Olav the Holy, Olav the Stout. Sagas are written about this man. He was of royal blood, descended from Norway’s first king, Harald Fairhair—but of course most anyone with an axe and a longboat was descended from Harald back then. The royals were nothing if not fecund.

Olav was a conqueror, seeking to reunite Norway under a single crown, his crown. He fought in England alongside the famous Jomsvikings, but switched sides when he witnessed the dignity of an English bishop tortured to death by Olav’s fellow pagans. He dramatically collapsed London Bridge while it was swarming with Danes—the origin, apparently, of that famous nursery rhyme. And he was then baptized in Normandy by his kinsfolk, the Norse who had settled down in France and come to Christ.

As king, Olav prescribed prayers for peace, outlawed infanticide, ended polygamy, mandated the ransoming of slaves, instituted draconian punishments for kidnappers and rapists, and applied the law equally to rich and poor alike. He was eventually cut down in battle against Knut the Great, the Danish Emperor of the North, thus cementing Olav’s place as a Norse national hero. It seems it takes a Christian Viking to beat a Christian Viking.

He is traditionally depicted standing astride a dragon that has his own head, indicating that Olav’s greatest conquest was his own violent self. Olav’s descendants live on today in both the Norwegian and British royal families. His feast day is 29 July.

So now why tell you all of this? What’s so important about the Viking saints of summer? I wanted to share these stories to make explicit that saints are not saints because they are good; they are saints because they are forgiven. In previous weeks we’ve spoken of heroic saints, humble saints, and unlikely saints of opportunity. But these people—Olav, Olga, Vlad—they’re killers. Murderers. Vikings soaked in blood. These saints in life were monsters.

And in some way, they are my monsters. They remind me that mercy is not theoretical. Grace is not some anodyne sentiment, the pro forma cure for feigned disease. We are real sinners in need of a powerful Savior, a God who is willing to forgive the unforgivable, redeem the irredeemable, and raise us hellions from out of our hell. God did not come for the good! He came for the evil, the broken, the wicked. He came for you and me. And if these people could be forgiven their sins—if burners of cities and demolishers of bridges can yet find refuge in the Kingdom of God—then, by God, there might really be a place for me there as well.

Heaven is made up of real sinners, really saved. It’s as scandalous a notion today as it was a thousand years ago. Yet by the Blood of Christ it’s true. Christ did not come for the saints! He came to make a saint of you.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.