By: Deacon Ignatius Strange ('22)

The OCA Archivist, Alexis Liberovsky, brought to St. Tikhon's the second talk in the Lecture Series. Following in the theme of autocephaly, he shared a wealth of information  – both from the vaults of the OCA's archives, as well as, from the treasures recorded in his own memory after years of researching our history. He recounted the process leading up to the council in which the autocephaly of the OCA was proclaimed, including the procession up to St. Tikhon's Monastery Church, where the tomos was read aloud. A beautiful aspect of the proceedings, for which we have a word-for-word transcript transcribed from a recording, was the void of geopolitical talk. Such discussion would have been an understandable concern in any talks between Russians and Americans in 1970. Rather, they solely focused on the high mission of attempting, in the words of the tomos itself, to "serve the good of the Orthodox Church in America and the glory of God."