I recently came across the web site of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. It’s a spectacular presentation that moves in a 360 degree perspective around this holy space, in full color.
The original cathedral was blown up by the Bolsheviks. Stalin planned to erect the world’s tallest building on the site, and a statue of Lenin was supposed to perch on the top of it. But difficulties with water seepage and other problems prevented the monstrosity from ever being completed.
After Stalin died, Khrushchev had the world’s largest outdoor swimming pool constructed there. In the 1980s, while waiting to meet a friend at the Pushkin Museum, I stood in front of the pool and said hello to a father and son as they approached with their towels and bathing suits in shopping bags.
All very mundane, and one might say profane. But after the fall of the Soviet Union the property was put to proper use, and a magnificent replacement for the old Cathedral was constructed. You can see it here at:
Seeing it reminded me of a visit I paid to another church, Our Lady of Tikhvin, in another part of Moscow. Old ladies in black were there, holding their candles, standing before an icon of the Blessed Virgin and the Christ Child. It might have seemed then as if the candle of faith in Russia was sputtering out, but the glory of the new cathedral says and shows otherwise.
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