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Andrew (Rymarenko) of Rockland

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'''Archbishop Andrew''' ({{lang-ru|Архиепископ Андрей}}, secular name '''Adrian Adrianovich Rymarenko''', {{lang-ru|Адриан Адрианович Рымаренко}}; 15 (27) March 1893, [[w:Romny|Romny]], [[w:Poltava Governorate|Poltava Governorate]] - July 12, 1978, [[w:Spring Valley|Spring Valley]], NYNew York)was bishop of the [[Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia]], bishop of Rockland.
== Biography ==
… When I remember those years there inevitably rises before me an unforgettable picture: early morning, it’s still dark. I have only just woken up and I see in front of the icons, half-illumined by a lampada, my mother. She prays for a long time. But a still stronger impression was made on me by the early-morning Divine services, to which our mother often took us and to which we went no matter what the weather, autumn or winter! After these Divine services one always felt a kind of extraordinary inspiration, a kind of quiet joy.”
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He recalls that this way of life was not only characteristic of his family but of all society around him. Following the Revolution of 1905 all this changed. He says that peoples’ joy was now replaced with “disillusionment and desolation.” During this time he attended the St. Petersburg Polytechnical Institute and studied engineering where those all-pervading feelings of despair started to affect him. During this time he found his soul to cry out: “I cannot.” He says,
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“I felt that I could not live as people around me were living. I felt that I was lacking that life, the Orthodox way of life, which had surrounded me in my childhood and youth, that lightness of heart which I felt. I had the impression that I had been deprived of the air which I had breathed.”
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From this moment on he started to seek out ways to revive this in his life.
“I felt that I could not live as people around me were living. I felt that I was lacking that life, the Orthodox way of life, which had surrounded me in my childhood and youth, that lightness of heart which I felt. I had the impression that I had been deprived of the air which I had breathed.”[2] From this moment on he started to seek out ways to revive this in his life. This new life was given to him in the person of Archpriest John Egorov who was the leader of a student group. He spent five years under the tutelage of this Archpriest and found opened up to him the “elemental reality of the life of Christ’s Church by which Holy Russia lived.”[3] Of this “elemental reality” which was imparted to him, he says, “I understood that the Divine services are not merely a ritual, but in them are revealed the dogmas of the faith. They are the foundations of man’s reception of Divinity. Then, the examination and study of the works of the Fathers of the Church and the Patrisitic writings revealed to me the paths of life. When I had gone through the whole course taught by Fr. John, I had literall come back to life. I sensed the elemental power of Orthodoxy, I sensed the breath of life which it gave. I understood in what this life consisted.”[4]
After this time he went to Optina where he met the Elder, Anatoly the Younger in 1921. At this time Eugenia Grigorievna was now in his life and she had gone to Optina before him to resolve questions about their marriage