Be a Servant to the King

My vocation—the calling and mission of my life—is to be a very faithful servant of the King, more faithful than any single human language—English or otherwise—can fully express. If I fail, there are no excuses, no second chances. My life would then be finished in despair.

When I was born in Soviet Russia, into a Jewish family of four men and two women—my mother, her mother (my grandmother), her husband (my grandfather), my father, and my mother’s two younger brothers—life was beautiful and free of any gentle reminder of obligation, let alone vocation or mission. The very notion of a King did not exist for us.

But when I had reached the age of one and a half, our country became the target of aggression, and three of our men went to war: my father, an army officer, and my mother’s two brothers—one a civilian mobilized into service, the other a fighter pilot. They went and died in combat.

Our city was attacked by the enemy, and we were granted both permission and obligation to evacuate, solely because my father was an officer. The army believed him still alive, and therefore his Jewish family could be used by the enemy after the city’s capture. I have remembered this striking fact all my life: how an already fallen soldier saved his family—a clear indication of his vocation, and of my own hidden calling.

We were assigned places on evacuation trains in livestock wagons. My first preserved childhood memory is of my mother and me running through the vast railway station, chasing different trains of cattle cars, searching for ours, where my grandparents were already seated.

Closely connected to this is my second memory: I am reciting wartime poems by heart, while my family—and other evacuated families—sit around me on the floor of the moving wagon, rocked by its rhythmic knocking. This was the first time, at the age of two, that I felt recognized and fulfilled, within the limits of my physical and intellectual capacities, in response to a serious mission.

I remember nothing else from the time of our evacuation, through various cities and climates. Undoubtedly, those were extremely difficult years for the adults. From my mother’s later accounts—then and now fully believed—I learned that my grandfather died of tuberculosis in one of those cities, and that I myself was repeatedly ill with pneumonia, twelve times, as she told me. My mother saved my life with great difficulty.

But what of my vocation?

We returned to our city—my grandmother, my mother, and I—a year before the war ended with the Allied victory. Between the ages of five and six, I survived numerous bombings of our city and our neighborhood. Throughout this period, I have no recollection of my mother; she worked long hours and returned home late.

I retain one particular memory of a bombing. One evening, left alone in our apartment, I could not leave my room because it was locked. My grandmother had gone out briefly but was trapped in a bomb shelter by the attack. I ended up wetting the floor of my room and, in despair, falling asleep.

No vocation. No calling. No mission. And no notion of the King.

The calling—though not yet to the King—began three years after these bombings.

My mother was invited by an officer, an old family friend, to marry him. For two years after the war, she had continued to search everywhere for her husband, my father. After those two years, she accepted the proposal, leaving her respected and intellectually engaging position in our city. We all moved to the city of her future husband.

After one year in a new and unfamiliar school, I realized that my weak academic results caused my mother deep distress. Without telling her, I resolved to devote myself seriously to my studies—and did so until the very last day I left school with excellent marks.

My calling was the necessity of supporting my mother through her difficult marriage to a divorced officer whose rude behavior was a consequence of five brutal years at the front.

As one might imagine, the possibilities available to a “good son to his mother” were limited. My stepfather showed no interest in me. The only gesture of “kindness” I remember was his purchase of ten small fish for a new aquarium my mother gave me when I turned thirteen. He released them into an empty aquarium filled with hot water, killing them instantly. Later, I bought other fish myself.

When I entered university—well prepared through a mathematics club run by university students—I immediately understood that my role as my mother’s devoted protector had come to an end. For the previous three years, my life had been entirely absorbed by obligations to school and the mathematics club, in fulfillment of her hopes for my future. Now, at university, new and unfamiliar responsibilities appeared, particularly in relation to peers who possessed extensive experience in sports and travel.

But what was my vocation?

There was no notion of the King at the Soviet university, just as before I had known nothing of Him. Yet something akin to my earlier role began to awaken in me. Slowly, I encountered a Russian (non-Jewish) girl of my age who, like me, was innocent and alien to the established Soviet social order. I married her in our third year of study, to my mother’s great distress—though she never explained the reason. Much later, I understood.

A second, still irreligious calling began to take shape, leading me toward fatherhood.

Now, at the age of eighty-six, I understand my vocation with clarity and strength.

Recently, one of my sons from my first marriage visited me briefly while traveling through my city. He lives in another European country and stopped “for half an hour” overnight. He is a beloved son, a talented pianist. For the first time, I told him that he reminds me of Saint Paul—formerly Saul—the mortal enemy of Jesus, transformed by punishment and miracle into His apostle.

My son was surprised and received the remark gratefully, as a kind but incomprehensible compliment.

It was not a compliment. It was an expression of what I perceive as his principal calling, one he has apparently never accepted.

His eldest sister lives alone in Israel. She emigrated with me in 1978 (see my article in Catholic Stand, 29 December 2025). Having a non-Jewish mother, she converted to Judaism. She plays music every morning and participates in international online music competitions. Highly intelligent and well educated, she knows many Jewish religious legends about the King’s ancient kingdom, as thoroughly as students in yeshivot. Yet this is not her calling either.

To be Catholic is to receive an invitation to mission. It is to live within the unfolding history of the King in a rapidly changing world. These times can be extremely difficult, and even the best Catholics may fail.

The life of Pope Pius XII (1897–1958) offers a profound illustration. I have already written of how, in 1943, he formally welcomed the decision of the Catholic hierarchy of Grenoble–La Salette to prepare the centenary of the Marian apparition of 1846 (celebrated in 1946), despite the war in France (see my article in Catholic Stand). It was a bold and wise decision, answered remarkably by the faithful in liberated France.

No similar success followed, however, when in 1951 Pope Pius XII attempted to articulate his cosmological vision—correct, but far ahead of its time.

On November 22, 1951, before the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, he declared:

“It truly seems that modern science, tracing back millions of centuries, has succeeded in bearing witness to this initial Fiat Lux. Around that time, the cosmos emerged from the hand of the Creator.”

To his astonishment, Father Georges Lemaître (1894–1966)—Belgian priest, eminent scientist, and father of the Big Bang theory—strongly opposed this statement. A fierce critic of “concordism,” Lemaître requested an audience with the Pope and threatened to leave the Pontifical Academy.

Faced with the prospect of public scandal, Pius XII withdrew the statement. On September 7, 1953, before the International Astronomical Union, he affirmed that scientific cosmology speaks neither of Fiat Lux nor of creation.

Twenty years later, the original intuition of Pius XII became widely accepted.

There is no need to judge Father Lemaître; Pius XII himself did not. Lemaître was a serious and renowned scientist, drawn into intense public debates often at the limits of human knowledge. His resistance likely stemmed from the fact that Pius XII’s courageous idea lay at the center of scientific unpopularity and lacked immediate empirical support.

This episode reminds us to listen with patience and humility to the moral and spiritual authority of the Church, even when professional consensus resists it. Pius XII endured great suffering during the years 1951–1958, and this “small” public misfortune added to his burden.Now is the time when our King suffers because of the profound disorder of Christian nations. The prophecy of Our Lady of Fatima remains unfulfilled. Russia is far from Mary’s hopes:

“If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated.”
(13 July 1917)

More than a century after Fatima, Catholic France is disoriented, as is Catholic Europe as a whole. Russia today wages war against Ukraine with near impunity.

I was born in Ukraine. My father and two uncles died defending a living Ukraine against the Nazi army. I was raised and educated in Russia and was forced to leave at the age of forty. Russia today is not a Christian nation. It proclaims a Jesus foreign to us—a conqueror by force.

I witness Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine with profound suffering.

I am a faithful servant of the King.