St Isaac’s Cathedral
With his birth date on St. Isaac’s feast day (Sept 9), Peter the Great determined to build a monumental church in his city–naming it “St. Isaac of Dalmatia” after his patron saint, Saint Isaac. His first church, built on the banks of the Neva River, crumbled. The second (still lacking an adequate foundation) met a fate similar to the first. The third version failed completion when Emperor Paul I used its marble in his own palace, “Mikhailovsky Castle,” and left ugly bricks in its place.
The fourth and final version took forty years to build; consumed more than ten thousand trees beneath its foundations; contains over one hundred monolithic red granite columns; used fourteen types of marble, 400 kg of gold, a thousand tons of bronze, and tons of malachite, jasper, malachite, lazurite, and porphyry. The dome is covered with pure gold, towers over three hundred feet above the city, and adorned with twelve angels.
Though consecrated to God in 1858 and spacious enough for fourteen thousand worshippers, the fourth tallest cathedral in the world rarely holds religious services. Communism relegated St. Isaacs to “museum status” in 1931. Stripped and robbed of its paintings, icons and anything valuable by the Soviets, even the beautiful dove (symbolizing the Holy Spirit) disappeared from its place of honor. Instead, the scientific “Foucault pendulum” took its place, and only recently the dove returned to hang beneath the center of the ceiling dome. The cathedral is indeed spectacular.
Wanting to experience this cathedral in all its glory, I chose climbing more than two hundred steps to walk the narrow outlook areas surrounding the outside of the dome. Twenty-four gigantic angels stationed along the perimeter and corners of the cathedral appeared to guard the sanctuary. Twenty-four more stand upon the roof.
The Peter and Paul Fortress spire stands in the distance.
Smaller domed structures on each of the four corners appear to dwarf the large angel below it.
With predominately leafless trees surrounding the cathedral my view was unobscured apart from the cloudy skies.
The climb downward to finally enter the cathedral.
Large Bronze doors require special mechanisms to open or close.
The marble parquet floor outside leads to the same pattern inside.
Malachite pillars flank the main altar.
I understand why it took more than forty years to construct this cathedral. But I can’t imagine where the additional icons or paintings, stolen by the communists, were placed!
Looking up into the dome.
Beautiful malachite columns
Mosaics everywhere! It’s hard to imagine 200 more, stolen during the revolution.
Hundreds of people lost their lives while building this cathedral; sixty during the process of gilding the dome. At a time when one’s life didn’t matter to Mother Russia, those lives do matter to God. The Icons, paintings and mosaics point us to the Creator interested in each of us–His creation. In the mid fourth century a young orphaned child, Isaac changed Armenian history. Through him, others came to know the God he loved.
Inventing the Armenian alphabet; translating the bible from Greek and Hebrew to Armenian; he protected both the culture and language of the people he loved. He began schools and authored hymns. His life spanned more than one hundred ten years–a life honoring God while pointing others to Him.
More than fifteen hundred years later, his name still points others to God in this magnificent church. Does it take such a “large life” for God to love us? Which came first, Isaac’s love for God or God’s love for Isaac. According to the bible, God loves us while we are yet sinners.
Romans 5:8, “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
It is hard to imagine God loving us while we are “in our sin.” He is a compassionate and loving God, slow to anger.
John 3:16 – For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Saint Isaac didn’t first become a man of God. God first loved Him. Saint Augustine says it better than I, “God loves each one of us, as if there were only one of us to love.” I don’t have to become better than I am because there is nothing I could do on my own to earn His love or acceptance. Miraculously I am loved just the way I am. In Christ, I am made perfect in His eyes.
I look around at this beautiful cathedral and can’t imagine anything more perfect, but God looks at me, and sees beauty in me. I belong to Him. I am His child. Just like the Apostle John, I am amazed at how great God’s love is for me:
I John 3:1 “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!”
