It
has recently been said about Dixie’s kinsmen in Northern Ireland,
Patrick, who
ministered to violent tribes, would have had a heart for modern Belfast, parts
of which are still plagued by hatred, drug abuse, and broken families. But how
if Patrick returned today, how would his message of Christ be received? Pastor
Jack McKee has tried carrying the cross on St. Patrick's Day in Belfast and has
felt the hostility.
"And as I'm
walking past [St. Patrick's Day revelers] with the cross, one of them
shouted, 'You're an f-ing idiot,'" McKee said, "And I thought to
myself, that's so ironic that on St Patrick's Day, the idiot is the one
carrying the cross."
So, like parts of the
new, peaceful, Northern Ireland, Patrick still waits to be rehabilitated, to
become meaningful not only to Catholics but to Protestants, as well.
"As far as I'm
concerned, Patrick was fully committed follower of Jesus Christ," Jack
McKee said, "Whether we call him 'Evangelical,' whether we call him 'born
again,' Patrick was a totally committed follower of Jesus Christ, and promoted
Jesus as Savior for all humanity."
--Dale Hurd, https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2020/march/could-the-legacy-of-st-patrick-help-heal-northern-ireland
How
will St Patrick be rehabilitated in Northern Ireland? How will he become meaningful to Roman
Catholics and Protestants? How will
Christianity ever be able to flourish there again?
The
answer: When those in that land
recognize the catastrophe that happened when Western Europe was forcibly taken
from the Orthodox Church and placed under the new religious institution created
by the apostate bishops/popes of Rome.
When
Ireland was within the safe embrace of the Orthodox Church, she understood that
there was more to being a Christian than appeasing God’s anger and living a
moral life. There was real union with
God, the experience of which far surpasses the mental speculations and
emotional feelings of the Roman Catholics and Protestants:
I am in
awe at the Orthodox Church. It’s beauty, its grace. The mystical silence and
stillness, which abides here. I am in awe at the purity of the Church’s
teachings. The Lives of the Saints and Martyrs, the prayers and hymns of the
Church, the Protection of the Panagia. The humility and sanctity of the Holy
Mountain. The Icons and writings of the Fathers of the Church. The mercy of the
Sacraments, the Christ-like humility of the Priesthood.
Orthodoxy
is not a religion. It is Life. It is not a list of rules. It is Mystical
Communion with the Holy Trinity. It is actual communion with God and man. In
the Orthodox Church there exists the grace of Theosis, Deification and
Transfiguration. Icons drip myrrh, relics miraculously heal, Saints are filled
with Divine Light, infants receive Holy Communion, Priests confess their own
unworthiness as they pray over the penitent before them, the mentally
handicapped can be theologians too, because they can pray with purity of heart.
The whole world is a Sacrament, for the Spirit of Truth “art everywhere present
and fillest all things.”
In the
Orthodox Church I found a Hospital for the Sick, whereby our wounds, sins and
delusions are healed through communion with the Holy Trinity and the “Cloud of
Witnesses”, (the communion of saints) which radiate the love and truth of God.
Everything
can be found here, in the mystic Church; all of the scattered pieces of truth
come together in the mysterious joy of communion with God. Nothing has been
added to the Holy Tradition and nothing has been taken away. The Church
is God-Breathed.
. . .
Orthodoxy
is the Way of Love. Religion without love is an offense to God. We don’t pray
and fast and give alms and attend vigils to impress God or appease His anger,
as if He were some kind of tyrannical pagan deity.
We do
these things out of love! We do these things because it draws our hearts closer
to Christ. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. . . .
Orthodoxy
is divine therapy. It is the true healing offered by Christ Himself. It is His
love that heals us. We, as God’s beloved patients, need only receive the
medicine of the Great Physician and trust Him with our whole being—this is
salvation. If He says the most important thing is to “Love God with all of your
heart, mind soul and strength and love your neighbor as yourself” than we
should follow that holy prescription! If he says, “Take, eat; this is my body…”
And also, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the new covenant,
which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” Then we should do
that very thing. He is the Physician; He knows how to cure us! Why should we
try to invent other ways to be healed? Could there be anything more profound
than to receive the Body and Blood of Christ? Could there be anything more
sacred and mysterious?
Orthodoxy
is healing, it is our response to Grace and our participation in the Love of
the Holy Trinity. It is the Way of Love.
--Jonathan Jackson, http://www.pravmir.com/encountering-the-beauty-of-the-church-the-way-of-love/
On the one hand, man was destined from the beginning for
deification; on the other hand, through his ascetic efforts man corrects in
himself what he does that is sinful, as a grandson of Adam. He purifies
himself, conquers his passions, uproots his bad thoughts, enlightens his mind,
simplifies it, “brings it to the One”, and as the supreme measure of
enlightenment of the mind, becomes a “seer of supreme things”.
“In this way man becomes a vessel that is capable of receiving
divine grace, which, as must continually be remembered, is not given for
something, or in some measure proportional to our ascetic labors, but for the
sake of something else, only out of God’s measureless love for us. There is no
correlation between our ascetic labors and God’s grace.
“Human nature is capable of deification, and man was presented
from eternity for unification with God.
. . .”
--Archimandrite Cyprian
Kern, https://orthochristian.com/129306.html
Both
Roman Catholics and Protestants have chased away the Grace of God described in
these word-sharings, have banished God from His creation, and turned the Church
into a banal, this-worldly, desacralized institution, leaving it wide open to
the fallen passions of men. Thus, the heart-breaking
condition of Northern Ireland today, and all of formerly Orthodox Western
Europe.
However,
all hope is not lost. A return to the
Orthodox Church is always possible.
Remember the past and honor it, and it will live again in the present
and the future:
It
is imperative, withal, to steer clear of false paths and dead ends, however
fair and comely they may look to the eye:
It
will not be by these flashy charismatics that the True Faith returns to Ireland,
Dixie, and the rest of the West, but by the poor, the little, the humble:
--
Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England,
South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð,
unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
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