‘Against the Prayer Mockers’

 

The statements being made by some prominent Leftist politicians in the wake of the school shooting in Minneapolis are outright satanic.  Joy Pullmann wrote a very good essay expounding on that at The Federalist.

We wanted to focus on a smaller part of that phenomenon she wrote about, the mocking of prayer as something weak and ineffectual.  The Church Fathers, who are masters of the art of prayer, who have experienced the richness of its depths, universally declare the opposite:

 

St Theophan the Recluse:

“This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.” [Matthew 17:14-23]

 

If this kind goes out by the prayer and fasting of another person, then it is even less able to enter one who fasts and prays.

 

What protection!

 

Although there are a slew of demons and all the air is packed with them, they cannot do anything to one who is protected by prayer and fasting. 

 

From the same Father:

For a believer there is nothing terrifying here, because near a God-fearing man demons only busy themselves, but they do not have any power over him. A sober man of prayer shoots arrows against them, and they stay far away from him, not daring to approach, and fearing the defeat which they have already experienced.

The objection of course is that prayer did not protect the students at the school in Minneapolis.  But this touches on the mystery of human freedom.  God does not restrain the free will of men and women; He allows us to choose good or evil for ourselves.  The prayers and worship at the Annunciation Catholic School could have guided the shooter Robert Westman to virtue, but he rejected the good things offered to him and chose to befriend Satan instead, chose to become a murderer.  This is reminiscent of Judas the Traitor, who lived nearly every day with the Lord Jesus Christ Himself for three years.  How could that not have protected him irrevocably from demonic influence?  But because of Judas’s own free will, he allied himself with the Pharisees and plotted the murder of his All-Good Master.

There is an assumption about prayer implicit in such objections, that it is little more than magic, i.e., a way to quickly accomplish the will of man in the world.  That is a tremendous misunderstanding.  The main purpose of prayer is the accomplishment of God’s will in the world (‘Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done,’ as we say in the Lord’s Prayer).  That can only happen when we deny our own corrupted, fallen will and cooperate fully with God.  Disobedience of God, self-will, acts of evil:  Each of them thwart God’s good plans for the world.

But the Holy Trinity, because He is All-Good, is not idle in the face of this resistance.  He is constantly using the evil deeds of man and the demons to bring about salvation and healing for us; He transforms evil acts into blessings for the cosmos.  Christ again is the supreme example of this:  He died a cruel death upon the Holy Cross, an apparent victory for the forces of evil.  But through His death, the most heinous act of murder and blasphemy that could be committed by men, and His resurrection, death itself was destroyed, the captives of hades were freed, the gates of Paradise were opened to us once again, and all of mankind will be resurrected at the end of time.  In the fulness of time, we may rightly expect good things to come from the sorrowful events in Minneapolis as well.

St Nikolai Velimirovich elaborates on this theme, writing poetically about why hardships should be seen as blessings:

 . . .

The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2025/09/garlington-against-the-prayer-mockers/.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

'Enceladus'

 

Commander John Maury:

Log for John Maury, in command

Of the Starship Timothy Leary.

International Reformed Calendar date

Twenty-one twenty-five point six point 3.

Almost twenty-four hours ago Earth’s Sun,

Without warning, went completely dark.

With so many of Earth’s systems operating

On solar power, the lives of billions

Of people are in mortal danger.

The U.N. Space Command ordered the nearest

Space ship to the Sun to investigate.

The science vessel Timothy Leary,

With Lieutenant-Commander Nathan Boone

As our science officer and engineer,

Lieutenant Julia Graves at the helm,

And myself, responded.  U.N.S.C.

Replied, ordering us to the Sun

Without any delay.  Graves and Boone

Opened a wormhole, we have made the jump,

And now we are making our approach to the Sun.

 

[On the bridge.  Maury and Graves]

 

Graves:

Five minutes until we’re in visual range, Sir.

 

Maury [A concerned grimace across his face]:

Steady as she goes, Lieutenant.

Keep us at maximum speed till then.

 

Graves:

Aye Sir.

 

[A commotion is heard.  Boone enters the bridge from the rear, forcing a squalid, elderly man onto the bridge with him.]

 

Boone:

Commander!  A stowaway!

 

Maury:

Lieutenant, keep her steady.  Boone, who is this?!

 

Boone [With his arms still wrapped tightly around the unknown man]:

Don’t know Sir.  Just found him in one

Of the supply rooms, muttering with his arms

Stretched out.

 

Maury:

                                    Who are you, and what are you doing here?

 

Stowaway [Laughing, carefree]:

I was baptized Mosaker

Though you may call me Little Tater

As I’m not enough to fill a gator!

 

Maury:

Okay, Mosaker.  Why have you decided

To hitch a ride in the back of my ship?

 

Mosaker:

I needed to find a throne.

 

Maury:

                                                You’re a king?

 

Mosaker:

Not a king,

But every man has a need,

At some time, to pee!

Hee, hee, hee!

 

Graves:

Sir, he’s insane!

 

Mosaker:

Yes, yes, no understanding,

But neither am I hiding

Any anatomy by clever tucking-

Jonathan Graves, dead-naming!

 

Maury [With a fatherly, good-natured smile; he is starting to find humor in Mosaker’s behavior]:

An impressive façade, Lieutenant.

We’ll discuss this later, assuming for the moment,

That we live over the deadly peril.

 

Graves [Sheepishly]:

Yes Sir.

 

[Looks at panel]

                        Commander!  We’re in visual range.

 

Maury:

All stop.  Image on screen.

 

[Hordes of black objects are seen circling the Sun, blocking its light.]

 

                                                            Boone . . . what is this?

 . . .

The rest is at https://www.newenglishreview.org/articles/enceladus/.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

‘A Bad Show on the Nature of God’

 

Misters Harper and McFarland strike again.  A poor woman confused about how one could see God since He is pure Spirit got a rambling, nonsense answer on Exploring the Word on American Family Radio (24 Aug. 2026, last segment of the program, starting about the 46:45 mark).  Mr Harper gave the worst answer of the two, saying the essence of God can be revealed.  That is a flat breach of basic Christian theology:  God’s essence cannot be known to any created being, only to the Three Persons of the Trinity.  Once again, if Protestants like these two would only do the smallest bit of study of biblical commentary by those within the authentic Apostolic lineage such as the Orthodox theologians Basil the Great or Gregory Palamas, they would know that God is both a hidden, unknown Essence and revealed, knowable Energies.  We can see God and be united with Him through His Energies.  What Mr Harper was saying is actually a restatement of an old heresy from the 4^th century, Eunomianism.  We quote briefly from Fr John Romanides:

‘Both Orthodox and Arians fully agreed with the inherited tradition that only God knows His own essence. This means that He who knows the divine nature is himself God by nature, Thus, in order to prove that the Logos is a creature, the Arians argued that the Logos does not know the essence of the Father. The Orthodox argued that the Logos does know the essence of the Father and, therefore, is uncreated. The Eunomians threw a monkey wrench into the agreed rules for proving points with their shocking claim that, not only does the Logos know the essence of God, but man also can know this essence. Therefore, the Logos does not have to be uncreated because He knows this essence.

‘Against the Arian and Orthodox position that creatures cannot know the divine uncreated essence, but may know the uncreated energy of God in its multiple manifestations, the Eunomians argued that the divine essence and uncreated energy are identical, so that to know the one is to know the other.

‘Strangely, Augustine adopted the Eunomian positions on these questions. Therefore, when the Franks appeared in the East with these positions they were accused of being Eunomians.’

I hope Misters Harper and McFarland will pray for me.  They are doing good work by encouraging people to read the Holy Scriptures.  Yet without the guidance of the Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church, they are making errors in their interpretations of the Bible that is harmful to their listeners.  May God help them to stop relying on their own wisdom.

Sources:

https://afr.net/podcasts/exploring-the-word-with-bert-harper-and-alex-mcfarland/2026/august/the-word-and-work-of-jesus-matthew-724-813/

https://www.romanity.org/htm/rom.03.en.franks_romans_feudalism_and_doctrine.03.htm

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!