May
the Lord forgive us for the slaughter of all the guiltless children who have died in the Souð
and the other States of the union or any other place in the world by abortion or warfare or other violent means,
and grant rest to their souls.
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Tuesday, December 29, 2015
Thursday, December 24, 2015
‘Christ and the Cosmos’
The cosmos is not a
gearbox,
Turning forever with grim
precision,
Nor mere matterhood, protons
and neutrons
Cleaving and sundering as
they would.
Life is not a strand of
little letters
Arranging themselves ever
better
At the behest of hoary
Thermodynamics
Or man’s craftwiseness.
Life is a miracle!
Horses in their fields
And sun-beams falling
through tree-leaves.
Life is a miracle!
The sacrament of husband
and wife
And the Church as the Body
of Christ.
Life is a miracle!
Godhood and manhood in one
Person,
Manhood taken up into
Godhead,
Mankind and all the
creation
Flooded with the Holy
Light of Christ!
Life is a miracle!
Tuesday, December 22, 2015
A Sharp Rebuke . . .
. . . of the members of the Church of America
the Messiah Nation, who push the anti-culture of pluralistic (which quickly
becomes secular) democracy and consumerism on every people of the world,
whether they want it or not, in the name of Progress:
. . .
What
does it mean to “make a difference?”
Generally,
the idea is linked with the myth of progress.
With concerted effort and sufficient resources, we are making a better world,
etc. Some undefined future awaits us, if only we care enough to make it happen.
But
this is a myth. We can make changes,
but change is not at all the same thing as progress. The leaders of the Western
world in 1914 started a “war to end all wars.” It was one of the greatest
projects of the modern era – the first “modern” war. At its end, there were 38
million casualties. The “winners” of the war sat down in 1919 and redrew the
map of the world in the Treaty of Versailles. Every conflict that has occurred
since that time has pretty much been driven by the arrogance and mistakes of
the maps they drew. The world has been stuck repeating the same war all over
the globe as we suffer the consequences of the “better world” we created.
They
redrew the map of Europe, laying the
foundation for years of turmoil in the Balkans. They redrew the Middle East, inventing new countries with little regard
to the history and composition of the new nations. The war they started gave
birth to the Communist revolutions that enslaved Russia and elsewhere for the better
part of a century. The treaty gave rise to Hitler. On and on the consequences
go, as the world constantly struggles to cope with one new eruption after
another. The United States,
considered the most successful of all modern projects, has been at war 222 out
of its 239 years: that’s 93 percent of its history.
Most
of the people who have lived and died over these modern centuries, only wanted
to live and love and die a decent death. Farmers wanted to farm; mechanics
wanted to fix their machines; parents wanted to raise their children in peace
and safety; teachers wanted to share what they knew with another generation;
and so on. But all of these things have largely been disrupted by the drive for
a better world. Farmers are disappearing; the machines have taken over many
lives; families are in almost total disarray; teachers long to quit a
profession that has become one long series of frustrations. The better world is
always in the future.
The
better world has no place within the Christian life.
We
have no commandment from God to make the world a better place. We have no
commandment from God to “make a difference.” Only God makes a difference, and
only God knows what “better” would actually mean. As Christians, the proper
life is one lived in accordance with the commandments. We should love. We
should forgive. We should be generous and kind. We should give thanks to God
always and for everything.
We
should understand that this is a description of the “better world.” We are not
making a better world, we’re waiting for the coming of the Kingdom of God.
With every act of love, there is the Kingdom. With every act of forgiveness,
there is the Kingdom. Every act of generosity and kindness sees its
inauguration. As Christ told us, “The Kingdom of God is among you.”
Modernity
is the practice and faith of gross idolatry. We worship technology, money,
politics, science, everything that we believe is a human tool capable of
building a better world. No tool is any better or different than the people who
use them. A bad man cannot use a good tool to make a good world. A bad man
makes a bad world and nothing more.
When
we were baptized, we were asked to renounce the devil. More than that, we were
asked to spit on him. That
same devil suggested to Christ that he could make the world a better place if
only He would bow down and worship the devil. Christ rebuked him. The same
offer has been made to us. It is called “modernity,” and it is a devil’s
bargain.
It
is for us to renounce him, and spit on him along with his bargain. Christ will
give us back our souls.
There
are right and wrong questions. When we stand before the judgment seat of
Christ, we will not be asked whether we made a difference or whether we left
the world a better place. The questions will be about the commandments.
Feeding, clothing, visiting, etc., are very homely practices (Matt. 25). It
doesn’t take all of the resources of the modern world to do them. They are all
immediately at hand.
The
better world and making a difference is a conversation we should refuse to
engage: it does not belong to us. Speak the truth. Keep the commandments. Let
God make all the difference in the world.
Source: Fr
Stephen Freeman, ‘You Barely Make a Difference and It’s a Good Thing’, http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/88354.htm,
posted 3 Dec 2015, accessed 15 Dec. 2015
. . .
We
are, in fact, all headed in the same direction human life has always gone:
death. No technology can change this fact. At most, it can create new scenery
as a diversion along the way. In general, the term “better” refers to “less
suffering.” By a “better world” we simply mean a world with less suffering.
But, like death itself, suffering is a fact of life. We suffer in different
ways, some of them begotten by technology itself, but no amount of technology
will ever change the landscape of human existence into a journey devoid of
suffering. In the modern narrative, what is abolished is a reason to suffer. Suffering is
understood as evil. But if it is unavoidable, then the modern project will
always fail, and by refusing to rightly understand suffering, it renders
suffering itself to be unbearable.
What We Can Do
Only
an understanding of the Good can provide a proper measure for “better.” But the
various philosophies that undergird modernity reject the notion of the Good.
Christians in the modern world have all too readily translated the Christian
gospel into the terms of the modern narrative. The Kingdom of God
cannot (and must not) be equated with an improved world. Though the relief of
suffering is often a very good thing, it is not necessarily an inherently good thing. Christ did not
die in order to make a better world – He died in order to raise us from the
dead.
That
Paschal reality unites us to Christ’s death and resurrection and this becomes
the measure and true vehicle of our existence. An alternate way to think about
suffering is to ask, “How can I help you bear legitimate suffering?” There is
no such thing as a non-suffering human existence. In the end, those who imagine
the relief of suffering to be the overriding goal of life, will also accept
death as a means to achieve it. Abortion and euthanasia are modern
efforts whose use is defended as a relief of suffering. Putting someone to
death certainly relieves suffering, after a fashion. A massive nuclear strike
could end all suffering – for ever. It is, strangely, a logical conclusion that
has so far been overlooked.
Overlooked
by those who choose to use the language of modernity to describe the Christian
life (“better world”) is the fact that such a description or self-understanding
makes the Church just one more partner in the common secular effort to make the
world marginally better. Christ founded the Church as His body, not as the
Rotary Club. The fact that many members of the Church cannot give a description
of a substantial difference between the purpose of Rotary and the Church is a
testament to the power of the modern narrative. (Incidentally, Rotary has much
more stringent attendance rules).
There
is a “spirituality” that naturally flows from the modern drive for improvement
and progress. Spiritual growth is cast in terms of improvement, getting better.
And though Protestant and Evangelical theology classically champion the work of
grace, modernity has high-jacked their movements and replaced them with
self-improvement. Grace has been reduced to God agreeing to grade us on a
curve.
The
Classical Christian life, as described in the New Testament, is grounded in weakness and true grace (the Divine Energies). Our
modern instincts urge us to try harder and get better. The New Testament tells
us that we are saved in our weakness: the way down is the way up. Modernity has
turned Christianity on its head and converted us into a society of the above
average.
And
this is very much my point. The critique of modernity is not the complaint of a
curmudgeonly priest. It is a cry for us to return to the faith as it was once
and for all delivered to the saints. The modern mind instinctively rejects the Cross as a
way of life while the mind of Christ (Philippians 2:5-11) instinctively rejects
modernity.
For
while we are commanded to do good, to share, to serve, to love, to forgive, we
do these things knowing that all of our efforts do not change the world. The
slogans of “making a difference” and “making the world a better place” are
illusions, figments of our imagination. They entice us to plot and plan, argue
and harangue. They do not nurture the spirit nor point us towards the way of
Christ.
Empty yourself.
Source: Fr
Stephen Freeman, ‘Modern Illusions’, http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/88829.htm,
posted 16 Dec. 2015, accessed 15 Dec. 2015
Friday, December 18, 2015
Welcoming Winter - 2015
With
Chopin, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Tchaikovsky.
Many
thanks to the folks at these web sites for their helpful lists:
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
Updating the American Pledge of Allegiance to Fit the Times
I
pledge allegiance
to
the Flag
of
the Transnational Corporations of the Globe,
and
to the New World Order
for
which it stands,
one
Multiculture
under
No One,
downloadable,
with
sitcoms and warfare for all.
*
* *
‘The
New World Order of Global Warfare’:
‘Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man:
preserve me from the violent man; which imagine mischiefs in their heart; continually
are they gathered together for war. They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent;
adders' poison is under their lips. Selah. Keep me, O Lord, from the hands of the
wicked; preserve me from the violent man; who have purposed to overthrow my
goings (Psalm 140:1-4 KJV).’
Friday, December 11, 2015
Restoration - Part 2nd
Fr
Andrew Phillips has a few more words we should hear:
. . . We are reminded of the ever-memorable Fr
John Romanides ‘Wyoming
syndrome’ parallel. He said: ‘Try to imagine that everything in the USA has disappeared except Wyoming;
this is what modern Greece
has been since the fall of Constantinople – a
provincial fragment of a once great empire. And this is what the modern Ukraine is: a
fragment left over from a once great empire. What was that empire and how was
its destruction organized?
The
Empire was the multinational Christian Empire of Holy Rus and its destruction
has been planned by the enemies of Christ over a century, in three different
phases:
1.
In 1914 there began the first phase in their operation to destroy the Christian
Empire of Holy Rus, the Russian Empire, replacing it in 1917 with a militant
atheist ideology developed in Western Europe.
Three generations passed.
2.
In 1991 there began the second phase, for it was to dismantle the successor
Empire, the Soviet Union, which contained the
Russian Empire’s cultural heritage, reducing it to oligarch corruption,
dependence and poverty. One generation passed.
3.
In 2014 there began the third phase, as it marked the beginning of the
occupation of one of the countries that belongs to the former Christian Empire
of Holy Rus, the Ukraine.
The
coming months may mark either the End of that Empire or else its Restoration,
when on the world stage the Lion will reprove the Eagle. On page 16 of the book
‘Elder Schema-Archimandrite Jonah of Odessa’ (1925-2012), recounting the life
of the clairvoyant healer and prophet, we find the Odessa Elder’s words
written:
‘We
ask all Russians to pray that an Orthodox Tsar be granted us. If there is a
Tsar in Russia,
then he will be God’s Anointed. The grace of God will be upon him and then
there will be a great help for Russia’.
May
Thy Will be done, O Lord!
Source: ‘In
the Ukraine’,
http://www.events.orthodoxengland.org.uk/in-the-ukraine/,
posted 2 Dec. 2015, accessed 6 Dec. 2015
As
Fr Andrew and others have said, should the Tsar return to Russia, then many
will come to salvation because of his strivings against the enemies of the
Orthodox Church. This period in world
history was described by Blessed Fr Seraphim Rose (+1982) of Platina, California, in one of
his talks that was delivered on 3 Aug. 1981:
In
the book which most thoroughly describes the events to occur at the end of the
world, the Apocalypse of St. John the Theologian, at the opening of the seventh
seal, which precedes the final plague to come upon mankind; it is said that
there was silence in heaven for the space of half an hour [Apoc 8:1].
Some have interpreted this to mean a short period of peace before the final
events o world history — namely, the short period of the restoration of Russia,
when the preaching of world-wide repentance will begin with Russia — that “new,
ultimate word” which even Dostoyevsky hoped Russia would give to the world
[Pushkin Speech, The Diary of a Writer, tr. Boris Brasol, New York, George
Braziller, 1954, p. 980]. Under present world conditions, when the events
of one country are known to the whole world almost instantly, and when Russia,
cleansed by the blood of its martyrs, indeed has a better chance than any other
country to awake from the sleep of atheism and unbelief — we can already
conceive the possibility of such an event. As Father Dimitry Dudko and
others have said, it cannot be that the blood of Russia's innumerable martyrs will
be in vain; undoubtedly it is the seed of the last great flowering of true
Christianity.
Source: ‘The
Future of Russia and the End of the World’, http://www.desertwisdom.org/dttw/truth/fr-seraphim-rose/russia.html,
accessed 7 Sept. 2015
Pray
for Russia,
O Southron, and for the return of the Tsar!
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
Restoration
A
change seems to be coming for the world.
Dmitry Lapa writes,
. . .
Over
the past 150 years, the relics of a number of early English saints have either
been miraculously rediscovered or returned to England from other countries. There
are numerous cases of miracles through these saints’ prayers and apparitions of
them to people. Thus, St. Botolph of Iken more than once rescued travelers from
imminent death in a visible way; the residents of the tiny town
Dorchester-on-Thames near Oxford, where relics of the Apostle of Wessex St.
Birinus are kept in the abbey church, have seen him at night walking along the
streets as if guarding his flock; likewise, residents of Beverley near York
have seen the holy Hierarch and Wonderworker John of Beverley walking in the
town. He is a great intercessor for his people who saved the place from
destruction many times; the Venerable Bede has appeared to people (including
one Orthodox bishop) near his shrine at Durham Cathedral; miracles, including a
vision of an angel, have occurred in the Church of St. Mary in Lastingham where
the relics of St. Cedd of Essex rest. And these are only some cases of
miracles. Also, in 2013, the possible relics of the Holy and Righteous King
Alfred the Great were uncovered in the church
of St. Bartholomew in Winchester. These remains are now being
examined by scientists. The Lord is speaking to us through His faithful
servants in our difficult and unstable times, when many people and even entire
nations urgently need to remember and return to the life and merits of their
pious, Orthodox forebears.
. . .
Source: ‘Saint Edwin of Northumbria, King and Martyr, and
Saint Ethelburgh, Queen and Abbess of Lyminge’, http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/87056.htm,
posted 25 Oct. 2015, accessed 16 Nov. 2015
Father
Andrew Phillips may have put his finger on the cause of this outpouring of
grace:
As
for the lion whom you saw rousing up out of the forest and roaring and speaking
to the eagle and reproving him for his unrighteousness and all his words that
you have heard, this is the Anointed One, Whom the Most High has kept until the
end of the days against them and their impieties…He will denounce them for
their ungodliness and their wickedness and will cast up before them their
contemptuous dealings…He will deliver in mercy the remnant of My people, those who
have been preserved within My borders, and He will make them joyful until the
end comes, the Day of Judgement…
(3
Esdras 12, 31-32 and 34 – the last book of the Russian Orthodox Old Testament;
in the Protestant RSV this appears as 2 Esdras)
. . .
Today
is the time of St John the Baptist. We are being called on to prepare the way
for the enthronement of the new Emperor of the Christian Empire of Rus. He will
be, by the grace and anointing of the Church, the only protector of Christians
from those who are preparing the coming of Antichrist on Zion,
even arranging in Paris
the largest gathering of world leaders in history. Our destiny is to fight in
the mystical battle against spiritual impurity and slander.
Last
week I prayed in Odessa
as a pilgrim at the grave of the humble Elder Jonah (+ 2012). Are his
prophecies regarding the Ukraine
and all Rus in 2016 to be realized? All depends on our repentance. All the
fragments of Holy Rus, ‘the footstool of the Kingdom of Heaven’,
in the words of St John of Kronstadt, are to be guarded, propagated and
gathered together before the end. All Orthodox of all nationalities who know
what is prophesied in the holy book of Esdras (3 Esdras 12, 30-34 and 3 Esdras
15, 8-63), the enthronement of the last Christian Emperor before the end, are
to repent and show the way.
Source:
‘Prophetic Times’, http://www.events.orthodoxengland.org.uk/prophetic-times/,
posted 30 Nov. 2015, accessed 6 Dec. 2015
And
what shall we do in the South? Are we so
sunk down in the mire of imported Fundamentalism and Dispensationalism that we
will not run to Russia’s
aid (and thus to our own and all the world’s as well)? Has our worship of ‘American Exceptionalism’,
of the idols of American constitutionalism and consumerism, become so ingrained
that we would ræther leave Orthodox Christian Russia to the mercy of the
devil-worshipping, New World Order-promoting, Corporatacracy (which now
controls so many of the American Empire’s institutions and has lusted for the
murder Holy Russia for more than a hundred years)? Forbid it, Almighty God!
Come
to your senses, Southrons. Embrace the
True Faith of your forebears, and pray for and help in every way you can your
friends in Russia.
Friday, December 4, 2015
Repentance
How
can Southerners and other good-hearted folks escape the Bacchanalia of ðe (the)
modern West? One very important step
would be returning to the Christian tradition of fasting found in the Orthodox
Church, which both Protestants and Catholics have largely abandoned since their
being sundered from her:
Fasting
is not very alive and well in the Christian world. Much of that world has long
lost any living connection with the historical memory of Christian fasting. It
is as though they were Jews who heard there was such a thing as kosher and
decided to make up the rules for what to eat and what not to eat because no one
knew what was actually kosher.
There
are other segments of Christendom who have tiny remnants of the traditional
Christian fast, but in the face of a modern world have reduced the tradition to
almost meaningless self-sacrifice.
. . .
Fasting
is not dieting. Fasting is not about keeping a Christian kosher. Fasting is
about hunger and humility (which is increased as we allow ourselves to become
weak). Fasting is about allowing our heart to break.
I
have seen greater good accomplished in souls through their failure in the
fasting season than in the souls of those who “fasted well.” Publicans enter
the kingdom of God before Pharisees pretty much every
time.
Why do we fast? Perhaps the more germane question
is “why do we eat?” Christ quoted Scripture to the evil one and said, “Man does
not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”
We eat as though our life depended on it and it does not. We fast because our
life depends on the word of God.
. . .
Christianity
as a religion – as a theoretical system of explanations regarding heaven and
hell, reward and punishment, is simply Christianity that has been distorted
from its true form. Either we know the living God or we have nothing. Either we
eat His flesh and drink His blood or we have no life in us. The rejection of
Hesychasm is the source of all heresy.
Why
do we fast? We fast so that we may live like a dying man – and in dying we can
be born to eternal life.
Source: Fr
Stephen Freeman, ‘Why We Fast’, http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/87798.htm,
posted 28 Nov. 2015, accessed 1 Dec. 2015
For
more on Christian fasting: http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/50335.htm
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
'Second Coming'
American Christians!
Your wait is over!
The Second Coming
You have longed for
Has come to pass:
Not of Jesus
Whom you honor
With your lips,
But of Bacchus
Whom you honor
With your deeds.
And, lo, great wonder!
You witness his
Coming not once only,
But once every year.
See how kindly the god
Condescends to dwell
In your mortal flesh,
Like the demons
In the swine herd!
Such grace he bestows!
He gives you to gorge
On food and wine
Until even violated nature
Feels a deeper shame.
Then with bulging, cloudy
eyes
You are invited to watch
The blessed magic screen
Till they are nigh burned
out.
But the highest ecstasy
He gives last, for
He is a loving god:
Brother waylays brother
With frenzied fist
For shoddy, slave-made
treasure,
Which only seems to grow
in value
The more it is sprinkled
With flecks of human
blood.
Give thanks! Give thanks!
To Bacchus, America,
your most beloved benefactor!
Give thanks! Give thanks!
To your god, America, now
and forevermore!