America’s Exceptional Acedia

With all the pretentious snottiness a true believer in the modern American project can muster, Mr Larry Tomczak lectures all the benighted souls in the world as to why ‘America’ is the greatest nation ever.  A few lines are all that is needed to get a feel for the whole article:

In the book, The 5000 Year Leap – A Miracle That Changed the World, the authors point out that “from the beginning of recorded history until the founding of the American nation, human civilization made relatively little progress. Those who came to the New World in the 1500s and 1600s were still plowing fields behind animals, moving about in ox carts, and hand-weaving cloth the same way they had for thousands of years.”

“Then, beginning with Jamestown and Plymouth, something remarkable happened – the human spirit was set free, creativity flourished and experimentation abounded. Americans were learning how to experience freedom. After the proven principles of liberty were institutionalized by the US Constitution in the 1780s, it took less than 200 years before men were walking on the moon!”

Source:  https://barbwire.com/2018/07/09/why-i-dont-identify-with-people-not-proud-to-be-american/

Later he unrolls a list that he believes proves the greatness of ‘Murca.  Here is part of it:

Imagine what life would be like without America and the following innovations. Let’s tone down the negative and major on the positive to celebrate life-changing contributions we’ve made:

·         Free-market economics, harnessed electricity, internal combustion engine,
jet propulsion, nuclear energy, automobile assembly-line, telephone,

·         Sustained air travel, sustained electric light, electronic hearing aid,
Franklin stove, lightning rod, catheter, bifocals, cotton gin, refrigeration,

·         Suspension bridge, fire hydrant, coffee percolator, circular saw, telegraph,
sewing machine, dental floss, combine harvester, steam shovel, mason jar

·         Ice cream maker, grain elevator, rotary printing press, baseball, volleyball,
American football, basketball, softball, stock car racing, racquetball,

·         Duckpin bowling, gas mask, dishwasher, inverted microscope, fire alarm box,
burglar alarm, jackhammer, electric stove, vacuum cleaner, escalator,

·         Ironing board, roller skates, motorcycle, denim jeans, silo, urinal, dental
drill, sanitary pad, metal detector, electric iron, thermostat, machine gun,

 . . .

  Computer mouse, balloon catheter, cordless telephone, CD, copiers, GPS,
central heating, handheld calculator, lunar module, Email, laser printer,
Facebook and Google,

  Virtual Reality, personal computer, MRI, iPhone, iPad, texting, Internet,
digital camera, contact lens, DNA computing, tilt-n-roll luggage, voicemail,

  Space shuttle, nicotine patch, Heimlich maneuver, drones, scoreboards,
whole body scanner, catalytic converter, microprocessor, backpack,

 . . .

Source:  Same as above

Put aside the fact that some of these great inventions are being used to build a total surveillance state tyranny here in the [u.] S. more monstrous than anything all those old-fashioned kings and nobles Mr Tomczak sneers at could have imagined.  Put aside the fact that some of them are simply killing machines (are we really supposed to celebrate the invention of the machine gun?).  They also represent something else:  spiritual sickness.  When the soul cannot find rest in the inner contemplation of God, it tries to find solace in outward works, in restless busy-ness.  This is acedia, and it is in this that America’s true ‘exceptionalism’ lies. 

Modern America is actually the place in the world that is poor, naked, blind, and wretched, not from a physical point of view but from the ghostly, for she has no holiness.  Only one or two men who have been born in and lived in the modern States have possibly become saints, Blessed Father Seraphim Rose of Platina, Ca., and Archbishop Dmitri Royster of Dallas, Tx.  Otherwise the awe-inspiring American civilization is quite bereft of any real greatness. 

Without holiness there is nothing truly meaningful or lasting:  no saints, relics, icons, monasteries, hymns, teachings, homilies, and so on that bring spiritual light and healing to the people (and oftentimes bodily healing as well) and inspire them to live holy lives themselves.  These are the true wealth of nations, and the modern American union simply does not have them. 

But Orthodox countries, among those stagnant backwaters that Mr Tomczak laughed at earlier as having ‘made relatively little progress’, are the most truly ‘progressive’ amongst mankind since they have within them the blazing fire of the Grace that flows from the Holy Ghost, oneness with Whom is the end that man was made for, rather than some utopian technological paradise on earth.  They have not lost inner stillness or pure prayer; they have not lost the vision of and union with the Uncreated Light of God in the nous, the eye of the heart.  Let’s have a look, then, at the list of some of the Orthodox nations’ ‘life-changing contributions’ to the world:

July 2

Venerables Tikhon, Basil and Nikon Sokolovsky (16th c.) (movable holiday on the 1st Sunday after June 29th).
St. Arsenius, bishop of Tver (movable holiday on the 1st Sunday after June 29th).
Synaxis of saints of Tver (movable holiday on the 1st Sunday after June 29th).
Hieromartirs Neophytus, Jonah, Neophytus, Jonah, and Parthenius of Lampsacus (movable holiday on the 1st Sunday after June 27th).
The Placing of the Honorable Robe of the Most Holy Theotokos at Blachernae (5th c.).
St. Photius, metropolitan of Kiev (1431).
St. Juvenal, patriarch of Jerusalem (458).
"Pozai" (17th c.), "Theodotiev" (1487) and "Akhtyr" (1739) Icons of the Most Holy Theotokos.
St. Juvenal, protomartyr of America and Alaska (1796).
Right-believing King Stephen the Great of Moldavia (1504) (Romania).
St. Monegunde of Chartres (530) (Gaul).
New Martyr Lampros of Makri (1835) (Greek).
Uncovering of the relics (2003) of New Hieromartyr Priest Sergius Florinsky of Rakvere, Estonia (1918).
Feast of the Robe of the Most Holy Theotokos (Georgia).
St. Oudoceus, bishop of Llandaff.
St. Swithun, bishop of Winchester.

July 1

Holy and Wonderworking Unmercenaries Cosmas and Damian, martyrs at Rome.
New Hieromartyr Arcadius priest (1918).
New Hieromartyr Alexis deacon (1942).
Martyr Potitus at Naples (2nd c.).
Venerable Peter the Patrician, monk, of Constantinople (854).
St. Angelina, despotina of Serbia (16th c.).
Venerable Nicodemus of Svyatogorsk (1809).
Translation of the relics of Venerable John of Rila (946) from Turnovo to Rila (1470) (Bulgaria).
Holy Julius and Aaron, protomartyrs of Wales (ca. 304) (Celtic & British).
St. Servanus, Apostle of Western Fife of East Scotland (6th c.) (Celtic & British).
St. Leontius, bishop of Radauti in Moldavia (15th c.) (Romania).
Venerable Gallus, bishop of Clermont (551) (Gaul).
25 Martyrs in Nicomedia (Greek).
Venerable Basil, founder of the Monastery of the Deep Stream in Cappadocia (10th c.) (Greek).
Martyr Constantine the Wonderworker and those with him, of Cyprus (Greek).
St. Leo the Hermit (Greek).
St. Serf, bishop of Kinross.
St. Eparchius the Recluse of Gaul (581).

Source:  http://www.holytrinityorthodox.com/calendar/

These are only two days’ worth of the Grace-bearing saints, relics, and icons that the Orthodox Church has given to the world.  And to sit before any one of them for a single day, for a single hour, in their caves or huts, their monasteries or churches, would be worth infinitely more than the possession of every last one of Mr Tomczak’s beloved American inventions.

Come out from among her, Southron.  Come out from Babylon-America (Rev. 18:4).

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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!