Yes,
friends, we are throwing caution to the winds today and jumping directly into
the briar patch of political correctness, for there is still a great deal of
hyperventilating nowadays over the South’s ‘peculiar institution’, ranging from
groups like Black Lives Matter and the Southern Poverty Law Center to
conservative Republican politicians and Evangelical Christians. All of them condemn Southern slavery as
inhuman, evil, backwards, etc. because it denied black folks certain rights,
the ability to achieve the American Dream, and so on and so forth. If man was made simply for materialistic
ends, they would be right. As it is,
however, this is not what man was made for, so their arguments miss the most
important point.
Man
was made for union with God, for union with the All-Holy Trinity through union
with Christ’s Church, which is His crucified, risen, ascended, and glorified
Body. Everything that helps us achieve
that end is a blessing; everything that hinders, a curse. And what is one of the chief truths that the
Apostles taught regarding the attainment of this wondrous salvation?
[21] And when they
had preached the gospel to that city, and had taught many, they returned again
to Lystra, and to Iconium, and Antioch,
[22] Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.
[22] Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.
--Acts 14:21-2 (bolding
added), https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/k/kjv/kjv-idx?type=DIV1&byte=4870956
This
is contrary to the wisdom of the world, an overturning of its values. But this is precisely what the Lord Jesus
Christ did in His life and teachings:
. . . Christians are inspired by the vision of
the “crucified God”, of Christ the “lamb without blemish and without spot” (I
Pet. 1:19), who carries the weight of the upturned pyramid, and they, too,
prefer “rather to take wrong” (I Cor. 6:7), because to “suffer” wrongfully “in
the behalf of Christ” (cf. Phil.
1:29), is a “thankworthy” gift from God (I Pet. 2:19-20).
. . . All the scandals in the history of the
Church are because no one wants to bear injustice. We all want to uphold our own dignity and
justice; no one wants to take the blame or to suffer a bit of injustice,
whereas the Lord tells us not to resist the evil one, and to prefer rather to
suffer injustice, as St. Paul exhorts the Corinthians, than to go to civil
courts (cf. I Cor. 6:7).
--Archimandrite Zacharias,
The Enlargement of the Heart,
Christopher Veniamin, ed., Dalton, Pa., Mount Thabor Publishing, 2012, p. 172
And,
lo! The priceless fruit that grows from
such humility is holiness, sainthood!
Let us take a short look at but one such beautiful life, that of Saint
John the Russian Slave (+1730):
. . .
Besides
the ancient saints, righteous ones, hierarchs, and martyrs, a great and shining
cloud of new saints, the majority of them martyrs, has appeared from the time
of the taking of Constantinople by the Turks until today. By their martyrdom
they strengthened the Faith and adorned with new and unfading crowns our
venerable Orthodox Church, which alone stands unchanging and immovable from the
time of the Apostles by whom she was founded. And this recalls the word of
Haggai the Prophet, who said: “Great shall be the glory of this house (i.e.,
the Church); the last greater than the first” (Haggai 2:9).
One of
those new saints is Saint John the Russian, whose sacred tabernacle is the
boast of the blessed island of Euboia, for here did this saint wish to rest and
to sanctify the place even more, though it had been sanctified from before by
the righteous David the Elder[1]and many other saints.
The
righteous John was born in a village of southern Russia, of parents pious and
Orthodox, for the blessed race of the Russians has the same spiritual Mother as
we—the Orthodox Church—and as given birth to many great saints. Saint John came
into this world around the year 1690, when Peter the Great was reigning in
Russia. I surmise this from the fact that when John was a brave young lad he
was a soldier in the war which that daring Tsar waged against Turkey in the
year 1711. In that war, John, together with thousands of other Russians, was
taken prisoner by Tartars. The Tartars sold him to a Moslem cavalry officer who
was from Procopion in Asia Minor, which is near Caesarea of Cappadocia. The
Agha took him to his village. At that time Turkey was filled with an
innumerable multitude of Muscovite slaves who groaned under the harsh yoke of
the Moslems, and the majority of them, in order to lighten the burden somewhat,
alas! denied the Faith of Christ and became Moslem.
John,
however, from childhood was nurtured “in instruction and admonition of the
Lord,” and he loved God and the religion of his fathers exceedingly. He was one
of those young men whom the knowledge of God makes wise, as the wise Solomon
declared saying, “The just man is wise even in his youth. For honorable age is
not that which standeth in length of time, nor that is measured by number of
years. But wisdom is the gray hair unto men, and an unspotted life is old age”
(Wisdom 4:8-9).
Thus also
the blessed John, having that knowledge which God gives to those who love Him,
was patient in slavery and the ill-treatment of his master and the insults and
annoyances of the Moslems who called him kiafir—that is,
unbeliever—thus showing their contempt and aversion. Procopion was the army
camp of the Christian-hating Jannisaries,[2]and John was their abomination
because to his master and to all who urged him to deny his Faith he answered
with firm conviction that he preferred to die rather than fall into such
a fearful sin. To the Agha he said, “If you leave me free in my religion, I
will be very eager to carry out your commands. But if you force me to change my
faith, know that I will rather surrender you my head than my Faith. A Christian
I was born and a Christian shall I die.”
God,
seeing his faith and hearing his confession, softened the hard heart of his
master and, with time, the Agha came to bear with him. The great humility and
meekness which adorned John contributed to this also.
The
blessed John, therefore, was left in peace without further promises and threats
from his Moslem lord, who had him in his stable to care for his animals. In one
corner of the stable he would lay down his tired body and rest, thanking God
because he had been deemed worthy to have as a bed the manger in which our Lord
Jesus Christ Himself had lain at His birth as Man. He was dedicated to his
work, affectionately caring for the animals of his lord, and they, perceiving
the love which the saint had for them, would look for him when he was absent.
When he petted them, they would look at him with love, and would whinny with
joy as though they were talking with him.
As time
passed, the Agha and his wife came to love him. They came him as a dwelling
place a small room near the hayloft. Yet John did not accept it, but continued
sleeping in his beloved stable so that he might be able to bring his body into
subjection by a life of privation and asceticism amid the smell of the animals
and the stamping of their feet. At night, however, that stable would be filled
with the prayers of the Saint, and the smell would become an odor of a
spiritual fragrance. The blessed John made that stable into a hermitage. There
he lived according to the rule of the Fathers, kneeling and praying for hours,
taking a little rest by curling up on the hay without any covering except for
an old coat. Many times he ate only a little bread and water, fasting most days
and chanting with a quiet voice the psalms of David, which he knew in the
Slavonic tongue: “He that dwelleth in the help of the Most High shall abide in
the shelter of the God of heaven. He shall say unto the Lord: Thou art my
helper and my refuge. He is my God, and I will hope in Him.. For He shall
deliver thee from the snare of the hunters and from every troubling word (Ps.
90:1-3). They laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness and in the shadow of
death. (Ps. 87:6). Unto the Lord in mine affliction have I cried, and He heard
me (Ps. 119:1). The Lord shall keep thy coming in and thy going out, from
henceforth and for evermore (Ps. 120:8). Unto Thee have I lifted up mine eyes,
unto Thee that dwellest in heaven. Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto
the hands of their masters, . . . so do our eyes look unto the Lord our God,
until He take pity on us” (Ps. 122:1, 2).
He would
even silently chant the psalms while he followed the horse of his master,
according to the duty of a stable-boy, when his master was taking a ride in the
country. With the blessing which the Saint brought to his house, the Turkish
cavalry officer became rich and was one of the powerful men in Procopion.
The holy
stable-boy—besides the prayers and fasting which he did day and night inside
that stable, winter and summer, lying upon the dung like another Job—would go
at night and keep vigils standing in the narthex of the chapel of Saint George,
which was built in the hollow of a rock near the house of his Turkish master.
He would go there secretly at night, and every Saturday he would partake of the
immaculate Mysteries. And the Lord, Who examineth the heart and the reins,
looked upon His faithful slave and caused his fellow slaves and other believers
to cease from mocking and insulting him. And the Lord also gave many riches to
John’s master, who understood whence such blessing had come unto his house and
proclaimed it to his fellow citizens.
. . .
But after
a few years, during which the blessed John lived with fasting, prayer, and
sleeping on the ground, the end of his life approached. He became ill and lay
upon the straw in that stable which he had sanctified with his supplications
and the privation of his body for the sake of the name and the love of Christ,
Who became man like unto us and was crucified for our love. Foreseeing his end,
he called for a priest and asked to partake of the immaculate Mysteries. But
because of the fanaticism of the Turks, the priest was afraid to bring the Holy
Mysteries into the stable openly. However, he was made wise, according to
divine enlightenment, and taking an apple he dug it out, lined the cavity with
beeswax, and placed the divine Communion inside. Thus he went to the stable and
gave Communion to the blessed John, who, upon receiving the immaculate Body and
Blood of the Lord, surrendered his holy soul into the hands of God Whom he
loved so much. This took place on the 27th of May, of the year 1730.[4]
In this
manner reposed Saint John the Russian, the new Job, who passed his life upon a
dungheap, the second Lazarus who endured the mockings of his fellow servants
and whose wounds his master’s dogs —who also slept with him— did lick.
. . .
Esset
Agha, an old man who was a descendant of the Moslem cavalry officer who was the
master of Saint John, narrated with simplicity to the many Christians of
Procopion the many and various benefactions of which his family had been deemed
worthy by God through the prayers of the righteous John. He would speak with
elderly sobriety and say: “My children would not live except for a short time,
and would die while yet infants. They would not reach that which we call ‘childhood’
so that we might rejoice in them. Their unfortunate mother, after she had lost
hope in the wisdom of medicine, fled without my knowledge to the relics of the
slave John, so that he might grant her a little child which would not die while
yet young, so that we also might rejoice to se it as a young man, or even a
young girl. She offered beeswax and other gifts to the lamplighter so that he
might entreat John for her, and she promised furthermore that if her
supplication was heard and John granted her a child she would call it ‘the
child of John.’ In truth the righteous John heard the supplication of my wife.
God granted us a strong little boy whom we called, as you know, Kole
Guvan Oglu (that is, “Son of the Slave John”), and he lives through the
power of God and the prayers of John even until today, and he is studying in a
school.” The child was known to all, both at home and at school, by this name
of Son of the Slave John. And if anyone who did not know him would ask, “Who is
the Son of the Slave John?” he immediately would answer with childish pride,
striking his chest and saying with joy, “I am the Son of the Slave John.”
(Thanks to Mr Cristian for
the link to St John’s life.)
Who
was the more blessed, the master or the slave?
The one who had riches and ease or the one who was poor and
afflicted? The life and miracles of St
John give a clear answer.
Fr
Moses Berry, a priest of the Orthodox Church whose forebears were slaves in the
States, attempts to give a similar warning to African Americans:
. . .
The
rest is at https://usareally.com/2220-slavery-as-a-spiritual-good
.
--
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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