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Monday, July 15, 2019

Why True Faith Is So Rare in the States


It is because there is no humility.  And there is no humility because there is no obedience.  What do we hear over and over again in the States?  The boastful statement, ‘Every man is a king’.  Each is obedient only to his own will; this develops not a healthy faith in God but Satanic pride and spiritual delusion:  These last two are the hallmarks of modern American ‘Christianity’.  Archimandrite Gregorios Estephan has some very helpful words regarding this:

The Apostles transferred the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ to the world, along with the duty of absolute obedience to this teaching. Out of this righteous obedience to the commandments, passed from generation to generation, the Tradition was formulated which is called the Apostolic Tradition, encompassing the entirety of the Church’s faith. That is why the Apostle Paul praised the Corinthians’ obedience saying: Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you. For Tradition in the Orthodox mind is the criterion for understanding the faith.

The opposite of Tradition is heresy, just as transgression is the opposite of obedience. Any departure from Tradition is heresy. Nobody can understand the faith except in the way it was delivered to the Church by the Apostles. About the Church’s overseers, St. Clement of Alexandria says, “They preserve the blessed Tradition of the faith that is handed down directly from the holy Apostles.” And Eusebius of Ceasarea says that St. Ignatius of Antioch was a defender of the faithful against heresies and that “he firmly exhorted them in the Apostolic Tradition.”

Thus, the blessed Tradition emerged from obedience. Obedience in Orthodoxy is an inseparable part of the life of the faithful who endure in the journey of their salvation, for in the Fall our human nature lost the ability to discern between the righteous and the wicked, between good and evil. It was in need of blessed obedience in order to face the effects of its corrupted fallen state. This is the reason why disobedience became the sign of abominable pride and error, while obedience is the sign of blessed humility and self-denial. Pride and self-love, which are the source of all passions and falls, oppose obedience.


The Evangalicals in the States may study the Holy Scriptures and church history, may sing all the praise choruses they want, and whatever else they like, but as long as they live in defiance of the Orthodox Faith, their spiritual understanding will be terribly distorted and clouded:

The world has its ways of convincing the many faithful who were entrusted to salvation with many arguments, that they supposedly do not oppose the faith but do God’s will while they in fact do their own will and violently resist whoever disagrees with their opinions. St. Dorotheos of Gaza says that if a man does not honestly seek God’s will, then even if he asks a prophet, God will place in the prophet’s heart an answer that fits the deception in the seeker’s heart. As the Bible says: And if the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet (Ezek. 14:9).

--Ibid.

Thus, they will go on tearing themselves and the world around them to pieces, driven mad by the demonic spirits they have invited within themselves, believing all the while they are doing ‘God’s will’:

No one is deceived but those who disdain obedience to the Orthodox spirit that the Church has followed from the days of the Apostles until today, and who impose their own thoughts that are harmful to the faith. They are many in the Church nowadays. They willingly submit to the spirit of this age that is full of evil, debauchery, and heretical teachings. They transgress and overlook under the pretext that we live in an age that requires such changes and omissions. They justify themselves with these excuses and subject the Church to secularism and conformity to the spirit of this world. St. Hilary of Poitiers says, “The Church boasts that the world loves her; the world's hatred was the evidence that she was Christ's.

As the disobedient monk cannot feel peace within himself, so those who were entrusted to the Church of Christ, the bishop and priests, will not find true rest except through blessed obedience to the faith, dogmas, and canons that define the foundation of this faith. Our Holy Fathers were persecuted for the faith, and in the depth of their sufferings of exile and martyrdom, their internal peace was increasingly pure and still, for only one reason—because Divine grace was strongly witnessing within them to the glory of the truth they were defending. But their enemies were full of feelings of confusion, anger and the desire for revenge. St. Hilary of Poitiers expresses the state of peace that he experienced when the heretics exiled him saying: “For me, I do not complain of the times: I rejoice rather, that iniquity has revealed itself in this my exile, when, unable to endure the truth, it banishes the preachers of sound doctrine, that it may heap up for itself teachers after its own desires. I glory in my exile, and rejoice in the Lord.”

--Ibid.

What the Soviet-murdered priest Father Pavel Florensky once wrote is very apt to American apostasy:

In its extreme, the state of Pharisaism is a spiritual delusion, where a certain state becomes an idol.  At the same time it is a very close imitation of what is genuine.  And once a person has entered into this circle, there is no way out, since even an errant prayer gives joy and a feeling of satisfaction, while feeding all the other feelings, pride, conceit, arrogance, etc., so that the more his soul is filled with this tinsel glitter, the greater will be his desire to pray and the more obstinate he will be in his error and convinced of his righteousness.  And only a miracle, which is what a deep fall usually is, can open his eyes and show him how far he has gone in his error.  This helps to explain the aphorism of Amvrosy of Optina, which he stated as a rule for young monks:  “Do not be afraid of any sin, even fornication; rather, be afraid of fasting and prayer.”

--At the Crossroads of Science & Mysticism, Boris Jakim, ed. & trans., Kettering, Ohio, Semantron Press, 2014, pgs. 114-5.

That is, sadly, the American Empire in a nutshell:  The further it goes into error, the more it believes it is advancing in righteousness.  May the deep fall of the States, if one is necessary to snap them out of their illusions, be softened by the prayers of the Saints.

--

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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