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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