We
were glad to see some of our Southern leaders pan Pres Trump’s proposal to
build monuments to ‘American heroes’ in his speech before Mt Rushmore:
https://www.reckonin.com/clyde-wilson/national-garden
https://www.reckonin.com/neil-kumar/the-garden-of-american-zeroes
This
is only right, as only a nation of imbeciles would honor Walt Whitman (a
homosexual and Satan worshipper), a lounge-singer and womanizer like Frank
Sinatra, Mohammed Ali (a Muslim boxer), or a butcher of Southerners and Native
Americans like Ulysses Grant (https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/ulysses-s-grant-mass-genocide-through-permanent-peace-policy-Ing8OYiNuU6hw6ZgulRA9Q).
The
South does not need any of these kinds of people for her heroes. What she desperately needs is the Orthodox
Saints of her forebears. For in one
Saint, just one Saint, there is such a close bond between God and man that it
floods a people with the Grace of God for generations. St Sergius, Abbot of All Russia (+1392), is a
perfect ensample of this:
. .
. All the threads of the spiritual life of the Russian Church converge towards
the great saint and wonderworker of Radonezh, and through all of Orthodox Rus
the grace-filled, life-creating currents radiate outwards from the Trinity
monastery he founded.
Naming a church for the Holy Trinity within
the Russian land began with holy Equal of the Apostles Olga (July 11), who
built the first Trinity temple at Pskov. Afterwards, similar churches were
built in Great Novgorod and other cities.
The spiritual contribution of Saint Sergius
in teaching the theology of the Holy Trinity is quite significant. The monk had
profound insight into the secret mysteries of theology with the “spiritual
eyes” of the ascetic, in prayerful ascent to the Tri-Hypostatic (i.e. in
Three-Persons) God, and in the spiritual experience of communion with God and
God-likeness.
“Coheirs of the perfect light and
contemplation of the Most Holy and All-Sovereign Trinity,” explained Saint
Gregory the Theologian, “are those which become perfectly co-united in the
perfection of the Spirit.” Saint Sergius knew from personal experience the
mystery of the Life-Creating Trinity, since in his life he became co-united
with God, he became a communicant of the very life of the Divine Trinity, i.e.
he attained as much as is possible on earth to the measure of “theosis”
[“divinization”], becoming a “partaker of the Divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4). “If a
man loves Me,” says the Lord, “he will keep My words; and My Father will love
him, and We will come unto him and make our abode with him” (John 14:23).
Abba Sergius, in everything observing the
commands of Christ, belongs to the rank of holy saints in the souls of whom the
Holy Trinity “has made abode.” He fashioned himself into “an abode of the Holy
Trinity,” and everyone with whom Saint Sergius associated, he elevated and
brought into communion with the Holy Trinity.
The Radonezh ascetic, with his disciples
and conversants, enriched the Russian and the universal Church with a new
knowledge and vision of the Life-Creating Trinity, the Beginning and Source of
life, manifesting Itself unto the world and to mankind in the “Sobornost’”
[“Communality”] of the Church, with brotherly unity and the sacrificial
redemptive love of its pastors and children.
In the spiritually symbolic gathering
together of Rus in unity and love, the historical effort of the nation became a
temple of the Life-Creating Trinity, built by Saint Sergius, “so that by
constant attention to It would be conquered the fright of the hateful discord
of this world.”
The worship of the Holy Trinity, in forms
created and bequeathed by the holy Igumen Sergius of Radonezh, became one of
the most profound and original of features of Russian ecclesiality. With Saint
Sergius, in the Life-Creating Trinity there was posited not only the holy
perfection of life eternal, but also a model for human life, a spiritual ideal
toward which mankind ought to strive, since that in the Trinity as
“Indivisible” (Greek “Adiairetos”) discord is condemned and “Sobornost’”
[“Communality”] is blessed, and in the Trinity as “Inseparable” [“Akhoristos”
-- per the Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon in year 451] coercion is
condemned and freedom blessed. In the teaching of Saint Sergius about the Most
Holy Trinity the Russian nation sensed profoundly its own catholic and
ecumenical vocation, and comprehending the universal significance of the Feast,
the people embellished it with all the variety and richness of the ancient
national custom and people’s verse. All the spiritual experience and spiritual
striving of the Russian Church was embodied in the liturgical creativity of the
Feast of the Holy Trinity, of trinitarian church rituals, icons of the Holy
Trinity, and churches and monasteries of this name.
The theological insight of Saint Sergius in
transformation was rendered as the wonderworking icon of the Life-Creating
Trinity painted by the Saint Andrew of Radonezh, surnamed Rublev (July 4), a
monastic iconographer, lived in the Trinity-Sergiev monastery, and painted with
the blessing of Saint Nikon in praised memory to holy Abba Sergius. (At the
Stoglav Council of 1551 this icon was affirmed as proper model for all
successive church iconographic depiction of the Most Holy Trinity).
“The hateful discord,” quarrels and
commotions of worldly life were surmounted by the monastic cenobitic life,
planted by Saint Sergius throughout all Rus. People would not have divisions,
quarrels and war, if human nature, created by the Trinity in the image of the
Divine Tri-Unity, were not distorted and impaired by ancestral sin. Overcoming
by his own co-crucifixion with the Savior the sin of particularity and
separation, repudiating the “my own” and the “myself,” and in accord with the
teachings of Saint Basil the Great, the cenobitic monks restore the
First-created unity and sanctity of human nature. The monastery of Saint
Sergius became for the Russian Church the model for renewal and rebirth. In it
were formed holy monks, bearing forth thereof features of the true path of
Christ to remote regions. In all their works and actions Saint Sergius and his
disciples gave a churchly character to life, giving the people a living example
of its possibility. Not for renouncing the earth, but rather for transfiguring
it, they proclaimed ascent and they themselves ascended unto the Heavenly.
The school of Saint Sergius, through the
monasteries founded by him, his disciples and the disciples of his disciples,
embraces all the vastness of the Russian land and threads its way through all
the remotest history of the Russian Church. One fourth a portion of all Russian
monasteries, the strongholds of faith, piety and enlightenment, was founded by
Abba Sergius or his disciples. The “igumen of the Russian land” was what people
called the founder of the Domicile of the Life-Originating Trinity. . . .
To Saint Sergius, as to an inexhaustible
font of spiritual prayer and grace of the Lord, at all times came in veneration
thousands of the people -- for edification and for prayers, for help and for
healing. And each of those having recourse with faith to his wonderworking
relics he heals and renews, fills with power and with faith, transforms and
guides upwards with his light-bearing spirituality.
But it was not only spiritual gifts and
grace-filled healings bestown to all, approaching with faith the relics of
Saint Sergius; God also gave him the grace to defend the Russian land from its
enemies. . . .
In later times, the monastery continued to
be an inextinguishable torch of spiritual life and church enlightenment. From
its brethren many famed hierarchs of the Russian Church were chosen for
service, one after another.
In the year 1744, for its service to the
country and the Faith, the monastery was designated as a Lavra. In 1742 a
religious seminary was established within its enclosure, and in the year 1814
the Moscow Spiritual Academy was transferred there.
And at present the Domicile of the
Life-Creating Trinity serves as one of the primary centers of grace of the
Russian Orthodox Church. Here at the promptings of the Holy Spirit the Local
Councils of the Russian Church take place. At the monastery is a place of
residence of His Holiness the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus, which carries
upon it the special blessing of Saint Sergius, in the established form,
“Archimandrite of the Holy Trinity-Saint Sergius Lavra.”
The fifth of July, the day of the
Uncovering of the relics of holy Abba Sergius, igumen of the Russian Land, is a
crowded and solemn church feastday at the monastery.
--https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2020/07/05/101910-uncovering-of-the-relics-of-venerable-sergius-of-radonezh
Dixie
ought in no way to settle for Pres Trump’s silly Garden of American
Heroes. She has many Orthodox Saints
connected with her past who could do for her something akin to what St Sergius
has done for Russia: St Alfred the Great
of England, St Cuthbert the Wonderworker of All England, St Anthony the Great of Egypt, St Athanasius the Great of Alexandria, St Martin the Merciful of Tours, St Brigid of Kildare, St Genevieve
of Paris, St Hilda of Whitby, St Audrey of Ely, St Moluag of Lismore, and
others besides. The demonic spirit of
Americanism brings death; the Holy Ghost present in the Orthodox Saints brings
life. The South has a choice between
these two. We hope she will choose life.
--
Holy
Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema
to the Union!
