Tuesday, November 12, 2024

Offsite Post: ‘Saint Benedict’

 

Brilliant star in the Western sky,

Herald of a calmer, Christian age –

Absorbing Anthony, absorbing Moses,

You conveyed the spiritual riches

Of the Desert Fathers

To poor pagan peoples

Through your well-wrought rule,

Raised up houses of holiness

Amongst the idol-plagued,

Bequeathed peace and order

To war-beleaguered nations –

 . . .

The rest is at https://www.reckonin.com/walt-garlington/saint-benedict.

***

For more about the wonderful St Benedict of Nursia:

https://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2018/03/saint-benedict-of-nursia-resource-page.html

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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!

Friday, November 8, 2024

Offsite Post: ‘Escaping the LGBT Briar Patch’

 

The Biden regime’s declaration of Easter Sunday as the Transgender Day of Visibility has outraged a multitude of people.  It is rather long and florid in contrast to the short and perfunctory edict written in honor of Easter.  In the former, the regime encourages the perpetuation of the trans epidemic in the States:

 

Transgender Americans are part of the fabric of our Nation.  Whether serving their communities or in the military, raising families or running businesses, they help America thrive.  They deserve, and are entitled to, the same rights and freedoms as every other American, including the most fundamental freedom to be their true selves.  . . .  Today, we send a message to all transgender Americans:  You are loved.  You are heard.  You are understood.  You belong.  You are America, and my entire Administration and I have your back.

If the people in the Biden regime really cared about trans-inclined people, they would not be telling them to embrace this disordered passion of theirs, but to quell it, to overcome it, to conquer it.  There is a wonderful saint of the Orthodox Church to whom they (the LGBT folks) can turn for inspiration and help in that effort:  St. Mary of Egypt (+6th century, celebrated 1 April and on the Fifth Sunday of Lent).

The story begins when a monk advanced in the spiritual life, Elder Zosimas, because of his prideful thoughts over his progress, was told by an angel to go to the Jordan River in order to learn humility:

 

Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared to him and said, “Zosimas, you have struggled valiantly, as far as this is in the power of man. However, there is no one who is righteous (Rom 3:10). So that you may know how many other ways lead to salvation, leave your native land, like Abraham from the house of his father (Gen 12:1), and go to the monastery by the Jordan.”

One year, as he went into the Jordanian wilderness along with the rest of the monks for their Lenten endeavors, he encountered St. Mary:

 

He walked into the wilderness for twenty days and then, when he sang the Psalms of the Sixth Hour and made the usual prayers. Suddenly, to the right of the hill where he stood, he saw a human form. He was afraid, thinking that it might be a demonic apparition. Then he guarded himself with the Sign of the Cross, which removed his fear. He turned to the right and saw a form walking southward. The body was black from the blazing sunlight, and the faded short hair was white like a sheep’s fleece.

Her clairvoyance revealed to St. Zosimas that she was greatly blessed by God:  ‘“O Mother! It is clear that you live with God and are dead to this world. You have called me by name and recognized me as a priest, though you have never seen me before.  . . .”’

Likewise, her miraculous manner of praying:

 

“ . . . fulfill my unworthy request, Mother, and pray for the whole world and for me a sinner, that my wanderings in the desert may not be useless.”

 

The holy ascetic replied, “You, Abba Zosimas, as a priest, ought to pray for me and for all, for you are called to do this. However, since we must be obedient, I will do as you ask.”

 

The saint turned toward the East, and raising her eyes to heaven and stretching out her hands, she began to pray in a whisper. She prayed so softly that Abba Zosimas could not hear her words. After a long time, the Elder looked up and saw her standing in the air more than a foot above the ground. Seeing this, Zosimas threw himself down on the ground, weeping and repeating, “Lord, have mercy!”

He begged her to tell him about her life.  Despite her hesitation, St. Mary obeyed his request.  It is here that LGBT people should pay special heed, for St. Mary reveals how those with passions that mercilessly control them can be conquered, how their lives can be transformed into something entirely beautiful and pleasing to God:

 

She replied, “It distresses me, Father, to speak to you about my shameless life. When you hear my story, you might flee from me, as if from a poisonous snake. But I shall tell you everything, Father, concealing nothing. However, I exhort you, cease not to pray for me a sinner, that I may find mercy on the Day of Judgment.

 

“I was born in Egypt and when I was twelve years old, I left my parents and went to Alexandria. There I lost my chastity and gave myself to unrestrained and insatiable sensuality. For more than seventeen years I lived like that and I did it all for free. Do not think that I refused the money because I was rich. I lived in poverty and worked at spinning flax. To me, life consisted in the satisfaction of my fleshly lust.

 

“One summer I saw a crowd of people from Libya and Egypt heading toward the sea. They were on their way to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. I also wanted to sail with them. Since I had no food or money, I offered my body in payment for my passage. And so I embarked on the ship.

 

“Now, Father, believe me, I am very amazed, that the sea tolerated my wantonness and fornication, that the earth did not open up its mouth and take me down alive into hell, because I had ensnared so many souls. I think that God was seeking my repentance. He did not desire the death of a sinner, but awaited my conversion.

 

“So I arrived in Jerusalem and spent all the days before the Feast living the same sort of life, and maybe even worse.

There in Jerusalem St. Mary’s life made a dramatic turn, thanks to another Holy Saint Whose life has been getting attention from The Spectacle podcast lately – the Ever-Virgin Mary, the Mother of God.

 . . .

The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2024/04/garlington-escaping-the-lgbt-briar-patch-an-orthodox-view/.

***

Thanks to the folks at the Reckonin’ site for posting the essay about St Alfred the Great and his role as Dixie’s patron saint:

https://www.reckonin.com/walt-garlington/patron-saints-in-christendom-and-at-the-south

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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!

Tuesday, November 5, 2024

Offsite Post: ‘Icons Are a Great Fit for the South’

 

The first Sunday of Lent in the Orthodox Church celebrates the restoration of the icons – specially stylized paintings of Christ, the Mother of God and other saints, and the angels – after more than one hundred years of imperial persecution of those who venerated them.  Though the official theology of much of Southern Protestantism is firmly against the use of religious images in Christian life, much of Southern life is nevertheless very favorable to icons.

In many a home in Dixie there will usually be displayed at least a few exceptionally old pictures of departed family members that look something like this one:

 


(Photograph of Confederate Cavalry Commander JEB Stuart)

Southrons show these pictures of their ancestors as a proclamation of their love for them and to keep their memory alive both for themselves and for future generations.  These also are some of the main reasons Orthodox Christians display icons.

The sentiment of Southerners towards these images of their ancestors is summarized well by George Fitzhugh in his book Sociology for the South:


The Roman dwelling was a holy and sacred place; a temple of the gods, over which Manes, and Lares, and Penates watched and hovered. Each hearthstone was an altar on which daily sacrifice was offered. The family was hedged all round with divinities, with departed ancestry purified and apotheosised, who with kindly interest guarded and guided the household. Roman elevation of sentiment and of character is easily accounted for, when we reflect that they felt themselves ever in the presence of deities.

The pictures of noble Southern ancestors have become something akin to the Roman household gods and goddesses that guarded and blessed the house and family.  With Orthodox icons, however, we get the proper fulfilment of this desire to fill our homes with virtue and holiness and the divine, with guardians and intercessors.  The wonderful teacher of Holy Scripture and the spiritual life in general, Father Athanasios Mitilinaios (+2006), says of the holy icons:


It is also known that whatever a holy person touches in this world, gives grace, conveys grace. In the Gospel according to St. Mark, this happened with Christ. Pay attention to what he says:

 

“And wherever He went, into villages, or cities, or the countryside, they laid the sick in the streets and begged Him that they might touch even the hem of His garment; and all those who touched Him were healed.” (Mark 6: 56)

 

As it happened with Christ, my beloved, He now gives to the Apostles and Saints. Listen:

 

“...they brought out the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats, that at the least the shadow of Peter passing by might fall on some of them.” (Acts 5:15)

 

They were all healed. They took the handkerchiefs and aprons of the Apostle Paul, threw them on the patients and they recovered.7

 

Why? Because the objects that came in contact with their skin were sanctified. Thus, sanctified people, when their lives were hagiographed8 [i.e., displayed on icons—W.G.], these icons are now miraculous. This is why, my beloved, icons work miracles.

 . . .

The rest is at https://southernorthodox.org/3746-2/.

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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!

Friday, November 1, 2024

Offsite Post: ‘Flesh and Spirit’

 

How many years have been devoured

By Time’s voracious hunger

Since a king carrying the Cross

Together with his scepter

Ruled a people unafraid of battle

For the faith and their fathers’ land,

Knowing there are things worse

Than demise of the body?

In the modern age

When men elect rulers

To govern the self-governing,

All noble passions have been stifled

By the allure of material comfort,

 . . .

The rest is at https://www.newenglishreview.org/articles/flesh-and-spirit/.

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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!