It would be plenty easy for
Southrons faithful to Dixieland to throw up their hands in despair, as we see
so many of our people identifying more with vapid, deracinated American
exceptionalism or with some other ideology or idolatry (there’s a difference?)
than with the traditions of their own forefathers.
And yet there is room for
hope, given the right conditions.
The Christian island of
Cyprus offers a wonderful illustration of this.
In 1974 she was overrun by vicious Muslim Turks, who have remained as
occupiers of the northern part of the island (the parallels with the Yankee
invasion and conquest of the South are readily apparent at this point).
We turn to an Orthodox priest
named Fr Gerasimos Fokas for more
of the story:
Cyprus greatly venerates the Apostle Andrew. There is no house
that does not have an Andrew or Androula. And exactly where the tip of Cyprus
is, at the cape, it is written on the map as the Cape of the Apostle Andrew,
and this is exactly there Saint Helen built, while traveling to Constantinople
from Jerusalem, the Monastery of the Apostle Andrew.
In 1974, with the unfortunate occupation by the Turks, several
thousand people were left trapped in the Karpasia region, where the Monastery
is located. With the suffering, with the intimidation, the people left. 800
people remained in Karpasia, Christian people and teachers and priests also
remained. Four priests remained with them. Unfortunately, the Turks continued
their plan: they burned, imprisoned, intimidated, so the people were constantly
leaving.
Of the four priests, one was martyred, the
other two died and one remained to work in the churches, to serve the religious
needs of Christians and to be in the Monastery of the Apostle Andrew - Father
Zacharias. This priest was married and had four children and the Turks were
slowly closing the schools because the children were leaving, and when the
priest’s children reached high school, there was no more school due to the lack
of students. And then the disagreement between the priest and his presbytera
began.
“Don’t you see what’s happening, Father Zacharias? The Turks
are not leaving here, the schools are closed, the village is deserted, everyone
has left, what will become of my children?”
The poor priest tried to convince her that being a priest
means self-denial and duty, but she, as a mother, saw the future of her
children being destroyed. She sent the children to the free part of Nicosia so
that they could study and progress and she kept complaining: “Let’s leave too.”
This, too, is familiar to
faithful Southerners, who face a multitude of pressures to conform to
Yankee/globalist ways, or to move away from their ancestral lands in Dixie for
‘greater opportunities’ in other States.
But just when the breaking
point was reached, the Lord intervened, sending the Holy Apostle Andrew with a
message to the priest’s wife:
. . .
The rest may be read here:
https://www.reckonin.com/walt-garlington/a-message-of-hope-from-st-andrew-the-apostle
Or here:
--
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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