Fr
Michael Gillis shares some thoughts from St Gregory Palamas in the recording
found at this page
on
why the Ƿest (West) is seeing such a great inbreaking of
killers and destroyers.
Friday, January 1, 2016
Tuesday, December 29, 2015
For the Day of the Holy Innocents
May
the Lord forgive us for the slaughter of all the guiltless children who have died in the Souð
and the other States of the union or any other place in the world by abortion or warfare or other violent means,
and grant rest to their souls.
Thursday, December 24, 2015
‘Christ and the Cosmos’
The cosmos is not a
gearbox,
Turning forever with grim
precision,
Nor mere matterhood, protons
and neutrons
Cleaving and sundering as
they would.
Life is not a strand of
little letters
Arranging themselves ever
better
At the behest of hoary
Thermodynamics
Or man’s craftwiseness.
Life is a miracle!
Horses in their fields
And sun-beams falling
through tree-leaves.
Life is a miracle!
The sacrament of husband
and wife
And the Church as the Body
of Christ.
Life is a miracle!
Godhood and manhood in one
Person,
Manhood taken up into
Godhead,
Mankind and all the
creation
Flooded with the Holy
Light of Christ!
Life is a miracle!
Tuesday, December 22, 2015
A Sharp Rebuke . . .
. . . of the members of the Church of America
the Messiah Nation, who push the anti-culture of pluralistic (which quickly
becomes secular) democracy and consumerism on every people of the world,
whether they want it or not, in the name of Progress:
. . .
What
does it mean to “make a difference?”
Generally,
the idea is linked with the myth of progress.
With concerted effort and sufficient resources, we are making a better world,
etc. Some undefined future awaits us, if only we care enough to make it happen.
But
this is a myth. We can make changes,
but change is not at all the same thing as progress. The leaders of the Western
world in 1914 started a “war to end all wars.” It was one of the greatest
projects of the modern era – the first “modern” war. At its end, there were 38
million casualties. The “winners” of the war sat down in 1919 and redrew the
map of the world in the Treaty of Versailles. Every conflict that has occurred
since that time has pretty much been driven by the arrogance and mistakes of
the maps they drew. The world has been stuck repeating the same war all over
the globe as we suffer the consequences of the “better world” we created.
They
redrew the map of Europe, laying the
foundation for years of turmoil in the Balkans. They redrew the Middle East, inventing new countries with little regard
to the history and composition of the new nations. The war they started gave
birth to the Communist revolutions that enslaved Russia and elsewhere for the better
part of a century. The treaty gave rise to Hitler. On and on the consequences
go, as the world constantly struggles to cope with one new eruption after
another. The United States,
considered the most successful of all modern projects, has been at war 222 out
of its 239 years: that’s 93 percent of its history.
Most
of the people who have lived and died over these modern centuries, only wanted
to live and love and die a decent death. Farmers wanted to farm; mechanics
wanted to fix their machines; parents wanted to raise their children in peace
and safety; teachers wanted to share what they knew with another generation;
and so on. But all of these things have largely been disrupted by the drive for
a better world. Farmers are disappearing; the machines have taken over many
lives; families are in almost total disarray; teachers long to quit a
profession that has become one long series of frustrations. The better world is
always in the future.
The
better world has no place within the Christian life.
We
have no commandment from God to make the world a better place. We have no
commandment from God to “make a difference.” Only God makes a difference, and
only God knows what “better” would actually mean. As Christians, the proper
life is one lived in accordance with the commandments. We should love. We
should forgive. We should be generous and kind. We should give thanks to God
always and for everything.
We
should understand that this is a description of the “better world.” We are not
making a better world, we’re waiting for the coming of the Kingdom of God.
With every act of love, there is the Kingdom. With every act of forgiveness,
there is the Kingdom. Every act of generosity and kindness sees its
inauguration. As Christ told us, “The Kingdom of God is among you.”
Modernity
is the practice and faith of gross idolatry. We worship technology, money,
politics, science, everything that we believe is a human tool capable of
building a better world. No tool is any better or different than the people who
use them. A bad man cannot use a good tool to make a good world. A bad man
makes a bad world and nothing more.
When
we were baptized, we were asked to renounce the devil. More than that, we were
asked to spit on him. That
same devil suggested to Christ that he could make the world a better place if
only He would bow down and worship the devil. Christ rebuked him. The same
offer has been made to us. It is called “modernity,” and it is a devil’s
bargain.
It
is for us to renounce him, and spit on him along with his bargain. Christ will
give us back our souls.
There
are right and wrong questions. When we stand before the judgment seat of
Christ, we will not be asked whether we made a difference or whether we left
the world a better place. The questions will be about the commandments.
Feeding, clothing, visiting, etc., are very homely practices (Matt. 25). It
doesn’t take all of the resources of the modern world to do them. They are all
immediately at hand.
The
better world and making a difference is a conversation we should refuse to
engage: it does not belong to us. Speak the truth. Keep the commandments. Let
God make all the difference in the world.
Source: Fr
Stephen Freeman, ‘You Barely Make a Difference and It’s a Good Thing’, http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/88354.htm,
posted 3 Dec 2015, accessed 15 Dec. 2015
. . .
We
are, in fact, all headed in the same direction human life has always gone:
death. No technology can change this fact. At most, it can create new scenery
as a diversion along the way. In general, the term “better” refers to “less
suffering.” By a “better world” we simply mean a world with less suffering.
But, like death itself, suffering is a fact of life. We suffer in different
ways, some of them begotten by technology itself, but no amount of technology
will ever change the landscape of human existence into a journey devoid of
suffering. In the modern narrative, what is abolished is a reason to suffer. Suffering is
understood as evil. But if it is unavoidable, then the modern project will
always fail, and by refusing to rightly understand suffering, it renders
suffering itself to be unbearable.
What We Can Do
Only
an understanding of the Good can provide a proper measure for “better.” But the
various philosophies that undergird modernity reject the notion of the Good.
Christians in the modern world have all too readily translated the Christian
gospel into the terms of the modern narrative. The Kingdom of God
cannot (and must not) be equated with an improved world. Though the relief of
suffering is often a very good thing, it is not necessarily an inherently good thing. Christ did not
die in order to make a better world – He died in order to raise us from the
dead.
That
Paschal reality unites us to Christ’s death and resurrection and this becomes
the measure and true vehicle of our existence. An alternate way to think about
suffering is to ask, “How can I help you bear legitimate suffering?” There is
no such thing as a non-suffering human existence. In the end, those who imagine
the relief of suffering to be the overriding goal of life, will also accept
death as a means to achieve it. Abortion and euthanasia are modern
efforts whose use is defended as a relief of suffering. Putting someone to
death certainly relieves suffering, after a fashion. A massive nuclear strike
could end all suffering – for ever. It is, strangely, a logical conclusion that
has so far been overlooked.
Overlooked
by those who choose to use the language of modernity to describe the Christian
life (“better world”) is the fact that such a description or self-understanding
makes the Church just one more partner in the common secular effort to make the
world marginally better. Christ founded the Church as His body, not as the
Rotary Club. The fact that many members of the Church cannot give a description
of a substantial difference between the purpose of Rotary and the Church is a
testament to the power of the modern narrative. (Incidentally, Rotary has much
more stringent attendance rules).
There
is a “spirituality” that naturally flows from the modern drive for improvement
and progress. Spiritual growth is cast in terms of improvement, getting better.
And though Protestant and Evangelical theology classically champion the work of
grace, modernity has high-jacked their movements and replaced them with
self-improvement. Grace has been reduced to God agreeing to grade us on a
curve.
The
Classical Christian life, as described in the New Testament, is grounded in weakness and true grace (the Divine Energies). Our
modern instincts urge us to try harder and get better. The New Testament tells
us that we are saved in our weakness: the way down is the way up. Modernity has
turned Christianity on its head and converted us into a society of the above
average.
And
this is very much my point. The critique of modernity is not the complaint of a
curmudgeonly priest. It is a cry for us to return to the faith as it was once
and for all delivered to the saints. The modern mind instinctively rejects the Cross as a
way of life while the mind of Christ (Philippians 2:5-11) instinctively rejects
modernity.
For
while we are commanded to do good, to share, to serve, to love, to forgive, we
do these things knowing that all of our efforts do not change the world. The
slogans of “making a difference” and “making the world a better place” are
illusions, figments of our imagination. They entice us to plot and plan, argue
and harangue. They do not nurture the spirit nor point us towards the way of
Christ.
Empty yourself.
Source: Fr
Stephen Freeman, ‘Modern Illusions’, http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/88829.htm,
posted 16 Dec. 2015, accessed 15 Dec. 2015
Friday, December 18, 2015
Welcoming Winter - 2015
With
Chopin, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Tchaikovsky.
Many
thanks to the folks at these web sites for their helpful lists:
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
Updating the American Pledge of Allegiance to Fit the Times
I
pledge allegiance
to
the Flag
of
the Transnational Corporations of the Globe,
and
to the New World Order
for
which it stands,
one
Multiculture
under
No One,
downloadable,
with
sitcoms and warfare for all.
*
* *
‘The
New World Order of Global Warfare’:
‘Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man:
preserve me from the violent man; which imagine mischiefs in their heart; continually
are they gathered together for war. They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent;
adders' poison is under their lips. Selah. Keep me, O Lord, from the hands of the
wicked; preserve me from the violent man; who have purposed to overthrow my
goings (Psalm 140:1-4 KJV).’
Friday, December 11, 2015
Restoration - Part 2nd
Fr
Andrew Phillips has a few more words we should hear:
. . . We are reminded of the ever-memorable Fr
John Romanides ‘Wyoming
syndrome’ parallel. He said: ‘Try to imagine that everything in the USA has disappeared except Wyoming;
this is what modern Greece
has been since the fall of Constantinople – a
provincial fragment of a once great empire. And this is what the modern Ukraine is: a
fragment left over from a once great empire. What was that empire and how was
its destruction organized?
The
Empire was the multinational Christian Empire of Holy Rus and its destruction
has been planned by the enemies of Christ over a century, in three different
phases:
1.
In 1914 there began the first phase in their operation to destroy the Christian
Empire of Holy Rus, the Russian Empire, replacing it in 1917 with a militant
atheist ideology developed in Western Europe.
Three generations passed.
2.
In 1991 there began the second phase, for it was to dismantle the successor
Empire, the Soviet Union, which contained the
Russian Empire’s cultural heritage, reducing it to oligarch corruption,
dependence and poverty. One generation passed.
3.
In 2014 there began the third phase, as it marked the beginning of the
occupation of one of the countries that belongs to the former Christian Empire
of Holy Rus, the Ukraine.
The
coming months may mark either the End of that Empire or else its Restoration,
when on the world stage the Lion will reprove the Eagle. On page 16 of the book
‘Elder Schema-Archimandrite Jonah of Odessa’ (1925-2012), recounting the life
of the clairvoyant healer and prophet, we find the Odessa Elder’s words
written:
‘We
ask all Russians to pray that an Orthodox Tsar be granted us. If there is a
Tsar in Russia,
then he will be God’s Anointed. The grace of God will be upon him and then
there will be a great help for Russia’.
May
Thy Will be done, O Lord!
Source: ‘In
the Ukraine’,
http://www.events.orthodoxengland.org.uk/in-the-ukraine/,
posted 2 Dec. 2015, accessed 6 Dec. 2015
As
Fr Andrew and others have said, should the Tsar return to Russia, then many
will come to salvation because of his strivings against the enemies of the
Orthodox Church. This period in world
history was described by Blessed Fr Seraphim Rose (+1982) of Platina, California, in one of
his talks that was delivered on 3 Aug. 1981:
In
the book which most thoroughly describes the events to occur at the end of the
world, the Apocalypse of St. John the Theologian, at the opening of the seventh
seal, which precedes the final plague to come upon mankind; it is said that
there was silence in heaven for the space of half an hour [Apoc 8:1].
Some have interpreted this to mean a short period of peace before the final
events o world history — namely, the short period of the restoration of Russia,
when the preaching of world-wide repentance will begin with Russia — that “new,
ultimate word” which even Dostoyevsky hoped Russia would give to the world
[Pushkin Speech, The Diary of a Writer, tr. Boris Brasol, New York, George
Braziller, 1954, p. 980]. Under present world conditions, when the events
of one country are known to the whole world almost instantly, and when Russia,
cleansed by the blood of its martyrs, indeed has a better chance than any other
country to awake from the sleep of atheism and unbelief — we can already
conceive the possibility of such an event. As Father Dimitry Dudko and
others have said, it cannot be that the blood of Russia's innumerable martyrs will
be in vain; undoubtedly it is the seed of the last great flowering of true
Christianity.
Source: ‘The
Future of Russia and the End of the World’, http://www.desertwisdom.org/dttw/truth/fr-seraphim-rose/russia.html,
accessed 7 Sept. 2015
Pray
for Russia,
O Southron, and for the return of the Tsar!
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