Orthodox Truth

Monday of the Fifth Week of Matthew

You can listen to an audio podcast of this post at https://www.spreaker.com/user/youngfaithradio/matt5mon 

In the Gospel today, the Lord reproaches the Pharisees for distorting the meaning of the Sabbath rest:

At that time, Jesus went into the Jews’ synagogue: And, behold, there was a man which had his hand withered. And they asked him, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath days? that they might accuse him. And he said unto them, What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out? How much then is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the sabbath days. Then saith he to the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it forth; and it was restored whole, like as the other.- Matthew 12: 9-13

St. Theophan the Recluse points out that while the Pharisees’ insistence on not doing certain things kept them from doing good works on the Sabbath, now we have Orthodox believers who insist on doing certain things that lead them to desecrate Sunday, the Lord’s Day of the Resurrection:

…Not doing things kept the Pharisees from performing good works, whereas the things which Christians allow themselves are what lead them away from good works. On the eve of Sunday they go to the theater and then to some other entertainment. In the morning they oversleep and there is no time to go to church. There are several visits, then lunch, and in the evening again entertainment. Thus all their time is relegated to the belly and to pleasing other senses, and there is no time even to remember God and good works. – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, pp. 138-139

Our 19th century Russian author here portrays the worldly aristocratic life depicted by Tolstoy in his novels: Theater, the opera, balls, dinner parties, frivolous social visits for gossip and flirting, etc. We might say, “Well, my boring, stressed-out existence bears no resemblance to that! I work all week, and I need my weekends for myself, to catch up on all the things I don’t have time for during the week and to have some fun with my friends in order to relax.”

But why does God allow us to fall into this meaningless existence, to run like rats on a wheel in this ceaseless round of superficial and hollow activity?  Is it not because we do not give to God the time that God demands for Himself alone? When is the last time we looked honestly at our Sundays and remembered that from sunset on Saturday to sunset on Sunday the day is set aside for three things: worship, rest, and good works? That to use it otherwise is still a sin? That on Judgment Day Christ will demand an account of how we will have used our Sundays?

A man giving me advice on how to attract people to my former parish once described to me, as a model for imitation, the grand entrance of a popular and wealthy priest into a noisy dance being held very late on a Saturday night, a dance, sad to say, organized by and attended only by Orthodox people: how this well-groomed, smiling man in his fine suit and Roman collar had gone from table to table like a politician running for office,   being greeted with acclaim, the center of everyone’s attention and admiration. “They were just eating out of his hand,” my volunteer advisor said with awed voice. Perhaps it did not occur to him that he had witnessed, in approving silence, a priest blessing that which is forbidden by God and, if unconfessed and un-repented, could send this priest and his unfortunate flock to hell for all eternity. Perhaps this priest had forgotten that heaven, hell, and eternity are the proper business of priests.

The Orthodox rhythm of Sunday remains today the same as it ever was: Saturday evening is set aside for Vespers or Vigil at church, for quiet preparation of the soul for the Day of the Resurrection, and, whenever possible, preparation for Holy Communion. Sunday morning is set aside for returning to the church to attend Matins or the Hours, followed by the Divine Liturgy. On Sunday afternoon we rest and also spend time in God-pleasing activities such as a peaceful dinner with virtuous family and friends -those who provide a good example – with whom we can share God-pleasing conversation and sentiments, study, teaching our children the Law of God, visiting the elderly or ill house-bound brothers and sisters who cannot come to the church, volunteer work to care for the unfortunate, etc. On Sunday evening (not Saturday), or the evening of (not the evening before) feast days, is the time for parties, dances, and entertainment, but even these must always accord with tradition, modesty, and restraint, and are arranged for the sake of love, of community, of true friendship in Christ, and not for coarse pleasure.

Unavoidable limitations in our circumstances may cause us to alter this schedule and this agenda. We may live very far from church, for example, but that does not prevent us from reading services at home on Saturday night instead of going to parties or football games. We may have a vocation to help suffering man in the medical profession or other work that demands our attention occasionally on Sundays.  But this does not prevent us from saying the Jesus Prayer and being mindful of the Lord when we have to work on Sundays. God knows our circumstances and our limits, and He also knows when we are being honest with ourselves and when we are lying to ourselves. Let us be honest with ourselves and ask the Lord to enlighten us as to what is truly unavoidable and what we pretend to be unavoidable in order to excuse our worldliness. Here is a test: When we think that some obligation – real or imagined –  is forcing us out of a pious Sunday observance, do we feel oppressed by this world or relieved to be off the hook? Are we sad or glad?  Think about it.

O most beloved Lord, most worthy and above-worthy object of all our love and devotion, Creator and disposer of all the days and hours of this life, enlighten us to keep Thy Day in holiness! Amen. 

The Lord rests on the Seventh Day from the work of Creation.

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Saturday of the Fourth Week of Matthew

The Gospel for today is Matthew 8: 14-23.

At that time:  When Jesus was come into Peter’s house, he saw his wife’s mother laid, and sick of a fever. And he touched her hand, and the fever left her: and she arose, and ministered unto them. When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses. Now when Jesus saw great multitudes about him, he gave commandment to depart unto the other side. And a certain scribe came, and said unto him, Master, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead. And when he was entered into a ship, his disciples followed him.

St. Theophan the Recluse makes clear what the Lord’s command to leave all and follow Him means:

…this means that he who wants to follow the Lord should not expect any comfort on earth after following Him, but only deprivations, needs, and sorrows. And it means that worldly cares, even the most legitimate, are not compatible with following Him. It is necessary to decisively renounce everything, so that nothing attaches you to the earth, and then to condemn yourself to every kind of suffering or cross. Having thus prepared yourself, follow the Lord. This is the direct will of the Lord! – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, p. 136

The author goes on to make clear that this command is for all Christians, not only for monks.

But how do we, living in the world, follow this command? How can we join such radical discipleship to the duties imposed by Christian family life in the world? Several considerations should serve to make clear that the two are compatible:

Note that St. Theophan says that the Lord’s followers should not expect any comfort on earth if they are real disciples. This does not mean that they will never have any comfort on earth. The Lord grants us consolations, both inner and outer, as we need them. He knows our weakness and condescends to give us encouragement in our struggles. But our basic attitude must be that of the soldier in the front lines, who expects to be required to die any minute, and counts every minute of life a gift. So should we, every day on earth, expect the sorrow of the cross but rejoice when we receive the joy of the resurrection. True Christians do not have the entitlement mentality (“I deserve happiness on earth”). They expect to carry their cross as the normal mode of life, but they rejoice in God’s good gifts when and how He deigns to give them. And those who carry the biggest crosses enjoy their consolations the most. Think of an ascetic who eats only fasting food all year except for one boiled egg on Pascha. How that egg must taste! We cannot imagine. Think of the young mother who has suffered several miscarriages and finally bears a healthy child. How she treasures that child; how much keener is her delight in her child than that of those who have not suffered as she has!

Worldly cares, the author says, are not compatible with following the Lord Jesus. This does not mean that worldly duties are not compatible with following Him. Even St. Paul, for instance, says that though he would rather die and go to be with the Lord, he still wants to live longer on earth in order to take care of those whom he has converted to Christ. According to our station in life, we accept duties and perform them, but without care insofar as we truly do them for the Lord, His grace helping us. Blessed duties become sinful cares when we make an idol out of our success, desiring wealth, comfort, and glory for ourselves instead of God’s glory, or do not rely on the Lord but on ourselves. This is true even of the good that we intend to do, not only the obviously selfish goals that we may have.

In the times we live in, Orthodox Christian family life necessarily involves heavy crosses, if it is truly a God-pleasing life. Those who marry, accept as many children as God pleases to send them, and make every sacrifice to rear these children in strict purity and piety, will doubtless receive a great reward as long as they do not stray from the narrow path, accepting all sorrows, privations, and loneliness as from the hand of the Lord for their salvation. This kind of life is a life of martyrdom, of witness. Such spouses and parents will find their place among those robed in white at the Throne of the Lamb. By the same token, because of the times we live in, many pious single people who deeply desire marriage and family life cannot find a suitable spouse. If they persevere in the Faith, despite the great loneliness they endure, they will find a great reward.

Let us resolve joyfully to run the course set for us by the Lord, the Judge of the contest and the Rewarder of those who do His will!

Thursday of the Fourth Week of Matthew 

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In today’s Gospel, the Lord invites us to cast off the heavy burden of sin and take up the light yoke of His commandments: 

The Lord said, All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. – Matthew 11:27-30

St. Theophan the Recluse describes how this change comes about in the heart of a repentant sinner: 

The Lord said, “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” O divine, O dear, O sweetest voice of Thine! Let us all follow the Lord Who calls us! But first we must feel something difficult and burdensome for us. We must feel that we have many sins, and that these sins are grave. From this feeling is born the need to seek relief. Faith will then show us that our only refuge is in the Lord and Saviour, and our steps will direct themselves toward Him. A soul desiring to be saved from sins knows what to say to the Lord: “Take my heavy, sinful burden from me; and I will take on Thy easy yoke.” And it happens like this: the Lord forgives the sins, and the soul begins to walk in His commandments. The commandments are the yoke, and sins are the burden. But comparing the two, the soul finds that the yoke of the commandments is light as a feather, while the burden of sins is heavy as a mountain. Let us not fear readily accepting the Lord’s easy yoke and His light burden. In no other way can we find rest unto our souls. – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, p. 135 

Here the saint has given us a step by step explanation of how the good change from walking on the path of perdition to walking on the path of salvation takes place in the soul:  

1. We must feel the burden of our sins, that they are many and are grave. 

2. From this feeling is born the need to seek relief. 

3.    Faith shows us that our only refuge is in the Lord and Savior. 

4. Our steps will direct themselves toward Him, and the soul knows what to say: Take my sins from me, and I will take on the yoke of Thy commandments!  

5. The Lord forgives the sins, and the soul begins to walk in His commandments.  

St. Theophan, of course, was writing for a readership of Orthodox Christians baptized in infancy, who were struggling with the sins that they committed after Baptism.  But the process of repentance is the same, whether one is still in need of the Mystery of Holy Baptism or one is a baptized Christian who needs the second Baptism of the tears of repentance.  And the process is the same for every human soul, for every soul needs Christ for relief from the burden of sin; every soul needs to take upon itself the light yoke of God’s commandments and to find salvation through Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as the only refuge of salvation. 

Not every human soul, however, responds to God’s call to Faith in the same way.  There is the worldly mind, the mind of unbelief, and there is the otherworldly mind, the mind of Faith.   Let us see how these two different minds work at each step of this five step process that St. Theophan has described:  

1.  Every human being feels the pain of bearing the burden of sin, but the worldly mind feels it only unconsciously or, when aware of it, ascribes it to something other than sin; it does not want to talk about sin.    The mind of Faith, on the other hand, says, “Yes, I have sinned; I see that my pain comes from my own choice, and that the only real evil for me is my own sin.  Nothing need separate me from God, if only I can repent!”  

2.  Every human being seeks relief from this pain of sin. But how the worldly mind seeks relief and how the mind of Faith seeks relief are two different things, and between them is a great chasm.  One can only go one way or the other. 

3.  The worldly mind seeks relief in worldly remedies, some that are noble or, for most people, some relief that is ignoble:  Being a do-gooder or being an evildoer;  being a good citizen or being a criminal; taking up some non-Christian ascetic practice like vegetarianism or being a glutton and a drunkard; being a philanthropist or being a miser – either way the result is the same, which is that the worldly relief does not heal the soul but rather only anesthetizes the soul from the pain of the consciousness of sin and the need for humility and repentance.   The mind of Faith, on the other hand, understands that all of these remedies are useless; the soul understands that it can find relief only in Christ, for all human efforts are worthless apart from faith in Christ.  So the mind and the will say, “Yes, I assent to the truths of the Faith,” and God gives the grace of Faith.  

4.  The worldly soul directs its steps on the path of pride, whether according to the higher or lower passions – the result is the same.  If the worldly person delights in the acts of goodness, he says, “I will follow the moral law my own way; one need not believe in this or that religion, but only be a good person.”  If the worldly person delights in the acts of evil, he simply indulges his passions.  But both are following the demonic mind, the mind of pride and self-chosen damnation, and the result is the same.  The former person may find an even greater punishment than the latter, for his pride may have been increased more by his good behavior than the other’s by his bad behavior.   The soul that lives according to Faith in Christ, on the other hand, directs its steps on the path of humility.  He knows that only the Lord Jesus Christ can take away his sins; his own behavior, unaided by Faith and Grace, cannot do this, no matter how hard he tries.  He takes up the yoke not of any commandments, not of some universal moral law or humanistic false virtue,  but rather he takes up consciously,  specifically, and explicitly the yoke of Christ’s commandments in the Gospel, and the experience of his constant inability to rise to the perfection of the Gospel inspires in him humility and complete dependence on grace.   This is why the yoke is light:  because at some point we realize we cannot carry it, and the Lord Who laid this yoke on us also carries it for us!  

5. The person who has the mind of the world finds a pseudo-salvation through temporary worldly happiness, whether of the higher or lower kind.   But his sins are not forgiven, because he has not come to Faith and repentance; he still carries the burden of his sins, because he has not given it to Christ in return for the light yoke of repentance.   The person with the mind of Faith finds forgiveness and salvation.   His soul is as light as a feather, for its burden – the burden of sin, the devil, death, and hell –  has been taken away and replaced by the light yoke of Christ, Who has already carried for us His Cross, which takes away all our sins.  

Dear Orthodox Christians, may we, every day, cast aside our passions and sins, and the dark thoughts that torment us, seeking not to numb our souls with the distractions and false promises of this world but rather to face the pain of our sins consciously and seek the remedy where it is to be found, in the tears of repentance to the Lord, Who takes from us the heavy yoke of sin and grants our souls feeling and light, as we rest in the unassailable refuge, in the shadow of His wings. 

Listen to a recording of my sermon on Matthew 6: 22 – 33, here

https://www.spreaker.com/user/youngfaithradio/sermon-matt3sun-2023

Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Matthew 

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The reading from the Holy Gospel today is Matthew 11: 16 – 20. 

The Lord said: But whereunto shall I liken this generation? It is like unto children sitting in the markets, and calling unto their fellows, And saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented. For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a devil. The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children. Then began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not. 

St. Theophan the Recluse likened the unrepentant sinners to whom Christ addressed these words to his contemporary, 19th century Orthodox Russians who were living mindlessly for this world, insensible to death and God’s judgment:  

The Lord says that we, not heeding the Gospels, are like those to whom merry songs are sung, but they do not dance; sad songs are sung, and they do not cry. You cannot do anything with them. We are promised the heavenly Kingdom, most bright and joyous, but we are unmoved, as if they were not speaking to us. We are threatened with impartial judgment and unending torments, but we are not alarmed; it is as if we do not hear. Downtrodden, we have lost all feeling of true self-preservation. We move as ones being led directly to destruction, and have not a care for our destiny. We have lost heart, given ourselves over to carelessness—what will be, will be! Look at our state! Is not this why suicides are so frequent? It is the fruit of modern teachings and views on man and his [in]significance! There is progress for you! There is enlightenment! It would be better to be totally ignorant, but save your soul with fear of God, than, having attained the title of an enlightened person, to perish unto the ages, never thinking your entire life about what will happen after death. Not a single jot shall pass from the word of God, which describes both the heavenly kingdom and hell—all will be as it is written. Take this to heart, everyone, as something which touches you personally; and take care for yourself, with all your strength, and as long as time remains. – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, pp. 133-134 

Our Lord in His time was rebuking not outsiders, not the Gentiles, but the Chosen People, the members of the Old Testament Church.  St. Theophan likewise applied the words of Christ to members of the New Testament Church, the Orthodox Christians of his own time.  Today, to profit from the Lord’s admonition, we must direct His accusation at ourselves.

St. Theophan accuses the false education of his time for creating this indifference of baptized Orthodox Christians to the hour of death and God’s judgment.  The science, falsely so-called, of the apostate West had by the late 19th century destroyed the minds of a critical mass of the Russian aristocracy, intelligentsia, and clergy, and therefore when a certain foreign element engineered the Revolution, the weakened and effete souls of the Russian leadership class could not resist it, did not even want to resist it; many of them even danced with suicidal joy as the Revolution rose up and devoured them.    Liberal clergy and academics who escaped the wreck of their nation fled to Paris and other Babylons of apostate worldliness like New York, and, they went right on, not missing a beat, setting up academic comfort zones where they could continue to propagate the lies of liberalism and modernism that had enabled the triumph of Marxism, utterly shameless, oblivious to their guilt for the catastrophe which they and their mentors had done so much to create.   Their intellectual heirs today are the superstar academic theologians – so-called – of World Orthodoxy who teach ecumenism, universalism, and the re-interpretation of Holy Scripture in the light of evolutionism. 

What do the teachings of all of these pied pipers of apostasy, who claim to be Orthodox theologians, have in common?  It is the spirit of Antichrist, for they do not claim to attack Christ but rather the opposite:  they claim that they are teaching the truth about Christ !  But behold the fruit of their teaching in their disciples: indifference to the literal reality of the coming judgment, supercilious self-satisfaction posing as virtuous moderation, and an Epicurean enjoyment of the physical and psychic beauties of Orthodoxy without  bearing the cross of confessing the hard truths of Orthodoxy to the apostate world.  Their assignment from the demons, who are their masters, was the task of destroying that single-minded and pure-hearted zeal for the salvation of souls which alone will enable us to escape the wrath that is to come. Judging from the typical sermon one hears from the amvon on any given Sunday, they have performed their task quite well.

The false teachings of these men include a denial of the literal reality of the Six Day Creation and of the universal Flood of Noah; they claim that one can reconcile the fairy tales of Darwinism with the truth of Holy Scripture.    For them and their disciples, the history of the world stretches back endlessly into a time so great as to be unreal, and stretches forward into the future in the same manner:  both the Creation and the Second Coming as taught in Holy Scripture are really just images, metaphors for, well, something or other quite abstract and far away, that can only be described accurately by experts like them, in long, boring pages of mystifying rigamarole.   Those who believe in such things will live according to this belief, which means that they will live for this world and not the next. They will not escape the wrath that is to come.

Another one of their fond imaginings is that heaven and hell are not places but “states of mind.” This is so vague and so incomprehensible to the ordinary mind that it must be highly intelligent, even spiritual…right?    But here is how a real Orthodox teacher, St. Ignatius Brianchaninov teaches us to think about hell:  

Frequently enumerate the eternal woes that await sinners.  By frequently docketing these miseries make them stand vividly before your eyes.  Acquire a foretaste of the torments of hell so that at the graphic remembrance of them your soul may shudder, may tear itself away from sin, and may have recourse to God with humble prayer for mercy, putting all hope in His infinite goodness and despairing of yourself.  Recall and represent to yourself the terrible subterranean gulf and prison that constitute hell.  The gulf or pit is called bottomless.  Precisely!  That is just what it is in relation to men.  The vast prison of hell has many sections and many different kinds of torment and torture by which every man is repaid according to the deeds he has done in the course of his earthly life.  In all sections imprisonment is eternal, the torments eternal.  There, insufferable, impenetrable darkness reigns, and at the same time the unquenchable fire burns there with an ever equal strength.  There is no day there.  There is always eternal night.  The stench there is insupportable, and it cannot be compared with the foulest earthly fetor.  The terrible worm of hell never slumbers or sleeps.  It gnaws and gnaws, and devours the prisoners of hell without impairing their wholeness or destroying their existence, and without ever being glutted itself.  Such is the nature of all the torments of hell; they are worse than any death, but they do not produce death.  Death is desired in hell as much as life is desired on earth.   Death would be a comfort for all the prisoners of hell.  It is not for them.  Their fate is unending life for unending suffering.  Lost souls in hell are tormented by the insufferable executions with which the eternal prison of those rejected by God abounds; they are tormented there by the unendurable grief; they are tormented there by that most ghastly disease of the soul – despair. – The Arena, chapter 28, “On the Remembrance of Death” 

The worldly man recoils at such words, not only, or even primarily, at the simplicity and the horror of this description of the torments awaiting him, but primarily because he cannot accept the way of escape that the saint offers to him:  “Acquire a foretaste of the torments of hell so that your soul may shudder, may tear itself away from sin, and may have recourse to God with humble prayer for mercy, putting all hope in His infinite goodness and despairing of yourself.”   The pride of the fallen mind cannot abide such words; it runs instead to fabricate its own imaginary escape from the torments to come in the form of a delusory intellectual construct.    Such a man may say that he believes in God, but in fact he believes in the powers of his own mind.   He will write “I did it my way” on his tombstone and go to burn in hell.  

We, however, most certainly need not go this way of pride, despair, and damnation.  We can choose the narrow but joyful path of simplicity of heart, accepting the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Tradition of the Church as they are taught to us clearly by the saints.  Let us acquire the mind of the saints, which is the mind of Christ, and with non-reliance on our fallen minds and wills, with all-daring hope in God’s mercy towards sinners, obtain that firm hope of salvation that He desires to grant those who believe in His Word with purity of heart. 

Wednesday of the Third Week of Matthew

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In today’s Gospel, the Lord promises His disciples that they who endure to the end shall be saved:

The Lord said to His disciples, Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues; And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles. But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you. And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved – Matthew 10: 16-22

St. Theophan the Recluse gives us a to-do list of concrete measures to take in order to endure wisely unto salvation:

…Do we have anything to endure? In this no one is lacking. Everyone’s arena of endurance is vast, and therefore our salvation is at hand. Endure everything to the end and you will be saved. However, you must endure skillfully – otherwise you may not gain anything by your endurance.

First of all, keep the Holy Faith and lead an irreproachable life according to the Faith. Immediately cleanse with repentance every sin that occurs.

Second, accept everything that you must endure from the hands of God, remembering firmly that nothing happens without God’s will.

Third, give sincere thanks to God for everything, believing that everything which proceeds from the Lord is sent by Him for the good of our souls. Thank Him for sorrows and consolations.

Fourth, love sorrow for the sake of its great salvific power, and cultivate within yourself a thirst for it as for a drink which, although bitter, is healing.

Fifth, keep in your thoughts that when misfortune comes, you cannot throw it off like a tight-fitting garment; you must bear it. Whether in a Christian way or in a non-Christian way, you cannot avoid bearing it; so it is better to bear it in a Christian way. Complaining will not deliver you from misfortune, but only make it heavier; whereas humble submission to God’s Providence and a good attitude relieve the burden of misfortunes.

Sixth, realize that you deserve even greater misfortune. Recognize that if the Lord wanted to deal with you as you rightly deserve, would He have sent you such a small misfortune?

Seventh, above all, pray, and the merciful Lord will give you strength of spirit. With such strength, when others marvel at your misfortunes, they will seem like nothing to you.

 – from Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, pp. 129-130

Now there we have a handy to-do list to print out and put on the refrigerator!

St. Theophan makes several points here, but I should like to expand on three: That we all have something to endure and therefore our salvation is at hand, that we actually deserve greater misfortunes than those which we receive, and that above all we must pray.

First: “…therefore our salvation is at hand.”   The spiritual struggler will lose hope if he sees this life as a dark tunnel with no end in sight. The devil would certainly like for us to see it this way. But this is an illusion.   When one thinks of the thousands of years since the Creation, and all the human generations before us, and the illimitable expanse of the aeons of the invisible universe inhabited by the angels, and the endless joy of the saints in heaven…one realizes that one is a very little person after all, that this life is short, and that all that matters is whether we please God in our short trial or not. This life is a sprint, not a marathon. Soon all will be over here, and our real life – or real sufferings – will start there. Is it not worth our while to endure for this short time?

Second: “…realize that you deserve even greater misfortune.” St. Ignaty Brianchaninov, in The Arena, is more explicit: One should realize that one deserves every temporal and eternal punishment.   Why is this? It is because the infinitely holy and good God has lavished His love on us, but we sin against Him. What misfortune would be sufficient to punish such ingratitude?   But the Lord does not visit such misfortune upon us – nothing we suffer is commensurate with what we deserve.   The proud human mind says that this teaching is a false image of a cruel god. The humble mind realizes that this is very Good News indeed, for it signifies that God desires our salvation, and that the misfortunes He sends us are not retribution but cleansing, because He wants us to be with Him once more in Paradise.

Third: “…above all, pray…”   The time of misfortune is actually the most opportune time for prayer, because it is a crisis, a moment of judgment, when we either go more deeply into prayer or we run away from God into illusory solutions to our predicament. When we do turn to God in great pain of heart, in the midst of suffering, our prayer deepens, we feel His presence, and we understand that we are made not for this life but for another world, that our home is not here but there, and this thought becomes the source of inexhaustible consolation. Prayer changes from being an interruption to our supposedly real life to the content of our really real life. We start praying more frequently, even constantly, and with greater fervor and attention.  This in turn gives us greater strength to endure the present misfortune and those yet to come.

Living in this way, we come to know in our experience the meaning of St. Paul’s words, “…we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose… For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:28, 38-29).”

Wednesday of the Second Week of Matthew

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Today’s reading from the Holy Gospel is Matthew 7: 21 – 23.  

 The Lord said: Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

St. Theophan the Recluse, in commenting on these words of Christ, connects the doing of God’s will to boldness in prayer: 

“Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven (Matt. 7:21).”  You will not be saved through prayer alone; you must unite with prayer fulfillment of the will of God—all that lies upon each person according to his calling and way of life. And prayer should have as its subject primarily the request that God enable us not to depart in any way from His holy will. Conversely, he who is zealous to fulfill God’s will in all things has boldness in prayer before God and greater access to His throne. Moreover, prayer that is not accompanied by walking in God’s will is often not true, sober and heartfelt prayer, but only external reading, during which one’s moral dysfunction is concealed by a multitude of words like a mist, while the thoughts are actually disorderly and wandering. Both must be made orderly through piety, and then there will be fruit. – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, pp. 124-125. 

“And prayer should have as its subject primarily the request that God enable us not to depart in any way from His holy will.”  We know that there are four types of prayer:  Glorification, Thanksgiving, Repentance, and Supplication.  The content of the first three types is fairly obvious:  We glorify God for Who He is in Himself and for all His works, we thank Him for all that He has done for us, and we acknowledge our sins, accusing ourselves in repentance and begging Him for the forgiveness for our sins.   But in our supplicatory prayers, we are often puzzled as to what we should ask for, for discernment often fails us as to what would be truly good for us and for those whom we love.   We think, “Just because we want something, does that mean it is really good for us?  Maybe it is not pleasing to God, and it will not turn out well for me if I get what I want.”  

This honest and salutary doubt, however, should not stop us from asking God for what we think we need or what others need.  Impartial and heartfelt prayer for others, especially, when we forget ourselves and our hearts go out in compassion to our brother,  is pleasing to God in itself as an act of charity, even if we cannot perfectly discern His will in regard to our particular petition.   When we say, “O Lord, heal my sick brother!    O Lord give him a home to live in, food to eat, the means to support his family,” and so forth, we are not saying that we know that God wants this specific thing in this specific instance; we are saying, rather, that in our human weakness we are crying out to Him for help in time of need, acknowledging our absolute dependence on Him and His absolute sovereignty and all-wise providence over our lives.

Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, the perfect model and exemplar for our lives, gives us the perfect model of supplicatory prayer in His prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, on the night before He died:   “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.”   Our Lord’s human nature, which was that of the New Adam, was in itself free not only from the sinful passions but also from the blameless passions, including the fear of death.   It was for our sake that He activated the potential of His human nature to suffer the blameless passions, in order to recapitulate in Himself all of man’s temptations and sufferings by His complete taking into Himself the consequences of all our sins, even unto death, though He was naturally immortal not only in His divinity but also in His deified humanity.   Therefore, when He exhibited the fear of death in the Garden, He was not play-acting:  He was really and truly afraid of death, gratuitously but truly suffering the spiritual, psychological, and physical pain of that ultimate fear as no other man ever did or ever will or ever can.    In this voluntary human weakness, He cries out to God His Father in the agony of His human soul, “Take this cup,” that is, His passion and death, “away from Me!”   But He immediately adds, “…not my will,” that is, His human will, “but Thy will be done,” perfectly uniting the faculty of the human will that He shares with us with the will of God and thereby reversing the disobedience of our first father Adam.  In a garden Adam disobeyed God and brought death into the world; in a garden, Christ obeys God and through His voluntary death conquers death for Adam and for all His race.  His obedience is expressed in the form of the perfect supplicatory prayer:  “My human weakness wants this, and do please give it to me, but if You want something else then give me that instead. Thy will be done.”  

To imitate the Lord in this regard, to acquire this complete and saving obedience in the core of our inner life, in our thoughts, our will, and our desires, and thereby attain perfect supplicatory prayer, we must practice obedience in our outer lives, obedience to God’s commandments. Today it is fashionable for people to say that they love God while they simultaneously and openly reject the necessity to obey this or that traditional commandment of God’s moral law as taught by the Church.  This is, of course, impossible.  They do not love God; they only imagine that they do.   The Lord Jesus Christ Himself said,   “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love (John 15:10),” and St. John the Theologian, who reports these words of Christ in his Gospel, reiterates this saving truth in his first Epistle:  “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous (I John 5:2-3).”   

The commandments of God are not hidden; they are well known.  They are given in Holy Scripture and skillfully summarized in the catechetical literature of the Church by wise and loving Holy Fathers for our benefit.  Yet how many today can even recite the Ten Commandments accurately?  How many know the eight principal faults and the standard remedies for these faults taught by the Holy Fathers?  How many know the Seven Corporal and Seven Spiritual Acts of Mercy, two useful lists that instruct us on how to avoid sins of omission, as the aforesaid lists instruct us on how to avoid the sins of commission? How many know the Beatitudes by heart, so as not only to understand the commands of justice but also to rise above these to the counsels of perfection, to that striving required of every Christian towards complete holiness? 

Here is a suggestion:   Obtain the Catechism of Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, a completely reliable and straightforward catechism from the 19th century that summarizes Scripture and Holy Tradition as understood by the Church.   Read it carefully, and at each reading, knowing the weakness of your will and understanding,  say the favorite prayer of St. Gregory Palamas, “O Lord, enlighten my darkness!” Memorize the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Beatitudes.   Study the principal faults and pray for the discernment to see them in yourself, so that you can repent.  Resolve to do God’s will in all things, every day and every moment.   

This holy labor is pleasing to God, and He will grant you His grace, to know His pleasing, perfect, and holy will.  And you will learn how and what for to pray, in union with the Incarnate Son of God’s own prayer to the Father.  

O Christ our God, perfect example of prayer to Thy Heavenly Father, teach us to do Thy will, for Thou art our God!  Amen. 

Tuesday of the Third Week of Matthew

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Today’s reading from the Holy Gospel is Matthew 10: 9 – 15.  

The Lord said to His disciples: Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, Nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves: for the workman is worthy of his meat. And into whatsoever city or town ye shall enter, inquire who in it is worthy; and there abide till ye go thence. And when ye come into an house, salute it. And if the house be worthy, let your peace come upon it: but if it be not worthy, let your peace return to you. And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city.

St. Theophan the Recluse takes the Lord’s condemnation of the unrepentant cities as a starting point to address two false teachings on man’s eternal destiny, teachings that are popular today, tempting even baptized Orthodox Christians to doubt the Church’s teaching on death and God’s judgment:  

The Lord also said to the apostles that if a city does not receive them, and will not hear their words, then It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city. And what will happen to us for our not hearing the words of Divine Revelation? It will be immeasurably intolerable be for us. To disbelieve the truth of God after so many tangible proofs is the same as reviling the Holy Spirit, and blaspheming. And yet we have no fear. The spiritists [and Hindus] say, “What judgment! We just have to be born a few more times.” The scientists say, “Who is there to judge? Everything is made of atoms; they will fly apart and that will be the end.” But, my friends, the hour of death will come; these dreams will fly away like phantoms, and we will all be faced with inevitabile reality. What then?… What wretched times we live in! The enemy has contrived to destroy our souls. He knows that fear of death and judgment is the strongest means for sobering up a soul—and so he makes every attempt to drive this away; and he succeeds. But extinguish the fear of death and fear of God will disappear; and without the fear of God the conscience becomes mute. The soul becomes empty, it becomes a waterless cloud, carried by any wind of teachings and various fits of passions.  – from Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, pp. 128 – 129

The devil offers various tasty dishes to unsuspecting sinners, according to their various sinful appetites.   He creates the appropriate moral temptations, of course, corresponding to the characteristic passions of those whom he attacks, but he also creates heresies, false teachings that correspond to the various kinds of curiosity, mental weakness, and upbringing of his intended victims. 

To religious people who believe in an afterlife, the devil offers the sickly sweet, delicious prospect of universal salvation, the doctrine that, in the end, God will forgive everybody, even Satan, and that everyone will be saved, whether they really want to be saved or not.  Every human being shall, willy-nilly, go through a number of reincarnations to work out his karma, and, finally, all will be well. In other words, if you do not get it right in this life, do not worry:  You will have an indefinite number of chances to straighten things out, or, rather, to be straightened out.  That is your fate, and it is everyone’s fate.  This idea is simply in the air today; no one has to study seriously the teachings of the eastern religions on the subject to have breathed in a vague belief in this error without noticing it.  And, sad to say, in the officially Orthodox world, we are even witnessing an attempt by some arrogant academicians to rehabilitate the heresy of Origen, who taught a version of universalism with his heresy of the apokatastasis, which was condemned by the Fifth Ecumenical Council.  Truly the enemy is within the gates. 

To those who still believe in the 19th century religion of scientism and its variants, like Darwinism, the devil offers the error of dogmatic materialism, the teaching that there is no God and no soul, and that we are all just atoms that fly apart at the end of life, as St. Theophan puts it.   It is difficult to justify such a belief philosophically; it actually requires much more blind faith than does traditional religious belief, and therefore only a few people with high IQs are deluded enough, clever enough, overeducated enough, and determined enough to defend such a silly and crude proposition.  But if we are honest, we must admit that most men live as if the dogma of materialism were true; they are practical atheists.   When King David wrote “The fool says in his heart that there is no God,” he was not talking about the official doctrines of Marxism or Darwinism, but about formally religious men who live as if God did not exist, regardless of their supposed beliefs.    

We are Orthodox Christians and, of course, we reject both errors.   Most of us must admit, however, that we do not have death always before our eyes, and that we can go hours or days or weeks – or longer – utterly consumed by temporal cares and dangerously oblivious to our eternal destiny.   We must resolve to struggle against this forgetfulness and acquire the continual remembrance of death, if we wish to practice true repentance and obtain a firm hope of our salvation.  There are various ways to do this:  

One is to pray faithfully and daily for our departed relatives, friends, and benefactors, as well as frequently offering their names for commemoration at the Divine Liturgy, sponsoring memorials for their salvation, and giving alms in their names.

Another is to visit cemeteries and say soberly, “Here my dead body will lie one day also!”

Another is to visit the elderly and gravely ill, which not only grants the grace pertaining to a blessed work of mercy commanded by the Gospel but also rebukes our illusion of perpetual youth and health, which is a lie of the devil.  

Another is to read the edifying accounts in the Lives of the Saints and the teachings of Scripture and the Fathers about what happens at the hour of death

Another is to read our night prayers faithfully and pay careful attention to the texts that speak of going to sleep as a foreshadowing of the hour of death. 

Today the world tempts us to dwell in anger over the malicious actions of the globalist cabal of government united to big business, which are causing so much death among the young and healthy by unjust wars and by genocidal assaults on whole populations through the abuse of medicine and technology.   Certainly we should recognize what is going on and not delude ourselves, but simply to be angry is to be worldly; there is no spiritual benefit in such a state of mind.   Let us recognize the great blessing in all this, for God always uses evil to bring about our salvation, if only we will to live in repentance. We can turn this evil to good through using these admittedly terrifying circumstances to humble ourselves with the remembrance of death and God’s judgment, and to acquire peace of soul through cleansing the conscience and entrusting ourselves to God’s all wise Providence, which is always directed towards our eternal happiness. 

Life is short, death is certain, judgment is eternal.  Let us seek the blessed relief that comes when we no longer cling to this passing life and instead rejoice in the prospect of the age to come, where there will be no more death, but only life everlasting and endless joy in the intimate presence of our beloved Lord. 

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 Heartfelt thanks to our benefactors! May the Lord bless you and your family as we begin the Holy Apostles’ Fast of 2023.  My parish is small, and though they are self-sacrificing, generous, and supportive according to their size, they cannot provide a full-time income for a family today. Your gifts, dear benefactors, enable me to write in my spare time, and to do unremunerative mission work in addition to my parish work, instead of working at a secular job.  

I have an important announcement to make:  We hope to launch a Substack site in the near future, as a way of making our work known to a wider audience and in order to offer an alternate way to give donations, using the subscription function on Substack.   Our Spreaker channel and the Orthodox Truth blog will remain active, but future essays and podcasts will also be published on the Substack site.  I do not plan to put any of my work behind a paywall on Substack; the subscription function will be used as a method for donations, not payment in return for intellectual productions.   “Freely have ye received; freely give.”  

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Introduction – Our Situation and What Is Called For 

It is obvious that those who hold the reins of earthly power in all sectors of society today throughout the world – in government, science so-called, medicine, the media, education, the security apparatus, etc. – hate Our Lord Jesus Christ, worship Satan, and are striving mightily to assist the demons in our temporal and eternal destruction.  By now this should be beyond need of demonstration to anyone paying attention, much less to the remnant of Orthodox Christians who have retained a comprehensive Orthodox worldview and evaluate current events from that perspective.  There are Orthodox Christians – including, or, rather, especially bishops and priests – who stubbornly refuse to recognize this, but that does not change the reality.  Beholding this self-chosen blindness on their part only reinforces our understanding that there is so much spiritual deception (plani/prelest) both outside and inside the Church today, that it is a great miracle when anyone today remains on the path to salvation.   God, however, loves to work miracles for His chosen, and we must learn how to dispose ourselves to receive the miracle of our salvation, with all-daring hope in His mercy.  How can we do so? 

When the men of old constructed great fortifications, they usually designed them with successive rings of defense:  an outer wall, one or more inner walls, and, finally, the keep, a central stronghold of great strength, designed as the last sanctuary and place of defense when all the outer defenses had given way.  We may apply this plan of the castle as an image of our life in society:  The outermost defense consists of the traditional institutions of the state, which in Christian societies were designed to protect the next line of defense, which consisted of the outward institutions of the Church.  These institutions – the hierarchy, clergy, national and local synods, etc.,  with all their great array of instruments in the form of income-producing property, in the form of magnificent buildings for worship, administration, education, care for the needy, etc., in the form of canonical rules and structures, in the form of great art, literature, and all the rest  – all of this was designed to protect Orthodox life at the level where it is lived, in the local monastery, in the local parish, and in the home.   These local structures in turn formed another line of defense for the monastic brotherhoods and families they fostered.   The brotherhoods and families, in turn, formed a line of defense for the individual soul.    Finally, at the center of all these concentric castle walls, there is the innermost keep, the final refuge:  The soul itself, in the center of which is the heart, where, if Christ the King is enthroned as Master, He will triumph in the last battle that occurs when all the other defenses are thrown down.   Ultimately He is the only defender that we need.  

I daresay that those of us who have lived long in this world and yet somehow – God alone knows how – still remain in possession of our rationality, much less our Faith, understand that the walls of defense of the Christian state and the traditional Church institutions have been destroyed, and, unless we live to see the Lord raise up the last and greatest Orthodox Tsar prophesied by our recent elders and saints, we will not see these walls rebuilt in our lifetime. We need not rehearse the story of the great apostasy of  the various Antichrist revolutions which achieved its greatest triumph in the Bolshevik revolution,  a revolution which has not ended.  It has continued unabated until this day, and it now threatens to engulf America entirely.   Without analyzing all of the details, it is enough to understand that we cannot rely on the state to protect the Church and that, in fact, the power of the state is, in general, being devoted to Her destruction.   Likewise, it is enough to understand that every one of the historic patriarchates and great national Church institutions have been internally destroyed; though the outward semblance remains, they are empty shells.  This has occurred somewhat by the actions of the state, but above all by the apostasy of the church hierarchy.    Truly, as St. John the Theologian prophesies in the Apocalypse, the stars – that is, the bishops – have fallen from the skies.

Therefore our outermost castle defense now consists of tiny and makeshift church institutions:  provisional church administrations headed by the few remaining right believing and confessing bishops, with sketchy organization, few resources, and constantly shifting memberships and alliances, with little capacity – beyond the minimum of simply preserving the apostolic succession – to help the local institutions of monastery, parish, and family   There are valiant bishops, clergy, and lay administrators who have remained faithful. They are carrying on the fight; they are still manning these crumbling walls though the overwhelming majority of their former colleagues have abandoned the fight and joined the enemy.   This takes a lot of courage. So these men need and deserve all the support we can give them. We cannot expect them to provide all that the great institutions of the past provided us, and we should not reproach them when they cannot do what is beyond their strength.  Simultaneously, we must do all in our power, God helping us, to strengthen the monastic life, local parish life, and family life, realistically and humbly, within the limits imposed by our situation: Every one of us must become an active warrior for the victory of the Church, and being a passive, nominal Orthodox Christian is not an option.   

Finally – and this is the subject of my talk today – it is absolutely urgent that each of us take refuge daily in the innermost keep of the soul, by directing the attention of our mind to the heart, acquiring the habit of continual spiritual attention, combatting our logismoi – the psychic flow of our mental sins or merely distracting and useless thoughts – and concentrating the mind in the heart, with the single thought of the sweetest name of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who alone can and will triumph over the enemies fighting against us.    

The Persecution Is Now

Everyone in the English speaking True Orthodox world is – or should be – familiar with Russia’s Catacomb Saints, by Professor Ivan M. Andreyev and Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose).   The book’s dedication reads thus:  “This book is dedicated to the Christian Martyrs, Today in Russia, Tomorrow in America.”   And many of us are familiar with the prophecy of the Elder Ignatius of Harbin:  “What began in Russia will end in America.”  

It does not take much imagination to observe what is going on today in this country and conclude that we are in the early stages of an official and open persecution of Christians in the United States.   We observe the events and the trends, we worry about it, we may get caught up in the Internet debates about this or that aspect of the problem – engineered economic crises enabling a few criminals to transfer the wealth of entire nations into their own bank accounts,  the “woke” brainwashing in the universities,  principled people losing their jobs and businesses during the great Covid deception and the looming prospect of another such fake crisis enabling more persecution of the same kind, parents getting arrested by the police for standing up at school board meetings to protest their children’s being initiated into abominable sexual practices by their teachers, and so forth.  

So we worry, we argue, we get upset…perhaps – let us be honest – we are actually entertained, in some sick way, by the whole thing: we enjoy being angry about it and verbally abusing the people responsible for it.     But are we really doing anything serious to ready ourselves for the moment when we are faced with the necessity to give up something in this world – friends, school, job, home, health, perhaps life itself – in order to save our souls?   Are we even able to recognize such moments when they comes?   Has this moment perhaps already come and gone, and we did not notice?   In other words, do we even possess the discernment to recognize when such a choice is before us?  It is quite possible to lose one’s salvation by an incremental series of compromises and not realize we have done so till we die and the demons come to take the soul to hell.  The great and obvious crisis – the dramatic moment when the Bolshevik thug points a gun at your head and orders you to choose between Christ and Lenin – that moment may never come.   It is possible to go to hell simply by getting into the habit of saying to those who are peddling the lies, “Maybe you are right,” in order to avoid an earthly loss of some kind or simply the momentary discomfort of an emotional conflict.  To borrow the apt image T.S. Eliot employs in the concluding lines of “The Hollow Men,” it is more likely that we shall perish not with a bang but with a whimper.  

So the persecution is now.   Though aspects of the outward persecution are certainly in place already, and we are feeling the pressure, and some of our brethren have already – and nobly – paid an outward price for their faithfulness,  the persecution is still chiefly mental and spiritual, and it is so intense that there are days when you can feel that your are losing your mind.   The Soviets set up mental hospitals where they would intern the “counter-revolutionaries” and “enemies of the People”  in order to poison their minds with drugs and make them crazy.  Today the Neo-Soviets in America have turned the entire country into an insane asylum, in which the most insane and most criminal inmates of the asylum are the people in charge.   The persecution was crude and obvious in the Soviet Union; it is much more subtle now, and it has been put into place slowly and patiently, chiefly through deception rather than through violence, while very few people even noticed.  We turn around and now we suddenly notice that the America of ten years ago – much less 50 or 100 years ago – has vanished, and we are living in a sinister version of Alice in Wonderland where nothing that the people in power say makes any sense.  If we give in and surrender our minds to endless fascination with the ever changing mental kaleidoscope of the false mainstream narrative and the myriad false competing narratives offered as alternatives, our minds will be demonized without much effort on the part of the demons. The demons can practically take a vacation.  

What is the Solution? 

There are steps we must take to preserve our souls, both in our dealings with the world out there and with our inner spiritual struggles.  Today I want to talk about the primary battle, which is to preserve the innermost keep of the castle of our lives, that is, the mind and heart.  So today let us speak of the constitution of our inner world and how to preserve it.  

The Universe Within 

In his Handbook of Counsel, St. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain talks about each man possessing within himself something greater than the entire visible universe.  Here’s what he says:  

God first created the invisible world and then the visible world.  After everything else He creates man, of an invisible soul and a visible body.  Thus He renders him like a cosmos – not a small cosmos within a great one, as the philosopher of Nature Democritos has said, and as other philosophers opine, calling man very pettily only a microcosmos and limiting his dignity and perfection to this visible world; no, God renders man a great cosmos within the small one.   Man is a megalocosmos through the multitude of powers he contains, especially intuitive and discursive reason and the will, which the physical universe does not have.  For this is what Gregory the Theologian says: “He places man on the earth like a second cosmos, a great cosmos within a small one” (Discourse on the Nativity and Pascha); a cosmos adorning both universes, the visible and invisible, according to the divine Gregory of Thessalonica (Discourse on the Entry of the Theotokos, I); a cosmos which connects the two ends of the world above and the world below, and makes it clear that the Creator is one, according to Nemesios.  – Handbook of Counsel, 2nd Edition, 1885, translated by Constantine Cavarnos and quoted in volume 3 of “Modern Orthodox Saints,” St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite 

This thought – that what is inside of us is greater than what is outside of us – has great power to console us and to motivate us when we are faced with the tyrannical demands of the outer world.  Nothing the world offers can give us greater happiness than that which we can possess within, when the powers of the soul are enlivened by the grace that we receive from the Orthodox Holy Mysteries and we follow the path of inner perfection as taught by the Holy Fathers.  Always remember:   God may allow bad people to take away from you every visible thing you have – family, property, and even your temporal life.  But He will never allow them to take away your soul, if you choose not to let them.  The more you will cultivate your inner life, the more secure you will be in the peace that the world cannot give and cannot take away (John 14:27: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”).  And along with this peace, you will grow both in discernment to know what is true from what is false and in the power of the will to confess truth and to deny falsehood. 

Russia’s Catacomb Saints as a Moral Catechism

  I cannot emphasize strongly enough that all of us should own at least once copy of Russia’s Catacomb Saints study it periodically.   It is out of print and will probably never be re-printed, at least not in its original form, and all of us should download it or scan it and share it as widely as possible both in hard copy and digital format. 

(It is also available now in hardcover from Lulu: https://www.lulu.com/search?page=1&q=Russia%27s+Catacomb+Saints&pageSize=10&adult_audience_rating=00.)

A lot more data about the New Martyrs of Russia has, of course, become available, since the so-called fall of Communism, but the enduring value of Russia’s Catacomb Saints, published in 1982 when the Soviet Union still existed, lies in the interpretation given to the amount of data that they had, by the authors Dr. Andreyev and Fr. Seraphim.   A small amount of data presented with the right interpretation, especially in the spiritual realm, in which the quantity of data is simply not that important, is always far preferable to a large quantity of data presented with muddled, misleading, or outright false interpretations.   What Russia’s Catacomb Saints still offers us today is a vivid catechism in the acquisition of the discernment of the spirit of Antichrist.    One should not only study – if possible, memorize – the stories in the book; one should immerse oneself in the spirit of the book, which is ineffably fragrant with the otherworldly humility of wisdom, a quality generally lacking in many of the slick and shiny publications pouring out today from officially approved Orthodox publishing houses. 

Russia’s Catacomb Saints is over 600 pages long, and obviously we do not have time today to talk about all of it.   I have chosen the stories of three personalities who are described there to help us gain some insight into the absolute necessity for developing the inner life of prayer in times of persecution:  The author I.M. Andreyev, New Martyr Matushka Maria of Gatchina, and New Hieromartyr Archbishop Pachomius of Chernigov.  Andreyev teaches us about the distinct existence of the spiritual realm as opposed to the psychosomatic, Matushka Maria teaches us about the ability to be joyful while living completely within the soul with no physical activity whatsoever, and Archbishop Pachomy teaches us that even if our discursive reason is destroyed by stress and persecution – even if we seem outwardly to have lost our minds – it is entirely possible that the noetic life of the spiritual reason, the life of prayer and holiness, can continue in the depths of the soul, if that life has been cultivated prior to losing one’s outward sanity.   

Fr. Seraphim Rose’s short biography of Professor Andreyev, entitled “About the Author,” at the beginning of Russia’s Catacomb Saints, is not only an engaging introduction to an outstanding Orthodox intellectual of the 20th century.  It presents a paradigm of conversion consisting of an ascent from materialism through idealism to a thoroughly Orthodox, patristic worldview, not merely as an intellectual position, but rather as a heartfelt conviction permeating and determining all of a man’s thoughts, feelings, and actions, at the cost of great sacrifice while yielding great joy.  The passage in the biography illustrating best the thoroughness and the meaning of Andreyev’s conversion relates the gift of spiritual insight he received while praying to St. Seraphim at Diveyevo in 1926. I shall quote this passage in full, because it is so important:  

Having come to true Orthodoxy, Andreyev finally, on a pilgrimage to St. Seraphim’s Diveyevo Convent, had an experience which he describes as his “spiritual birth.” It was the custom for pilgrims to Diveyevo to remain at least 24 hours in the convent and perform there the “rule” laid down by St. Seraphim himself:  to walk around the “canal” of the Mother of God (the path around the convent), saying a special rule of prayer by prayer-rope, praying for all one’s relations and close ones, and at the end expressing one’s most heartfelt, most needed desire, which would unfailingly be granted, according to one’s desire.  Andreyev thus describes his experience:  

“When, at the end of the third circuit of the ‘canal,’ having performed the whole rule, I wished to express my heartfelt desires, something miraculous occurred to me, evidently by the great mercy of St. Seraphim.  I was suddenly gripped by an entirely special, warm, and fragrant joy – an undoubting conviction with my whole being of the existence of God and of an entirely real communion prayer with Him.  And it became entirely evident and clear to me that any request for anything earthly would be equal to the prayer: Lord, depart from me and deprive me of Thy wondrous gift…And inwardly I fervently addressed God, ‘O Lord, give me nothing, takeaway from me all earthly prosperity, but only do not deprive me of the joy of communion with Thee, or, if it is impossible to preserve this always in our life, then grant me remembrance of heart, grant me the possibility of preserving to death the remembrance of this present blessed minute of the sensing of Thy Holy Spirit!’  

“The next day we went to Savor.  We venerated the relics of St. Seraphim with great emotion, with spiritual fear and reverence.   I sensed that I had been spiritually born the previous day at Diveyevo.  Everything had become new within me.  Previously I had not understood such a simple truth, that spiritual things are more distinct from those of the soul than the latter from bodily things.   But now I understood this all well.  Within, in the depths of my soul, it was quiet, calm, joyful.  The outward miracles at the shrine of St. Seraphim, which occurred before my eyes, did not astonish me.  All this seemed simple and natural…

“My whole life after my pilgrimage to Sarov Monastery changed.  The Lord took away from me, in accordance with my prayer at the canal, all earthly goods, but He preserved forever in me the remembrance of that moment when, in His limitless kindness, by the mercy of the Most Holy Mother of God and the prayers of St. Seraphim, I a sinner, totally undeservedly, was vouchsafed to experience in myself the quiet, joyful, gentle, and fragrant wafting of the Holy Spirit of the Lord.”  (“A Pilgrimage to Sarov and Diveyevo in 1926,” in Orthodox Way, 1953, pp. 20-21, 25). – Russia’s Catacomb Saints, pp. 30-31 

The central statement in the passage above is this: “…such a simple truth, that spiritual things are more distinct from those of the soul than the latter from bodily things.”   In Orthodoxy, and only in Orthodoxy, man has direct access to spiritual life and authentic spiritual experiences, properly speaking, while in other religious systems, including those outwardly similar to Orthodoxy like old-fashioned Catholicism,  even the highest experiences of the most outstanding personalities are psychic not spiritual – they are psychiko not pneumatiko, dushevni not dukhovni –  and the difference between the psychic and the spiritual is immeasurably greater than the difference between bodily and psychic experiences.  The fact that we are Orthodox and thereby have access to that which is genuinely spiritual is not due to any worthiness on our part – we all know Catholics and Protestants, or even non-Christians, who seem to be better people than we are.  It is not our worthiness that bestows true spiritual experience, but rather the uncreated grace of God acting through faith and baptism in the spiritual intellect and the spiritual heart (which together the Fathers call the nous), that is given to those of orthodox faith and is not given to those outside the Church, by the pre-eternal determination of God’s sovereign wisdom and will and not according to any human calculation.  This realization should arouse in us the most earnest contrition for our ingratitude in the face of such an undeserved and immeasurable gift transcending all other human joys, and it should inspire us to do whatever is necessary – to resolve, like Dr. Andreyev, to give up everything if necessary – to obtain the infinite gift offered to us and to preserve it throughout our lives, unto death.   This gift enabled Andreyev and countless others like him to endure the most terrible sufferings in the trials of the 20th century and to be faithful to Christ all their lives.  It can enable us to do so in the 21st century as well.   

The great podvig of the nun Maria of Gatchina was to practice continuous and attentive prayer with unremitting patience while lying completely paralyzed from an extreme form of Parkinson’s disease, and she received the gift of the Holy Spirit to console the suffering people who came to her seeking counsel and relief, in an immediate and obviously miraculous fashion.   Here is what Andreyev writes about her:  

…her whole body became as it were chained and immovable, her face anemic and like a mask; she could speak, but she began to talk with half-closed mouth, through her teeth, pronouncing slowly and in a monotone.   She was at total invalid and was in constant need of help and careful looking after.  Usually this disease proceeds with sharp psychological changes (irritability, a tiresome stubbornness in repeating stereotyped questions, an exaggerated egoism and egocentrism, manifestations of senility, and the like), as a result of which such patients often ended up in psychiatric hospitals.   But Mother Maria, being a total physical invalid, not only did not degenerate psychically, but revealed completely extraordinary features of personality and character, not characteristic of such patients:  she became extremely meek, humble, submissive, undemanding, concentrated in herself; she became engrossed in constant prayer, bearing her difficult condition without the least murmuring.  As if as a reward for this humility and patience, the Lord sent her a gift:  consolation of the sorrowing.  Completely strange and unknown people, finding themselves in sorrows, grief, depression, and despondency, began to visit her and converse with her.   And everyone who came to her left consoled, feeling an illumination of their grief, a pacifying of sorrow, a calming of fears, a taking away of depression and despondency. The news of this extraordinary nun gradually spread far beyond the boundaries of Gatchina. – Russia’s Catacomb Saints, pp. 85-86. 

(Holy New Martyr Maria of Gatchina was arrested in 1930 for her refusal to accept the Declaration of Metropolitan Sergius, and she died briefly afterwards  – probably murdered – in a prison hospital.)

There are many insights to be gleaned from this saint’s amazing witness, but I would like to point out one aspect of this extraordinary story that applies directly to our electronic media-addicted generation:  Matushka Maria had very little or no mental stimulation or variety of experience from outside sources, but she did not go insane from boredom.  On the contrary:  she attained the heights of wisdom and understanding, enabling her to give immediately effective counsel to all those who came to her.  Remember what St. Nicodemus said above:  Our inner world is immeasurably larger than the outer world.   Our souls are constantly functioning in the invisible universe, though because of our worldliness and inattentiveness, we do not perceive it.  As we grow in prayer and inner attention, we find that our interior experiences are actually more attractive than our outer experiences, and therefore we find it less and less necessary to be distracted in order to be happy.   So it is critical to attain an active and attentive inner life, not only in order to acquire discernment about the lies and delusions of the present but also to prepare for that day in the future when we may be severely disabled like St. Maria or locked in solitary confinement in a prison cell, or simply be cast out and have no friends and no social life, because of our loyalty to Christ.  We need to start now; today is the day of salvation.  We do not know what tomorrow will bring.  

The sufferings of Holy New Hieromartyr Pachomius, Archbishop of Chernigov, the spiritual father of our own Archbishop Leonty of Chile, of blessed memory, constitute for me the most poignant account in Russia’s Catacomb Saints.  Vladika Pachomy’s sufferings – both from the situation of the Church and from his own time in the Gulag – were so terrible that they caused him to have a mental breakdown, and he was released for a time to the care of his sister Vera.  The poor man would have periods of lucidity, during which he realized the extent of his mental infirmity, and he would actually try to escape his sister’s house, in order not to burden her.  Finally his sister could no longer take the stress of the situation, and she decided to take her brother to a mental hospital.  Of course, in Soviet times, this often meant a death sentence, for they would simply euthanize helpless people, as we see going on increasingly today in the so-called free West, and, indeed, St. Pachomius suddenly died only two months after entering the hospital.   Here is how his nephew describes the scene in which he last saw his uncle, Vladika Pachomy:  

…The winter had settled in; everywhere there was a lot of white glistening snow.  My uncle came down dressed in a warm overcoat with a black Mount Athos monastic cap on his head; he had a large black beard that had not ye turned grey.  He looked at me with a quiet gaze.  He did not bless me for we were afraid; he just embraced me and was gone.  A strange sweet feeling came over my heart; it settled in like some beautiful melancholy music that lingers on even though the sound has died long ago.  That was all I saw of my uncle New-Martyr Pachomius.  – Russia’s Catacomb Saints, p. 203 

How could the boy feel a sweet fragrance and beautiful music embracing his heart in such a dark moment?   Here was his mad uncle going off to an insane asylum and probably to imminent death at the hands of evil men.   What he felt must have been something that transcended the physical situation as well as his uncle’s psychic state.   He perceived the grace that still exuded from a holy soul and a holy body.  The spiritual powers that the bishop had stored up through years of the sacramental life, of podvig, of inner prayer, of service to the Church and, finally, of suffering as a righteous confessor of Jesus Christ,  still acted within the depths of his soul, in his spiritual intellect, though his discursive intellect was so profoundly damaged.   I have had similar experiences with pious people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease:  For months they did not speak; they did not know their own children; they could not remember their own names.  But when the caregiver would say, “Father has brought you Holy Communion, “ they would make the Sign of the Cross and open their mouths.   The spiritual mind knew what the worldly mind could not perceive.  

One day any of us could be reduced to such a state of outward helplessness, in body and in mind, either by disease or by the machinations of the demons and of evil men.  Let us begin today to store up spiritual riches through an attentive inner life, through frequent and careful confession and Holy Communion, and in general gradually stripping ourselves of our earthly attachments, curiosity, desires, and fears, while spending more and more time in prayer, in spiritual reading, and in quiet labors for God and neighbor.  We trust that the All-Merciful Lord will not abandon us, and that by His undeserved gift of grace, we will receive and always remember the sweet visitation of the All-Holy Spirit, which will sustain us unto death and good hope at the dread judgment seat of Christ.  

I would like to close with words from an inscription New Hieromartyr Pachomius of Chernigo once wrote on his portrait given to his cell-attendant Novice Basil, the future Archbishop Leonty of Chile:  

Dear Vasya F., 

‘Paradise is the love of God from which Adam fell; and since then joy did not encounter him even though he labored and tilled the hard earth.’ 

‘He who has acquired love, tastes Christ every day and every hour and becomes immortal through it.  Love is much sweeter than life.  He who has acquired love becomes clothed in God Himself.’  

‘The glory of the body is submission to chastity through the help of God.  A chaste body in the sight of God is worth more than a pure sacrifice.’  

From St. Isaac the Syrian. 

(Signed) Unworthy Archbishop Pachomius 

Through the prayers of St. Isaac and all of our Holy and God-bearing Fathers, and all the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, O Christ God, have mercy on us and save us.   Amen.   

Pentecost Week – Friday of the First Week of Matthew

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In today’s Gospel, Our Lord continues His Sermon on the Mount, the charter of Gospel perfection.

Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths: But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God’s throne: Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black. But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. – Matthew  5: 33-41

What does it mean to turn the other cheek? The Church does not teach absolute pacifism, for there are times when we must resist evil on behalf of others: for example, a Christian man who does not resist someone invading his home to kill his family is not only not virtuous but rather the opposite. An Orthodox warrior who fights for his nation to resist alien conquest fulfills Christ’s words that the greatest love is to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. And we must always struggle fiercely, with unwavering intransigence, against the enemies of the Church who devour men’s souls. It is to one’s own enemies that one must turn the other cheek; no one has given us the right to practice non-resistance to the enemies of God, the Church, the family, and the nation. We must practice meekness towards the person right in front of us whom we see every day, the one we live with, work with, worship with. It is he who is constantly offending our self-love; it is he whom God has sent into our lives to help us find our salvation.

Furthermore, meekness gives birth to courage: the man who – not from some defect of his incensive faculty but out of a conscious choice to practice evangelical meekness with the help of grace – does not repay with slander the colleague who slanders him at work, or who does not voice resentment against his brother-in-law for not repaying a loan, or who practices absolute silence in regard to his wife’s defects of character, is more, not less, likely to lead the charge when the battle trumpet sounds. Self-sacrifice has become his fundamental orientation, and virtue to virtue gives birth.

To acquire both the discernment and the power to start practicing lofty evangelical virtues like meekness, however, we must have a conscious inner life. There is no external calculus one can apply infallibly to every single moral situation – you have to construct an inner compass. In the introduction to his Russian translation of the Philokalia, St. Theophan the Recluse states that cultivating the inner life of attentiveness is required of every Christian, not only consecrated ascetics:

Secret life in our Lord Jesus Christ, which is the truly Christian life, begins, develops, and rises to perfection (for each in his own measure), through the good will of God the Father, by the action of the grace of the Holy Spirit present in all Christians, and under the guidance of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, Who promised to abide with us for all time…God’s grace calls all men to such a life; and for all men it is not only possible but obligatory… – Writings from the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart, Kadloubovsky and Palmer trans., Faber and Faber 1951, p. 13

The Sermon on the Mount, with its demand for perfection above nature (“Be ye therefore perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect”), is comprehensible only to those leading the grace-filled life of the Church in the manner intended by God, that is, with the struggle for unceasing attention and prayer, under the guidance of the Church and in conjunction with the life of the Holy Mysteries. Teachings created by minds functioning outside of this life, whether on moral philosophy, social reform, or proposed political utopias, all contain fatal flaws. The only way back for us, the only return to sanity – for ourselves, our families, our nations, our civilization – is through the strait gate of the heart.