25 September OS 2018 – Monday of the 2nd Week of St. Luke; S. Euphrosyne, S. Sergius of Radonezh
In today’s Gospel, the Lord states that the purpose of His ministry is to preach the Kingdom of God:
At that time, Jesus came into Simon’s house, and Simon’s wife’s mother was taken with a great fever; and they besought him for her. And he stood over her, and rebuked the fever; and it left her: and immediately she arose and ministered unto them. Now when the sun was setting, all they that had any sick with divers diseases brought them unto him; and he laid his hands on every one of them, and healed them. And devils also came out of many, crying out, and saying, Thou art Christ the Son of God. And he rebuking them suffered them not to speak: for they knew that he was Christ. And when it was day, he departed and went into a desert place: and the people sought him, and came unto him, and stayed him, that he should not depart from them. And he said unto them, I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities also: for therefore am I sent. And he preached in the synagogues of Galilee. – Luke 4: 38-44
St. Theophan the Recluse relates the Lord’s words, “…I must preach the kingdom of God…for therefore am I sent,” to the vocation of the Christian priesthood:
“I must preach the Kingdom of God to other cities also: for therefore am I sent (Luke 4:43).” Our priesthood needs to take “for therefore am I sent” as an immutable law. The Apostle commanded them, in the person of St. Timothy, to be “instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort (II Timothy 4:2).” The Lord and the Holy Spirit, Who filled the Apostles on the day of Pentecost, brought the truth to the earth, and the truth walks the earth. Its transmitters are the mouths of God’s priests. If any priest closes his mouth, he blocks off the path to the truth, which demands to enter the souls of believers. That is why the souls of believers grow weary, when they do not receive the truth. The priests themselves must feel weariness, since the truth, not receiving an exit, burdens them. Relieve yourself of this weight, priest of God. Pour forth streams of Divine words unto your own joy and to the enlivening of the souls entrusted to you. If you see that you yourself do not have the truth, get it: it is in the Holy Scriptures. Then, filling yourself with it, pass it on to your spiritual children. Just do not be silent. Preach, for it is unto this that you have been called. – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, p. 214
Is this not the state of affairs today, that the souls of the believers have grown weary, indeed have simply gone to sleep, because the priests are not preaching the truth? This has happened in the two directions a believer faces: within, in the Orthodox world, and without, towards the surrounding culture.
- In the Orthodox world: All of the “official” bishops have apostatized either actively or passively. Most are active apostates simply in virtue of being organic members of the neo-pagan World Council of Churches and promoting union with the daily-evolving Catholic Lite religion of the post-Vatican II papacy. A few are passively apostate by remaining in communion with the explicit Ecumenists. Perhaps one’s local bishop or priest says, “Oh, I disagree with this Ecumenism.” Fine, but by persisting in communing with the patriarchs or synods that promote it, he brings the evil of the heresy into his own soul, especially if he openly teaches against it and then openly communes with it by communing with those who preach it. The anti-ecumenist communing with the ecumenist: the ultimate vindication of Ecumenism! What could be worse than that?
What, then, can he offer the faithful? He is split within: He has created a fundamental lack of integrity at the very basis of his priesthood – his confession of faith. He is teaching the faithful, “Yes the patriarch (or synod) is in heresy, and furthermore, to remain in the Church I must go on commemorating them.” Besides being ahistorical and unprecedented, such a teaching is simply madness – it creates cognitive dissonance within the soul, which day by day and year by year, as it grows stronger, destroys the capacity for rational thought, much less faith. Into such a spiritual and rational wasteland of a ruined soul, since nature abhors a vacuum, the next step is to accept the current mass delusion (plani, prelest) of being “super-spiritual”: we now see weeping icons, signs and wonders, and the supposed visions of “elders” replacing the Church’s dogmas, canons, and example of the saints (old, undoubted saints, not newly minted ones promoted by this or that party to advance their agenda). In the midst of the greatest apostasy in history, we are asked to believe that the Holy Spirit is pouring out grace abundantly in amazing signs and wonders worked by “holy elders” who endorse (nay, enforce) the commemoration of heretics. “Yes, the patriarch is a heretic, and yes, if you do not submit to him you are outside the Church.” Thus spake the “Holy Elder.” Can you hear the soundtrack from Twilight Zone at this point: dah-dah-dah-dah, dah-dah-dah-dah…?
- Looking at the outside world, facing the surrounding culture, the believer is confronted by so many lies and so many pressures to conform to anti-Christian, indeed anti-human behaviors, that it is mind-boggling. Well, priest, sorry, you are not allowed to be boggled. If you do not keep your head on straight, who will? For example, you have to preach the same old-fashioned sexual morality the Church has always taught: Sexual union is blessed only within matrimony, married people may not prevent themselves from having children except through living as brother and sister, abortion is murder, homosexual behavior is an abomination, couples should not live together before marriage, Christians should wear modest clothing, watching dirty movies and TV (which means nearly all movies and TV today) is a sin, etc., etc. All of this is still true. Nothing has changed, except that the world around us has gone mad and expects us to go mad with it, since misery loves company.
In the “Culture War,” the “True Orthodox” clergy are often no better than the “World Orthodox,” and, to be honest, the World Orthodox are often better. Yes, they have that Ecumenism thing all wrong, as I have bluntly explained above. Yet we see some of their priests bravely preaching old-fashioned cultural and moral standards, and actually doing something about it, like founding K-12, full-time parish schools to rescue their parishioners’ children from the kiddie Gulag called “public education,” and teaching the practices of a strict family life, while True Orthodox clergy may be letting their people jive with the zeitgeist in their family lives. They remain complacently aloof from the “evil Ecumenists” yet make the fatal mistake of thinking that this is enough to punch their ticket to Paradise. So you are a True Orthodox? Congratulations. Living like a neo-pagan, therefore, will be for you a greater condemnation than that of the heretical Ecumenist. If you indeed still have the grace of the Holy Mysteries through your confession of the Faith, what are you doing with it?
Let us all, priest and layman alike, take courage, stand up and be counted, and just tell the truth, and – here is the hard part – act on it. It will be a great relief! We know perfectly well that the task before us is impossible, and that we are the weakest Christians in history, and therefore only God can save us. We also know that with Him all things are possible.
We having nothing to lose that is a permanent good, and we have everything to gain – namely eternal life.
Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death. – Revelation 2: 10-11
