Monthly Archives: August 2018
Most of a Life
Foreword
I may live another twenty or thirty years, but equally my time on earth may come to an end tomorrow, next week, in a month’s time, or next year. No-one knows, but I have no illusions. Now that I am coming to an end, it is fitting to set down the three tasks of my destiny which have filled my unworthily lived days. It is my belief that others will more effectively continue these tasks after me, just as many others worked on them both before me and at the same time. And although, not always in positions of power, they worked far more efficiently and with far greater success than me, it has often felt as though I were totally abandoned in these tasks. I never chose them – they fell to my lot despite my clear manifold human weaknesses and equally clear unsuitability and unwillingness to fulfil them.
With the Saints
My first task has been the modest contribution to spreading the veneration of the Saints of Western Europe in the Church. This meant fixing them in locally-issued calendars, praying and writing their lives and compiling, collecting and celebrating their services and icons. This was a bitter battle and cost me enormously, for resistance from all sides without exception was very harsh. Isolation was my lot. There were – and are – so many who resist the saints. Altogether, above all by the reposed Monk Joseph (Lambertson) whom I much encouraged, services were compiled to nearly one hundred saints or groups of saints of Western Europe who did not yet have one. Victory came slowly and over forty years later several such saints were included in the official Russian Orthodox calendar, with more to follow.
Church Unity
My second task has been to help contribute to the restoration of the unity of the two parts of the Russian Church and to call others outside it, for example those who had fallen away in Paris, to unity with it. My part was very, very minor, of course, but it must have helped, for people told me it had. Having visited the Soviet Union twice in the 70s and seen the lamentable state of much of the Patriarchate in England and France, I could see that nothing could be done until the fall of the Soviet Union. Only that would bring the liberation of the hostage episcopate there. So it was only in 2000 that it repented for its compromises with the atheist government and so its failure to recognize the New Martyrs and Confessors earlier, as well as for its politically-motivated compromises with heterodox.
Equally, however, the Church Outside Russia would have to reject decades of the spiritual impurity of sectarian politicking with the treacherous and tragic Vlasov movement and its CIA backers, as well as its own embarrassing failure to canonize the New Martyrs until as late as 1981. Victory came only in 2007 with the Act of Canonical Communion, signed in the presence of thousands of us in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, the Russian Patriarch and President and longsuffering clergy of both parts of the Church in attendance. That Cathedral had been built to commemorate the 19th century Orthodox victory over the French atheist Napoleon and rebuilt to commemorate the 20th century Orthodox victory over the German atheist Marx. Thus, the Cathedral became the place of a threefold victory.
A Life for the Tsar
My third task has been to help contribute to the restoration, now inevitable, of the Orthodox Empire, based in Russia under the coming Tsar, just as St Seraphim of Sarov prophesied nearly 200 years ago. This has been and is, if anything, the hardest of all. This is because it involves the Incarnation, that is, the political, economic and social ramifications of our understanding of the Incarnate Christ. Resistance here is ferocious and mocking, for our struggle is with the Devil himself. Firstly, we must defend the holiness of Tsar Nicholas, both in life and in death. Secondly, we must defend all those faithful to him, many not yet canonized. Thirdly, we must promote his shining vision, which was a century ahead of its time but tragically interrupted for a blood-soaked century by ‘treason, cowardice and deceit’, as he described.
Afterword
Some might say that then all has been completed. This is not so. The task for Rus, to spread veneration for the Western saints of the first millennium Church is to develop much further. The task for Faith, to see the full unity of the Russian Orthodox Church in Western Europe in a single Metropolia, the foundation of the future new Local Church, helping build up a little part of it in my native East of England, is nearing its conclusion, but is not complete. Finally, the task for the Tsar, to explain his holiness and defend his healing vision of justice and balance after a century of global injustice and wars, which resulted directly from his overthrow by internal traitors, so-called allies, Great Britain, the USA and France, and enemies, Germany and Austria-Hungary, and to implement that vision, so long delayed, has only just begun.
Twenty Years After Brexit: How the Northern Confederation Came Into Being
The last twenty years have been dramatic in the history of the fifty-two countries which make up today’s Northern Confederation. Looking back, the European Union, founded after 1945 by its US puppet-masters and based on a West Germany kept united in order to contain the Soviet Union, was a clear example of the arrogance and hubris of over-reach. And that hubris was caused by the EU elite’s total lack of contact with the real world. Today’s Confederation of Nations, a friendly group of free and sovereign nation-states based on the will of their independent peoples, is everything that the EU, a Fascist Customs Union, based on elitist tyranny, failed to be.
The real EU disasters began after the fall of the old Soviet Union at the end of 1991, which was deliberately timed to coincide with the US-imposed Maastricht Treaty and foundation of a ‘European Union’. This promised an absurd and much-feared Federal United States of Europe. There followed the launch of the euro and the imperialistic absorption and then rape and impoverishment of Eastern Europe. Then came the failure to deal with the rejection of the international EU elitist dictatorship by the British and European masses. Next were the catastrophes in the Ukraine and the Western Balkans, where the EU had bloodily meddled under US misguidance. This all meant that the EU had signed its own suicide-warrant.
After the UK voted to leave the EU twenty years ago today, followed by Eire, it broke apart. England, Scotland, Wales and the newly united Ireland, found themselves freed of EU tyranny. Such was their success as sovereign and free-trading nations that in 2025 ‘The Four’, as they were called were joined by other non-EU countries, then freedom-loving Scandinavia and their dependent Baltic countries, once they had freed themselves from US dictators. Thus, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Switzerland and Liechtenstein, all joined what at once became known by the providential name of ‘The Northern Confederation’, making fourteen members in all and creating vengeful panic among the EU gerontocrats.
Seeing its success and tired of Brussels meddling in their internal affairs, within three years freedom-loving Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Lands, Austria and Slovenia had joined them, making nineteen members. However, the turning-point came a year later in 2029, when they were joined by the Russian Empire under Tsar Nicholas III, and its dependent Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Moldova, Georgia and Malorossia, all non-EU countries. (Malorossia had been formed from the old Ukraine, which had collapsed in chaos and corruption, most of its territory happily returning to the Russian Federation and the extreme, and extremist, western tip unhappily returning to Poland, leaving a small central part around Kiev to form the new nation).
In 2030 these twenty-six were followed by Luxembourg, Malta, Cyprus, Greece, Bulgaria and Romania, making thirty-two nations. The EU had by now collapsed in acrimony and bankruptcy, with race riots breaking out among its few remaining members amid the panic of the ruling elite which had lost control and, indeed, all sense of reality. Some of its members eventually managed to escape and two years later the Northern Confederation was joined by Portugal, Spain, newly-independent Catalonia, Andorra, Serbia in its new borders with its reunited territories, Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania, Italy and San Marino, making forty-two members.
Three years later, in 2034, these were joined by the last old EU countries, at last admitting how wrong their former elites and their EU-controlled media had been. The delay in their joining had been caused by their enormous political problems, with Fascist minorities, immigrants and border issues to resolve. These countries were Poland, Croatia, the Netherlands – in its restored borders with what had been northern Belgium – newly-independent Brittany, and France with former southern Belgium now an integral part. Six months later these were followed by Bavaria (all six southern states of the old Germany) and Saxony (all seven northern states of the old Germany).
Now with forty-nine members and stretching from the Pacific to the Atlantic, from Vladivostok to Rejkjavik, most observers thought that the Northern Confederation was complete, the old EU a dead nightmare. However, in January 2036, the forty-nine nation-states were joined by Canada and the newly-independent Alaska and New England (which had both freed themselves from the former USA, which had disunited and imploded in bankruptcy), making a true and continuous Northern Confederation. This made fifty-two independent but friendly sovereign nations, co-operating politically and economically, in effect uniting the northern quarter of the planet.
This leaves the world with four other stable groups of nations, or blocs – China with Mongolia, Tibet and reunited Korea, Christian (Sub-Saharan) Africa, Oceania (Australasia) and Latin America. These four blocs are now in relatively healthy situations. However, the remnants of the debt-ridden USA are in chaos. In bankrupt Japan, south-eastern Asia, the Indian Subcontinent and the stans, and in most of the Muslim world of North Africa and the Middle East there are also grave problems. Thus, the Northern Confederation leads the way. And all because of England’s historic vote for freedom exactly twenty years ago….
23 June 2036
International Nicholas II Conference, Colchester, 27 October 2018
Two Types of Missionary Work
Much is done in the name of missionary work. Some of it is good, but some of it is bad, for some compromises are made not in the name of pastoral dispensation (‘economy’), but in the name of seeking after personal popularity, that is, seeking after the vanity of fame, of having their photo everywhere. Those who do this (the name of the disgraced Protodeacon Andrey Kurayev comes to mind, among others…) always fall and their work comes to nothing.
The authentic missionary’s work is deep, it lasts for generations and centuries, it is always heartfelt, a living example of sacrifice. We can think of the apostles, and also equal to the apostles like St Helen and St Nina of Georgia, Sts Cyril and Methodius, St Olga, St Stephen of Perm, St Herman of Alaska, St Seraphim of Sarov, St John of Kronstadt, St Nicholas of Japan, St John of Shanghai….
The inauthentic missionary’s work, always headborne and not heartborne, is superficial and soon fades. Most of those ‘converted’ by its mere intellectualism fall into philosophy and theorizing, or else reformism, or else cynicism, always lapsing and disappearing, like their gurus, the pseudo-elders or self-appointed ‘startsy’, who ‘converted’ them to their personal fantasies.
How do we recognize the true missionary? ‘By their fruit, ye shall know them’.
When You Next Have Doubts….
Wonder at the vast night sky, the billions of galaxies and the quadrillions of stars and see God’s majesty and might, even if we are incapable of understanding His purpose.
Consider the distance of the Earth from the Sun and the tilt of the Earth on its axis and how this enables us to have seasons, and that if the Earth were at another distance or tilted at some other angle, no life would be possible on it.
Think about the balance of nature, how all the millions of species depend on one another and how if certain microscopic bacteria did not exist, nether would we.
Look at a snowflake and see how ‘in wisdom He has made all things’.
Pick up an acorn, examine the pattern on its cup. Is this mere chance? See how everything has a purpose, both practical and beautiful.
Taste a pear and ask yourself how it has this unique taste, different from an apple or some other fruit. Is this all random?
Gaze at the rain and think how saltwater is collected across the ocean, rises up, carried in clouds, but falls pure, when and where we need it, and that it too has its own beauty.
Listen to a song and ask why it moves us.
Watch a baby sleeping and understand that no human-being made this.
Smell a rose and grasp that only the Divine Maker can create such scents.
Stare at the sea and wonder at the vastness of the ocean and how its waters move because of gravity and the moon, invisible forces, which no man could ever make.
Touch a tree and try to understand how this grew from a tiny seed, its trunk and patterned bark, its branches, twigs, leaves, blossom and fruit, that come to life and die every year for centuries.
And then admit that you were foolish in your heart to have had doubts and understand that it was all your pride of mind.
The Pastor
At seminary, now nearly forty years ago, a debate raged about which was the most important subject: Dogmatic Theology, Liturgical Theology, Moral Theology, Ascetic Theology, the Holy Scriptures, Patristics, Church History, Canon Law, the Typikon, Languages, Psychology, Homilectics, Philosophy…Each teacher put forward convincing arguments for his subject and how vital it was. I listened attentively, ready to be convinced, but feeling that Moral Theology had a weaker argument, since it is only a branch or consequence, of Ascetic Theology, and that Philosophy was completely irrelevant in our impoverished Diaspora situation.
In retrospect, I now believe that the most important subject was the one not taught: Pastoral Theology. This, for me, is the summary of everything else, all else is contained within it, and it is the gauge of whether a parish works or not: if the priest does not understand the needs of his flock, does not adapt to them, while at the same time the flock adapts to the pastor and he leads them forward, on to repentance and so to an active Church life, then nothing else has any significance.
Sadly, the pastoral crisis rages everywhere. Outside the Church, Roman Catholicism has been largely destroyed by pervert clergy and a majority of Protestant clergy either seem to be atheists or else moralizing fanatics with some personal, sexual problem. However, inside the Church, we have little to be proud of. We have far too few churches and laypeople often distrust clergy, who are often seen as moneygrubbers. This comes about because a few actually are. As we say in Russian: ‘he is not a priest, but a ‘pop’’ (the contemptuous word for an ignorant, dishonest and, above all, heartless priest).
A rotten apple (and Judas was one of twelve apples who was) spoils the basket. Sadly, bandit-priests can be very manipulative – I have seen them, in all dioceses or ‘jurisdictions’, in all Local Churches, in all generations. They can manipulate and flatter naïve or already corrupt bishops, destroy a parish or even diocese, and a group of them can actually compromise whole Local Churches. This is why bishops have to listen to the people: they will boycott parishes, dioceses and Churches, where they allow such priests to perform services, or rather, to perform disservices. They are no example to anyone.
And so we come back to pastoral theology, which, actually and quite simply, is about loving our neighbours.
Blessed Pelagia of Ryazan said the following of the anti-pastor bandit-priest hypocrites, ‘do as I tell you, not as I do’, ordained by naive or else simoniac bishops, including those who before the Revolution betrayed the Tsar (as also did many bishops):
‘Rich priests crucified Christ, rich priests overthrew the Tsar, rich priests will lead the people to Antichrist’.
On Spiritual Delusion (Prelest)
The Greek word ‘plani’, translated 1600 years ago into Latin by St John Cassian as ‘illusio’ and then into Slavonic (not into Russian, where the word means something quite different) as ‘prelest’, means in English spiritual delusion.
We all know what delusion and delusional mean.
We can think of examples among politicians. For instance, there was Gorbachov, who actually thought that by ruining the lives of tens (if not hundreds) of millions of people he was doing the world a service. Apparently, he is still a Communist, having learned nothing from his long life. Today, he cannot appear on any street in Russia for fear of assassination.
Then there was Blair. A man so delusional that he killed tens (if not hundreds) of thousands in the name of his narcissism. Years later, he still justifies himself! There is no repentance because he is so ‘sincerely delusional’ that he actually believes in his delusions. Today, he cannot appear on any street in the UK for fear of assassination.
However, we are talking about spiritual, nor political, delusion. What are the signs of spiritual delusion among its victims?
First of all, there is spiritual pride, the certainty that they are absolutely right, and their decisions and opinions are always categorical, dogmatic, despite long histories of errors and misjudgements. Indeed, this is why they accuse others of ‘prelest’. Humility is a word unknown to them.
Secondly, as they are blind to their own major faults, like the pharisee they can only see the minor faults of others and always find fault and carp. They are full of negativity and criticism and generally depress those who have to tolerate them, which is why people avoid, even flee, them.
Thirdly, they are narcissists, they love having their photos taken (especially with the great of this world), and encourage personality cults around themselves. Thus, they are easy prey to flatterers who learn how to manipulate them very easily and very quickly.
Finally, and above all, they suffer from a complete lack of discernment, which some Church Fathers consider to be the greatest virtue. This is why they make mistakes so consistently, often and almost systematically doing exactly the opposite of what is right. This is known as the Midas touch in reverse.
Little Britain or Great England?
Brexit is supposed to take place next year, nearly three interminable years after the UK voted for it. This delay, and indeed Brexit will not even then take place in full, has given rise to various viewpoints: some still say that Brexit will be a disaster; some still say that Brexit will be wonderful; yet others say that it will never take happen at all, as the Prime Minister has never believed in it, she has cast out of her incompetent Cabinet most who firmly believed in it. In any case, the real men of power and finance, in Washington, London and Brussels, who stand behind all these party political puppets all over Western Europe, do not want it and will not allow it.
Whatever the case may be, the real question is not here. The real question is:
As Great Britain is no longer an option, will there one day be a Little Britain, a country of cynical post-modernists and amoral degenerates who do not believe in anything, a country of Third World infrastructure and narrow and conformist minds, serfs of secularism?
As Little England never was an option, will there one day be a Great England (and consequently a Great Ireland, a Great Scotland and a Great Wales), a generous-hearted country, (which is what true greatness is)? Will we repent and make up for the past, wrought by an alien British Establishment which trod underfoot the people of these islands for over 950 years, and then invaded almost every other country of consequence in the world, oppressing their peoples and stripping their natural resources?
Here is the real question.
700,000 Orthodox Now Live in the UK
The UK government has stated this week that 395,000 Bulgarians and Romanians (a good minority of the Romanians actually Moldovans – Romanian passports cost them $10) now live in the UK. This means that with some 160,000 Cypriots, about 100,000 Russians (only a few from Russia – a majority of them are economic and political refugees from the Baltic States and the Ukraine) and other Orthodox minorities (mainly Serbs), there are now some 700,000 Orthodox in the UK. This means that at least 1% of the population is Orthodox: a total transformation from ten years ago, since when at least 400,000 Orthodox have arrived here, let alone 20 years ago, when the Orthodox population was tiny.
However, the fact is that we are not at all settled evenly. Outside the London area Orthodox are still a tiny minority and the further from London, the fewer we are. Possibly 500,000 live in London and the south-eastern corner of England, with very few in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Moreover, the fact is that any parish can only count on a practice rate of 5%-10%. Even so, if there are between 35,000 and 70,000 practising Orthodox in the UK, we are faced with a challenge: to organize appropriate infrastructure, in order to keep our children in the Church.
It must be said that the past gives us no examples. Both parts of the Russian Church lost their flocks to ethnic exclusivity and the acid bath of modern Western culture. The Greek (Cypriot) immigration has done no better. And dreams of middle-class ex-Anglicans of an English Orthodox or even, absurdly, a ‘British Orthodox’, Church, made up of intellectual converts from the tiny minority of Anglicans have to be abandoned. the utter failure on the part of all Orthodox administrations to provide adequate infrastructure is scandalous. We no longer need words – we need actions. On the other hand, never has the use of English in the services been so important. What is to be done?