Category Archives: Ancient Western Holiness

Where Oxlips Grow: A Summer’s Day in Orthodox Suffolk

Without wisdom, wealth is worthless.

King Alfred the Great

I am English, not British. ‘British’ is the name of the barbarian Norman reinvention of the British part of the pagan Roman Empire. Since we are not barbarians, but Christians, we have nothing in common with those Frankish-speaking Vikings, known as the Normans. The latter, their invasion manned by the scum of Northern Europe and financed by anti-Christians from Rouen, made their Capital in London. They abandoned the English Capital of Winchester, where St Alfred still stands, calling his people to wisdom. In East Anglia we always called London ‘the smoke’ and the best place in it was Liverpool Street Station, because that was the escape route home. With this in mind, I invite you to the Suffolk that still resists the Norman Yoke.

At 8.30 I arrived at the north Suffolk home of the Benckendorffs, whom I call the Earl and Countess of Orthodox East Anglia. On one of the hottest days of the decade, after a quick breakfast we left and headed towards the breezy cool of the Suffolk coast along the country lanes. Between Mickfield and Cross Green (if you do not know where they are, you have not lived yet), by a five-bar farm gate was displayed a very large board painted with the St George’s Cross of England, red on white, and written on it were the words: ‘The British State is the enemy within, the enemy of England’. This is how and what everyone outside alien and crooked Norman London and those who have not yet been corrupted by its mercantile spirit, have always thought.

This reminded me of the story of the visit of Tsarevich Nicholas II to Norfolk in June 1894. Staying with the future King Edward VII at his newly-rebuilt Sandringham, they had gone for a walk together around the Sandringham Estate. After walking what seemed like several miles, they realised they were lost. Coming across a horse-drawn cart and approaching the driver for help, the latter said he would give them a lift to the railway station at North Wootton. On boarding the train, the guard asked to see their tickets, and the King began to explain: ‘I am the next King of England and this is the next Tsar of Russia’. ‘Pleased to meet you’, said the guard, ‘and I am the Archbishop of Canterbury. Tickets, please’. Such are the people, not the pharisees.

The other link with a Tsarevich is Newmarket in Suffolk. In 1839, the Grand Duke and future Russian Tsar Alexander II visited England. Queen Victoria, whose real name was Alexandrina, in honour of Tsar Alexander I, threw a ball for him. Lord Palmerston, then Foreign Secretary, took him to the races at Newmarket. In Alexander’s honour, a new horse race was established — the ‘Cesarewitch’, the title of the Russian visitor. To this day, the Cesarewitch is an annual Newmarket race. And now they are building new homes there on the site of the former St Felix Middle School, built by the Edmundham company. We cannot get away from our local saints. They are always with us.

In the car we reached Framlingham, which was festooned with bunting and flags, especially the East Anglian flag, the red cross of St George and in its centre the blue shield and three crowns of our patron St Edmund, the Martyr-King. Then we went through mystical Rendlesham, where still stands St Gregory’s church, founded for the Kings of East Anglia soon after 625 AD in honour of the Patriarch of Rome, who had sent the mission to convert the southern English. We had entered the Sandlings, heathland and forest, with Scots pines, birches, ferns and wildflowers, heading for Orford, its Norman seaside castle quite out of keeping with its cottages, the roses and wisteria climbing to the roofs, hollyhocks, foxgloves and daisies in their gardens.

Here in Orford, all is cool in the sea-breeze. We stroll by the quay, visit a gallery, head through the town as far as the castle and then eat at the King’s Head, with its sign of St Edmund. He is said to have come here in his fight against the Vikings. Today we need his help, for we are still fighting the barbarian Vikings, though now they are called politicians, journalists and arms merchants.  We are reminded again of St Edmund’s heritage and memory: ‘The British State is the enemy within, the enemy of England’. I recall a naïve young man who wrote to me nearly twenty years ago, expressing his alarm that ‘the barbarians are at the gates’. I disagreed with him, saying, ‘No, the barbarians are not at the gates, they have been in charge for a thousand years’.

At lunch we speak of Debenham, the home on the River Deben, in mid-Suffolk, which so much resembles the little town in North Essex where I grew up. We speak of the difference between the Saxon and Anglian dialects of Germanic and how still today the Anglians in Suffolk pronounce the name of the boundary river as Stour (rhyming with tower) and the Saxon/Essex pronunciation which rhymes with tour. A similar difference is apparent in Cambridge, where those on the east bank of the River Cam/Ouse are East Anglians and drink ale, those on the west bank are East Mercians and drink beer, and have a working man’s club on their side. On the other hand, the City of Ely is all East Anglian, as it was in the time of St Audrey.

We speak of the 1959 novel Love on a Branch Line by John Hadfield, which the Benckendorffs have recently read. In it a bureaucrat from London is converted to the East Anglian way, rather as in the novel The Darling Buds of May by H. E. Bates. We speak of the nature of love. The Countess speaks to me of an elderly neighbour. Widowed, he actually bought the bus stop, which had been closed by the bus company, where he had proposed to the love of his life when he had been twenty years old. Every morning he walks down to it and sits on the bench, not waiting for the bus, but for the next meeting with his beloved wife. She tells me how she also knows a widow, who every Friday buys flowers and puts them with a candle in front of the photograph of her late husband.

We leave Orford for Claydon to visit the graves of Sophie (Shuvalova) and Constantine Benckendorff, the wife and the son of Count Alexander Konstantinovich Benckendorff, the last ambassador of the Tsar to the Court of St James. Last September we erected new crosses on their graves, where we wish to plant roses in their memory. We decide to turn for home by the country lanes, past the thatch, hollyhocks and roses of Suffolk villages, past Crowfield, White Horse Corner, Hestley Hall, Standwell Green, by the ripening fields of grain and rape gone to seed, still south of the village of St Dicul, the disciple of St Fursey at Burgh Castle and of St Edmund’s Hoxne. Here, on the back roads, lives Old Suffolk, part of the Old England that we love.

Now we are back home. The Count and Countess get out of the car and the Countess walks among the fallen petals along the path beneath the rose-covered garden arches which lead to the front door of their home and is greeted by her tabby cat, which she picks up, caresses and cradles. It is tea time; the Royal Albert chintz tea set is ready and cake too. We are home and over tea we discuss the project of opening a chapel nearby, in honour of the Dormition of the Mother of God. A building is at present for sale. I promise to speak to our Archbishop about it. Almost in the centre of the triangle of our churches in Colchester, Cambridge and Norwich, this is an ideal location for those who live further away than others. May God bless it.

Count Benckendorff speaks enthusiastically of the couple’s recent visit to Jane Austen’s House in Chawton and to Winchester. Jane Austen’s House felt so authentic for them and they saw her tiny writing table and family portraits. They felt they had been taking part in Pride and Prejudice. They quote from the novel: ‘It must be improper that a young lady should dream of a gentleman before the gentleman is known to have dreamed of her’. Then they had discovered Winchester, the City Museum, and had taken photographs of one another beneath the statue of King Alfred the Great. They want to return and visit more Hampshire villages along the valley of the River Test.

Finally, we turn to our next trip. We will start at St Botolph’s seventh-century thatched church at Iken as an act of pilgrimage, then on to mysterious Laxfield, and from there we can head to Lavenham and Kersey. Who said that Suffolk does not have hills?! In Lavenham I want to show them De Vere’s house, that is the home of Earl de Vere, whom many think wrote ‘Shakespeare’. I tell them of the oxlip flower, mentioned in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, which grows only in parts of North Essex and Suffolk, which de Vere knew. As he wrote:  I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.

26 June 2026

 

 

The Saints of Exning in Suffolk

Exning is a village in Suffolk, 2 miles north-east of New­market, 11 miles south-east of Ely, 14 miles east of Cambridge and 14 miles west of Bury St Edmunds. Its name may go back to the Celtic Iceni (pronounced Ikeni) tribe, who lived in what became Norfolk and North Suffolk. They may be recalled by other place-names on their southern border like the local Icknield Way, Ickworth and Ixworth, and Iken on the Suffolk coast. Exning too may have been a centre for the Iceni, famous for Queen Boudicca, who in the first century AD fought back against the sadistic Romans.

Whatever its origin, by the seventh century Exning was a well-fortified, strategic location. From the north it was protected by the low-lying, swampy fenlands and from the south by the low hills and then the forests and rivers of southern East Anglia. In the gap from the west it was protected by a huge manmade earthwork, today known as the ‘Devils Dyke’, though originally called ‘the Great Ditch’. This defensive earthwork, seven miles long, was built some time in the mid-sixth century as a border wall to protect the East Anglians from peoples to the west.

The Apostle of East Anglia, now Suffolk, Norfolk and eastern Cambridgeshire, is St Felix. Coming from Burgundy in Gaul (France) in 633, he sailed to Canterbury and then across to the Roman fortress by Felixstowe, which is named after him – ‘stowe’ means monastery – to enlighten the pagans. He opened his activities by setting up churches and monasteries near royal halls. One of these was in Rendlesham, upriver from the monastery in Felixstowe in the south-east, another was in Blythburgh, near the port of Dunwich, and to the north-east in Loddon and Reedham.

Around the coast, o the north-west of East Anglia there was another mission centre in Babingley and in the south-west was another in Soham and nearby in the stronghold of Exning. Here there was another royal hall located by the strategic border of East Anglia and it was here that Bishop Felix baptised the King of the East Angles, Anna, and his family. All of them, Jurmin of Blythburgh (+ 653), Audrey (Etheldreda) of Ely (+ 679), Saxburgh of Ely (+ 700), Wendred of March (?) and probably a grand-daughter, Withburgh of Dereham (+ 743), were to become saints.

Even today there is a holy well named after St Wendred in Exning (and also a road) and its water was famed locally among believers for its healing powers. Nobody can remember it freezing over, nor can anybody remember it drying up. It was in the water of this well that Wendred, Audrey and their siblings were baptised. It would seem certain that the original church in Exning was founded by Bishop Felix. Indeed, that church has always been dedicated to St Martin of Tours, who was much venerated by Bishop Felix and throughout Gaul, as well as in Canterbury.

Only in the early thirteenth century was Exning taken over in importance by a ‘new market’, what is now the town of Newmarket, first recorded in 1228, just to the south. The importance of this ‘new market’ may have come about as the result of the many pilgrims who came walking from London by the Icknield Way, whose route is now followed by the A11. They were heading for the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in north-west Norfolk, where the Mother of God had appeared to Edith the Fair in 1061, warning of hardships to come under the Norman Yoke.

 

 

The East Anglians

Like the majority of English people, the East Anglians are chiefly descended from the Angles, who once lived on the Angeln Peninsula in the present northern tip of Germany, just below the south-eastern corner of Denmark. They began settling here with some of their neighbours, Saxons, Frisians and others, already at the end of the third century. Some intermarried locally, but in the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries their wider families joined them. By about 600 the Angles dominated the whole region and indeed the whole country, giving their name to England, for they were the majority of the new settlers. Thus, they gave their name to this part of Eastern England, which bulges out into the North Sea, once called the German Ocean. This is in fact more a relatively shallow lake than a sea, with a clockwise current that separates Eastern England from the coast of the Netherlands and Belgium, some 200 miles away.

The River Waveney divides the East Anglian folk into two regions, north and south, which became Norfolk and Suffolk, although these used to extend into the eastern half of what came to be called Cambridgeshire, beyond which lived the Angles of Mercia, now the East and West Midlands (1). In the early sixth century the East Angles formed their own Kingdom of East Anglia. In the ninth century they were joined by numbers of Danish invaders, especially on the coasts and along the rivers. Living in this relatively isolated region and facing an often hostile Continent, over time East Anglians came to display suspicion, aloofness, independence and individuality and were reputed as modest, hard-working, brave, reliable and frugal in their attitudes. Living near the sea, like that famous East Anglian, Lord Nelson, they also displayed a spirit of adventure, inquisitiveness, love of freedom and fair dealing.

Despots have learned about this East Anglian love of freedom to their sorrow. Such despots include the first Norman invader in St Audrey’s Ely, where he was resisted by Hereward. Then new resistance appeared on St Edmund’s Day in 1214 at Bury St Edmunds, which became not only ‘the shrine of the king’, but also ‘the cradle of the law’. For St Edmund, King and Martyr (+ 869), is our East Anglian champion. Then there came the examples of independence given in Norfolk by Geoffrey Lister and Robert Kett in their rebellion against injustice of the fourteenth century, those who rose up against tyranny under the early Cromwell (before he became a tyrant), and later against the European tyrants Napoleon and Hitler. All the foreign tyrants, and to this day, have always been confused by the old East Anglian subtlety of feigned simplicity and apparent ignorance, and the reluctance to show what is in fact deeply-felt emotion.

This feigned ignorance. ‘playing dumb’, is only a sign of our modesty. East Anglians have never liked know-it-all boastfulness, American-style flamboyance and alien pomposity. We prefer the culture of our own modest simplicity, which is so disrespected by some. Partly for this reason, East Anglia is the home of English Painting, with its soft, homelike scenes and our native, pastel-shaded woods and fields. This School was led by such as the famed Gainsborough, Constable, Crome, Cotman, three generations of the Norwich School, and in the last century the great Sir Alfred Munnings. All were inspired by the broad skies, cloudscapes, seascapes and landscapes of the East Anglian scene. East Anglia is our home and in our international age of constant change and instability, all the more an anchor to which we hold. Let London and other big cities go their way. We are here, we are staying here and we are defending here.

Note 1:

With the River Waveney flowing through its middle, the North Sea to the north and the east, the East Anglian border with Essex to the south formed by the River Stour, and to the west by the Rivers Ouse and Cam, East Anglia was distinct from the rest of the country, almost an island. Beyond the Ouse and the Cam, as far as a line descending from Newark, stretches the East Midlands, thereafter it is the West Midlands as far as the Welsh border. Traditionally, East Anglians drank ale, in the East Midlands beer, and in the West Midlands they drank cider.

To the north of East Anglia, in what is now called Lincolnshire and in Northumbria, lived more Angles. Like the Jutes in Kent, southern Hampshire and on the Isle of Wight, the Saxons lived in the south of England, in Essex (East Saxons), Middlesex (Middle Saxons), Sussex (South Saxons) and Wessex (West Saxons). There are no North Saxons, only Anglians, so numerous that they gave their name to the whole country. The term ‘Anglo-Saxon’, is historical nonsense. Indeed, today it is used to mean ‘Anglo-American’, or rather ‘Modern Norman’.

 

 

 

 

September 2025: A Tale of Two Cities and of Two Saints

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way…

Charles Dickens

Two Cities (1859)

Dickens’ The Tale of Two Cities was published 166 years ago and concerned the two cities of London and Paris. Today these cities have become rather irrelevant on the world stage and been replaced by others. These are Ekaterinburg, which in 1918 became the New Paris, the City of Martyrdom, as was old Paris for a time after 1789, and Shanghai, which has become the new centre of commerce, the New London, as was old London until 1918. Ekaterinburg is in North Asia (Eurasia), at the very frontier of Europe and Asia, and Shanghai is in East Asia. In the first days of September 2025, they came to the fore, as three out of the four most important world leaders met because of agreements made in them.

Firstly, there was the meeting of the SCO (Shanghai Co-operation Organisation) and secondly that of the Intercontinental BRICS, founded in Ekaterinburg. The main languages were Mandarin and Russian. And on 3 September over twenty of the most important world leaders gathered in Beijing to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Chinese victory over the Western puppet of Japan, turned rogue, and against Japanese Fascism. 20 million Chinese were killed in this struggle, 16.5 million of them civilians, for China had to fight for fourteen years from 1931-1945 against 70% of the Japanese Army. This is unlike the USA which fought only from 1941 to 1945 and lost 400,000 from its armed forces.

In its battle against German Fascism, the USSR lost 27 million, 19 million of them civilians. In other words, the USSR and China lost 47 million people against Fascism, whereas US lost fewer than 1% of this. The world leaders gathered in Beijing were national leaders, not tyrannical, oligarch-appointed sexual perverts and puppets of the global banking cartels, as in the West, like Trump, Merz, Starmer and Macron. BRICS is the Concert of Sovereign Nations, which preaches non-interference, co-operation, and refuses to engage in regime-change operations or assassinations of the democratically-elected leaders of other countries. They highlight today’s Tale of Two Cities and Tale of Two Saints.

St Nicholas of Ekaterinburg (1868-1918)

BRICS was founded in the Tsar’s Capital of Saint Petersburg in 2006 and its first summit took place in Ekaterinburg in 2009. Ekaterinburg is the City of the martyrdom of Tsar Nicholas II, his Family and four of his faithful servants in 1918, though the first of them had been martyred in 1916. Tsar Nicholas had reigned over a summit of cultural achievement: Dostoyevsky (1881), Chekhov (1904), Tolstoy (1910); Tchaikovsky (1893), Rimsky-Korsakov (1904), Rakhmaninov (1943); Levitan (1900), Serov (1911), Repin (1930). In 1917 this apex of culture was overthrown in a right-wing plot of aristocrats, generals, politicians and lawyers, orchestrated by British perfidy and hatred of Russia in wartime.

The plotters were themselves soon overthrown by the crude and reactive Western ideology of Marxism, accepted and imposed mainly by Non-Russians. Mass genocide followed. Today, those of us who are faithful to the memory of the righteous Tsar continue his mission. Count and Countess Benckendorff, ambassadors of Holy Rus, travel throughout the East of England and beyond, recently visiting Royal Sandringham and greeting King Charles III, and renewing with St Edmund, the last East Anglian King, who was martyred like Tsar Nicholas by the same heathen. This is despite the apostasy of certain members of the Russian Church, whose liberation from the politicians we all await.

Tsar Nicholas II spoke five languages, Russian, English, French, German and Danish. He was multinational, wanting to build a church for Orthodox in every Western European capital, before the First European War prevented him from implementing this project. Today the Benckendorffs fly the multinational White Russian flag combined with St Edmund’s standard as their confession of the Faith. But a number of Church leaders are still stuck either in the masonic (1721-1917), or the Bolshevik (1917-1991), or the Capitalist (1992-2022) past. Thus, the plagues of nationalism, centralism and sectarianism infect the once great multinational Russian Orthodox Church and sadly enslave it and limit it.

St John of Shanghai (1896-1966)

Ekaterinburg has its saint, but so does Shanghai. Multinational, Imperial and Prophetic like our Tsar, St John (Maximovich) preached repentance for his martyrdom not only to the apostatic Russians in Shanghai, Western Europe and the USA, but also to the whole Western world. As a result of the weaponisation of Western finance, trade, the dollar and diplomacy, the United Nations (UN) may yet move from New York precisely to Shanghai, together perhaps with the IMF (International Monetary Fund), the World Bank and the WTO (World Trade Organisation). Although St John was persecuted, suspended and put on trial by the apostatic Russians in the USA, his victory in Shanghai is coming.

After all, the three largest BRICS nations alone, Russia, China and India, that is, North Asia (Eurasia), East Asia and South Asia, represent over three billion people, some 36% of the world’s population. All Eurasia is now being interconnected, as symbolised by new pipelines which are only reinforcing these interconnections. Even West Asia, the greatest nation of which is Iran, is entering into those interconnections, despite the Western wars against it. Africa, Latin America and even Oceania are also now entering into those interconnections. Missing only is the self-isolated and barbarically aggressive north-western peninsula of Eurasia, that pretentiously calls itself ‘Europe’.

That ‘Europe’ and its US master is now a blend of failed (bankrupt) states and rogue (which murder the heads of other countries) states. As globalists, their leaders hate as ever their own peoples. The 750 + US bases worldwide are not threats to freedom, but monuments to its bankruptcy. The Western world, Northern America, Western Europe, the crusader settler colony of Israel, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and the 47 million of Oceania, is isolated. And so it mounts attacks against BRICS in Pakistan and Bangladesh, Nepal and Indonesia, Syria and Iran, Thailand and Cambodia, Venezuela and Brazil, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Serbia, Romania and Moldova, Hungary and Slovakia.

The Way Ahead (2025)

First the Western world lost its diplomatic, technological and military war against Russia, China and India. Then it lost its economic war of illegal sanctions and tariffs, against Russia in 2023, China in 2024, and India in 2025. Western Europe is still living in the past of its old empires. The Frankish Empire of Western Europe, built against Eastern Europe (from 882 on), against Southern Europe (from 999 to 1194), against Northern Europe (from 1066 on) and then against the coastlands of West Asia and North Africa (from 1096 on), is over. This millennial empire is why it is four times more difficult for Western Europe to give up its hubris and fantasy than for the USA with its mere 250-years of empire.

At this very moment Western European governments are collapsing in violence. Its European Wars, ‘World War One’ (1914-18) saw the suicide, or rather murder by Zionists, of the German Second Empire (Reich), the Russian Imperial, the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman Empires. ‘World War Two’ (1939-45) saw the suicide, or rather murder, of the German Third Empire (Reich), the British, the French and the Japanese Empires. ‘World War Three’ (2022- ) saw the suicide, or rather murder, of the US Empire and that of its vassals in Western Europe, the Ukraine and Israel. At this very moment, Western European governments are collapsing. And the cause is the same – suicide or murder.

‘It would be a far, far better thing that you do, than you have ever done’ for the West to return to the Pre-West. This is the West of the Age of the Saints. For authentic Christianity is not a Western religion, but came out of Asia for the whole world. And so the West would become again part the rest of the world. This is the future, to rejoin the Concert of the Sovereign Nations, in respect and toleration. US intolerance, like its religion, does not export. US religion was cast out of Europe because of its intolerance, its intimidation and bullying are not Christian. Western intolerance, interference in the affairs of others, is dead, which is why the Western world is the museum and the cemetery of its past.

 

 

 

The Message of Ekaterinburg

‘The circus has left town, but the clowns have stayed on.’

Old Saying

Foreword: The Present

In English one who causes chaos may be called ‘a bull in a china shop’. Without wishing to pun, the current US President may be described as ‘a bull in the China shop’. His bullying, threats and then retaliation are like those of a spoiled child, who throws his toys out of his pram in a tantrum when he is contradicted. However, apart from tariff terrorism, he also threatens threefold military war – against Iran and Yemen, China in the ‘Chinese Ukraine’ of Taiwan, and Russia in the Ukraine. Some call his policies suicidal, some doubt his sanity, though these are his equally insane political enemies. US authority used to be based on three pillars: military, moral and economic might. Today, the first has been pushed over by Russian military superiority, the second by the US genocide in Gaza and the third by the economic might of China. Can the Temple still stand now?

If the ‘eccentric’ Mr Trump, whose slogan appears to be MMGA, ‘Make Me Great Again’, rules one part of the Collective West, what can be said of the other part, Western Europe? Here the sinister, pro-Nazi EU wants to raid the savings of EU citizens for a trillion euros for its forever war in the Ukraine, rigs elections in Germany and Moldova, bans the AfD, the most popular Party in Germany, imprisons the ‘far right’ (= Anti-Fascist) leader Le Pen in France, in Romania bans the priest’s son and future President, Calin Georgescu, so as to use the country as a base to invade Russia, just as Hitler used Romanians before, blackens Meloni in Italy and Orban in Hungary and tries to assassinate Fico in Slovakia. As for its ‘Big Three’ political leaders, Napoleon Macron, Blackrock Merz and Harmer Starmer, they seem to be squabbling for the crown of ‘Most Foolish in Europe’.

The Way Down: The End of the West

When I become Tsar, there will be no poor and unhappy people. I want everyone to be happy.

Tsarevich Alexei

Western hegemony is unsustainable, as we know from the huge accumulation of US deficit and debt, which are echoed in all Western European countries. The system has reached breaking point, it cannot go on any longer. This is why President Trump introduced tariffs, though they are not at all the solution and are instead threatening to collapse the US economy altogether, which is much smaller than the Chinese. The problem, after all, is caused by the US having lived far beyond its means for two generations and weaponising the dollar and its banking system against the rest of the world, policies enacted by US presidents for over five decades. Weaponising the dollar was a fatal error. At any moment, foreign investments in the dollar and US government bonds can be withdrawn, shattering the already weak US economy and causing a run on the dollar.

The Collective West, a mere 10% of the whole planet, has long lived off cheap Russian energy and cheap Chinese manufactures. It has now sanctioned Russia 30,000 times and the US has tariffed China by 145%. Both parts of the Western world now suffer suicidally from its own tariffs or sanctions – while 90%, the rest of the world, trades with one another normally, tariff and sanction free. As for Western Europe, it is ruled by degenerate colonial oligarchies, who live in a virtual reality, the delusion that makes them think that it is still the century before last. Its Empire is in reality determined by transnational banking corporations, whose anti-patriotic ideology is Globalism. To make matters worse, these Western European leaders have fallen out not just with European Russia and Asian China, but also with the new, post-2024 nationalist USA.

As a result, Western Europe, having squabbled with everyone, is now critically isolated. Although its leaders still maintain control of their captive populations through very tight censorship of their legacy media, intense surveillance and nightmare threats to the children of a bogeyman enemy, in effect, through Nazification and militarisation, there is ever greater polarisation between the rich 10% and the 90% of the rest within those Western European societies. Nevertheless, the decadent ruling elite, symbolised by a dying, divisive and perhaps even disbelieving Pope of Rome, is facing the growing possibility of a social uprising against its millennial control. The people laboured for 500 years under a feudal medieval con-trick, for 400 years under social control moralism and puritanism, and are now being zombified by their condescending elites.

As under Old Pagan Rome, so under New Pagan Rome, Western people labour under the rule of bread (consumerism) and circuses (the legacy media, ‘entertainment’ and ‘sport’). However, there is now a growing Sovereigntist wave of revolt, the revolt of the people, Populism against the Dystopian future offered by the Western Establishment, to the point where populations are starting to collapse. Fewer and fewer want to bring children into the Nazi world on offer. The Victory of Sovereigntism is the only solution if humanity is to survive in these countries. This Populism is already perceptible on the horizon in every part of the Western world, despite the imprisoning, slandering and persecuting of the leaders who oppose the Globalist ruling class. In some places, maybe first in violent France and Romania, this revolt may even turn violent.

The Way Forward: The Future

‘Today, we are fighting so that it would never occur to anyone that Russia, our people, our language, or our culture can be erased from history. Today, we need a consolidated society, and this consolidation can only be based on sovereignty, freedom, creation and justice. Our values ​​are humanity, mercy and compassion’.

President V.V. Putin, 2022

The Way Forward is in a World Alliance of anti-colonial peoples, a People’s Globalisation, founded on fairness and compassion. This is already here, the decentralising but co-operating BRICS, which already has 56% of the world trade. Its popularity and unity have been hugely reinforced by the incompetence of Western leaders, not least the US leader. Dozens more countries are waiting to join it, perhaps soon European Hungary, Italy and Spain, as well as other victims of Western colonialism of the past and its alphabet soup of UN, EU, NATO etc. Founded in 2009 in Ekaterinburg, the City between Europe and Asia where the Tsar and His Family were martyred ninety-one years before, BRICS has as its premier members Russia, India and China, the largest countries which were sabotaged or suffered humiliation under Western colonial manipulators.

From the eighteenth century on, the whole Indian Subcontinent endured its humiliation at the hands of the exploitative British elite; from the nineteenth century on, China endured its ‘century of humiliation’ from the Western world, symbolised by the anti-imperialist ‘Boxer’ rebellion between 1899 and 1901; and from the twentieth century on, the peoples of Russia endured their humiliation, from which they at last freed themselves only in 2022. Each time the humiliations included huge massacres of their peoples at the hands of Westernised materialists, in India by luxury-corrupted rulers, in China by Mao, and in Russia by Lenin and Stalin. Thus, BRICS began as an Anti-Colonial League, but it looks to a future together, of sovereign, independent, but co-operating peoples.  This is not Corporate Globalisation, but the People’s Globalisation.

Now is the time of the humiliation of the Western world. The West has failed to prevent Russia from freeing the peoples of the Ukraine from the Western-installed Nazi regime in Kiev. That regime was the unnatural extension of default Western European Nazism to the Eastern half of Europe, which eighty years ago valiantly and self-sacrificingly defeated the old Western European Nazism, at the cost of 27 million lives. After the defeat of the West in its proxy Ukraine, the peoples of Western Europe have been left with only one choice – to overthrow their Fascist elite and join BRICS as individual, respectful and respected nations, especially now that the USA is walking away from the imperialist Project Ukraine of its previous dementia. Already in Eastern Europe 75% of the population supports Russia, in Central Europe 65% and even in Western Europe up to 40%.

Hubris and Humility

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest those who are sent to thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and you would not!

Matt. 23, 37

The Marxists were installed with their materialist ideology by the Western Powers in Russia, after their useful idiots of aristocrats, generals and intellectuals had overthrown the old order and deposed the last Christian Emperor. It was after all from New York bankers that the order went out to murder the Tsar and His Family in Ekaterinburg in July 1918. The bankers feared only genuine Orthodox Christianity, the Orthodoxy of the Holy Spirit, of pastors and prophets, confessors and martyrs, not that of protocols and careerists, bureaucrats and politicians, who killed the prophets because the latter would not allow Jerusalem to be turned into Babylon. The bankers wanted to feudalise the peoples to enslaving finance. They tried to Sovietise the Russians and Americanise the Greeks, making both bow down to and worship pagan models.

Thus, the Russians were supposed to admire the Soviet-installed Patriarch Sergius and his followers, who like new Popes of Rome wanted to ‘save the Church’, by glorifying the atheist State and imprisoning the righteous in its Russian Vatican. And as for the Greeks, to their everlasting shame, they were bought out by the CIA-installed, American Patriarch Athenagoras through the power of the Almighty dollar, a model just as Western as a Russian Pope. It is time for Russians and Greeks alike to return to real Orthodoxy, to quit centralising bishop-politicians, who amass power and wealth and are wolves in shepherd’s clothing. It is time to return to the spiritual values of the New Martyrs and Confessors, to the pastors and fathers, who are shepherds in shepherd’s clothing and who denounce the wolves in their shepherd’s luxury camouflage.

The essence of the millennial barbarian Western ideology is Hubris. This is the fatal pride which believes that the Western world represents God on earth, arrogating to itself all that is Divine, giving itself the dogmatic right to lord it over the rest of the world, when in fact it is at best human, at worst devilish. From the Western Institutions of Papacy to Parliament and President, each Western European nation in turn went through this absolutist Nazi sickness that it is God on earth: the Papacy that preached bloody ‘crusades’, Spain that massacred in the Americas, France with its narcissistic Sun-King, Britain with its never-setting imperial sun that nevertheless set, Belgium with its massacres,  Germany with its racist Nazism, and the USA with its Global Empire. They all preached the same ideology that Might is Right, of their ‘rules-free international disorder’.

It is time to turn away from the Hubris of the Jerusalem that killed the prophets and stoned the envoys of God, silencing their voices for a while, and turn back to the Humility of old, which each people of Western Europe once had in the Lives and voices of its Saints, the followers of Christ. This means returning to Europe’s spiritual roots, to turn away from those who tried to conquer, exploit and oppress the rest of the world, justifying themselves like Bush by claiming that ‘God told them to do it’. These spiritual roots are those of the Old West, the Western Europe of the first millennium which followed the Light of the Son of God Incarnate in Asia. For the Saints what is Greatness? It is in His Victory over Death, not in power and riches. It is in the Civilisation of the Saints which is not the Civilisation of Death and Decay, but the Civilisation of Life and Resurrection.

Eve of the Resurrection of Lazarus, 2025,

Monastery of Curchi, Moldova

 

The Western European Elite Isolated

The Western proxy war in the Ukraine continues, though it is now more or less without the US, which is tired of losing so much money in that entirely unprofitable project. Thus, it is now a Western European proxy war. It seems as though the US will next abandon the equally absurd and loss-making NATO, which Russia has all but destroyed anyway. And the Ukrainians are running out of soldiers to die. Meanwhile, Zelensky has said that he will quit, providing he gets more money. ‘Give me the money and I will go away’. This is typical of a narcissist, whose sense of entitlement is such that he can only be compared to a spoiled brat. Given the new attitude of the US, Zelensky now has to find more dupes to exploit. And the dupes are queueing up for him in Western Europe. This is especially so in the UK, where the proud Establishment is still living in the delusional fantasy of Imperial greatness, although dead long ago, and in vainglorious Napoleonic France, where this fantasy is also shared.

Why do such delusions still exist? Sadly, the greater the empires of the past – the British and the French – and the longer ago they began (in Britain in 1066, in Capetian France a century later), the greater their delusions in the present. Moreover, the British and, in theory, the French, came out as victors in 1945, though they were victors only on paper, their victory was Pyrrhic. In reality, the British had begun handing over their Empire to the US as early as 1916, according to Milner’s Round Table plan. This plan was to destroy the Tsar’s Russia and then use the US as a catspaw to prolong British Imperialism. However, all that was good in the Tsar’s Russia, State-regulated Capitalism and free healthcare and education, survived in the USSR. It proved unvanquished. We clearly see that continuity today – Russia is still the largest country in the world and the largest economy in Europe. The Tsar’s Russia, with even its flag, is rising from the dead. Nemesis is coming for those who tried to destroy it.

The Western European elite has now isolated itself from both the Russian Federation and the New USA. There is no more ‘Collective’ West, for only Zelensky and the warmongering Europeans want to continue their war. Thus, that elite has made itself even more irrelevant and laughable in the eyes of the rest of the world and of its own non-zombified peoples. The future German Chancellor Merz (whom 71.5% of German voters do not support) and the unelected ‘Brussels Empire’ bureaucrat, Empress von der Leyen, have both expressed that isolation very eloquently. As the USA prepares to lift sanctions against Russia, the self-harming and very unpopular EU and UK elites (with about 20% of support) are applying even more sanctions to further destroy their own economies. Given the hostility of the Western European elite to both its Great Power neighbours, east and west, and the complete absence of any positive foreign policies or strategies, what possible future can they have?

First of all, we have to understand why the Western European elite refuses to grasp reality, whereas the USA, under Trump, has finally grasped the reality, that it has been willingly deceived by Kiev and its own former, very corrupt elite. The reason for the obtuseness of the Western European elite is because it is profoundly stuck in that above-mentioned thousand-year-old rut. This comes from belief in its snobbish and arrogant prejudice of its own mythical superiority, that somehow, mysteriously, ‘The West is Best’, that is, ‘We are best’. Conversely, the USA has, at worst, only a 250-year-old mentality of superiority, arguably, it may only be 80 years old, going back only to 1945. After all, we should not forget that the greatest ally of the USA in the nineteenth century was Imperial Russia, indeed Russia probably saved the US Union during its Civil War. And both countries fought together against Germany in two World Wars as allies. Are we returning to that once more?

Thus, the US elite is throwing off that mentality of superiority, which it took on from Western Europe, especially from the British elite. However, in Western Europe we can see how that anti-Christian mentality of superiority was shared by its most important leaders during the 1940s. For example, Hitler hated his neighbours, the Slavs (he slaughtered 30 million of them in his holocaust) and the Jews, just as they did during the Teutonic Crusades. Churchill hated ‘blacks and browns’, Africans and Asians, his imperial neighbours. As for De Gaulle, he hated his neighbours, the Arabs, just as they did during the Crusades against the Holy Land. Typically, by the end of 1940 all the Roman Catholic countries in Europe were run by Nazis. It can be said that this Nazism, the hatred of neighbours, is the common ideology of the Western European elite. Look back to Mussolini in Italy and Ethiopia, the Belgian Leopold in the Congo, the Dutch in the ‘East Indies’, the Spanish conquistadores, or the Italian Columbus.

But what will post-Yalta Western Europe be replaced by? Surely there needs to be a New Yalta? The Old Yalta was 80 years ago and is no longer relevant. A New Yalta would be attended by the New Big Three, Presidents Trump, Putin and Xi (instead of Churchill). ‘Eastern Europe’ (in fact the eastern half of Western Europe) is already making its choice, in Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Croatia, Serbia, even in former East Germany, probably in freed Romania next May and, as riots take place against the EU in Sofia, probably in Bulgaria too. Others will follow them. Thus, most of ‘Eastern Europe’ is already deciding on its future – it is in free trade and shared cultural contacts with the Russian Federation. Independent of Russia, it will also be independent of the EU. Western Europe also needs to return to and reintegrate the rest of Asia or, if you prefer, Eurasia. The people want it. After all, Europe is a fake Continent, it is part of Asia and all ‘Europeans’ came to the European Peninsula from Asia.

In other words, the future of Western Europe is also to be with, though in no way under, Russia, that is with the rest of Europe, half of which is precisely inside Russian borders. Today the symbolic head of Western Europe, the elderly and ill Pope of Rome, lies close to death, like his Religion in Western Europe, as also the Protestant groups in Western Europe, which broke off from the Popes, and which are now also dying out in pedophilia. This is also deeply symbolic. Is there a viable alternative in Orthodox Christianity? True, parts of both the Russian Church have been infiltrated through hatred-preaching ‘Orthobro’ bishops and the Greek Church through bribes, but there are other Orthodox Churches, which are free, not subjugated to the USAID of Biden. The other Local Orthodox Churches can help Western Europeans return to their roots and identity. Here is the chance for Western Europeans – to return to authentic, ancestral ‘European values’, from Christ, Who also came from Asia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Civilising Mission of the Orthodox Church in the Western World

I would long ago have gone mad in the face of human injustice, if I had not known that Christ will have the last word in history.

St Paisios the Athonite

Decadence has always existed. It is a result of the Fall. However, it is one thing for decadence to exist, quite another for decadence to be institutionalised. Some people like to imagine that the decadence of the West was institutionalised only recently, in, say, 1997, or the 1960s. Others, more radically, suggest that it was at the Enlightenment, the Reformation, the Renaissance or even in 1274 and with the invention of Nominalism. In fact, the rot set in well before that. The rot began before with Charlemagne, but ‘set in’, or rather, was institutionalised in the eleventh century and the date of 1054, in the middle of the century, symbolises the institutionalisation of the rot.

The West is civilised? The Papally-sponsored massacres of hundreds of thousands in Spain, Italy and, then in 1066, in England? The massacres of the Jews in the Rhineland on the way to the genocidal Crusades in the Holy Land, the sacking of the Christian capital in 1204, the genocide of the Cathars in France, and then that by the Teutonic Knights? The Inquisition? The Black Death? The Conquistadors? The witch-hunts? The ‘Wars of Religion’? The genocide in the New World, South and North America?

The colonialisation of India? The ‘opium wars’ with China? The genocide of the Tasmanians and the Maori? The European scramble for Africa? That of Leopold in the Congo? Two suicidal European Wars, become World Wars? The Germans in Namibia? The British in Kenya? The French in Algeria? The Western invasions of and genocides in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and the Ukraine? And all these tens or hundreds of millions of dead Non-Europeans are enshrined in 1,000 years of ‘heroic’ pro-Western ‘narratives’? Western Civilisation?

We have had a thousand years of Western Anti-Civilisation. But who can recivilise the Western world and return it to the first millennium? Or is it finally going to destroy itself? Clearly, extremists will not help save it, neither those who accept and want to ape the West in everything, nor those who reject and want to denigrate everything in the West. It is all more subtle than that. Thus, religions like Islam and Hinduism will not work in the West, for they are too closely connected with the alien Arab and Indian worlds. As for the Buddhist or Confucian philosophies, they are only for intellectuals.

What remains and can attract and answer the West’s spiritual needs, bringing it back to the Age of the Saints, the time before decadence became institutionalised? We can answer the question negatively:

What remains and can attract and answer those needs CANNOT be something corrupted, sexually depraved, financially depraved or depraved by jealousy for us.

What remains and can attract and answer those needs CANNOT be something sectarian that condemns other Christians as Non-Christians.

What remains and can attract and answer those needs CANNOT be something that belongs exclusively to another race and condemns all other races.

I have been telling the world for fifty years what can attract and answer the spiritual needs of Western people who have such needs. However, I have all this time been persecuted by the extremists, by the corrupt and depraved in the Russian Church inside Russia, by the sectarian in the Russian Church outside Russia, and by the racist everywhere, not least in Constantinople.

He who has ears, let him hear.

 

 

 

Service to the Holy Martyr Edward, King of England

For nearly twenty years we have been using our own English translation from the original Slavonic of the service to the English King, St Edward the Martyr. Now we are free from the straitjacket of oppression, it is time to publish it.

In it we corrected the many mistranslations, omissions and additions in the foreign translation and also omitted references to venerable Russian saints, like Sts Boris and Gleb, who are not relevant here (the service was composed by a Russian and so gives that perspective). We have also corrected again the Russian cultural confusion between ‘British’ and English’ and sometimes replaced the word ‘relics’ (which exist in only one place) by ‘precious image’, and included the original Epistle and Gospel.

Above all, we have omitted the censorious negativity in the misinformed original in its unproven accusations of murder against St Edward’s stepmother, which were a Norman invention. We have replaced those judgemental accusations, which are so shocking in a liturgical context, with the anonymous word ‘the impious’, leaving God to judge the guilty.

As usual, we do not use the Victorian inversions of the American Hapgood style. She was trying to be more English than the English, with her archaic use of ‘eth’ for the third person verb endings, unnecessary ‘ye’, ‘unto’, ‘upon’, and Latinate Anglicanisms. These are imitations of the style of the old Establishment Anglicanism, to which she as an Episcopalian belonged and which is inimical to our Orthodox Christian Faith.

We also leave aside the use of esoteric and purposely obscure language, which represents the style of the pharisees. Equally, we do not use the ‘anything goes’, ‘make it up as you go along’ style of translation of modernism. The first such translations represent the desire of some for the Establishment religion of old-fashioned Anglicanism and Catholicism, which is political conservatism and old calendarism, the second translations representing political liberalism and new calendarism.

Orthodoxy is and cannot be any of these. Orthodoxy is Christianity. The Church is for all, which is why our translations represent the mainstream and not tiny fringe groups, which try to spread an ideology, and not the Word of Christ. There are those individuals who arrogantly impose and try to force us to speak a foreign language. They do not respect other nations as their equals. We reject their jargon or ‘idiom’ and do not use it in our services.

 

Service to the Holy Martyr Edward, King of England

Commemorated on 18 March

At Vespers

At ‘Lord, I have cried…’, eight stichera, four in Tone I.

As a most fruitful vine of the new vineyard of Christ, planted in thy land at the dawn of its enlightenment, thou didst shine forth in many virtues and wast pleasing to God: therefore, with praises we call thee blessed, O Edward, thou most pious king. (Twice)

Travelling the royal way, O holy king, adorned with the love of Christ, the queen of virtues, thou didst watch over the poor and wretched, and visit the sick, rendering judgement and justice to thy people, O Edward, Who honours God.

Thou didst grant thy precious relics like a great treasure to those who honour thy memory, O Edward. Therefore, thou dost heal the divisions of those who have recourse to them and by thy prayers to God fulfil their petitions which are of profit.

And these stichera, in Tone II.

The iniquitous took counsel against thee, O Edward, likening themselves to those who strived to slay the prophets of God, and they plotted thy murder, for they were not daunted by thy youth, nor by thy meek demeanour, nor yet by thy piety, but benighted through bitter envy they followed the prompting of the devil. (Twice)

Like Judas who betrayed Christ with a kiss, so the impious, plotting evils against thee and taking counsel with their retainers, with deceitful intent invite thee, O king, in full knowledge that they lead thee to the slaughter.

What, then, did you acquire, O foolish ones, who wrested the throne from the lawful king and placed his blooded crown upon the head of another? For, lo! Edward shines forth in the Kingdom of Heaven, adorned with a martyr’s crown, while you, repenting in sackcloth and ashes, pray to receive his forgiveness and intercession.

Glory… Tone VIII.

It is not on a hunt that thou goest forth, O most innocent king, but thou art treacherously called to a council of the iniquitous; thus thou dost not encounter a wild beast, but receivest a cruel death at the hands of beast-like traitors. Yet leaving thine earthly kingdom, thou art crowned with a martyr’s crown and dost inherit the Kingdom of Heaven, making thine abode with the saints and the righteous.

Now and ever… Dogmatikon to the Mother of God in the same tone.

Three readings from Isaiah.

At the Litia, the sticheron of the church and this sticheron to the saint, Tone IV.

Come, let us make haste to King Edward, he who was pleasing to God, and who in the years of his youth received a martyr’s crown, that he may intercede for his people, ever standing before the Heavenly King, praying unceasingly.

Glory… in Tone VI.

Let the impious weep, tearing their garments and hair, beholding thee, unjustly slain, O Edward, and glorified by God with miracles; for thou art vouchsafed a martyr’s crown, while they, mindful of their great guilt and trembling before the impartial Judge, strive to wash their souls with repentance.

Now and ever… Hymn to the Mother of God, in the same tone.

Thou, O pure Bride of God, dost meet and comfort all who suffer sorrows in this earthly life, bringing them consolation and drying every tear from their eyes. Therefore, intercede for all who are in misfortunes and sufferings, granting them swift deliverance, for thou dost assuage every sorrow.

At the aposticha, these stichera, Tone VIII: Special Melody: ‘O most glorious wonder …’

O, glorious wonder! O Divine Providence! A most precious treasure, hidden beneath the earth to preserve it from desecration, is uncovered at the end of the times; for, lo! the holy relics of the martyred king are revealed as a new and much-healing wellspring for all who with faith bow down before them and glorify God, Who is wondrous in His saints.

Verse: I have raised up one chosen out of My people, I have found David my servant.

O wondrous solemnity! O most joyful feast! For we celebrate the most radiant memory of Edward the King, the merciful healer of the afflicted and the sick, the defender of the orphaned, the consoler of the grieving, the uprooter of irreverence and sower of piety, the bold intercessor and advocate for our generation.

Verse: For this I have anointed thee, O God, thy God with the oil of joy more than thy partakers.

O, the wealth of the wisdom of God! O, the Providence of God! The holy relics of the martyred Orthodox king are entrusted to the Orthodox Church! Therefore, let us now bow down with faith, calling on the crowned passion-bearer in prayer: and let us fervently offer thanksgiving to Christ God, Who has granted us such a treasure and ever shows us forth His mercy.

Glory … Tone III.

A valiant warrior who fought against the armies of the foe, O Edward, thou didst array thyself yet more against sinful passions; and revealed as a glorious victor over both, clothing thyself with humble wisdom as with a breastplate, thou didst render glory and honour to Christ God.

Now and ever… Hymn to the Mother of God, in the same tone.

In accordance with the will of the Father, through the Divine Spirit without seed thou didst conceive the Son of God, Who without mother was begotten before the ages from the Father. And for our sakes thou didst give birth in the flesh to Him Who was begotten of thee without a father, and with milk thou didst nourish the Infant. Therefore, cease not to pray that our souls may be delivered from misfortunes.

Troparion, Tone IV.

Celebrating the newly-revealed memory of the holy Edward, who of old shone forth in the virtues and suffered innocently, and bowing down before his precious image, in gladness we cry aloud: truly Thou art wondrous in Thy saints, O God! (Twice)

Rejoice, O Mother of God…

At Matins

At God is the Lord, troparion to the saint twice. Glory… Now and ever… Hymn to the Mother of God, in the same tone, ‘The mystery hidden from the ages…

After the first reading of the Psalter, this sessional hymn, Tone VII.

Passing through the time of the fast in spiritual feats, thou, O Edward, didst ready thy soul for a meeting worthy of the feast of feasts, the holy Easter Festival. But leaving thy life on earth of a sudden, thou didst glorify the Resurrection of Christ in His Kingdom, rejoicing with the angels and the righteous and watching over thy people from heaven.

Glory… Now and ever… Hymn to the Mother of God, in the same tone.

Rejoice, O Virgin Birthgiver of God, full of grace, haven and intercession for the human race, for the Redeemer of the world is incarnate from thee, for thou alone art Mother and Virgin, ever-blessed and most glorious. Pray to Christ God to grant peace to the whole world.

After the second reading of the Psalter, this sessional hymn, Tone V.

Lo! spring has blossomed forth on earth, announcing the end of winter, and the celebration of the spiritual spring of the Resurrection of Christ has shone forth to the world. But thy people, O King, are filled with sorrow, stricken by thine untimely end; therefore, make haste and speedily comfort them, revealing to them that thou dwellest in the Kingdom of Heaven with the Risen Master, Who has granted them to obtain thy sacred relics as a pledge of thy care for those who love thee; that, fleeing to them in reverence, they may receive gifts of healing.

Glory… Now and ever… Hymn to the Mother of God, in the same tone.

O Birthgiver of God, Bride unwedded, thou who changed the sorrow of Eve into joy: we, the faithful, praise and bow down before thee, for thou didst lead us forth from the ancient curse. Pray unceasingly, O all-hymned one, that we may be saved.

Polyeleos and Magnification:

We magnify thee, O holy passion-bearer King Edward, and we honour thy precious sufferings, which thou didst suffer for the sake of Christ.

After the Polyeleos, this sessional hymn, in Tone VIII.

Having suffered death out of season, O blessed one, instead of the cup of treachery thou didst receive an unquaffed cup of joy from the hands of the Saviour. Now, therefore, delighting in the sight of Christ’s most radiant countenance at His banquet, pray that those who honour thee may through Him receive the Kingdom of Heaven.

Glory… Now and ever… Hymn to the Mother of God, in the same tone.

O Sovereign Lady, accept the prayers of thy servants, and deliver us from all want and sorrow.

After Psalm 50, this sticheron, Tone VI.

Though thou didst toil but a little while in the field of Christ, yet having toiled diligently, thou didst receive the promised payment from the hand of God, and didst show thyself to be a faithful steward. Therefore, thou hast entered into the joy of the Lord and acquired boldness before Him, ever interceding for thy people.

Canon to the holy King Edward, the original acrostic of which is: ‘I sing of the memory of the pious King Edward’, Tone VIII.

Ode I

Irmos: Let us sing to the Lord Who led His people through the Red Sea, for He alone has gloriously been glorified.

Let us worthily hymn with songs Edward the King, who shone forth in piety and was glorified by God with many miracles.

Now let the English land keep festival and let the Orthodox Church make glad, glorifying the memory of the divinely wise king.

Having suffered out of season unrighteous killing, thou didst acquire boldness before God, O Edward. Therefore, thou dost grant healings to those who honour thee.

Hymn to the Mother of God: The ranks of angels and the choirs of the righteous, monks and laypeople, poor people and kings, together hymn the Birthgiver of God.

Ode III

Irmos: Thou art the confirmation of those who flee to Thee, O Lord. Thou art the Light of the benighted and my spirit hymns Thee.

Born in accordance with Divine Providence to shine forth in the virtues and show forth an example of piety to thy people, thou didst bring the short course of thy life to a good end.

To Christ, the King of all, thou wast a good and faithful servant, who increased the talent given thee by Him, O wise King Edward. Therefore, thou didst enter into the joy of thy Lord.

Like unto Abel who was slain in his innocence, thou didst endure unrighteous murder; deprived of thy fleeting life, now thou dwellest in the mansions of heaven.

Hymn to the Mother of God: Let us unceasingly hymn the Virgin Birthgiver of God, Queen of Heaven and boast of earthly kings, unshakeable pillar of the Church of Christ and unassailable rampart of the Kingdom of God.

Sessional Hymn, Tone III.

As the pre-eminent Peter said, in every nation he that fears God and works righteousness is acceptable to Him; thus, the saints and the righteous from the ends of the earth have entered into the Kingdom of Heaven. Therefore, O holy passion-bearer and king, come from the West and living righteously, was slain unrighteously out of bitter envy, now partaking of everlasting joys remember also us who honour thee and cry out: Truly art thou wondrous in Thy saints, O God!

Glory… Now and ever… in the same tone.

As an uncultivated vine, O Virgin, thou hast put forth the fairest cluster of grapes, which pours forth the wine of salvation for us, gladdening the souls and bodies of all. Therefore, blessing thee as the cause of good things, with the Angel we ever cry out to thee: Rejoice, thou art full of grace.

Ode IV

Irmos: I have heard of the mystery of Thy Providence, O Lord; I have understood Thy works and glorified Thy Divinity.

Emulating a lamb led to the slaughter, thou, O holy Edward, didst not struggle against the evildoers who slew thee, but yielded up thy soul into the hands of God in an instant.

Celebrating thy joyous memory, we call thy wonders to mind, O Edward, for thou healest the leprous, the paralysed and the blind from birth by thy most bold supplications to Christ.

Desiring to glorify thee openly, Christ God gave healing power to thy precious relics, that, beholding the miracles worked thereby, the pious people might praise the Lord for ever.

Hymn to the Mother of God: The divine prophets have announced thee, O Birthgiver of God; the apostles have proclaimed thee; the martyrs have confessed thee, and the divine minstrels and the venerable have hymned thee in songs of divine beauty.

Ode V

Irmos: Waking early, I cry to Thee: Save me, O Lord, for Thou art our God and we know none other than Thee.

A divine light shone on the woman who was blind from birth when she touched thy body, O King Edward. Therefore, her eyes were opened and she glorified God and thine intercession.

Thy tomb has been shown to be a wellspring of healings for all who have recourse to it with faith, beseeching enlightenment and consolation.

Open the eyes of our hearts also, O Edward, who gavest light to the eyes of the woman born blind, that we may behold God’s most wise providence for us and glorify His power.

Hymn to the Mother of God: Let us not fall idle in our unceasing praise of her who is more honourable than the cherubim and beyond compare more glorious than the seraphim, gazing with the eyes of our minds on her greatness and magnifying her mercy with ardent hearts and warm love.

Ode VI

Irmos: As Thou didst deliver the prophet from the nethermost abyss, O Christ God, as Thou lovest mankind deliver me from my sins and direct my life, I beseech Thee.

When the impious learned of the uncovering of thy relics and of the miracles which had come to pass, O Edward, they desired to fall down in repentance before them, but the power of the Lord then forbade them.

With other kings, thou didst bring thy glory to the Heavenly Jerusalem, O Edward, laying at the feet of the Lord the twofold crown of kingship and martyrdom, and receiving fitting honour from Him.

Thou didst escape the vile pit of perdition, rendering justice and righteousness and feeding the wretched, showing thyself worthy of a royal throne, most wise and right glorious Edward.

Hymn to the Mother of God: May they who do not honour thee as the Birthgiver of God be clothed with shame and fear, denounced by all creation which unceasingly hymns thee.

Kontakion, Tone IV.

As a faithful king and bright martyr, thou didst shine forth in the English land; suffering the wounds and blows of the enemies of the Church and the Sovereign Land, who fell upon thee, thou didst soon pass over to our Saviour; now thou workest a multitude of wonders for those who cry to thee with faith: Cease not to beseech Christ God, that He may return thy homeland to the Orthodox Faith!

Ikos: Lo! the fullness of time is come! Arise, people who bear the name of Christ. For behold! the righteous Judge Who sees all things, mindful of His mercies and compassion, and wishing to fill the dried-up wellspring of piety with life-bearing streams, has revealed to us the relics of His favourite and passion-bearer, Edward the King, which for many years lay hidden beneath the earth; for when the tempest of persecution was raised against the saints of God by impiety and the holy shrines were destroyed, they were buried as a priceless treasure and there they remained even until these days. But now, by the providence and good pleasure of God, the holy relics are once more given to the faithful and again the light of Orthodoxy shines forth in the English land. Therefore, stand fair, O England, thou land of kings! And all you who dwell therein, rejoice, crying out to the blessed Edward, whom the King of kings would fain glorify: Cease not to beseech Christ our God, that He may return thy homeland to the Orthodox Faith!

Ode VII

Irmos: O Lord God of our fathers, Who in the beginning founded the earth and established the heavens by a word: blessed art Thou unto the ages.

Having fought against the foes, and battling the passions yet more, thou wast shown to be a victor over both: but urged on by humility thou didst render glory to God, crying out: Blessed art Thou, O God of our fathers!

The ranks of angels and the choirs of the righteous, accompanying the holy king who is received into the Kingdom of Christ, hymn God, Who is wondrous in His saints, crying out: Blessed art Thou, O God.

Leaving the sin-loving world out of season, thou didst reach the heavenly home, O Edward, where thou prayest unceasingly to the blessed God of thy fathers on behalf of thine earthly homeland.

Hymn to the Mother of God: Fearing not the fiery furnace, the youths who prefigured thee, O Virgin, cried out in thanksgiving for thee: Blessed art Thou, O God of our fathers!

Ode VIII

Irmos: The Lord Who was glorified on the holy mount and Who revealed the mystery of the Ever-Virgin in the burning bush to Moses, hymn and exalt Him supremely unto all ages!

Celebrating the memory of the godly king and marvelling at the wonders that have been wrought by his precious relics, rejoicing in God we cry aloud: Hymn the Lord and exalt Him supremely unto all ages!

Having vanquished all the wiles of hades and put to shame the evil schemes of the impious, called to the Heavenly Kingdom thou didst sing, O holy king: Hymn the Lord and exalt Him supremely unto all ages!

Bowing down before thy precious image and calling on thy name in prayer, O Edward the king most dear to God, we hymn the Lord and exalt Him supremely unto all ages!

Hymn to the Mother of God: Thou didst reveal to men Him, on Whom the angels dare not gaze. Reveal to us also His unutterable mercy, that we may exalt thee supremely unto all ages.

Ode IX

Irmos: Saved by thee, O pure Virgin, we confess thee to be the true Birthgiver of God, magnifying thee with the bodiless choirs.

Thou dost pour forth healings and receive the prayers of the faithful, earnestly praying for those who honour thy memory; therefore, O Edward, we gratefully magnify thee.

Thy memory is glorious and thy rest is with the saints, for thou ever standest before the throne of God. Therefore, we magnify Christ Who gave thee to the people as a new intercessor.

The Orthodox Faith reaches from the East even unto the West. Therefore, the saints of God are glorified throughout the world.

Hymn to the Mother of God: Thy kinswoman Elizabeth has taught us to cry out to thee, O all-pure Birthgiver of God: blessed art thou among women and blessed is Christ, the Fruit of thy womb, Whom we magnify unceasingly.

Expostilarion: Meet it was for thee, who beheld the unwaning Light, to show thy first miracle through light, O most blessed king; for, lo! a heavenly light shone forth on the house where the impious had concealed thy body, and the eyes of the woman blind from birth were opened and giving thanks to God she cried out: Blessed art Thou, O Lord, Who hast revealed to us Thy new favourite!

Glory… Now and ever… Hymn to the Mother of God.

Thou dost cover all the earth with thy radiant stole and embrace the whole world with thy love, O Birthgiver of God, receiving the prayers and entreaties of all who call on thee, and helping all before the throne of thy Son, for He has given thee to mankind as an intercessor forever.

At the Praises, these stichera, Tone II.

Thou dost abide with pious kings in the Kingdom of Heaven, with the fasters and ascetics thou art praised, with the martyrs thou art glorified and with all the righteous thou art blessed, O glorious king Edward. (Twice)

Earnestly we bow down before thine image, celebrating the commemoration of thine untimely end; and mindful of the wonders worked thereby, we ask for thine intercession and help, O righteous king Edward.

O thou who with martyr’s blood didst adorn thy royal raiment more than with purple and amethyst and who has received a crown of suffering from the hand of God, thou didst recline at the banquet of Christ with the elect. O Edward, pray for our souls.

Glory… Tone VI.

Lo! the time is shortened: judgement is at the door! Lo! the souls of the slain cry out for the justice of God: How long, O Lord, dost Thou not avenge our blood? But they are instructed to wait patiently until the number of the saved is completed and the mystery of iniquity is revealed; then will come the Judge, Who will render to each according to his deeds. Thou, O most blessed king, shalt receive the portion of the blessed. Therefore, beseech Christ the Master, that we may be vouchsafed to stand at His right hand.

Now and ever… in the same tone. O Queen and Birthgiver of God, who openest to us the doors of divine mercy, pray to thy Son, with the king and passion-bearer to have mercy on our souls.

At the Liturgy

At the Beatitudes, eight troparia from Odes III and Ode VI.

Prokimenon, Tone VII: The righteous man shall be glad in the Lord, and shall hope in Him.

Verse: Hearken, O God, to my prayer, when I make supplication to Thee.

Epistle to the Romans, Section 99.


Alleluia, Tone IV.

Verse: The righteous man shall flourish like a palm tree, and like a cedar in Lebanon shall he be multiplied.

Verse: They that are planted in the house of the Lord, in the courts of our God shall they blossom forth.

Gospel according to John, Section 52.

Communion Verse.

In everlasting remembrance shall the righteous be, he shall not fear evil tidings.

Two Saints of Huntingdonshire

St Neot

This future saint was born in the west of England in the first half of the ninth century. In early life he came under pressure from his father, Ethelwulf, to become a soldier, but instead he became a novice at the monastery in Glastonbury. He was probably helped in this refusal by the fact that physically he was very short. Neot must originally have had an English name. However, as at that time the word ‘neophyte’ was commonly used for monastic novices, this was shortened to ‘neot’, giving the future saint his name.

Neot was admired for his zeal with humility and would get up in the middle of the night to go to the church and pray. In time, pilgrims from all over started going to Glastonbury to listen to Neot’s wisdom. However, he desired to live as a hermit in a quieter spot. Therefore, he travelled westwards, like many English people at the time, to settle near a remote place in central eastern Cornwall, then known as Hamstoke. The location Neot chose was surrounded by thick woodland and hills. In time Hamstoke became known as Neotstoke, for Neot lived here, as if he were a novice, a ‘neot’, mortifying his body by fasting, vigil and prayer.

Later a monastery formed around him and Neot was made Abbot. King Alfred became a visitor and the King’s miraculous healing here came as a result of the holiness of Abbot Neot. In 877 the Abbot fell ill and sensing his earthly end, he took communion. He addressed his flock as a faithful shepherd, instructing all to live in peace and stretching forth his hands towards heaven, he breathed out his spirit. It was 31 July. His relics were kept at the monastery and they attracted considerable numbers of pilgrims.

A century later, and very far from Cornwall in the west, in about 975 a monastery was founded in the east of England, close to the River Great Ouse in Eynesbury. This is in what was until 1974 Huntingdonshire, though now called part of Cambridgeshire. A local nobleman and landowner, usually known by the name of Leofric and his Lady Leofleda, set up a monastery on their land and chose a notable holy person as their patron.

This was St Neot, as he had become famous through his healing of the English King Alfred and many miracles. This choice may also have been influenced by the Celtic blood and speech of many in the local population (see below). An Englishman from Celtic Cornwall would have made this a wise choice. With the support of King Alfred’s great-grandson, King Edgar (+ 975), who was encouraging monastic life, and despite some opposition in Cornwall, St Neot’s relics, apart from one arm, were brought from Cornwall to Eynesbury.

Here they were placed in a shrine at the monastery and Eynesbury came to be renamed Neotsbury, now St Neots. The church at the monastery was consecrated in the presence of the monastic founder Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester (+ 984), Æscwin, Bishop of Lincoln, Brithnoth, Abbot of Ely, and many other notables. Leofric and Lady Leofleda asked Abbot Brithnoth and Bishop Æscwin for their protection and that they would send more monks there from the nearby monasteries in Ely and Thorney.

Although the monastery of Neotsbury, that is, St Neots, was attacked by the Danes in 1010, the buildings were repaired and rebuilt, and it is recorded that the relics of St Neot, which had been saved, had been restored to the monastery by 1020. Although 31 July is St Neot’s Day, locally in St Neots in Cambridgeshire, his feast was kept on 28 October, the day of the translation of his relics from Cornwall. St Neot’s relics disappeared at the Protestant Reformation, but may still be concealed in the town of St Neot’s today and protecting it.

St Ives

St Ives (also known as Ivo) was a bishop, originally from Celtic Cornwall. His relics were uncovered in about 1001 when a peasant found his coffin with an intact body and three other bodies while ploughing at a place then called Slepe, later renamed St Ives, in Huntingdonshire. St Ives appeared to the ploughman in several visions, obliging him to tell a monk at the large monastery at nearby Ramsey, one of the five great Fenland monasteries, of his discovery. The latter did not take this seriously at first, whereon St Ives also appeared to him in visions.

When the monastic community learned of this, they rejoiced at the discovery. Abbot Ednoth of Ramsey set about building a church in St Ives’ honour near the site of the discovery and this settlement was given the right to hold a market and renamed St Ives. On 24 April 1002 Abbot Ednoth translated St Ives’ body and a small monastery was founded in Slepe. His feast was assigned precisely to 24 April. Later there was some confusion and some claimed that St Ives was a Persian saint. This is untrue.

Some non-believers have suggested that St Ives was a pure invention in order to attract pilgrims and so generate income in competition with the nearby town of Eynesbury/St Neots, sixteen miles further down the river. A generation earlier it had obtained the relics of the English St Neot from Cornwall. However, St Neot’s relics were physically brought to St Neots, whereas those of St Ives and his companions were miraculously found. This coincidence and both Cornish connections can perhaps be explained by the fact that the local population in the isolated fenlands, including around St Ives and Ramsey, was, as in other isolated pockets in England, Celtic (‘British’).

Even in the eleventh century Celtic/Brythonic speech could still be heard in the area, notably around nearby Ramsey, where some of the relics found were kept. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FHRTpEhaAs). This indicates that in the fifth and sixth centuries, before the settlement of the English, there may have been a small monastery here, set up from Cornwall to serve local remaining Celtic Christians and then centuries later a ploughman had found the relics of the monastic founders. Although the present location of the relics of St Ives is unknown, the town of St Ives still has a special atmosphere today.

Holy Neot and Ives, Pray to God for us!

The Russian-Founded New World Order and Moving to Russia

Introduction: Why I Have Not Moved to Russia

As a fluent Russian-speaker, I wanted to move to Russia when I was actually 20, when I was invited to study at the Moscow Theological Academy in 1977, but the Cold War prevented that. I would long ago have moved there, if I were 20 years old. In the last twelve months I have been invited to move there, where the futile slanders of me by one here are mocked, to serve as a priest by two Patriarchal bishops, whom I know and who know the real situation.

However, my family lives here and my Russian and other parishioners need me here. I will not be going to Russia, unless my whole family, all 27 of us, wishes to go. I prefer to stay and continue the fight against the ecumenists, against the covidists, and against the pseudo-Russian schismatics. I was, by God’s will, born here. God put me here to do something here. When I was 18 and the late Metropolitan Kallistos told me that, I did not know what that something was.

Gradually, the twofold sense of my life was revealed to me. It was to witness to Western European Orthodoxy, to St Felix, St Edmund and the ten thousand other Western Saints, whom St John also venerated, and so to restore the Non-Establishment West, and, secondly, in the words of the ever-memorable Slovak Metropolitan Laurus, ‘to keep the purity of Holy Orthodoxy’. This meant to act against the rogues of left and right, against both the scribes and against the pharisees.

This meant fighting against both the spiritually empty intellectuals, ecumenists and modernists, and the equally spiritually empty ‘princes of the Church’, whose only interests are their preening narcissism and love of power and money. Both sides, acting together against the mainstream, that is, against the mighty river, of the Church of God, are too cowardly and unprincipled to stand up to such corrupt bullies, anti-family perverts and psychopaths, and they repeat their slanders against us. But we are not cowards and unprincipled. God is the Judge of those who repeat slanders against us.

Russian Military, Political and Diplomatic Victories

In the wide world, today the government of President Putin is liberating the bankrupt Ukraine and its patriotic and persecuted faithful from NATO Nazism, as promoted by the local Fascist rogues in Kiev. Clearly, this conflict will end with the Kiev regime’s capitulation. Russia hopes that this capitulation will take place through a popular Ukrainian insurrection against the Kiev regime. That is possible. The US-created Ukraine is the biggest loser of this war, but not far behind it is the now isolated and impoverished Western Europe. This has lost greatly, as it has committed economic suicide by boycotting cheap Russian gas, oil, fertiliser and other resources and has also taken in eight million very expensive Ukrainians, who became very unpopular there through their demands and sense of entitlement. As for the third loser, the ungoverned USA, it has already abandoned the Ukraine, just as it abandoned Afghanistan and Iraq before it.

Internationally, the same Russian government has created a defensive Alliance with China, North Korea, Iran, Belarus and Mongolia. Thus, Russia’s borders, east and west are now secured and protected, much as they were in January 1904, before the West attacked Russia indirectly (through Japan, which later wanted to destroy Korea, China and Mongolia), and then in January 1914, before the West attacked Russia directly. South Asia, India, is already with Russia and we will soon see the consolidation of the Eurasian heartland, as Central Asia joins this defensive Alliance of Eurasia.

As for the Russian-sponsored BRICS Economic Alliance, even now 45% of the world population, it was founded in 2009 in Ekaterinburg, the City of the Martyrdom of Tsar Nicholas II and his Family, a martyrdom ordered from New York. BRICS, now with nine countries, includes other countries from Asia (the UAE), Africa (Ethiopia and South Africa) and Latin America (Brazil). In Kazan, in seven weeks’ time, new members will ask to join the BRICS Alliance, some say thirty countries, some say more, though most of them may not actually be joining as early as this year. Among the candidates are countries as diverse as Azerbaijan, Cuba, Bolivia, Gabon, Venezuela, Belarus, Turkiye, Algeria, Indonesia, Vietnam, Serbia, Malaysia, Kazakhstan and even, one day, for the moment EU Hungary, Slovakia and Italy.

Russian victory was imminent at the end of 1916, liberating Vienna in summer 1917 and Berlin in autumn 1917, just before the Western prevented that victory by overthrowing the Tsar with its agents and replacing him with the Western agents, Lenin and Trotsky, the former of whom created the Ukraine, the second of whom was born in what is now the Ukraine. Russia is back. This Russian victory may be imminent again, in 2024 – unless the West can overthrow the present Tsar. Over a century of thwarted Russian victory may be over at last, despite the spies, traitors, perverts and schismatics who have infiltrated the Russian Orthodox Church.

Russian-United Eurasia and European Collapse

Three of the four world’s superpowers and largest economies are in Asia: China, India and Russia.  China and India were once far more prosperous and far more advanced than Europe, before Western Europeans colonised, exploited and destroyed them. That process has now gone into reverse: Asia now dominates Western Europe. Moreover, Eurasian Russia is getting Asia to unite. East Asia (China etc), West Asia (the old ‘Middle East’), South Asia (India etc) and North Asia (Russia) are uniting. Apart from the still hesitant five ‘stans’ of Central Asia, what is missing is US-occupied North-West Asia (what is still called ‘Western Europe’, 5% of the world population) and US-occupied North-East Asia (the ever-shrinking Japan and South Korea).

The hope is that both the latter, the North-West Asian Peninsula (the Western half of Europe, which has so disastrously tried to expand into the Eastern half, in the Ukraine) and the North-East Asian Archipelago (Japan and South Korea), will liberate themselves from Americanisation (camouflaged beneath the word ‘Globalism’) and enter into this Grand Alliance of the Global Majority of BRICS. For this to happen patriotic left and patriotic right have to unite against the anti-patriotic, NATO-Nazi Globalists of the US-created Uniparty, who are the real extremists. Liberation from the 20% of the pro-US, pro-EU, pro-NATO, pro-Kiev and pro-Woke Globalist Establishment is what the 80%, the peoples of Western Europe, seek. For the Globalists always put anti-national interests first, to the detriment of their own electorates.

Such liberation from the Establishment, the System, as it is called in Germany (‘the Deep State’ in the USA), is now the electoral path in the UK, France, Germany and almost every other country in Western Europe, against the highly unpopular ruling class elite. We the people want our sovereignty and our national identity, which we believe is in our saints, back. In the meantime, we have to face the contemporary Western reality. This is summed up by both the opening and closing ceremonies of the Pagan Games in Paris, which show exactly what its nature is. The Serbian Orthodox tennis player Novak Djokovich and some African athletes resisted the persecution and blasphemies against Christianity there, but few others did.

LGBT ideology and transgenderism dominate the Western Establishment (for example, the millionaire pedophiles employed by the BBC) more and more. It is shocking. The West has become the collapsing Soviet Union. It is 1989 in the West. As a result, President Putin has issued an executive order to take in spiritual refugees from the West, on condition that they share in the traditional religious values of the Russian Federation and that they are under persecution. Should people move there?

Moving to Russia

So far only one Russian family from our parish has moved to Russia, though not because they were under persecution. That was eighteen months ago.  It was a great success financially. They both have jobs which they like and they are already able to buy their own home. One other parishioner is thinking about following their example, but most of my many Russian parishioners are not even contemplating it. Let alone our Ukrainians, Balts, Romanians, Moldovans, Serbs, Bulgarians, Greeks and the other twenty-one nationalities among our 600 regular parishioners.

Here some should take care, not returning Russians who know the situation perfectly well, but naïve and idealistic Non-Russian converts to Orthodoxy. They should ask themselves many questions first: Why do most Russians stay here and new Russians even want to come here? Why do they not return and others still want to leave Russia? The fact is that in today’s Russia, most live in high-rise tower blocks, abortion is twice even the appalling level of Western countries, divorce is just as high as in the West, and most baptised Orthodox are still cremated when they die. Beware of ‘the grass is always greener on the other side’ syndrome.

Then there is the bureaucracy (just as bad as in France) and corruption, which is especially noticeable when it comes to health care with its universal envelopes under the table. As for the Church, only 2-3% go to church, partly because of the problems of corrupt and oligarchic homosexual bishops and money-grubbing priests (those two problems helped cause the post-1917 persecution of the Church). What many in the West do not understand is that Russia is dominated by a cultural Orthodoxy, rather than a zealous, practising Orthodoxy, just like every other country in the Orthodox world.

Then there are purely practical questions. Do you speak Russian? You will have to learn. What money will you live off, if you live in Russia? What job will you find? How will your children adapt to a very different and much tougher school system? Will you attend church in Slavonic and on the old calendar? (If you do not do so here, how will you cope there?). Just a little dose of reality.

Conclusion: Avoiding Escapism

For most it is too early to contemplate moving to Russia. Let us wait and see. As long as we can still be saved here, as long as we can still fight and resist here, despite the persecution of us here, not by LGBT fanatics, but by certain so-called ‘Orthodox’ bishops, let us stay here. To leave now seems like running away. We still have the chance to win here.