Tag Archives: Prayer

In the Week of St Gregory Palamas

Gregory Palamas was born in Constantinople in about 1296, where his father was a courtier of Emperor Andronikos II. When Gregory was still a child, his father died and the Emperor took part in the education of the orphan. He hoped that the gifted boy would devote himself to imperial service. Instead, he chose monastic life on Mt Athos and the Christian tradition of unceasing prayer, known in Greek as ‘hesychasm’.

Gregory received a good education and even studied the pagan Greek Aristotle, but in 1316 he left to become an Athonite monk. In 1326, aged thirty, because of the threat of Turkish attacks he and others took refuge in Thessaloniki where he was ordained priest. Spending his time in prayerful service to the people, he also founded a small community of hermits near Thessaloniki in Veria. The cave where he lived and prayed can still be visited.

Later Fr Gregory served for a short time as Abbot of Esphigmenou on Mt Athos. Here he was asked by monks to defend the tradition of unceasing prayer from the attacks of a Catholic-trained Greek called Barlaam. Gregory wrote a number of works in defence and stood up for the practice of unceasing prayer at six different Councils in Constantinople. Like all later Greek Catholics, Barlaam asserted that it was impossible to determine from whom the Holy Spirit proceeds and Gregory naturally viewed Barlaam’s argument as agnostic. In his response titled ‘Apodictic Treatises’, Gregory proved that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, but not from the Son.

In response to Barlaam’s attacks, Gregory wrote nine treatises entitled ‘Triads in Defence of Those Who Practise Hesychia’ (Unceasing Prayer). The first Triad was written in the second half of the 1330s and was based on discussions between Gregory and Barlaam. Gregory’s teaching was affirmed by monks of Mount Athos, who met in a Council in 1340–1. In early 1341, the monasteries composed ‘The Tome of the Holy Mountain’. This was a presentation of Gregory’s teaching and it became a textbook of Christian theology.

As an apostate Orthodox without spiritual experience, Barlaam viewed any claim of the real and conscious experience of God ‘as a heresy’. He also rejected the Christian teaching on the uncreated nature of the Divine Light, the experience of which is the result of unceasing prayer. Deprived of the Holy Spirit, he regarded that experience as ‘heretical and blasphemous’. The Divine Light was maintained by Christians to be identical to the Light seen by Christ’s disciples at the Transfiguration.

The second Triad quoted some of Barlaam’s writings. In response to this, Barlaam composed a treatise called ‘Against the Messalians’, which linked the hesychasts to a proud, materialist, Protestant-style sect called the Messalians, thus accusing Christians of heresy! In the third Triad, Gregory refuted Barlaam’s charge, showing that Orthodox Christians are not anti-sacramentalist and do not claim to see the essence of God. Gregory oriented the Orthodox teaching against Barlaam on the issue of pagan intellectualism, that is, the Hellenism of such as Aristotle, which he considered to be the main source of the heresies of the Scholastic Barlaam.

Six Patriarchal Councils were held in Constantinople between 1341 and 1351 to consider Barlaam’s attacks against Orthodox Christianity. These are accepted as having universal status by many Orthodox. Some call them the Fifth Council of Constantinople or the Ninth Universal Council. The Council of May 1341 condemned Barlaam and the Patriarch insisted that all Barlaam’s writings be destroyed. Barlaam realised that he could not promote his errors among Orthodox Christians and went to Italy, where he was soon appointed Roman Catholic Bishop of Gerace.

After Barlaam’s departure, a pro-Catholic Aristotelian intellectual called Gregory Akindynos became the chief critic of the Christian teaching on unceasing prayer and the Divine Light. However, the second Council in Constantinople in August 1341 condemned Akindynos and affirmed the findings of the earlier Council. Nevertheless, Akindynos and his supporters gained a brief victory at a rogue Council held in 1344, which excommunicated Gregory. Here his opponents spread slanderous accusations against him and in 1344 the corrupt Patriarch John XIV imprisoned Gregory for four years.

Nevertheless, the last of the Six Councils in 1351 supported Gregory and finally condemned his opponents. This Council ordered that his enemies, the Metropolitans of Ephesus and Ganos, be defrocked and jailed. All those who were unwilling to accept Christian teachings were excommunicated. A series of anathemas were pronounced against Barlaam, Akindynos and their followers. At the same time, a series of acclamations was made in favour of Gregory and the adherents of the Christian teaching, which he had expressed.

In 1347, when a new and non-corrupt Patriarch was appointed, Gregory was released from prison and consecrated Archbishop of Thessaloniki. He probably reposed in 1359 and his last words were: ‘To the heights! To the heights!’ He was canonised only nine years later, in 1368, and his life was written and a service was composed to him. His feast is celebrated twice a year, on 14 November, the anniversary of his repose, and on the Second Sunday of Lent. This is because St Gregory’s victory over Barlaam is a continuation of the victory of the Church over heresy, which is celebrated on the first Sunday of Lent. St Gregory’s relics are venerated in the church dedicated to him in Thessaloniki. In 2009 Gregory’s mother and four siblings also embraced the monastic life and the whole family was canonised.

Persecution is the norm for those in the Church who oppose politically-motivated corruption and intimidation. Christ was slandered and crucified. St John Chrysostom was deposed and twice exiled. St Gregory Palamas was excommunicated from the Church, slandered and imprisoned. In the last century St Nectarius of Pentapolis was slandered and exiled by jealous Greek bishops of his own Synod. St John of Shanghai was slandered, put on trial and suspended by jealous Russian bishops of his own Synod. Today, nothing has changed. Those who propose the Gospel model of the Church and not the corrupt one, which is all about money, power and so links with States, are also persecuted, just as we have been persecuted for 2,000 years already.

 

 

 

 

 

Two (?) New Local Churches and Controversy

In a single week the number of universally recognised Local Churches has apparently gone up from 14 to 16. First, the Serbian Orthodox Mother-Church granted autocephaly to the Macedonian Orthodox Church. Thus a schism that has lasted well over fifty years has at last been overcome and the 1.5 million Orthodox of North Macedonia have now entered back into communion with the Serbian Orthodox Church and hopefully with the whole Orthodox family. There is rejoicing at this.

However, today (27 May) a Council (not Synod) of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, meeting in Kiev, has declared its autocephaly (without ever using that actual term), though it has not been granted it by the Mother-Church in Moscow. This is problematic, as the Mother-Church must first grant autocephaly, as in the Serbian example. We fear problems and divisions ahead. Of course, we well understand why the Kiev Council has been forced into this by the Kiev government and by the general tragic situation. A great many canonical Ukrainian Orthodox churches were being stolen, closed or handed over to schismatic groups by the nationalist Kiev government authorities in Central and Western Ukraine, as the UOC was under Moscow. Here there are many questions:

Was the decision reached freely? Was this the only solution? In declaring full independence, does the Council actually mean autocephaly? How will out-of-touch Moscow react? Should centralised Moscow have granted the Ukrainian Church at least autonomy previously, as we and others have long suggested? (For example, our March article on the possible reconfiguration of the Russian Church, suggesting large-scale autonomy, and many other articles years before that). What will happen as the UOC enters into negotiations with other groups, many of whose members left the Church only for political reasons? Will there at last be unity in the Ukraine, as the UOC wants to negotiate with at present schismatic groups in the Ukraine? How will this affect the Diaspora? What about churches, clergy and people in the Diaspora that are largely Ukrainian-dominated (like one in London)? Will the Ukrainian Orthodox Church accept or open churches in the Diaspora, as it suggests it will do in its Council’s statement?

Of course, we do not even know the borders of the future Ukraine. So far Russian forces have completely taken or almost taken five largely Russian-speaking provinces: Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, Zaporozhe and Kharkov. Given the rout of the Kiev forces, with hundreds deserting or surrendering every day, Russia may also soon take Odessa, Nikolaev and Dnipropetrovsk, so as to join up with Transdnestria.

Thus, it now looks as though all these more heavily-populated  eight provinces of the Eastern Ukraine/Novorossija will, as the Crimea did in 2014, join Russia. Presumably, they will also, with their 20 million population (half the total of the Ukraine), also Join the Russian Church, still leaving it with some 130 million faithful. This will leave the sixteen provinces of Western and Central Ukraine, with some 10 to 15 million Orthodox, under the new Ukrainian Orthodox Church – presuming that Western provinces do not return to Poland, Romania and Slovakia, so restoring the 1930s borders. However, with the remnants of the routed Ukrainian Army collapsing in the Donbass and rumours, but only rumours, of an imminent coup d’etat in Kiev, the situation is very fluid.

We, canonically and safely living our Orthodox lives in a sister-Church, can only pray for Metr Onuphry and all concerned. We have as fathers steered the ship of the Church to remain outside devious political pressures and keep ourselves free. This, as everywhere, has been essential in order to retain the multinational ethos of the Church and protect our flocks and our churches. We all want a situation where all are free to worship God in the Orthodox manner.

The Russian Church has been in chaos for well over a year now, in the Diaspora, in Lithuania, which also seeks autonomy, and above all in the Ukraine. It has been thrown left and right by sinister political forces and has even rejected its own most faithful members of half a century’s standing because of raison d’etat. But God is not mocked. You will see. All of this was predicted.

The Western Elite Backs Down – For the Moment

Behold, Damascus will cease to be a city and be a ruinous heap.

Isaiah 17, 1

Yet more aggressive and illegal Western airstrikes on the sovereign state of Syria have this time caused no victims. 100 missiles were fired off, but most of them were intercepted and destroyed before they could do any damage. Another billion dollars wasted in token strikes in order to justify imperialism, money that could instead have been used to feed the millions of victims of the Western war against Syria, which dared to oppose Israel.

With its fake news about chemical weapons released in concert by Western State-controlled media, controlled by arms merchants and six foreign-owned news corporations, with statements that would make even Dr Goebbels blush, we are seeing with Syria and Russia a repeat of the ‘Germans kill Belgian babies’ stories of over 100 years ago and Iraq’s mythical ‘weapons of mass destruction’. We now see why the British Establishment created the false-flag incident in Salisbury on 4 March. Then, British spies attempted to poison two Russian citizens and later kidnapped one of them, who previously lived quietly in Russia. We see that all this was linked with the greater geopolitical aim of overthrowing the Syrian government, regularly bombed by the murderous Western proxy-State of Israel, so that the Western ally of Qatar can build its long-dreamed of pipeline through Syria to EU-imprisoned Europe.

The Western media have conveniently forgotten how the West invented chemical weapons, refusing to ban them, as the Russian Empire proposed at the end of the 19th century. They have forgotten the thousands of dead and 500,000 injured in Bhopal in 1984 through its chemicals. Meanwhile, Western-backed terrorists (‘rebels’ in BBC-speak) continue to massacre in Syria, using their Saudi-supplied chemical weapons, British bombs rain down from British-supplied warplanes on tens of thousands of innocent women and children in the Yemen, Western-destroyed Afghanistan is ruled by Muslim drug-barons who feed the ghettoes of the West in new opium wars, Western-destroyed Iraq lies in ruins, Western-destroyed Libya and Western-created Kosovo are ruled by immigrant-smuggling, arms-smuggling and human organ-smuggling terrorists, and, in Europe, Ukrainian citizens die every day beneath the shells of the Western-installed junta in Kiev in the war that the Western media are banned from reporting on.

At least for now the West has backed down from starting WWIII, for someone was praying. Just as in 1962 it was forced to withdraw its missiles from Soviet borders in Turkey and so the Soviet Union was to its relief able to send back its missile-laden ships from Cuba, now we see the same. Like any bully, the West backs down once someone powerful enough stands up to it. However, it is clear that now a greater settlement is going to be needed. Having set up NATO on Russian borders in Europe and Asia, despite promising not to, having invaded Russia through its Georgian proxy ten years ago and then overthrown the democratic Ukrainian government and set up its genocidal Fascist puppet junta in Kiev, so many injustices have now accumulated, that the time of reckoning for the West is coming soon.

The Western Establishment has broken its word every time, betrayed the whole free world, including its own trapped peoples, all in the interests of the parasitic elite. It does the will of Satan. As Christians we must oppose it. It is 1% of the world against 99% of the world, which 99% are the real international  community. But the Truth, so hated by the Western elite and beloved by conscious Christians, sets us free.

 

Turbulence and Prayer

Great generational change is taking place as we pass through the centennial of World War I (1914-1918), 75 years since the Second World War (1939/41-45), 50 years since the social transformations of the 1960s and 25 years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991). Nobody likes change, because it creates turbulence and forces us to adapt or die. And yet, however inconvenient it may be, change is inevitable and can be positive.

Today, this is particularly the case in the UK. Whether we like the change, because we have felt frustrated and powerless captives for 43 long years and so always been forward-looking, or whether we dislike the change, because we see it as negative and it makes us feel fear, insecurity and despair, we have to accept it. After forgetting Christ, the UK, Europe, the USA and the whole world is being reshaped, whether we like it or not. What must we do?

We must pray that the inevitable changes may be as positive and as painless as possible. And in the UK we should ask in particular for the prayers of the Saints of the Isles, so long forgotten. Unfortunately, we have to pay for past mistakes; everything comes at a price. Repentance for abandoning Christ and His values, so falling into lonely despair comes only with pain. Now is the time that tests our Faith. However, ‘In peace’ let us pray to the Lord.

A Commentary on a Universal Prayer

O Lord, forgive us for the sins of not knowing and rejecting the Church,

= Forgive us for our ignorance of the Church through the sins of distant ancestors who were forced into following the heresies and errors of the Western rulers of that age and so fell away from the Church, and for rejecting the Church by not seeking Her.

failing to keep the spiritual purity of Holy Orthodoxy and so failing to share in the missionary Cross of Holy Rus, the Christian Empire of the Third Rome,

= Forgive us for the sins of new calendarism (modernism, liberalism, ecumenism), old calendarism (phariseeism, sectarianism), phyletism (nationalism and racism), narcissism (personality cults, false eldership) and the impurity of other deviations and deformations (spiritual delusions).

and betraying the memory of the Anointed of God, not understanding and revering the holiness of the last Christian Emperor and his Family.

= Forgive us for accepting what the rulers of our countries did to betray and undermine the Christian Emperor and Empire in 1917 and for believing the lies about them that have ever since been inherent in Western culture.

On Delaying the Coming of Antichrist: Universal Repentance and a Universal Prayer

In 1914 the leaders of Western Europe set out on a path of madness, dragging down the rest of the world into their folly. Since then that path of folly, invading other countries and repressing other peoples, has continued to be the one which this world treads, as it were winding up the spring of global tension so tight that, it seems, all can end only in a release of unparalleled global violence.

The key event which signified the leaders’ refusal to repent and return was the coup d’etat of February 1917 in Russia, when they and their Westernized Russian minions committed treason and overthrew the God-given ruler of Russia. After that there was no going back and so the folly spread through Europe again a generation later and then went global. For since 1917 there has been no peace, the world has become unbalanced.

After that catastrophe of nearly a hundred years ago, in Russia today many are realizing that only repentance there can bring restoration and so the rebalancing of the world. However, repentance is also necessary in Western countries, especially in Great Britain, the USA, Germany and France, for it was their elites that engineered the treason of the February 1917 coup d’etat and so are indirectly responsible for all that came later. Using their agents, sometimes Non-Russian, sometimes Westernized Russians, they began the disaster.

Moreover, despite the abysmal deeds of the atheists in the former Russian Empire, especially between 1917 and 1941, most books and articles written by Western academics, authors and politicians about the so-called ‘Russian Revolution’ still maintain that this genocidal blood-letting of millions was good. And they have spread that ideology among the peoples of the West, most of whom still actually believe their lies about the Tsar’s Russia and therefore about contemporary post-Soviet Russia.

According to the propaganda myths of these ideologists the old order with its peace and prosperity had to be destroyed, because the Russian Empire was hindering their plans to obtain global secularist control. Thus, the calls to repentance of the Russian Orthodox Church to Russians apply also to all Non-Russians who consider that the overthrow of the Tsar and the Christian Empire were positive. What is needed is repentance not only in the lands of the former Russian Empire, but universally:

The misfortune that has befallen Russia is the direct result of grievous sins and her rebirth is only possible through cleansing from them. However, so far there has been no real repentance, the crimes committed have not been clearly condemned and many who took an active part in the Revolution continue and even now still affirm that at the time there was no other course of action…refusing to express any direct condemnation of the February Revolution and their rebellion against the Lord’s Anointed.

Bishop (now St) John of Shanghai at the Second Council of the Russian Diaspora in 1938.

We call on all to repent….regardless of their political opinions and views of history, regardless of their ethnic origins, religious background, their attitude to the concept of monarchy and the personality of the last Emperor of Russia.

The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, 18 July 1993.

As the end of history approaches with the coming of Antichrist, we can still postpone that apocalyptic event by repenting. That will gain us time for our own much delayed salvation and potentially that of billions of others, those close to us and those far from us, to the ends of the earth. Therefore let Non-Russians also pray:

O Lord, forgive us for the sins of not knowing and rejecting the Church, failing to keep the spiritual purity of Holy Orthodoxy and so failing to share in the missionary Cross of Holy Rus, the Christian Empire of the Third Rome, and betraying the memory of the Anointed of God, not understanding and revering the holiness of the last Christian Emperor and his Family.

His Holiness Kyrill, Patriarch of all the Russias, now calls on the fullness of our Church, to all the peoples of historic Rus, to pray

O Lord Jesus Christ our God, look down with Thy merciful eye on the sorrow and great pain of lamentation of Thy children in the Ukrainian land. Deliver Thy people from civil strife, make to cease the bloodshed, turn away impending misfortunes. Bring the homeless home, feed those that thirst, console those that weep, join together those that are divided. Let not Thy flock that are embittered towards their kin be diminished, but grant them swift reconciliation, for Thou art compassionate. Soften the hearts of those that have grown violent and bring them to know Thee. Give peace to Thy Church and her faithful children, that with one heart and one mouth we may glorify Thee, our Lord and Saviour, unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Дорогие братья и сестры, обращаюсь ныне ко всей Полноте нашей Церкви, ко всем народам исторической Руси

Господи Иисусе Христе Боже наш, призри милостивным Твоим оком на скорбь и многоболезненный вопль чад Твоих, в земле украинстей сущих. Избави люди Твоя от междоусобныя брани, утоли кровопролития, отврати належащия беды. Лишенныя крова введи в домы, алчущия напитай, плачущия утеши, разделенныя совокупи. Не остави стадо Свое, от сродник своих во озлоблении сущих, умалитися, но скорое примирение яко щедр даруй. Ожесточенных сердца умягчи и к Твоему познанию обрати. Мир Церкви Твоей и верным чадам ея подаждь, да единем сердцем и едиными усты прославим Тя, Господа и Спасителя нашего во веки веков. Аминь.