Tag Archives: Righteousness

What happened to our parish was the work of the devil, and those who dared to lay hands on God’s temple and God’s people are acting like bandits.

Below we report the latest news from our dear friend of over 30 years, Fr Joseph Feysak. in Brno in Moravia, who for two years now has been under persecution from his ‘bishop’. Sadly, this is a familiar story. Clearly, the work of closing a church is the devil’s work – and also the work of this ‘bishop’, who claims he is doing God’s work!

Today’s Sunday holy, divine liturgy was held contrary to the customs at our historical church of St. Wenceslas, because it was not possible to hold services in our temporary shelter on Karásková náměstí.

Although the prospects for Sunday morning did not sound too favorable in terms of weather, in the end we were in for a pleasant surprise.

Father Jozef started the holy liturgy with his helpers and singers even in light rain. However, no one was deterred by these small drops and moisture from above. Believers and their children came throughout the holy liturgy so that they could confess and later receive the Pure Gifts of Christ.

The Holy Liturgy was held in the same place where a similar big event took place this year before Easter – on Palm Sunday.

The green color of the surrounding grass and leaves on the trees also colored the pleasant impression of today. We felt as if the sky had come down to earth and turned into the purple of the green branches.

The conclusion of the holy liturgy was a sermon by father Jozef, followed by a 40-day panichida for the innocently killed brother in Christ, Ruslan. All those present were moved to join in the common prayers, sympathizing in their hearts with the relatives of the slain young man.

Father Jozef’s sermon today was no less significant. With its content, inner message and open confession, it awakened in each of us a fiery faith, hidden in our hearts. It was so clear and true that in all of us, the flames of our faith began again powerfully, encouraging us to remain in unity and love regardless of the heavy adversities and discomfort that each of us suffers, most of all our spiritual shepherd himself.

Father Jozef quite clearly and openly described the injustice that has been going on for a long time on the part of vicar bishop Izaiáš and his priests, who illegitimately and anti-churchly occupied our holy temple here in Brno.

This occupation of our temple was something illegal, unchristian and impious. It was a barbaric act of violence. And whoever committed such violence in the Church, against God’s people, could not have acted out of God’s love. Or do you think so?

No, no!

What happened to our parish was the work of the devil, and those who dared to lay hands on God’s temple and God’s people are acting like bandits.

The famous elder Gabriel Svatohorec told father Jozef clearly that he must separate himself from such people. He must not serve either with the vicar bishop Isaiah or with those who support him, because such people have fallen away from God and His love.

Today was sad and happy at the same time, as it usually is.

However, our grief and dismay, as well as the initial rain, eventually gave way to joy and sunshine. God remembered us. As a reward for our perseverance and steadfast faith, He sent us His gracious caress in the form of God’s blessings from above.

May the Lord bless all our parishioners, may he have mercy on our enemies.

The Lord is with us!

And we hope that it will continue to be so!

In the true love of Christ

Your bro. Michael

Victorine

The other day I went over from Paris and put flowers on a grave in a small, unheard-of town in Brittany, in the hills near Loudeac. It was the first days of autumn, the trees had begun turning colour and there was a slight chill in the early morning and evening air – in northern France the weather always changes after 15 August.

Tante (Aunt) Victorine had been born in the straw on the dirt floor of a cowshed in a hamlet of six houses, which still bore the name of its Breton founder, Brehan, 1300 years later. Literally. The tiny one-floor home-built house had a dining room/kitchen/bedroom on one side and the cow lived on the other side and was sent out to the field during the day. It had changed but little in 1981 when I first met her. Living in Upper (Eastern) Brittany, she spoke not Breton, but ‘Gallo’, the local dialect of French. Or, as the locals will tell you, French is the local (Parisian) dialect of Gallo.

Victorine had been born on 22 November 1918 and inevitably, after the Armistice of 11 November 1918, she had been named Victorine. So many sturdy Breton peasants had gone out to fight the dirty ‘Boches’ and not come back. The Boches were the German enemy of the Paris elite, the elite who had so depised Bretons as ‘yokels’ (‘ploucs’) in peacetime and had banned their language. The victory, after which Victorine had been named, was not that of France, it was the victory of peace for the peasants who had lost many of their best sons fighting against so many of the best sons of Bavarian and Saxon peasants in the futile quagmires and the deadly trenches of World War I.

That was why, like so many women of her generation, Victorine did not marry: there was no-one to marry. Indeed, in 1941 her sister had had a child by a reluctant German soldier who had been forced to join the German Army and had then been sent to patrol the wilds of Brittany. It was the great taboo of the village, but we will leave the condemnation to the sour-faced village pharisees. The illegitimate child, Jean-Pierre, her great-nephew, was my friend.

Victorine did not go to church very often. She did not much like that hard, stony building where hard, stony faces condemned human-beings for loving life. She preferred the hills and streams, woods and fields of God’s Cathedral, where she passed her life, growing vegetables on her patch in the spring, picking fruit in the little orchard in summer and autumn, for eating, cooking, bottling and jam, chopping logs for winter heating, looking after her cow for milk and the best salted butter you have ever tasted, and the pig at the bottom of the garden, that would be slaughtered by the village-slaughterer, our old friend Michel, every December and sold for pork at the village butcher’s.

So Victorine eked out a living. She would have liked to have had a man and children, but it was not to be. She passed away peacefully, a smile on her face, as she went to meet her Maker in November 1989, aged just 71. It had been a hard life, spent in her little house and on its piece of land, whitening her soul, like some early Christian hermit. She had made the best of a life that, on the surface at least, had already in 1914 been wrecked before she had even been born by the war-loving elites of Berlin and Vienna and Paris and London. But if I had to choose between the lives of so many rich, powerful and famous people, I would prefer ten thousand times over to have the life and clear conscience of Tante Victorine. God bless her.

In Memoriam: Michael McCall

Christ is Risen!

It has always been the desire of devout Orthodox Christians to die on the Resurrection Day of Easter. Thus, we recall the life of a righteous layman, Michael McCall, who lived without a television, a car or a mobile phone. He fell asleep peacefully at his home on the Isle of Wight on 8 April, Orthodox Easter Day, at the age of 62, having suffered stomach pains since Great Friday.

Nobody would have guessed that Michael had a Cambridge doctorate in mathematics, so modest was he. A bachelor, he joined the Orthodox Church 25 years ago and was known for his almost monastic life and great modesty. A pilgrim to Jerusalem and frequently partaking in pilgrimages to Iona (near where his ancestors had come from), he was a very generous donor to various churches. Among them the Colchester parish, to which he donated £50,000 and the Norwich parish, to which he donated £5,000. It is only now that we reveal his generosity, for he donated strictly on condition that this would not be revealed in his lifetime.

Michael wrote to me only on Great Wednesday, confirming that he would be coming to us for the Ascension. His Ascension is taking place now.

Michael was an example to us all. Funeral details are yet to be announced, but her will be interred in the Orthodox cemetery at Brookwood near Woking.

To the servant of God the Righteous Pilgrim Michael: Eternal Memory!

He is Risen Indeed!