Is There Salvation Outside of Orthodoxy?

by Rev. Fr. Dr. (Matthew) Raphael Johnson, Ph.D.
Protection of the Teotokos Mission (Milan Synod)
Fayetteville, Pa.

Orthodoxy, throughout its 2,000 year history, has claimed, without interruption, that it is the repository of the Apostolic faith, that is, it is the place where the ancient doctrines of Christianity can be found. Therefore, the claim is made that truth has as its fundamental value salvation, that is, salvation cannot derive from falsity, error, schism.

Modernist Orthodox have, above all things, rejected this fundamental dogma of the faith, that salvation is a function of truth, that is, of true belief. Therefore, they have, to one degree or another, become apostates from Orthodoxy. From its central idea that truth, happiness and salvation are one and the same thing.

The purpose of this brief paper is to outline, for non-Orthodox who wish to know, the basic ancient writings on the question of truth, Orthodoxy and salvation. First, though, here is a quote from the infamous meeting of the World Council of Churches in Barr, Switzerland, in 1990; it is significant because it lays out the groundwork for the ecumenical agenda:

 

We see the plurality of religious traditions as both the result of the manifold ways in which God has related to peoples and nations as well as a manifestation of the richness and diversity of humankind. We affirm that God has been present in their seeking and finding, that where there is truth and wisdom in their teachings, and love and holiness in their living, this like any wisdom, insight, knowledge, understanding, love and holiness that is found among us is the gift of the Holy Spirit. We also affirm that God is with them as they struggle, along with us, for justice and liberation. . . .This saving mystery is mediated and expressed in many and various ways as God’s plan unfolds toward its fulfillment. It may be available to those outside the fold of Christ (Jn. 10.16) in ways we cannot understand, as they live faithful and truthful lives in their concrete circumstances and in the framework of the religious traditions which guide and inspire them. The Christ event is for us the clearest expression of the salvific will of God in all human history. (I Tim. 2.4). . .

We feel called to allow the practice of interreligious dialogue to transform the way in which we do theology. We need to move toward a dialogical theology in which the praxis of dialogue together with that of human liberation, will constitute a true locus theologicus, i.e. both a source of and basis for theological work. The challenge of religious plurality and the praxis of dialogue are part of the context in which we must search for fresh understandings, new questions, and better expressions of our Christian faith and commitment.

This pseudo-intellectual obfuscation and mystification of the WCC (financed by the Rockefeller family), was signed by nearly all the world’s Orthodox churches. However, the Orthodox church rejects these ideas, as evidenced by the citations below. Most New Calendar Orthodox believe the heresy that salvation is possible outside the canonical boundaries of Orthodoxy, however, this is an error, and one that destroys the specific mission of the church in the world. For recent converts, it is rather difficult for these Americans, whose spirituality was formed by the secularized, neo-Protestants whose teachings change with the seasons, cannot stand the rather “strong milk” of Orthodox teaching on this most important of matters. The purpose of me compiling these sources is to let the converts know that Orthodoxy has always spoken with a clear voice on these issues, and new calendarist bishops do not have the power to change this. The Antiochean, Greek and OCA branches of Orthodoxy hold to the heresy of universal salvation (except, so I hear, for people like me) so as to be accepted within the Protestant ecumenical bodies whose grant money keeps the new calendar seminaries going. The reality is, however, that Orthodox teaching is clear and uncompromising, as these citations show.

 

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• Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not according to the tradition which he received from us. (II Thessalonians 3:6)

   

• Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household. (Matthew 10:34-36)

   

• A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, “You are mad; you are not like us.” (St. Anthony the Great)

   

• Follow the straight path which has been charted by our Lord Jesus Christ, and do not allow yourselves to be encircled by sin…Today’s path which is followed by various societies is directed towards sin. The cause of this is the development of civilization – of wrongly conceived civilization – towards which the various leaders are striving by diverse means to direct mankind, trying to create a new way of life, different from that prescribed by the Lord. (Saints Raphael, Nicholas and Irene of Lesvos.)

   

• Those things which the holy Fathers laid down as law and all that is of our Church is good holy, both in soul and body. And whatever is done outside our Church is all of the devil. (St. Kosmas Aitolos)

   

• For whomever the Church is not mother, God is not father. (St.Cyprian of Carthage)

   

• The Church is the salt that salts the whole world, preserving it from putridity. (Venerable Ephrem the Syrian)

   

• I, my Christians, read both about priests and about impious people and about atheists and about heretics; I investigated the depths of wisdom. All faiths are false, fake; all are of the devil…Only the faith of the pious and Orthodox Christians is good and holy. (Saint Kosmas Aitolos)

   

• Concerning the fact that those belonging to the Church must not be allowed to go visiting the cemeteries or the so called martyria of any heretics, for the purpose of prayer or of cure, but, on the contrary, those who do so, if they be among the faithful, shall be excluded from communion for a time until they repent and confess their having made a mistake, when they may be readmitted to communion. (Canon IX of Laodicia, Also approved by the Ecumenical Synods).

   

• Let any Bishop, or Presbyter, or deacon that merely joins in prayer with heretics be suspended, but if he had permitted them to perform any service as Clergymen, let him be deposed. (Canon XLV of the Holy Apostles.)

   

• There is one religion only, the Orthodox Christian Religion. And this spirit the orthodox one is the true one. The other spirits, are spirits of delusion and the teachings are mixed up. (Elder Porphyrios +1991)

   

• If any man receive not Baptism, he hath not salvation; except only Martyrs, who even without the water receive the kingdom. For when the Saviour, in redeeming the world by His Cross, was pierced in the side, He shed forth blood and water; that men, living in times of peace, might be baptized in water, and, in times of persecution, in their own blood. For martyrdom also the Saviour is wont to call a baptism, saying, Can ye drink the cup which I drink, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? And the Martyrs confess, by being made a spectacle unto the world, and to Angels, and to men. (Catechetical Lectures Of Our Holy Father, Cyril, Archbishop Of Jerusalem – Lecture 3.)

   

• All the teachers of the Church, and all the Councils, and all the Divine Scriptures advise us to flee from the heterodox and separate from their communion. (St. Mark of Ephesus)

   

• Concerning the necessity of not permitting heretics to come into the house of God, so long as they persist in their heresy. (Canon 6 of the Council of Laodicea)

   

• Do not err, my brethren: if anyone follow a schismatic, he will not inherit the Kingdom of God. If any man walk about with strange doctrine, he cannot lie down with the passion. Take care, then, to use one Eucharist, so that whatever you do, you do according to God: for there is one Flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup in the union of His Blood; one altar, as there is one bishop with the presbytery and my fellow servants, the deacons. (St. Ignatius Of Antioch, Epistle to the Philadelphians, 3:2-4:1)

   

• He that saith not ‘Anathema’ to those in heresy, let him be anathema. (Seventh Ecumenical Council)

   

• Neither the Papist nor the Protestant church can be considered as the True church of Christ. The first was altered by a number of innovations and the accursed despotism (Primacy) due to which resulted the schism from the Orthodox. The same goes for the Protestants whose innumerable innovations lead to total anarchy and chaos. Only the Orthodox church maintained the teachings of Christ flawlessly without a single innovation. Only in the Orthodox church does unity exist. The unity which the Savior was petitioning from the Father saying, “Holy Father keep them in your Name those that you gave me so they can be one just like we were one.” (John 17:11…) (St. Nektarios of Aegina)

   

• St. John the Almsgiver said: We shall not escape sharing in that punishment which, in the world to come, awaits heretics, if we defile Orthodoxy and the holy Faith by adulterous communion with heretics. (The Life of St. John the Almsgiver.)

   

• That one must not accept the blessings of heretics, which are rather misfortunes than blessings. (Canon 32 of the Council of Laodicea.)

   

• The fact that we do not become indignant over small matters is the cause of all our calamities; and because slight errors escape fitting correction, greater ones creep in. As in a body, a neglect of wounds generates fever, infection and death; so in the soul, slight evils overlooked open the door to graver ones . . . But if a proper rebuke had at first been given to those who attempted to depart from the divine sayings and change some small matter, such a pestilence would not have been generated, nor such a storm have seized upon the Church; for he that overturns even that which is minor in the sound Faith, will cause ruin in all. (St. John Chrysostom, Homily One on the Epistle to the Galatians.)

   

• Those that are not reborn by the divine grace in the only One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, they do not consist of (comprise) any church, neither visible nor invisible. (St. Nektarios of Aegina)

   

• The sixteenth century gave birth to four great beasts: the heresy of Luther, the heresy of Calvin, the heresy of the Jesuits, and the heresy of the new calendar. The heresies of Luther and Calvin were refuted by [such and such] . . . As for the heresy of the new calendar, this was condemned by a decision of the great Ecumenical Council that met in Constantinople in 1593. (Dositheus, Patriarch of Jerusalem, Confession of the Orthodox Faith, p. 4)

   

• But what a thing it is, to assert and contend that they who are not born in the Church can be the sons of God! For the blessed apostle sets forth and proves that baptism is that wherein the old man dies and the new man is born, saying, ‘He saved us by the washing of regeneration.’ But if regeneration is in the washing, that is, in baptism, how can heresy, which is not the spouse of Christ, generate sons to God by Christ?” (St Cyprian of Carthage, “The Epistles of Cyprian,” Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 5, 388)

   

• Caecilius of Bilta said: I know only one baptism in the Church, and none out of the Church. This one will be here, where there is the true hope and the certain faith. For thus it is written: ‘One faith, one hope, one baptism;’ not among heretics, where there is no hope, and the faith is false, where all things are carried on by lying. (The Seventh Council of Carthage Under Cyprian, (200-258 AD), September, 258 AD, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 5, pg. 565)

   

• Marcellus of Zama said: Since sins are not remitted saved in the baptism of the Church, he who does not baptize a heretic holds communion with a sinner. (The Seventh Council of Carthage Under Cyprian, (200-258 AD), Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 5, 570)>

   

• Orthodoxy is such happiness, such riches! It alone teaches and provides all the paths to salvation. No Catholicism, no Protestantism, no other form of faith or denomination, gives that which the grace of the Holy Spirit gives through Holy Orthodoxy. (Vol 3, 1. Blessed Elder Sampson (+1979))

 

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Now, one might indignantly ask, what of those who have never heard of Christ, or of Orthodoxy specifically? Though as this is becoming more and more an irrelevant question, it is a legitimate one, and a few ideas might be required here:

First, there is an old Russian custom that St. John the Baptist approaches very human soul at the hour of death and preaches to them about Christ. To reject him is to reject missionary labors on your behalf.

Second, there is also the question of the acceptance or rejection of the religious system one is raised under. The honest seeker, one who rejects the paganism, for example, one has been brought up with is truly a struggle, and may well earn a place in heaven after being suitably preached to at the point of death. If however, one finds his religion satisfactory, one has a problem.

Thirdly, there is the continuous prayers for the dead performed by the Orthodox church on a daily basis. The time between the particular and the final or general judgement is a time where the church, which is the mind of Christ and His manifestation, intercedes for those who have departed in the faith, and for all departed souls. For example, an elderly Japanese woman, a neighbor fo mine, passed away. While she was in a coma, I prayed in her stead that I had accepted Orthodoxy in its fullness, and begged the saints to accept this prayer as if it were from her. I guess I’ll find out later if it worked or not, and I urge Orthodox people do perform this practice for all heretics and pagans who are dying.

Fourthly, those who are mentally retarded or otherwise incapacitated are incapable of committing sin and therefore salvation is automatic for them. The same goes for aborted babies, etc. The heretical Church of Rome struggled with this issue because they believe that the sin of Adam is hereditary, while Christianity has always understood this sin to manifest in the endless propensity for human beings to do the wrong thing. Therefore, the “unbaptized baby” question is irrelevant for the True Faith.

Fifthly, there is a question about the nature of Hades, or what the papists might call “Limbo.” Archbishop +IOANN of the Synod of Milan, a theologian of extraordinary abilities and the spiritual son of the Valaam/Pskov elder and Schema-bishop +THEODORE (Irtel), is of the opinion that hades was not destroyed at the Resurrection, but remains, in some form, to provide a place of natural happiness (though not the presence of God, and therefore this happiness is not unmixed with sorrow) for those who have departed outside the faith for faults not of their own. This is a highly controversial stance, and I hold a position of neutrality on it. Some church fathers have held that the “Bosom of Abraham” is just this place (whether one wants to call it Hades or not), a place that papists forgot about, and then reinvented it as “Limbo” centuries later.

However one cuts it, the principle remains, only Orthodox people exist in heaven, and no other. Whether or not such people have been evangelized at the hour of death is of no concern to Orthodox people currently alive, but is a position of ancient lineage in the Christian confession.

“If Salvation is difficult while Orthodox, imagine how difficult it is when one is not Orthodox.” –Blessed Fr. Seraphim Rose.

(Hattip: Fr Raphael for a standing permittion to utilize his available writings.)

Source: The Orthodox Medievalist Journal

 

 

“Martyrdom is the Only True Virtue”

The Social Thought of Patriarch +Volodymyr of Kiev and All Ukraine (+1995)

 by The Rev. Fr. (Matthew) Raphael Johnson, Ph.D.

“Martyrdom is the Only True Virtue”

 
While a priest in the Soviet forced labor and death camps, Fr. Vasili Romanyuk, later to become Patriarch +Volodymyr of all Ukraine, wrote several epistles from prison. Within these, one can discern a very specific and well thought out social philosophy, albeit one contained within a very strict True Orthodox context. Within these letters and essays, the future Patriarch held that law and nationalism are necessary for an intelligent political life, that human rights are central to a moral political life, and even more, any contact with the Moscow Patriarch and the complacent and elitist World Council of Churches (WCC) is a betrayal of those suffering for the Orthodox faith in Ukraine and elsewhere in the Soviet Bloc. While this may be inconvenient for the Bound Brook Ukrainian ecumenists, the reality is that patriarch +Volodymyr was a witness and a sufferer for the True Orthodox vision–a vision that set itself against those semi-Orthodox bodies that have joined with the Moscow Patriarchate for the sake of worldly advancement and social prestige.

Ultimately, Fr. Vasili was sent to the GULAGs on four separate occasions that spanned the years

Fr. Vasili in Ukraine, circa 1979

1949-1959, and from 1972-1979, where he was finally released and escaped the USSR into Canada, where he became a monk, after the death of his wife, under Metropolitan +Mstyslav. Only when the USSR fell in Ukraine did +Mstyslav take his rightful place as Patriarch of an independent Ukraine, and now monk Volodymyr was made Metropolitan of Lv’iv and the heir apparent of +Mstyslav, who warned his synod against the machinations and corruption of metropolitan Filaret (some claim that Mstyslav had anathematized Filaret, but the latter’s great wealth and political connections made such an pronouncement of no effect ). He was never excommunicated by Mstyslav, as the absurd Wikipedia articleon Volodymyr claims. Filaret was in the synod of Mstyslav as Volodymyr was, and hence, the Wikipedia claim is baseless and preposterous, as most Wiki claims are.

His two main essays, “Sons of Day and Sons of Night,” (1979) as well as “The Kingdom of God Within Us” (1979) are directed against the world Orthodox and their attachment to the fraudulent Moscow Patriarchate. For the then priest Vasili, the true Orthodox resisters “have no right to sleep because we are the light of the world.. . .one may be called righteous only if we are ready to lay down our life for our friends.” Of course, those who attached themselves to the MP were interested in saving their own skin. “Our Christian calling obligates us to categorically reject all the deeds of darkness, and enter into no compromises with the sons of night. . .” While the world Orthodox were comfortable, well ed, and complacent in their acceptance of the Moscow Patriarchate and the WCC who supported it, the future patriarch writes concerning the True Orthodox “There is no grumbling about their fate amongst them because they know whose sons they are, why they have been called into this world, and where they are going. . . no one has been given the right to be indifferent to the events of this world.” On the other hand, the world Orthodox have been led astray by “insidiousness, deceit, flattering words and the guise of ‘magnanimity,’” as the world persecutes the righteous. Even more, “The devil wants to legalize the interception of human souls for himself with the help of various secular laws that persuades Christians to agree with the legalization of lawlessness.”

But what remains steady in the patriarch’s words is that there can be no compromise here: “Let us not be diverted from our chosen path by any diabolical ‘peace’ proposals, because there can be nothing in common between darkness and light.” Clearly, this is not only directed against the left wing in western politics, but more importantly, the semi-Orthodox that have joined with Moscow and those others who have sought to compromise with anti-Christ rejecting their Christian calling for being comfortable in the mainstream of social life in the west: the same west that not only ignored the future patriarch’s many appeals, but continued to aid and trade with the Soviet bloc while the GULAG remained in motion. In an appeal to the world Orthodox to break with Moscow and the WCC, he writes “Therefore, what emerges fro the present sate of things is that the Christian community should not reconcile itself to the conditions which have come about in today’s world and should demand in those so-called ‘dialogues’ that the opposing side promptly change its attitude towards us!” That is, the suffering Orthodox in the catacombs. The WCC, needless to say, ignored Fr. Vasili’s appeals and continued to support the Moscow Patriarchate and its “world Orthodox” hangers on.

For Patriarch Volodymyr, the voice of Christ can be heard in the conscience of every Orthodox person. “It speaks to us constantly if we have not deadened it by our sins” he writes. For a man that spent a generation throughout the various GULAG camps in Russia and Ukraine, camps that the Moscow Patriarch denied even existed, he writes “It is namely our sins that prevent us from feeling the joy of the Kingdom of God already here on earth, and later become a hindrance to entering it, for according to the Word of God nothing impure will enter there.” This is an important theological point. The Kingdom of God and the transfiguration of nature and human relations has already been accomplished. Heaven exists on earth in the church in its fulness, but our sins keep us bound to the lower world of cause and effect, in short, the world of power and its relations. Unlike Catholicism, Protestantism and new Orthodoxy, heaven is merely a dimension of the created earth, bound together in lawfulness by the Logos, saved and transfigured by Christ, and it can be experienced here and now by the saints and great ascetics. It is not some far off world, not some “place up there” as the simple would have it, but within the church, within the ascetic struggle itself. Death is a simple transition to the possession of this kingdom with complete security, but a kingdom that can be accessed while still in the flesh. In other words, Christ has already accomplished this task of transfiguration, only humanity and its arrogance and pride has prevented itself from experiencing it. “Entire generations were lost in the murky thickets of centuries only because they believed not in God, but in corrupted human wisdom. And this is not all. Human wisdom inspired by a diabolical spirit, strives to somehow justify its abuse of people, embellishing it with great attributes and far fetched epithets in order to look enticing and pleasant to human hearing and sight because in this way it is easier to capture all kinds of credulous and naive people.”

For Fr. Vasili, the west was completely fooled by the leftist propaganda machine in and out of the USSR. Corrupted media, religious complacency and sheer ignorance and self-importance forbade western politicians and religious leaders to fully comprehend the Soviet menace. While the Nazis were condemned to the skies on a daily basis, being a Marxist was little less than chic in American universities. Marxist slogans without serious opposition were offered with a sneer from the overpaid academics in the modern west, comfortable with high salaries, tenure and little work to pontificate to their captive audiences in the classroom. Anti-communists were regularly denied tenure and driven out of universities on the charge of “anti-Semitism.” The west had, since World War I, followed the Marxists root and branch, offering the same promises, but under a system where the regime could be justified in periodic and tightly controlled elections. This the likes of Patriarch +Volodymyr and Solzhenitsyn knew very well. While “Holocaust survivors” became celebrities, GULAG inmates were forgotten, and their memory besmirched by huge American academic establishment who regularly considered the GULAG inmates “fascists” regardless. Even today, professional academic frauds have ignored the testimony of GULAG inmates among the expatriate Ukrainian and Russian exiles in America, while giving “Holocaust survivors” speaking fees of $100,000 and up. Had Solzhenitsyn not won the Nobel prize, he also would have gone down the Orwellian memory hole as well.

For Fr. Vasili in the GULAG, the Moscow Patriarchate was little more than a propaganda organization for the KGB. The fact that these men wore clerical dress and chanted the services meant nothing, none of that proved their Orthodoxy, only their usefulness. Today, the Ukrainians in Bound Brook, in full communion with Constantinople who never wavered in their support of the Moscow Patriarchate, would like to drop +Volodymyr down the memory hole, something that we cannot permit. For Fr. Vasili, the Moscow Patriarchate exists solely for the purposes of “self-liquidation,” in his words, a bureaucracy that exists to oversee the manipulation, alteration and eventual disintegration of religion in Russia and has no other purpose. Hence, the Moscow Patriarchate maintained close ties with the WCC to permit a further penetration of the propaganda to the “anti-communist” west. In fact, the WCC was a willing partner with the MP in flooding the west with false stories about “freedom of religion” in the Soviet Bloc. In fact, the future patriarch writes from prison, concerning the MP, “This church has no rights. It is unable to set in motion its own activity. Furthermore, it has been assigned the function of self-liquidation. . priests and active believers are submitted to various repressions while the hierarchy washes its hands of the matter. . .I have turned to the Moscow patriarchate several times, so that they could intervene in my defense, but on none of these occasions have I ever even heard a reply.” In dealing with the obliviousness of the corrupted west, he writes: “Brazenly and arrogantly the USSR persecutes believers while the Christian world not only remains silent, but signs various agreements with this country.” The phrase “Christian world” was uttered in sarcasm.

In mocking the western delegates at the 1975 WCC convention in Nairobi, Fr. Vasili writes: “. . .how the delegates of the west permitted themselves to be deceived and manipulated in everything! A visitation from the Lord! It cannot be called anything else. How benevolently and attentively they listen to the emissaries of falsehood and atheism cry out from the rostrums about the equal rights of believers and other citizens.” The “religious academics” gathered in Nairobi, with major foundation grants, to pontificate about the progressive nature of the USSR in order to satisfy their paymasters. These then went back to their universities and pompously pontificated about their sophistication and their world travels, as millions starved in the GULAG. As they piously prattled about ecumenism in their protected and tenured chairs, the true Christian world was liquidated. Those that spoke out were summarily called “fascists” and, even worse, “nationalists” by the apostles of openness and ecumenism.

The future Patriarch hence indicts the entire “world Orthodox” organization, the Phanar, Antioch, Alexandria and the OCA, as being part and parcel of the liquidation of the True Orthodox in Russia and Ukraine. Even worse, the flatulent, neo-Orthodox world of the OCA, themselves openly venerating KGB “Patriarch Nikodim” who created them, openly sided with the KGB hierarchy over the True Orthodox, the latter of which were anathematized as “schismatics” by the western “World Orthodox” organization and the WCC, of which the world Orthodox are merely a small branch office. These are the very same frauds: the wealthy Orthodox academics, millionaire bishops and worldly wise synods in “world Orthodoxy” who continue to call the underground Orthodox in Russia “schismatics” today, and even pronounce their mysteries graceless, while they stuff their faces at their parish picnics and vacation trips to the Antiochean Village. As they believe that the KGB Patriarchate who acquiesced to millions of Orthodox people being liquidated in the GULAG as “mainstream Orthodoxy,” they condemn the True Orthodox for their “lack of love.” The True Orthodox world does not receive grants from the Rockefeller Foundation.

For Patriarch Volodymyr, the only true virtue is in the acceptance of martyrdom: but the world of “mainline Orthodoxy” is the opposite of martyrdom: it is a compromise with the world for the sake of money and mainline prestige. The pseudo-bishops under the millionaire Philip Saliba meekly saw their sees taken away from them solely because Saliba controls millions of dollars who support their organizations and chancelleries, not to mention their medical benefits. The OCA has received millions in grants from the WCC and Archer Daniels Midland to finance their seminaries and “scholars.” But these same bishops, to acquiesce to all sorts of non-canonical outrages and sit on personal fortunes and tenured chairs, spit in the faces of the TOC and say we are “un-canonical.”

Patriarch +Volodymyr saw the same in the USSR in the 1970s. Certain KGB bishops, all of whom maintained communion with “world Orthodoxy,” were wealthy men who traveled the world preaching peace with the USSR and condemning the underground church as “graceless.” The Serbs, Antiocheans and especially the OCA nodded along with them, and turned to condemn the TOC as “lacking in compassion.” For Volodymyr, there could be no compromise with this mentality: they were as evil as the KGB who financed them. Fr. Vasili soon learned that the WCC was not going to help him in prison, but in fact were helping to finance his jailers. Was the OCA going to help the imprisoned in Russia, when they were created by the Moscow Patriarchate and the WCC that has assisted in the rounding up of underground Christians? But martyrdom is precisely this: rejecting the world and its pomps, and receiving the attacks of the world in return. While world orthodoxy can offer much money and academic respectability, it can not offer virtue, since the world of martyrdom is foreign to it. It cooperates with the princes of this world in order to continue to finance its activities and receive invitations to the major academic conferences.

“Evil has become more subtle these days,” patriarch Volodymyr writes, it needs not to continue rounding up the Christians, since none of them are willing to fight their jailers. The Orthodox can have their liturgy, their harmless theology AND worldly respect. But this is the voice of the anti-Christ, the one who says that you can have it both ways. Patriarch Volodymyr, spending most of his life in the GULAG, knows what a fraud this is, and therefore, throughout his pontificate, refused to commune with anyone within world Orthodoxy, and sought ties only with the Milan Synod of Auxentios for its own support of the TOC in Russia. What a mockery of his legacy are the well-fed Bound Brook and Johnstown groups and the pseudo-Patriarch Filaret, seeking recognition from Constantinople as a substitute for the faith and virtue. Neither Patriarchs +Mstyslav or +Volodymyr would commune with anyone who recognized the KGB patriarchate of Moscow as a matter of official synod policy, and therefore, sought ties only with the TOC. To reject this martyric legacy is solely based on the endless pursuit of filthy lucre and the approbation of Baal. For Volodymyr, human reason and the will that controls it is crippled by sin. This and only this is at the root of the fraud of world Orthodoxy and its support for anyone who finances them. It is a will so blinded by schism and sin that it can see only the approbation of the world as the only true good the good for which all other goods should be sacrificed.

Ultimately, our legacy is that of +Volodymyr and all the new confessors of Russia and Ukrainewho would rather suffer a violent and horrific death than abandon Orthodoxy and the love of the nation. In the west, on the other hand, mainline Orthodoxy seeks to compromise with Pharoah and his soldiers in exchange for a small place in the religious mainstream. The Milan Synod stands with its two founders, Archbishop Auxentios of Athens and his ally, Patriarch Volodymyr of Ukraine, in rejecting the “world Orthodox” and seeking only martyrdom in this world of one kind or another as the only true virtue.

 

                             +   +   +

All quotes in this paper are taken from the collection of letters and epistles by Patriarch Volodymyr, A Voice in the Wilderness,published by The Society for the Study of Religion Under Communism, 1980

Source:  The Russian Orthodox Medievalist online journal. This article is published here by kind permission of its author.

Hattip:  to the Rev. Reader Joseph Suaiden for identifying this excellant article from among Fr. Raphael’s catalogue.

Editor’s Note:  All italics and bolden type were added for emphasis.

The Church on Relations with Heretics

Matthew Raphael Johnson

The Orthodox do not expect the other Christians to be converted to Orthodoxy in its historic and cultural reality of the past and the present and to become members of the Orthodox Church—Statement of the Orthodox delegates at the WCC General Assembly in Nairobi in 1975

We order any Bishop, or Presbyter, that has accepted any heretics’ Baptism, or sacrifice, to be deposed; for “what consonance hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath the believer with an infidel?” (Canon 56 of the Apostles)

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Many have begun to upbraid me for my position on the grace of the sacraments for those who believe the heterodox have mysteries. The simple fact of the matter is that there cannot be two Orthodoxies. One is true, the others, false. Today, there are two “orthodoxies,” the first, based at the Phanar, and is an integral part of the global ecumenical movement and globalist elite forces. The other is the “suffering Orthodox,” those in resistance, who refuse to recognize or compromise with the secularization of the world, which, to a great extent, now almost completely dominates the mind of “world Orthodoxy.”

Overwhelmingly, the True Orthodox in Greece and elsewhere have rejected the idea that grace can exist in a church body that holds that heretics, that is, Roman Catholics and Anglicans, do have sacraments and can achieve salvation. They have rejected the idea that two orthodoxies can exist side by side. It was the Greek new calendar church that first claimed that the True Orthodox do not have mysteries, yet the papists do. It was the new calendarists who launched bloody and violent reprisals against the True Orthodox in Bulgaria, Romania and Greece, destroying churches, profaning the mysteries and assaulting priests and faithful.

These are spiritual thieves, plundering the spiritual flock, and they will enter the sheepfold (the Church), climbing up some other way, using force and trampling upon the divine statutes. The Lord calls them robbers (cf. St. John 10:1). Indeed, their first task will be the persecution of the true pastors, their imprisonment and exile, for without this it will be impossible for them to plunder the sheep.

Therefore, my son, when you see the violation of patristic tradition and the divine order in the Church, the order established by God, know that the heretics have already appeared, although for the time being they may conceal their impiety, or they will distort the Divine Faith imperceptibly, in order to succeed better in seducing and enticing the inexperienced into the net. (St. Anatolii the Younger of Optina, 1922).

Ecumenism is a heresy because it claims that grace exists outside of Orthodoxy, and, as a result, truth has no relation to salvation, grace or sacraments. Those who are a part of the ecumenical movement hold this to a man, and hence, there can be no question from a strict canonical point of view that they are no longer Orthodox. The patristic/canonical authority for all this, though familiar to most, is reprinted below. Those who are new to this controversy must read this material. The True Orthodox number about 2000 parishes throughout the world, and have pronounced synodically that the synods of Moscow and the Greek world are schismatic. There is no official statement on the Romanians, Serbs, Georgians or Bulgarians. These have been considered “irregular,” such as the Matthewites or certain Ukrainian groups, rather than graceless.

In other words, the True Orthodox have not synodically rejected the grace of the Serbs, etc. Since Serbia and Georgia have left the World Council of Churches (WCC) there is some reason to hold them as a part of Orthodoxy, however irregular due to their communion with the Phanar. Nevertheless, the independent Serbian metropolitanate of Christopher, a 33rd degree Mason has refused to follow Belgrade in this matter, one can easily conclude that the Serbs in America fall into the same heresy as the Greeks. Since Serbs in America receive communion maybe once a year, it is a rather moot point whether they are a apart of Orthodoxy.

It should be reiterated that these synodal decisions of the True Orthodox, Russian and Greek, refer only to sacramental grace. The pious Orthodox, maybe confused as to their status, receive all the grace that they would merely as praying, without the sacramental life. Hence, salvation is possible if there is no moral culpability, as is clearly the case throughout the world. Holding Orthodoxy in one’s being is all that is necessary for salvation, regardless of the irregularity of such a position. In these confusing times, times the True Orthodox are not helping by their factiousness, the faithful Orthodox will see God, regardless of their position.

The fact remains that the New Calendar was anathematized by all Orthodoxy, all the historic patriarchates, prior to 1921. Between 1902 and 1904, the Patriarchs of Jerusalem and Constantinople have anathematized the New Calendar and the papal mentality that undergirds it. No Orthodox body, outside of the most severe emergency, has the authority to rewrite tradition to suit their needs. Certainly this applies to something so intimately familiar to all Orthodox as the calendar. It created a schism in Orthodoxy, introduced Orthodoxy to the structured, elite-funded ecumenical movement, and crated an “Orthodox papacy” in the Phanar.

The Masonic Young Turk movement made certain that all Patriarchs of Constantinople were Masons, and that includes the well known Mason Meletios IV (both patriarch of Constantinople and Alexandria, even after his formal deposition, who had reached the 33rd degree), as well as lesser known Masons such as Basil III and Photios II. The Lodge at Constantinople, under Patriarch Meletios IV recognizes the sacraments of the Anglicans. In 1948, another Freemason is “elected,” Athenagoras a 33rd degree Mason. Athenagoras said, “We are in error and sin if we think that the Orthodox Faith came down from heaven and that the other dogmas [i.e. religions] are unworthy. Three hundred million men have chosen Mohammedanism as the way to God, and further hundreds of millions are Protestants, Catholics and Buddhists. The aim of every religion is to make man better.”

Iakovos, head of the Greek sect in America, and a Mason, of sorry memory, referred to the canons as “pseudo-documents” and “prejudices” that prevent union with the western “Christians.” He is venerated still by the Greek church, though has yet to be “canonized.” He believed that the Talmudic Jews were our “fathers in the faith,” and regularly received cash advances from the ADL. The Patriarchs of Constantinople regularly pray and concelebrate with the popes. In 1965, the papal name is inserted into the diptyches of Constantinople, denoting full communion. The ROCOR under St. +Philaret the New Confessor, rejects all communion with the ecumenists as a result, and joins with the Greek Old Calendarists, long confessing the gracelessness of the ecumenist mysteries. After +Philaret death, the ROCOR’s policy will change, something predicted by the great Archbishop +Averky of blessed memory.

Demetrios is then elected “Patriarch of Constantinople” in 1972, and in his case, is a public Mason, reaching the 33rd degree, having, as all Masons, taken their oath to Lucifer/Prometheus at the 13th degree, and repeated thereafter. He will proclaim that the Roman Catholics and Anglicans have sacraments, and that, therefore, they are part of the Orthodox church. All of “world Orthodoxy” accepts it. He writes the following:

. . . .the Holy Church of Christ in Constantinople embraces the Bishop of Rome and the Holy Church in Rome, in the incense, acceptable to the Lord, of the pentarchy of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, in which the Bishop of Rome is defined as presiding in love and honor, ascribing all honor to Your Holiness,… first in rank and honor in the universal Body of the Lord.

The facts are clear: all of the Patriarchs of Constantinople have been Masons and Luciferians since the 1920s. Parthenios of Alexandria himself was a Mason and praised Islam as a “true Religion” as president of the World Council of Churches. Yet “world Orthodoxy” maintained communion with him, and made communion with the Phanar their core argument for being “canonical.” In the meantime, the Antiocheans entered into communion with the Jacobites and encouraged Anglican parishes to become “Orthodox” without ever abjuring Anglicanism. So under the AOC in America, Anglican parishes, using organs, unleavened bread and openly venerating post-schism saints, are called “western rite Orthodox.”

The Phanar had long since been venerating post-schism western “saints,” and icons are painted of Paul VI of Rome and placed in the churches of the New Skete “monastery” in New York. By 2003, the ROCOR is concelebrating with the Masonic Phanar in Ireland and elsewhere. Specifically, on April 24, 2003, the ROCOR and the Phanar concelebrate in Dublin, Ireland. The ROCOR, despite all they have done for humanity, were (and are) taken in by the lures of worldly influence and mainstream “acceptance.” The result? Confusion, more schism and more harsh feelings and ill-will.

But the worst, the most openly evil, was the 1983 Vancouver Statement of the WCC, which explicitly “affirmed” an ecclesiology that rejected the necessity of Christ for Salvation. This was the first in a series of steps that allowed the Serbs, long on the WCC payroll, to eventually bite the hand that fed them and leave that organization.

The document in question is called, “My Neighbor’s Faith and Mine, Theological Discoveries Through Interfaith Dialogue: A Study Guide” (Geneva: WCC, 1986). After claiming the need “a more adequate theology of religions,” the group stated, “that in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, the entire human family has been united to God in an irrevocable bond and covenant. The saving presence of God’s activity in all creation and human history comes to its focal point in the event of Christ. . . because we have seen and experienced goodness, truth, and holiness among followers of other paths and ways than that of Jesus Christ…, we find ourselves recognizing a need to move beyond a theology which confines salvation to the explicit personal commitment to Jesus Christ.” This was signed by all members of the WCC, including all Greek New Calendar jurisdictions that have yet to repent of it. World Orthodoxy continues to commune with the Phanar. As a result, there can be no question that Moscow, Bucharest, Athens, the Greeks and the Finns are heretics, worse than papists (for at least the latter do not claim to be “Orthodox”), and a humiliation for all True Orthodox peoples.

Allow me to be clear: The vulgar quoting from canons is not the aim here. The canons, almost completely unknown to the “average Orthodox” in the nave, are necessary to good church order, but they are not sufficient to it. We call the Orthodox Church the manifestation of the Spirit, that is, the Third Person of the Trinity, rather than the manifestation of Christ in the flesh. The Sprit, and this is at the root of the difference between the papal party (east and west) and the Orthodox one, is the representative of a Holy Freedom. We are freed from the law, but it is a far cry from saying we are freed from the necessity of true church order. Hence, the reality is that “canonicity” has become nearly meaningless, deriving as it does from the pens of hobbyists, neophytes and amateurs. But what the Spirit gives to us is a freedom within order and the fullness of the faith: canon law, the living witness of the saints, monastic typika, the divine services, pilgrimage, mystical experience, the giving of alms and the giving of self in a very real and often painful way. All of these together (and all of these that cannot be rendered in language) are at the basis of good Orthodox order and canonical life. And it is here, even more than the violation of a strict canonical order, that the difference between the two Orthodox churches arise. Nevertheless, the relevant canons, etc. are reprinted below.

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Those who attack the Church of Christ by teaching that Christ’s Church is divided into so-called “branches” which differ in doctrine and way of life, or that the Church does not exist visibly, but will be formed in the future when all “branches” or sects or denominations, and even religions will be united into one body; and who do not distinguish the priesthood and mysteries of the Church from those of the heretics, but say that the baptism and Eucharist of heretics is effectual for salvation; therefore, to those who knowingly have communion with these aforementioned heretics or who advocate, disseminate, or defend their new heresy of Ecumenism under the pretext of brotherly love or the supposed unification of separated Christians, Anathema! (ROCOR, 1983)

Concerning the fact that those belonging to the Church must not be allowed to go visiting the cemeteries or the so called martyria of any heretics, for the purpose of prayer or of cure, but, on the contrary, those who do so, if they be among the faithful, shall be excluded from communion for a time until they repent and confess their having made a mistake, when they may be readmitted to communion. (Canon IX of Laodicia (Also approved by the Ecumenical Synods))

If any clergymen, or laymen, enter a synagogue of Jews, or of heretics, to pray, let him be both deposed and excommunicated. Canon LXV Of the Holy Apostles)

Let any Bishop, or Presbyter, or deacon that merely joins in prayer with heretics be suspended, but if he had permitted them to perform any service as Clergymen, let him be deposed. (Canon XLV of the Holy Apostles)

One must not join in prayer with heretics or schismatics. (Canon XXXIII of Laodicia)

Do not err, my brethren: if anyone follow a schismatic, he will not inherit the Kingdom of God. If any man walk about with strange doctrine, he cannot lie down with the passion. Take care, then, to use one Eucharist, so that whatever you do, you do according to God: for there is one Flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup in the union of His Blood; one altar, as there is one bishop with the presbytery and my fellow servants, the deacons.” (St. Ignatius Of Antioch, Epistle to the Philadelphians, 3:2-4:1, 110 A.D.)

The present age is rich not in ascetical feats of piety and confession of faith, but in cheating, lies, and deceits. It is noteworthy that several hierarchs and their flocks, for the most part Russians, have already fallen away from Ecumenical unity, and to the question: “What dost thou believe?”, reply with references to self-proclaimed heads of all sorts of schisms in Moscow, America, and Western Europe. It is clear that they have ceased to believe in the unity of the Church throughout the whole world and do not wish to admit it, attempting to bear calmly the refusal of the true Church to have relations with them, and imagining that one can supposedly save ones should even without communion with Her… Those who have cut themselves off from Her deprive themselves of the hope of salvation, as the Fathers of the Sixth Ecumenical Council teach concerning this, having recognized the renegades as being totally devoid of grace , according to the word of Christ: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.”

Unfortunately, some Orthodox laymen, even, alas, many priests (and hierarchs) have subjected themselves to this state of gracelessness, although still retaining the outward appearance of the church services and the apparent performance of the Mysteries. (The 1934 paschal encyclical of Vladyka Anthony (Khrapovitsky))

And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron: This is the law of the Passover: no stranger shall eat of it. And every slave or servant bought with money – him thou shalt circumcise, and then shall he eat of it. A sojourner or hireling shall not eat of it. In one house shall it be eaten.” (Exodus 12:43-46.)

We shall not escape sharing in that punishment which, in the world to come, awaits heretics, if we defile Orthodoxy and the holy Faith by adulterous communion with heretics. St. John the Merciful

All the teachers of the Church, all the Councils, and all the Divine Scriptures, exhort us to flee those who uphold other doctrines and to separate from communion with them. (Confession of Faith, XII, 304, Saint Mark of Ephesus)

With a great voice, Saint John Chrysostom declared that not only heretics, but also they who hold communion with them are enemies of God. (Saint Theodore the Studite , Letter to the Abbot Theophilus)

Concerning the Faith, the heretics were totally shipwrecked; but as for the others, even if in their thinking they did not founder, nonetheless, because of their communion with heresy, they too were destroyed with the others. (Saint Theodore the Studite, Letter to the Patriarch of Jerusalem [PG 99, 1164])

“The divine and sacred canons say: ‘He who has communion with an excommunicate, let him be excommunicated, as overthrowing the rule of the Church.’ And again: ‘He who receives a heretic is subject to the same indictment…’ The great apostle and evangelist John says: ‘If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching with him, do not greet him and do not receive him into your house; for he who greets him communicates with his evil deeds’ (II John 10-11). If we are forbidden merely to greet him on the way, and if inviting him into our house is prohibited, how can it be otherwise not in a house, but in the temple of God, in the sanctuary at the mystical and terrible Supper of the Son of God… Whoever belches out the commemoration of him who has been worthily cut off by the Holy Spirit for his arrogance towards God and the Divine things, becomes for that reason an enemy of God and the Divine things.” (From an Epistle of the Martyred Fathers of the Holy Mountain to Emperor Michael Palaeologus against the heretical Patriarch John Beccus of Constantinople)

“If anyone breaks any ecclesiastical tradition, written or unwritten, let him be anathema” (Eighth Proceeding of the Seventh Ecumenical Synod)

To those who hold in contempt the sacred and divine canons of our blessed fathers, which, by sustaining the holy Church of God and adorning the whole Christian Church, guide to divine reverence, ANATHEMA (Eighth Proceeding of the Seventh Ecumenical Synod)

Among us, neither Patriarchs nor Councils were ever able to introduce innovations, because the defender of Religion is the very Body of the Church—that is, the people themselves — which desire to have their Religion eternally unchanged and identical to that of their Fathers. (Reply of the Orthodox Patriarchs of the East to Pius IX, issued in 1848)

As we walk the unerring and life-bringing path, let us pluck out the eye that scandalizes us-not the physical eye, but the noetic one. For example, if a bishop or presbyter-who are the eyes of the Church-conduct themselves in an evil manner and scandalize the people, they must be plucked out. For it is more profitable to gather without them in a house of prayer, than to be cast together with them into the gehenna of fire together with Annas and Caiaphas (St. Athanasius the Great, PG 26:1257c)

He that saith not ‘Anathema’ to those in heresy, let him be anathema (Seventh Ecumenical Council)

I adjure all the people in Cyprus who are true children of the Catholic Church to flee as fast as their feet can carry them from those priests who have fallen and submitted to the Latins; neither assemble in church with them, nor receive any blessing from their hands. For it is better for you to pray to God in your homes alone than to gather together in churches with the Latin-minded (Germanos II, Patriarch of Constantinople, PG 140:620a)

It is good to be at peace with all, but [only] when they are of one mind with us as regards piety; for peace with that which is just and proper is a most excellent and profitable possession; but when it is with that which is evil or enslaving, then it is most disgraceful, and of all things the most shameful and harmful. For there is an evil concord and a good discord; there is a good severance, and an evil concurrence. And if friendship become a cause of perdition for some, then hatred becomes a virtue for them. Better is division for dispassion’s sake than concord effected for the passions’ sake. (Joseph Bryennius, the teacher of Saint Mark Eugenicus)

That one must not accept the blessings of heretics, which are rather misfortunes than blessings. (Canon 32 of the Council of Laodicea)

That one must not join in prayer with heretics or schismatics. (Canon 33 of the Council of Laodicea)

The dearest thing of all for the Christian is the Truth, for the sake of witnessing to which the Lord Jesus Christ came to earth, as He Himself said to Pilate (Jn 18:37). And for the true Christian there can be only one desirable unity–unity in the Truth of Christ–the pure, undistorted, uncorrupted Truth, without any admixture of diabolic falsehood, not envenomed by any compromise with it. From this point of view, all these appeals for “peace” and “unity” are unacceptable, for they come from people who encroach on our principal treasure–the pure and undefiled truth of the teaching of Christ that has been preserved by us, and who wish to substitute for it a lie which is of the devil. The “unity” which is now envisaged by the enemies of the pure truth of Christ is not unity in Christ. It is that unity which the Antichrist, who wishes to subject all to himself and to found his kingdom on earth, is striving to create. (“On the Situation of the Orthodox Christian in the Contemporary World by Archbishop Averky of Syracuse)

Those that are not reborn by the divine grace in the only ONE, HOLY, CATHOLIC AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH, they do not consist of (comprise) any church, neither visible nor invisible.” (St. Nektarios of Aegina)

As there is one God and one Lord, so also true dignity is expressed by oneness in the image of the One Principle. And so, the one Church, which heresies make an effort to cut into many, is likened by oneness unto the nature of the One. We call the ancient Catholic Church one according to her essence, according to our concept of her, according to her origin and preeminence. (Presbyter Clement of Alexandria)

For whomever the Church is not mother, God is not father. (Hierarch Cyprian of Carthage)

Undoubtedly, we are only saved as living and organic members of the theanthropic body of the Savior, namely of the Church, of a holy Church, apostolic Church, catholic Church because the Church is nothing but the whole theanthropic life of Christ, extended to all the centuries and to the whole eternity. (Fr Justin Popovich, The Orthodox Faith and Life in Christ)

Be glad and rejoice that you were granted to be pious Orthodox Christians. Likewise again cry and mourn for the impious and unbelievers who walk in darkness, in the hands of the devil. (St Kosmas Aitolos)

Only the Religion of Christ unites and all of us must pray that they come to this. Thus union will occur, not by believing that all of us are the same thing and that all religions are the same. They are not the same…our Orthodoxy is not related to other religions. (Elder Porphyrios)

…But as for those who…severe themselves from communion with their president, that is, because he publicly preaches heresy and with bared head teaches it in the Church, such persons are not only not subject to canonical penalty…, but are worthy of due honor mong the Orthodox. For not bishops, but false bishops and false teachers have they condemned, and they have not fragmented the Church’s unity with schism, but from schisms and divisions have they earnestly sought to deliver the Church. (Canon XV of the First-Second Council of Constantinople)

Hiding behind the ‘high-minded’ aim of ‘removing inter-religious discord’ and ‘the reunion of believers in one fraternal family’, the theorists of ecumenism forget to mention one thing. This is that in such a reunion, the greatest and most precious thing of all will be lost – that is the truth of the Law of God, buried underneath the burden of false human reasoning. Like all heresies, ecumenism lies when it offers the fraternal union of Truth with the lie, cunningly pretending that it does not understand the unnatural nature of such a union, hoping that people bewitched by high-minded slogans will not notice the dreadful forgery. (Metropolitan IOANN of St Petersburg (+ 1995))

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Hence, what is the logical and canonical conclusion? The New Orthodox are aware of Freemasonry and its cult of Lucifer/Prometheus, they are aware of the canons against relations with the heretics, they are aware that the canons decree that the heterodox are graceless, they are aware that fleeing from their bishops is legitimate according to the canons themselves. Hence, they are willfully apostates, aware of their apostasy, but their main passions, pride and a desire for mainstream acceptance, has destroyed them. Certainly noting new in Orthodox history. Since the True Orthodox bishops have synodically proclaimed the New Greek Church schismatic, those who remain orthodox are forced to conclude, despite our feelings to the contrary, that the New Orthodox do not have grace, and that they are worse than the papists. Of course, this refers to the institutions of the New Calendar churches, not to individuals.

The Abomination of Desolation has entered into the very altar of the church, and the True Orthodox must flee from it, not make excuses, as I did for so many years. The struggle is to build our house chapels, engage in intense proselytization, and above all, fear nothing. In this day and age, the internet has made our position crystal clear for all to see. There is no excuse for the Orthodox in the local Greek church not wanting to tell Aunt Matilda that he is no longer going to the family church. The information is there for all; those who refuse to act on it, even though they know it is correct from a canonical point of view, are culpable, and have lost eternal life and the immortality of their soul. Orthodoxy is not an “establishment” religion, and when it does become part of an “establishment,” it loses its soul, it becomes complacent and, slowly, becomes obsessed with worldly power and prestige. St. John Chrysostom saw this fact, the Old Believers saw it, the catacomb Orthodox saw it, and we are seeing it again. The New Orthodox have learned nothing, they have forgotten everything.

The New Orthodox are basically decent, secular people who have a respect for the “rich tradition” of the church, but see it as little more than a part of the “rich fabric” of American diversity. The church is a social institution, a vaguely “conservative” presence, but nothing more. They have inserted themselves into America life, its media and its prejudices, and, as a result, exist solely as a superficial “Christian” body. Those coming from Holy Cross or St. Vladimir’s have little by way of spiritual formation, and are taught a highly distorted, trivial and perfunctory version of the ancient faith.

The Orthodox tradition, however, is very different. Our life is one of struggle and persecution. The New Orthodox bishops are not persecuted and do not suffer. Yet, the Apostle Paul says the opposite. The New Orthodox life is one of relative ease. The True orthodox mission is to flee, to build alternative communities and an alternative economy. The Old Believers have proven that this can be done, and that their settlements were more literate, more pious and more prosperous than that of the mainline Orthodox. For one to claim the Orthodox mantle, yet be completely satisfied with the modern global economy and political system, is an apostate on that account alone. We are revolutionaries and separatists. At no level, not from the prophets, nor apostles or our saints, have we been anything else. We are outcasts. We are hated and persecuted. Yet, Christ and his apostles said that this is our lot. How few wonder why this is apparently not the lot of world Orthodoxy, a group that does not suffer at all, and is accepted by the world that Christ ordered his people to flee. World Orthodoxy is not, but rather an integral part of the world, and, as a result, partakes of its sins, its power relations and its money. The True Orthodox have the mantle of the prophets, while the “ecumenical Christians” have that of the temple prophets, the well paid lackeys of the corrupted Israelite power structure. Nothing has changed in 3000 years. We have no reason to expect it ever will. For our part, we struggle and suffer.

Source: The Russian Orthodox Medievalist by kind permission of the Rev. Fr. Dr. Raphael Johnson of The Pokrov Chapel, Fayetteville, Pa.

Another Article by Father Raphael:

Notes on the True Orthodox Resistance

Reprinted on Reader Joseph Suaiden’s Reredos blog

Blogged with the Flock Browser

On the Lord’s Ascension

by St. Leo the Great

I. The Ascension Completes Our Faith in Him, Who Was God As Well as Man.

The mystery of our salvation, dearly-beloved, which the Creator of the universe valued at the price of His blood, has now been carried out under conditions of humiliation from the day of His bodily birth to the end of His Passion. And although even in “the form of a slave” many signs of Divinity have beamed out, yet the events of all that period served particularly to show the reality of His assumed Manhood. But after the Passion, when the chains of death were broken, which had exposed its own strength by attacking Him, Who was ignorant of sin, weakness was turned into power, mortality into eternity, contumely into glory, which the Lord Jesus Christ showed by many clear proofs in the sight of many, until He carried even into heaven the triumphant victory which He had won over the dead. As therefore at the Paschal commemoration, the Lord’s Resurrection was the cause of our rejoicing; so the subject of our present gladness is His Ascension, as we commemorate and duly venerate that day on which the Nature of our humility in Christ was raised above all the host of heaven, over all the ranks of angels, beyond the height of all powers, to sit with God the Father. On which Providential order of events we are founded and built up, that God’s Grace might become more wondrous, when, notwithstanding the removal from men’s sight of what was rightly felt to command their awe, faith did not fail, hope did not waver, love did not grow cold. For it is the strength of great minds and the light of firmly-faithful souls, unhesitatingly to believe what is not seen with the bodily sight, and there to fix one’s affections whither you cannot direct your gaze. And whence should this Godliness spring up in our hearts, or how should a man be justified by faith, if our salvation rested on those things only which lie beneath our eyes? Hence our Lord said to him who seemed to doubt of Christ’s Resurrection, until he had tested by sight and touch the traces of His Passion in His very Flesh, “because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed: blessed are, they who have not seen and yet have believed.”

II. The Ascension Renders Our Faith More Excellent and Stronger.

In order, therefore, dearly-beloved, that we may be capable of this blessedness, when all things were fulfilled which concerned the Gospel preaching and the mysteries of the New Testament, our Lord Jesus Christ, on the fortieth day after the Resurrection in the presence of the disciples, was raised into heaven, and terminated His presence with us in the body, to abide on the Father’s right hand until the times Divinely fore-ordained for multiplying the sons of the Church are accomplished, and He comes to judge the living and the dead in the same flesh in which He ascended. And so that which till then was visible of our Redeemer was changed into a sacramental presence, and that faith might be more excellent and stronger, sight gave way to doctrine, the authority of which was to be accepted by believing hearts enlightened with rays from above.

III. The Marvellous Effects of This Faith on All.

This Faith, increased by the Lord’s Ascension and established by the gift of the Holy Ghost, was not terrified by bonds, imprisonments, banishments, hunger, fire, attacks by wild beasts, refined torments of cruel persecutors. For this Faith throughout the world not only men, but even women, not only beardless boys, but even tender maids, fought to the shedding of their blood. This Faith cast out spirits, drove off sicknesses, raised the dead: and through it the blessed Apostles themselves also, who after being confirmed by so many miracles and instructed by so many discourses, had yet been panic-stricken by the horrors of the Lord’s Passion and had not accepted the truth of His resurrection without hesitation, made such progress after the Lord’s Ascension that everything which had previously filled them with fear was turned into joy. For they had lifted the whole contemplation of their mind to the Godhead of Him that sat at the Father’s right hand, and were no longer hindered by the barrier of corporeal sight from directing their minds’ gaze to That Which had never quitted the Father’s side in descending to earth, and had not forsaken the disciples in ascending to heaven.

IV. His Ascension Refines Our Faith : the Ministering of Angels to Hint Shows the Extent of His Authority.

The Son of Man and Son of God, therefore, dearly-beloved, then attained a more excellent and holier fame, when He betook Himself back to the glory of the Father’s Majesty, and in an ineffable manner began to be nearer to the Father in respect of His Godhead, after having become farther away in respect of His manhood. A better instructed faith then began to draw closer to a conception of the Son’s equality with the Father without the necessity of handling the corporeal substance in Christ, whereby He is less than the Father, since, while the Nature of the glorified Body still remained the faith of believers was called upon to touch not with the hand of flesh, but with the spiritual understanding the Only-begotten, Who was equal with the Father. Hence comes that which the Lord said after His Resurrection, when Mary Magdalene, representing the Church, hastened to approach and touch Him: “Touch Me not, for I have not yet ascended to My Father:” that is, I would not have you come to Me as to a human body, nor yet recognize Me by fleshly perceptions: I put thee off for higher things, I prepare greater things for thee: when I have ascended to My Father, then thou shall handle Me more perfectly and truly, for thou shall grasp what thou canst not touch and believe what thou canst not see. But when the disciples’ eyes followed the ascending Lord to heaven with upward gaze of earnest wonder, two angels stood by them in raiment shining with wondrous brightness, who also said, “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing into heaven? This Jesus Who was taken up from you into heaven shall so come as ye saw Him going into heaven.” By which words all the sons of the Church were taught to believe that Jesus Christ will come visibly in the same Flesh wherewith He ascended, and not to doubt that all things are subjected to Him on Whom the ministry of angels had waited from the first beginning of His Birth. For, as an angel announced to the blessed Virgin that Christ should be conceived by the Holy Ghost, so the voice of heavenly beings sang of His being born of the Virgin also to the shepherds. As messengers from above were the first to attest His having risen from the dead, so the service of angels was employed to foretell His coming in very Flesh to judge the world, that we might understand what great powers will come with Him as Judge, when such great ones ministered to Him even in being judged.

V. We Must Despise Earthly Things and Rise to Things Above, Especially by Active Works of Mercy and Love.

And so, dearly-beloved, let us rejoice with spiritual joy, and let us with gladness pay God worthy thanks and raise our hearts’ eyes unimpeded to those heights where Christ is. Minds that have heard the call to be uplifted must not be pressed down by earthly affections, they that are fore-ordained to things eternal must not be taken up with the things that perish; they that have entered on the way of Truth must not be entangled in treacherous snares, and the faithful must so take their course through these temporal things as to remember that they are sojourning in the vale of this world, in which, even though they meet with some attractions, they must not sinfully embrace them, but bravely pass through them. For to this devotion the blessed Apostle Peter arouses us, and entreating us with that loving eagerness which he conceived for feeding Christ’s sheep by the threefold profession of love for the Lord, says, “dearly-beloved, I beseech you, as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul.” But for whom do fleshly pleasures wage war, if not for the devil, whose delight it is to fetter souls that strive after things above, with the enticements of corruptible good things, and to draw them away from those abodes from which he himself has been banished? Against his plots every believer must keep careful watch that he may crush his foe on the side whence the attack is made. And there is no more powerful weapon, dearly-beloved, against the devil’s wiles than kindly mercy and bounteous charity, by which every sin is either escaped or vanquished. But this lofty power is not attained until that which is opposed to it be overthrown. And what so hostile to mercy and works of charity as avarice from the root of which spring all evils? And unless it be destroyed by lack of nourishment, there must needs grow in the ground of that heart in which this evil weed has taken root, the thorns and briars of vices rather than any seed of true goodness. Let us then, dearly-beloved, resist this pestilential evil and “follow after charity,” without which no virtue can flourish, that by this path of love whereby Christ came down to us, we too may mount up to Him, to Whom with God the Father and the Holy Spirit is honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

on the Ecumenical Patriarch

The so-called “Mainline” Orthodoxy is all a buzz of late regarding the positioning by the Patriarchate of Constantinople as the Ecumenical Patriarch assumes authority beyond honor over various local Orthodox Churches in the diaspora especially those in America.  At the sametime, the Antiochian Church has experienced its own shake up as the Holy Synod in Damascus in effect recinded their American Church’s autocephalacy.

Amongst our various blogs we have previously offered statements against what is essentially the heresy of neo-Papism which is an outgrowth of the heresy of Ecumenism implanted in the Orthodox Church by the notorious heresarch Patriarch Meletios Metaxakis of Constan-tinople during the early 20th Century.  Metaxakis, who was openly a Mason and manipulated his elections onto both the Thrones of Constantinople and Alexandria although he had previously been deposed. He introduced the Gregorian Calendar into the Orthodox Church, despite previous condemnations and anathemas by various Patriarchs. He not only encouraged joint prayer between Orthodox and Heterodox but assisted in founding the Ecumenical Movement. Successive Patriarchs from Constantinople have taken up Metaxakis’ Masonic Madness in watering down the prestine Faith of The Church that is rightly called Orthodox.

The Autonomous Orthodox Church of Western Europe and the Americas (an offspring of the True Orthodox Church of Greece) has often been criticized by individuals attached to ‘mainline’ Orthodox Churches that we surely could not be canonical because we are not in communion with nor recognized by Constantinople.  Now that it is perhaps clearer that the EP intention is to control as many local Churches in the diaspora as possible that our detractor might begin to understand that a local Church’s canonical status does not depend upon the recognition of the EP or other Patriarchate. Such would be akin to Roman papism in the fallen Western Church.

From our moderate Traditional Orthodox perspective we are likewise concerned about the EP’s influence of theological syncreticism which makes Ecumenical relations with non-Orthodox and non-Christians possible. The EP’s efforts to enter into communion with Rome without Rome’s conversion, repentance or cleansing of its various heresies and irregularities is likewise an abandonment of True Orthodoxy. The adoption of the Gregorian or so-called “Revised Julian” Calendar is but a symptom of contemporary realitivism (among many other innovations) amongst mainline Orthodox while being a sign of the Masonic Madness that continues to fester in many jurisdictions.

The following are a variety of articles that address the status and problems with the modern Patriarchate of Constantinople:

The Canonical Status of the Patriarch of Constantinople in the Orthodox Church.
We recently posted this paper by the late Archbishop Gregory of Alaska (+April 14, 2008) on a Yahoo! Group amidst their conversation regarding the OCA Metropolitan Jonah’s various statements in response to a representative of the Phanar speking at Holy Cross Seminary.  We were surprised that (to the best of our awareness) only Fr Gregory Jensen had taken notice of this article’s significance and reproduced it on his Paradosis blog. (hattip: Fr Gregory).

Patriarch Bartholomew can’t…

CANONICAL CHURCHES: What Does It Mean ?

Some thoughts on equating “Canonicity” with “Recognition” as a false guide of one’s Orthodoxy

Orthodox Ecclesiology in Outline

Constantinople’s unilateral encroachment (Again?)

The Decline of the Patriarchate of Constantinople 
By ST. JOHN (MAXIMOVITCH) OF SAN FRANCISCO

Living Martyrdom of the Monks of ESPHIGMENOU MONASTERY – MOUNT ATHOS

On the Lord’s Resurrection

By St. Leo the Great, Pope of Old Rome

delivered on Holy Saturday in the Paschal Vigil

I. We must all be partakers in Christ’s resurrection life.

In my last sermon, dearly-beloved, not inappropriately, as I think, we explained to you our participation in the cross of Christ, whereby the life of believers contains in itself the mystery of Easter, and thus what is honoured at the feast is celebrated by our practice. And how useful this is you yourselves have proved, and by your devotion have learnt, how greatly benefited souls and bodies are by longer fasts, more frequent prayers, and more liberal alms. For there can be hardly any one who has not profited by this exercise, and who has not stored up in the recesses of his conscience something over which he may rightly rejoice. But these advantages must be retained with persistent care, lest our efforts fall away into idleness, and the devil’s malice steal what God’s grace gave. Since, therefore, by our forty days’ observance we have wished to bring about this effect, that we should feel something of the Cross at the time of the Lord’s Passion, we must strive to be found partakers also of Christ’s Resurrection, and “pass from death unto life¹⁰⁹⁵ Cf. 1 John iii. 14.,” while we are in this body. For when a man is changed by some process from one thing into another, not to be what he was is to him an ending, and to be what he was not is a beginning. But the question is, to what a man either dies or lives: because there is a death, which is the cause of living, and there is a life, which is the cause of dying. And nowhere else but in this transitory world are both sought after, so that upon the character of our temporal actions depend the differences of the eternal retributions. We must die, therefore, to the devil and live to God: we must perish to iniquity that we may rise to righteousness. Let the old sink, that the new may rise; and since, as says the Truth, “no one can serve two masters Matt. vi. 24.,” let not him be Lord who has caused the overthrow of those that stood, but Him Who has raised the fallen to victory.

II. God did not leave His soul in hell, nor suffer His flesh to see corruption.

Accordingly, since the Apostle says, “the first man is of the earth earthy, the second man is from heaven heavenly. As is the earthy, such also are they that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such also are they that are heavenly. As we have borne the image of the earthy, so let us also bear the image of Him Who is from heaven 1 Cor. xv. 47-49 we must greatly rejoice over this change, whereby we are translated from earthly degradation to heavenly dignity through His unspeakable mercy, Who descended into our estate that He might promote us to His, by assuming not only the substance but also the conditions of sinful nature, and by allowing the impassibility of Godhead to be affected by all the miseries which are the lot of mortal manhood. And hence that the disturbed minds of the disciples might not be racked by prolonged grief, He with such wondrous speed shortened the three days’ delay which He had announced, that by joining the last part of the first and the first part of the third day to the whole of the second, He cut off a considerable portion of the period, and yet did not lessen the number of days. The Saviour’s Resurrection therefore did not long keep His soul in Hades, nor His flesh in the tomb; and so speedy was the quickening of His uncorrupted flesh that it bore a closer resemblance to slumber than to death, seeing that the Godhead, Which quitted not either part of the Human Nature which He had assumed, reunited by Its power that which Its power had separated

III. Christ’s manifestation after the Resurrection showed that His Person was essentially the same as before.

And then there followed many proofs, whereon the authority of the Faith to be preached through the whole world might be based. And although the rolling away of the stone, the empty tomb, the arrangement of the linen cloths, and the angels who narrated the whole deed by themselves fully built up the truth of the Lord’s Resurrection, yet did He often appear plainly to the eyes both of the women and of the Apostles not only talking with them, but also remaining and eating with them, and allowing Himself to be handled by the eager and curious hands of those whom doubt assailed. For to this end He entered when the doors were closed upon the disciples, and gave them the Holy Spirit by breathing on them, and after giving them the light of understanding opened the secrets of the Holy Scriptures, and again Himself showed them the wound in the side, the prints of the nails, and all the marks of His most recent Passion, whereby it might be acknowledged that in Him the properties of the Divine and Human Nature remained undivided, and we might in such sort know that the Word was not what the flesh is, as to confess God’s only Son to be both Word and Flesh.

IV. But though it is the same, it is also glorified.

The Apostle of the Gentiles, Paul, dearly-beloved, does not disagree with this belief, when he says, “even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know Him so no more. For the Lord’s Resurrection was not the ending, but the changing of the flesh, and His substance was not destroyed by His increase of power. The quality altered, but the nature did not cease to exist: the body was made impassible, which it had been possible to crucify: it was made incorruptible, though it had been possible to wound it. And properly is Christ’s flesh said not to be known in that state in which it had been known, because nothing remained passible in it, nothing weak, so that it was both the same in essence and not the same in glory. But what wonder if S. Paul maintains this about Christ’s body, when he says of all spiritual Christians “wherefore henceforth we know no one after the flesh.” Henceforth, he says, we begin to experience the resurrection in Christ, since the time when in Him, Who died for all, all our hopes were guaranteed to us. We do not hesitate in diffidence, we are not under the suspense of uncertainty, but having received an earnest of the promise, we now with the eye of faith see the things which will be, and rejoicing in the uplifting of our nature, we already possess what we believe.

V. Being saved by hope, we must not fulfil the lusts of the flesh.

Let us not then be taken up with the appearances of temporal matters, neither let our contemplations be diverted from heavenly to earthly things. Things which as yet have for the most part not come to pass must be reckoned as accomplished: and the mind intent on what is permanent must fix its desires there, where what is offered is eternal. For although “by hope we were saved Rom. viii. 24.,” and still bear about with us a flesh that is corruptible and mortal, yet we are rightly said not to be in the flesh, if the fleshly affections do not dominate us, and are justified in ceasing to be named after that, the will of which we do not follow. And so, when the Apostle says, “make not provision for the flesh in the lusts thereof Rom. xiii. 14.,” we understand that those things are not forbidden us, which conduce to health and which human weakness demands, but because we may not satisfy all our desires nor indulge in all that the flesh lusts after, we recognize that we are warned to exercise such self-restraint as not to permit what is excessive nor refuse what is necessary to the flesh, which is placed under the mind’s control. And hence the same Apostle says in another place, “For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it Eph. v. 29.;” in so far, of course, as it must be nourished and cherished not in vices and luxury, but with a view to its proper functions, so that nature may recover herself and maintain due order, the lower parts not prevailing wrongfully and debasingly over the higher, nor the higher yielding to the lower, lest if vices overpower the mind, slavery ensues where there should be supremacy.

VI. Our godly resolutions must continue all the year round, not be confined to Pascha only.

Let God’s people then recognize that they are a new creation in Christ, and with all vigilance understand by Whom they have been adopted and Whom they have adopted, i.e. Christ has taken on Him human nature, and we by virtue thereof are partakers of the Divine.. Let not the things, which have been made new, return to their ancient instability; and let not him who has “put his hand to the plough Luke ix. 62.” forsake his work, but rather attend to that which he sows than look back to that which he has left behind. Let no one fall back into that from which he has risen, but, even though from bodily weakness he still languishes under certain maladies, let him urgently desire to be healed and raised up. For this is the path of health through imitation of the Resurrection begun in Christ, whereby, notwithstanding the many accidents and falls to which in this slippery life the traveller is liable, his feet may be guided from the quagmire on to solid ground, for, as it is written, “the steps of a man are directed by the Lord, and He will delight in his way. When the just man falls he shall not be overthrown, because the Lord will stretch out His handPs. xxxvii. 23, 24..” These thoughts, dearly-beloved, must be kept in mind not only for the Easter festival, but also for the sanctification of the whole life, and to this our present exercise ought to be directed, that what has delighted the souls of the faithful by the experience of a short observance may pass into a habit and remain unalterably, and if any fault creep in, it may be destroyed by speedy repentance. And because the cure of old-standing diseases is slow and difficult, remedies should be applied early, when the wounds are fresh, so that rising ever anew from all downfalls, we may deserve to attain to the incorruptible Resurrection of our glorified flesh in Christ Jesus our Lord, Who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Ghost for ever and ever. Amen.

Holy & Great Sabbath

On our Oblation Journal:

Witness of Christ’s Descent into Hades

This is the account of two brothers who were resurrected shortly after Christ’s burial. The two , sent by the Archangel Michael, gave witness before Caiaphas and Anaias and before Joseph of Arimathea, and Rabbis Nicodemus, and Gamaliel amongst others.  This is how our Lord spent this Holy and Great Sabbath, not in the grave though,  just prior to His Glorious Resurrection from the dead.

The Adoration Hymn on Good Friday

The Sarum Cathedral Graduale now assigns the following Hymn to be sung. While the Clergy and Monastics each come up individually, and kneel three times, each time drawing closer to the Cross until they kiss Its Feet.

Faithful Cross, above all other
One and Only Noble Tree;
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit Thy peer may be;
Sweetest Wood, and Sweetest Iron!

Sweetest Weight is hung on Thee.

Faithful Cross, above all other
One and Only Noble Tree;
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit Thy peer may be;
Sweetest Wood, and Sweetest Iron!

Sweetest Weight is hung on Thee.

Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle,
Sing the last, the dread affray;
O’er the Cross, the Victor’s Trophy,
Sound the high triumphal lay,
How the pains of death enduring,
Earth’s Redeemer won the day.

Faithful Cross, above all other
One and Only Noble Tree;
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit Thy peer may be;
Sweetest Wood, and Sweetest Iron!

Sweetest Weight is hung on Thee.

He, Our Maker, deeply Grieving
That the first-made Adam fell,
When he ate the fruit forbidden

Whose reward was death and hell,
Mark’d e’en then This Tree the ruin
Of the first tree to dispel.

Faithful Cross, above all other
One and Only Noble Tree;
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit Thy peer may be;
Sweetest Wood, and Sweetest Iron!

Sweetest Weight is hung on Thee.

Thus the work for our salvation
He ordained to be done;

To the traitor’s art opposing
Art yet deeper than his own;
Thence the remedy procuring

Whence the fatal wound begun.

Faithful Cross, above all other

One and Only Noble Tree;

None in foliage, none in blossom,

None in fruit Thy peer may be;

Sweetest Wood, and Sweetest Iron!

Sweetest Weight is hung on Thee.

Therefore, when at length the fulness

Of th’ appointed time was come,

He was Sent, the world’s Creator,

From the Father’s Heav’nly Home,

And was Found in human fashion,

Offspring of the Virgin’s womb.

Faithful Cross, above all other
One and Only Noble Tree;
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit Thy peer may be;
Sweetest Wood, and Sweetest Iron!

Sweetest Weight is hung on Thee.

Lo! He lies, an Infant Weeping,
Where the narrow manger stands,
While the Mother-Maid His Members
Wraps in mean and lowly bands,
And the swaddling clothes is winding
Round His Helpless Feet and Hands.

Faithful Cross, above all other
One and Only Noble Tree;
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit Thy peer may be;
Sweetest Wood, and Sweetest Iron!

Sweetest Weight is hung on Thee.

Thirty years among us Dwelling,
His appointed time fulfill’d,
Born for this He meets His Passion,
For that this He freely will’d;

On the Cross the Lamb is lifted,
Where His Life-Blood shall be Spill’d.

Faithful Cross, above all other
One and Only Noble Tree;
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit Thy peer may be;
Sweetest Wood, and Sweetest Iron!

Sweetest Weight is hung on Thee.

He endur’d the Nails, the spitting,
Vinegar, and Spear, and reed;
From That Holy Body Broken
Blood and Water forth proceed;
Earth, and stars, and sky, and ocean,
By That Flood from stain are freed.

Faithful Cross, above all other
One and Only Noble Tree;
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit Thy peer may be;
Sweetest Wood, and Sweetest Iron!

Sweetest Weight is hung on Thee.

Bend Thy Boughs, 0 Tree of Glory,
Thy relaxing sinews bend;

For awhile the ancient rigour
That Thy birth bestow’d suspend;
And the King of heav’nly beauty
On Thy Bosom gently tend.

Faithful Cross, above all other
One and Only Noble Tree;
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit Thy peer may be;

Sweetest Wood, and Sweetest Iron!

Sweetest Weight is hung on Thee.

Thou Alone wast counted worthy
This world’s Ransom to sustain;

That a ship-wreck’d race for ever

Might a port of refuge gain;
With the Sacred Blood Anointed
Of the Lamb for sinners Slain.

Faithful Cross, above all other

One and Only Noble Tree;
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit Thy peer may be;
Sweetest Wood, and Sweetest Iron!

Sweetest Weight is hung on Thee.

Praise and honour to the Father,
Praise and honour to the Son,
Praise and honour to the Spirit,
Ever Three and ever One,
One in might, and One in glory
While eternal ages run.

Faithful Cross, above all other
One and Only Noble Tree;
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit Thy peer may be;
Sweetest Wood, and Sweetest Iron!

Sweetest Weight is hung on Thee.

__________________________________________

The Good Friday Services
© St. Gregory Press, West Milford, NJ, USA

St. Gregory Press is the official publication arm of
the Archdiocese of New York & New Jersey
His Eminence Archbishop John (LoBue), diocesan prelate

Of the

Autonomous Orthodox Metropolia of Western Europe & the Americas
His Beatitude Metropolitan Evloghios of Milan (Italy), Chief Hierarch

http://milansynodusa.org/press.html

A pdf copy of the complete Good Friday Services according to the Sarum Cathedral Use is available in our Hermitage’s online Library here.

Hymn during Maundy Thursday

If the Holy Chrism is to be consecrated at this Mass by the Bishop, this Rite is begun during the end of the Canon, as given in the Sarum Pontifical. The following Hymn is to be sung during the Consecration of the Chrism as indicated therein; but if the Chrism be not consecrated at this Mass, this Hymn may be sung during the Canon:

Refrain:

Hear our Hymn, Redeemer, Lord; Thee we praise with one accord.

1. Hear us, Judge of dead and living, Hope of mortals, hear us singing.

Hear us emblematic tribute from the peaceful olive bringing.

[Refrain]

2. May the Sacred Flame draw near us, Which when through the flood Descending

To the Church’s Ark yet floating once did bear the tree-branch Saving.

[Refrain ]

3. Fruit of Light the tree did yield, that gave This Hallowed store;
Worshipping the world’s Redeemer, this we offer and adore.

[Refrain]

4. Consecrate Thou, Christ, Eternal King of Heaven, our home.

This our Chrism, a living seal against the powers of doom.

[Refrain]

5. That by this most sacred unction, either sex may be healed.
And our wounded glory rescued through the Spirit’s plentitude.

[Refrain]

6. There before the Altar standing, prays the Mitered Pontiff  lowly,
Duly he performs the Rite, to consecrate the Chrism Holy.

[Refrain]

7. May This Day of festal gladness, keep Its holy joys in store,
Dignified with joyful praises, Blooming now and evermore.

[Refrain]

8.  Lasting praise to God the Father, also to the Son be glory;
Honour, virtue, and the power be to Paraclete All-Holy.

Refrain:

Hear our Hymn, Redeemer, Lord; Thee we praise with one accord.

________________________________________________________________________

The Maundy Thursday Services
© St. Gregory Press, West Milford, NJ, USA

St. Gregory Press is the official publication arm of
the Archdiocese of New York & New Jersey
His Eminence Archbishop John (LoBue), diocesan prelate

Of the

Autonomous Orthodox Metropolia of Western Europe & the Americas
His Beatitude Metropolitan Evloghios of Milan (Italy), Chief Hierarch

http://milansynodusa.org/press.html

A pdf copy of the complete Maundy Thursday Services according to the Sarum Cathedral Use is available in our Hermitage’s online Library here.

Hymn of Kassiani

Sensing Thy divinity, O Lord, a woman of many sins

takes it upon herself to become a myrrh-bearer,

And in deep mourning brings before Thee fragrant oil

in anticipation of Thy burial; crying:

“Woe to me!” For night is to me, oestrus of lechery,

a dark and moonless eros of sin.

Receive the wellsprings of my tears,

O Thou who gatherest the waters of the oceans into clouds.

Bend to me, to the sorrows of my heart,

O Thou who bendedst down the heavens in Thy ineffable self-emptying.

I will kiss Thine immaculate feet

and dry them with the locks of my hair;

Those very feet whose sound Eve heard at dusk in Paradise

and hid herself in fear.

Who shall reckon the multitude of my sins,

or the abysses of Thy judgment, O Saviour of my soul?

Do not ignore Thy handmaiden,

O Thou whose mercy is endless.