There has been a second American Revolution, and we lost.

I don’t know when it happened, or how long it took, not positive about who started it, not sure how it was won, but those who are of the Traditional Christian stock were routed, soundly defeated and made mock of.

We have been put in the stocks and they are throwing refuse at us and calling us names, holding up our Savior and Holy Scripture to ridicule, mockery and blasphemy.

Meanwhile, we blithely discuss the high cost of gas.

Sounds a little pessimistic, no? Sounds a little like the Hebrews of the OT, no?  The very foundations of our culture have erroded so that now “marriage” is a trick to get presents. Sexuality is excercise and uncontrollable. The Canons of the Holy Church are long ago thrown out in favor of public opinion. As has our constitution. The Supreme Court throws out a death penalty for child abuser because there is a changing moral climate in our country, not because it is unconsitutional. The “Church” of England “finally cathes up with the 21st. century” by allowing women bishops, a logical outcome of their long held heresy of women priests. Sex before marriage is a foregone, accepted reality, nay, a rite of passage.

Oih Veh!

Thank God for the Orthodox Church

http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/RahrDachauPascha.php

By Bishop Hilarion (Alfeyev)

 

God didn’t create the hell for sinners, they did it themselves

The Russian Orthodox Church’s representative to the European International Institutions Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria, on Interfax-Religion’s request, commented on the recent suggestion of Danish Lutheran theologians to consider the hell and the devil a metaphor and to accept only existence of the paradise.

- This theology should be considered in general context of liberalized Christian dogmatic and moral teaching developed in depth of many Protestant communities in several recent decades. Everything that makes Christianity is “inconvenient”, “uncomfortable” is being omitted, “the dark Middle Ages” heritage is cleared up. Christianity in light version is under construction and the hell and devil don’t match it.

A tragedy of Protestantism has originally been the following. Seeking to get rid of medieval stratification of Catholicism, Protestants didn’t properly study the heritage of the Eastern fathers. And today when arguing with the Middle Age hell and devil, liberal Protestants don’t trouble themselves with reviewing the Holy Fathers and their conception of afterlife retaliation.

Meanwhile, the Eastern Christian tradition has never considered the hell as created by God to punish sinners. God didn’t create the hell, free will of people has created it. It exists not because God wants it, but because people keep it existing. They first create the hell on Earth and then carry it on to the afterworld.

-What do you mean by the hell on Earth?

- When a man using his power over others makes Earth the hell for them. Didn’t Hitler turn Earth to hell for millions of people tried and tortured in concentration camps, perished in gas cameras and battlefields? Didn’t Lenin and Stalin make hell for thousands and millions of people who died in camps or were shot on false denunciations or sentenced by Stalin’s “troika”? Don’t today’s terrorists, who kill peaceful citizens, take them hostage and cut off their heads, turn Earth to the hell?

And is it believable that malefactors and monsters, who kill other people and revolt against God and all-hallows will share the paradise with righteous and saints? Is it believable that the paradise will welcome both John the Baptist and Herod, St. Veniamin of Petrograd and Lenin, thousands of the murdered new Russia’s martyrs and confessors and their torturers? It removes division between the good and the evil. Then there’s no difference if you are a saint or a villain, if you do the good or the evil, if you save people from death or kill them.

-So sins will be inevitably recompensed?

-Any person bears moral responsibility for his actions. And he will answer for the sins of his earthly life in the eternity. St. Isaac the Syrian writes that sinners in the hell are not deprived of God’s love. On the contrary, love is given equally to everyone: to the righteous in the Heavenly Kingdom and to the sinners in Gehenna. But for the righteous it becomes the source of joy and bliss while for sinners it is the source of torture.

Thus, God didn’t create the hell for sinners, they did it themselves. God doesn’t send sinners to the hell, but people who oppose God’s will and revolt against God choose the hell themselves. And this choice is made in their earthly life rather than in some distant eschatological prospect. It is right here on Earth that infernal tortures and “the Kingdom of God come with power” begin.

- However, even the Orthodox divine service says that the hell is “abolished” by Christ after His Resurrection from the dead?

- The reality of the hell, its existence for sinners and even the possibility of its eternal existence don’t contradict the news of its abolition by Christ resurrected. The hell is really “abolished” in the resurrection of Christ, as it is not inevitable for people anymore and doesn’t have power over them. But those, who consciously oppose God’s will and commit crime and sin, restore destroyed and abolished hell as they don’t want to reconcile with God’s love.

I’d like to stress it again: God didn’t create the hell, people created it for themselves, God destroyed and abolished the hell, but people restore it again and again. The hell is re-created every time when the sin is consciously committed and isn’t repented.

http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=interview&div=62

So I can wax somewhat eloquent about God in the garden, I also have to remember that the world is not static, that it is not neutral. It works against us. (See Gen. 3:8-24, especially 17-19) I was bluntly reminded of this as I attempted to dig a 30 ft. trench, 2 ft. wide in which to plant my rose hedge (Jackson and Perkins rules). Talk about the sweat of the brow! Genesis doesn’t mention blisters, sore back, dehydration; but they were there too!

I discovered that some earthling who had previously “owned” my property had not the foggiest idea of how to properly dispose of unwanted, non-organic material. In other words, he never got the “Go Green” memo.

I dug up, with various unmentionable utterances, plastic bags, steel springs, pieces of metal of all shapes and kinds, pottery, bricks, wood and last but not least a buried stone pile! What joy I experienced as I dug for the Lord! Remember I was bringing beauty to the Earth, bringing Heaven down here! I was doing the work of all Christians! Yet I was not too happy, until it was finished.

The end result, 15 Lavender Hedge Rose bushes, in a nearly straight line, all mulched in and cozy was a wonderful sight and made it all worth while. I did rejoice. My wife commented, “You’re pretty proud of yourself aren’t you?” Yup!

But dang it, the rock piles and waste products pop up all over. Not just in a new project to bring Heaven to Earth. Starlings, those lovely non-native winged beasts, make nests where you would rather they did not. The same trees I plant for beauty also drop less than beautiful stuff on my lawn. My efforts at cleaning out the garden in my soul are regularly thwarted by stubborn weeds and foreign growths; but more regularly by my own sloth, lack of attention and purposeful distraction.

Revelation 22:1-5

Faster and faster time passes, and the hour of our entrance into eternity draws nigh.  Make use of your days on earth to prepare for this.  Such preparation dispels temporal sorrows and brings consolation, thereby indicating that this preparation is indeed a preparation for blessedness…

 

My sincere desire is to end my days somewhere in solitude and anonymity, in spiritual vigilance and repentance.  One should not deceive oneself with false expectations of a long earthly life…  Everything passes, both the good and the bad, and neither humans nor demons can overcome that which God does not allow.

 

    St. Ignatius Brianchaninov

 

Greetings Earthlings

We live between two gardens, or Gardens. The first Garden we were expelled from due to sin, in order to bring us Redemption and not keep us eternally paralyzed in a sinful state. The second Garden we are working toward. Stuck between the two Gardens, where I don’t belong, where I don’t fit, I often resort to gardening. God loves a garden. How do I know? Cause He told us in His prayer, thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. I do His will by redeeming, sanctifying, beautifying His earth, by making it more heavenly, even if in a very small way and only for a summer.

Pulling weeds, tilling dirt, putting out “Moo-nure” is like pulling out the weeds of my sinful habits, my passions. I am addicted to pleasure and comfort, somehow making beauty out of the chaos of a section of my property is iconic of making my soul a thing of beauty. If only it were as easy as going to the garden center and buying some weed killer!

God help us we need gardens!

Christ IS Risen!

The problem? Post-Pascha meltdown!

The reason? Too much!

Too much of a drastic flip-flop of lifestyle. Too much of a Lenten Life that is only lived during Lent. Too drastic a shift from Lent to Bright Week. No meat for 56 days, suddenly; nothing but meat. Intense prayer, many liturgical services, then none. Daily fasting, then none. Restriction and self-control is replaced with over-indulgence. How much of the Lenten effort is erased in Bright Week by over-indulging the Flesh with flesh?

The answer? Moderation. Instead of doing Lent for the prescribed period each year and making an intense and (compared to the rest of our life) unbalanced, strenuous effort. Try some of Lent all year round. Try following the Wednesday and Friday fast, the other fast periods. Try keeping some of the Lenten discipline as part of “normal” living, all year round. Then try not going for the “Quad-Staker” at BK on Bright Monday. Maybe just a bacon cheeseburger.

Gotta be better than toilet haunting.

He is best known as the author of the Ladder of Divine Ascent, a treasury of spiritual wisdom which is read in its entirety in monasteries during every Lenten season.   Nothing is known of his life before he entered the monastery at Mount Sinai (now St Katherine’s Monastery) at the age of sixteen; he remained there until his death at the age of eighty. After he first arrived, he spent nineteen years in strict obedience to his spiritual father, Martyrios. When Martyrios died, John retired to a nearby cave, where he lived in the strictest asceticism for twenty years. (It was during these years that he wrote the Ladder.) He reluctantly returned to the monastery when he was made abbot by the brethren, and spent the rest of his days guiding his spiritual children in the way of salvation.  Once he heard a monk criticize him for speaking too much; rather than reproach the monk, he himself kept silence for a full year, never uttering a word until the brethren begged him to speak again. At another time a large company of pilgrims came to Mt Sinai. At supper they all saw a young man, dressed as a Jew, serving at table and giving orders to the other servants, then suddenly disappearing. When they wondered among themselves what this could mean, John said ‘Do not try to look for him; that was the prophet Moses serving you in his own home.’  When the holy abbot knew that his death was approaching, he appointed his own brother, George, as his successor. George grieved the approaching death of his beloved brother, but St John told him that, if he was found worthy to stand close to God after his death, he would pray that George be taken up to heaven in the same year. So it happened: ten months after St John’s death, George reposed in the Lord. With the rivers of your tears, you have made the barren desert fertile. Through sighs of sorrow from deep within you, your labors have borne fruit a hundred-fold. By your miracles you have become a light, shining upon the world. O John, our Holy Father, pray to Christ our God, to save our souls.

Interior crosses can found at all times and more easily than exterior ones.  You have only to direct your attention to yourself and examine yourself with a sense of repentance and a thousand interior crosses will at once present themselves to you. . . Interior crosses are sometimes so burdensome that the sufferer can find no consolation whatever in anything.…but in whatever position you may be, and whatever sufferings of the soul you may feel, do not despair and do not think that the Lord has abandoned you.  NO!  God will always be with you and will invisibly strengthen you even when it seems to you that you are on the very brink of perdition. 

St. Innocent of Alaska

Do you have faith in God?

If you do, lay it down then as a basis for all your behavior.

With it, face everything that comes your way in this life—be it joy or grief.

Do not allow your faith to change every day according to the vicissitudes of this life.

Do not let success increase you faith in God, neither let failure or loss or illness weaken or undermine it.

Have you accepted to live with God? Put, then, all your trust in Him at once.

Never try to recant or regress in the least. Keep faithful to Him even to death.

Matthew the Poor, Orthodox Prayer Life, The Interior Way

“Constantly, each day, each hour, God is sending us people, circumstances, tasks, which should mark the beginning of our renewal; yet we pay them no attention, and thus continually we resist God’s will for us.  Indeed, how can God help us?  Only by sending us in our daily life certain people, and certain coincidences of circumstance.If we accepted every hour of our life as the hour of God’s will for us, as the decisive, most important, unique hour of our life – what sources of joy, love, strength, as yet hidden from us, would spring from the depths of our soul!” 

Alexander Elchaninov, The Diary of a Russian Priest 

 

Adam was driven out of Paradise, because in disobedience he had eaten food; but Moses was granted the vision of God, because he had cleansed the eyes of his soul by fasting. If then we desire to see God, let us like Moses fast for forty days. With sincerity let us persevere in prayer and intercession; let us still the passions of our soul; let us subdue the rebellious instincts of the flesh. With light step let us set upon the path to heaven, where the choirs of angels with never-silent voice sing the praises of the undivided Trinity; and there we shall behold the surpassing beauty of the Master. O Son of God, Giver of Life, in Thee we set our hope: count us worthy of a place there with the angelic hosts, at the intercessions of the Mother who bore Thee, O Christ, of the apostles and the martyrs and of all the saints.

            Canticle 9: Forgiveness Sunday Matins, aka: Expulsion From Paradise Sunday

I do not love God.  For if I loved God I should be continually thinking about Him with heartfelt joy.  Every thought of God would give me gladness and delight.  On the contrary, I much more often and much more eagerly think about earthly things, and thinking about God is labor and dryness. If I loved God, then talking with Him in prayer would be my nourishment and delight and would draw me to unbroken communion with Him.  But, on the contrary, I not only find no delight in prayer, but even find it an effort.  I struggle with reluctance, I am enfeebled by sloth, and am ready to occupy myself eagerly with any unimportant trifle, if only it shortens prayer and keeps me from it.  My time slips away unnoticed in futile occupations, but when I am occupied with God, when I put myself into His presence every hour seems like a year.  If one person loves another, he thinks of him throughout the day without ceasing, he pictures him to himself, he cares for him, and in all circumstances his beloved friend is never out of his thoughts.  But I, throughout the day, scarcely set aside even a single hour in which to sink deep down into meditation upon God, to inflame my heart with love of Him, while I eagerly give up twenty-three hours as fervent offerings to the idols of my passions.  I am forward in talk about frivolous matters and things which degrade the spirit; that gives me pleasure.  But in the considerationof God I am dry, bored and lazy.  Even if I am unwillingly drawn by others into spiritual conversation, I try to shift the subject quickly to one which pleases my desires.  I am tirelessly curious about novelties, about civic affairs and political events; I eagerly seek the satisfaction of my love of knowledge in science and art, and in ways of getting things I want to possess.  But, the study of the Law of God, the knowledge of God and of religion, make little impression on me, and satisfy no hunger of my soul. I regard these things not only as a non-essential occupation for a Christian, but in a casual way as a sort of side-issue with which I should perhaps occupy my spare time, at odd moments.  To put it shortly, if love for God is recognized by the keeping of His commandments (If ye love Me, keep My commandments, says our Lord Jesus Christ), and I not only do not keep them, but even make little attempt to do so, then in absolute truth the conclusion follows that I do not love God.  That is what Basil the Greatsays, ‘The proof that a man does not love God and His Christ lies in the fact that he does not keep His commandments.’ I do not love my neighbor either.  For not only am I unable to make up my mind to lay down my life for his sake (according to the Gospel), but I do not even sacrifice my happiness, well-being and peace for the good of my neighbor.  If I did love him as myself, as the Gospel bids, his misfortunes would distress me also, his happiness would bring delight to me too.  But, on the contrary, I listen to curious, unhappy stories about my neighbor and I am not distressed; I remain quite undisturbed or what is still worse, I find a sort of pleasure in them.  Bad conduct on the part of my brother I do not cover up with love, but proclaim abroad with ensure.  His well-being, honor and happiness do not delight me as my own, and, as if they were something quite alien to me, give me no feeling of gladness. What is more, they subtly arouse in me feelings of envy or contempt. I have no religious belief.  Neither in immortality nor in the Gospel.  If I were firmly persuaded and believed without doubt that beyond the grave lies eternal life and recompense for the deeds of this life, I should be continually thinking of this.  The very idea of immortality would terrify me and I should lead this life as a foreigner who gets ready to enter his native land.  On the contrary, I do not even think about eternity, and I regard the end of this earthly life as the limit of my existence.  The secret thought nestles within me: Who knows what happens at death?  If I say I believe in immortality, then I am speaking about my mind only, and myhart is far removed from a firm conviction about it.  That is openly witnessed to by my conduct and my constant care to satisfy the life of the senses. Were the Holy Gospel taken into my heart in faith, as the Word of God, I should be continually occupied with it, I should study it, find delight in it and with deep devotion fix my attention upon it.  Wisdom, mercy, love, are hidden in it; it would lead me to happiness, I should find gladness in the study of the Law of God day and night.  In it I should find nourishment like mydaily bread and my heart would be drawn to the keeping of its laws.  Nothing on earth would be strong enough to turn me away from it. On the contrary, if now and again I read or hear the Word of God, yet even so it is only from necessity or from a general love of knowledge, and approaching it without any very close attention, I find it dull and uninteresting.  I usually cometo the end of the reading without any profit, only too ready to change over to secular reading in which I take more pleasure and find new and interesting subjects. I am full of pride and sensual self-love.  All my actions confirm this.  Seeing something good in myself, I want to bring it into view, or to pride myself upon it before other people or inwardly to admire myself for it.  Although I display an outward humility, yet I ascribe it all to my own strength and regard myself as superior to others, or at least no worse than they.  If I notice a fault in myself, I try to excuse it, I cover it up by saying, ‘I am made like that’ or ‘I am not to blame’.  I get angry with those who do not treat me with respect and consider them unable to appreciate the value of people.  I brag about my gifts: my failures in any undertaking Iregard as a personal insult.  I murmur, and I find pleasure in the unhappiness of my enemies.  If I strive after anything good it is for the purpose of winning praise, or spiritual self-indulgence, or earthly consolation.  In a word, I continually make an idol of myself and render it uninterrupted service, seeking in all things the pleasures of the senses, and nourishment for my sensual passions and lusts. Going over all this I see myself as proud, adulterous, unbelieving, without love to God and hating my neighbor.  What state could be more sinful?  The condition of the spirits of darkness is better than mine.  They, although they do not love God, hate men, and live upon pride, yet at least believe and tremble.  But, I?  Can there be a doom more terrible than that which faces me, and what sentence of punishment will be more severe than that upon the careless and foolish life that I recognize in myself?  Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner! 

 

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/743/united-states-religion

Wacky Americans are at it again. Hedonism rules. Who needs doctrine? I’m OK, you’re OK! Right!?

Wow!

Check it out and keep praying.

Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life;
and I will raise him up at the last day. (Jn. 6:54)

These words of our Lord Jesus Christ have been, since the moment
they were spoken, a “scandal” and stumbling block, and a point of
departure for all who could not see in them “words of eternal life”
(Jn. 6:58). The misconceptions and mis-interpretations continue to
exist today, as does the need for a patristic and pastoral response.
Just such a reply exists in Saint Nikodemos’ renowned work,
Concerning Frequent Communion. The pious reader will find therein
answers, combed from the entire patristic tradition, to such questions
as: How should I approach the Holy Mysteries? What preparation is
necessary? How often should I commune? And, what does it mean to
be “worthy” of Holy Communion? Based upon and gathered from the
teachings of the Holy Fathers of the Church, Concerning Frequent
Communion provides a much needed, comprehensive and “catholic
corrective” to the variety of one-sided approaches so prevelant today.

This, the second volume in the series The Works of Saint Nikodemos the
Hagiorite, includes a thorough explanation of the Lord’s Prayer, an
apology for frequent communion, answers to objections and clarifications
of misconceptions. This edition is further enriched with a brief
history of the book’s compilation and two appendices on the Divine
Eucharist from other works of Saint Nikodemos.

Order this book here: http://www.uncutmountainsupply.com/products.asp?cat=44