Visions Outside the Church

Visions Outside the Church

Monk Gorazd

1990

Please pay attention.  This applies not just to the marion apparitions, but also to charismatic "gifts" and to false elders promoting new-age ideas ["thoughts determine our lives", "all souls are interconnected", etc.] 

What criterion should we use to guide us in testing the truth of visions outside of the Orthodox Church?

Many people have heard that the Mother of God has supposedly appeared to Roman Catholics in various places.  They do not know what to think about these events.  Some even go so far as to think that since the Mother of God appears to Roman Catholics, it follows that the Roman Catholic Church is a true, grace-filled church, especially since various miracles and healings take place at the locations of the visions.  Fatima, in particular, has aroused much interest among Russians living abroad because the apparition allegedly speaks about Russia in strongly anti-communist terms, leading them to overlook the heretical and anti-Orthodox content of the message as a whole.  What are we to make of these appearances and the claims made for them?  What criterion should we use to guide us in testing the truth of visions outside of the Orthodox Church?  Hopefully, what follows will help in understanding such phenomena.

The Holy Fathers, knowing that Satan can transform himself into an angel of light, advise us to be cautious and distrustful of all appearances in the visible world.  “If you are silent in a good way, desiring to be with God,” says St. Gregory the Sinaite,   “never accept any physical or spiritual appearances, either outside or inside yourself, even if it might be an image of Christ, or an angel, or some Saint, or if light should appear, or imprint itself in the mind... Be attentive, that you may not come to believe something, even if it is something good, and be not captivated by it before consulting those who are experienced and are able to analyze the matter, so that you do not suffer harm... God is not displeased with the person who is attentive to himself, even if he, out of fear of deception, does not accept even that which is from Him, without consulting and testing....”    We might add that the Lord God could at all times give full assurance to a person, if He is pleased to do so, concerning the truth of a vision.  If such caution is necessary concerning visions WITHIN the Orthodox Church, how much more circumspect should we be in relation to apparitions OUTSIDE the one, true Church!  The sole criterion for examining these visions should be their Orthodoxy.  If in any respect their Orthodoxy is lacking, then they must be rejected: even if 99% of the message is Orthodox and only 1% deviates from the doctrines laid down by the Church, then the whole must be rejected.  God cannot deny Himself or preach untruth even in the smallest degree.

FATIMA

Let us examine three well-known cases which have occurred in our own century. First, we will deal with Fatima, which is of special interest, since the apparition there speaks about Russia and its role in the destiny of mankind.

Towards the end of the First World War, at Fatima in Portugal, between May and October, 1917, three shepherd children, two girls and a boy, had a series of visions of someone whom they said was our Lady, the Blessed Virgin.... Throughout the six months of the apparitions, the messages which Lucia was told to make public, at that time or somewhat later, were largely concerned with the need to encourage devotion to the rosary and to our Lady’s immaculate heart, and with the need for mankind to change the direction in which it was moving. Failure to make that change would bring down the wrath of God... (from Studies in Comparative Religion. A Question Concerning the Second Vatican Council, by Verak).

In December, 1940 Sister Lucy (the only one of the three who remained alive and who is now a nun of the Carmelite order) wrote to Pope Pius XII saying, “In 1917 the Most Holy Mother prophesied to us the end of the war which at that darkened the face of Europe; she prophesied another war and said that she would come again. She insisted on the dedication of Russia to her most sacred heart, promising in return to hinder the spread of false teaching from Russia and to convert Russia.” (from News About Fatima, the Greatest Miracle of Our Time, Brussels, 1962 p. 144).  It is necessary to remember that Catholics understand “the conversion of Russia” to mean her conversion to Roman Catholicism.  

Again we read in the journal The Fatima Crusader (issue #17, April-May, 1985):  “So it may well be that the conversion of a few Russians to Catholicism now is part of God’s preparations for the conversion of Russia when the Pope and bishops finally obey the command of our Lady of Fatima to consecrate Russia in the manner prescribed by God... The reason why Jesus gave this specific command to the Pope and bishops is because he wants his whole church to recognize the consecration of Russia as a triumph of the immaculate heart of Mary... Sister Lucy records... in a letter dated May 18, 1936: ‘Intimately I have spoken to our Lord about the subject and not long ago, I asked Him why He would not convert Russia without the Holy Father making the consecration. He replied, “Because I want My whole Church to acknowledge that consecration as a triumph of the immaculate heart of Mary so that it may extend its cult later on and put the devotion to the immaculate heart beside the devotion to My sacred heart”.  

Here something should be said about the un-Orthodox forms of devotion to the sacred heart of Jesus and the immaculate heart of Mary which the apparition advocates.

A Roman Catholic nun, Mary Margaret Alacoque (who died in 1690), allegedly had a vision of Jesus Christ who showed her His heart, burning with love, and asked her to spread devotion to it.  The revelations she received were first printed in the account of her life by the Jesuit bishop Lanje and caused such a scandal that the edition was destroyed.  Due to the fact that these “revelations” were so exposed to the public eye, they were condemned by Pope Clement in 1772.  Nonetheless, this cult continued to exist under the auspices of the Jesuits, and finally entered into the mainstream of Catholic religious life (Pastoral Theology, Part II, Archimandrite Constantine, Jordanville, 1961, p. 16).  Sacred heart pictures and devotions became a major part of Catholic spirituality, and the popes added their endorsements in encyclicals, granting indulgences for the observance of the devotion.  Not to be outdone, other groups, claiming to have seen apparitions of Mary, put forward the idea of devotion to “The Immaculate Heart of Mary.”  The heart of Mary was sometimes depicted together with the sacred heart of Jesus motif: a picture with two hearts... and later, the sorrowful heart of Mary, with five or seven swords piercing it, became extremely popular... It would be difficult to accuse Roman Catholicism of denying the divinity of Christ, rather they have split the wholeness of Christ, emphasizing His human nature as a separate devotion, sometimes in a crudely biological way.  This violates a central principle of the Councils, that devotion should be given to the devotion of Christ, and not to one of His natures, or parts of His body.  Thus, by fragmenting the wholeness of the Son of God, a tendency develops to ‘Nestorianize.’  Parts of the body of Christ should not become parts of isolated objects of adoration, nor should they be pictorially depicted (i.e., a heart on fire, or a heart crowned with thorns surrounding it)” (from Comparative Religion, “Roman Catholicism: Some Devotional Practices,” by Father George Mitchell). We mention these devotions here in order to illustrate the abyss which lies between Orthodox and Roman Catholic spirituality.

GARBANDAL

Yet another series of apparitions took place in a small mountain village called San Sebastian de Garabandal in the north of Spain.

These apparitions took place between June, 1961 and November, 1965.  The seers were four young girls.  We repeat some of the messages given:

“The Virgin also reminded us very often about visiting the blessed sacrament.  As a matter of fact even in her final apparition (November 13, 1965) the Virgin told me, ‘Conchita, why do you not go more often to visit my Son in the tabernacle?’  When I saw the Virgin I said to her, as if there were a spy in the village, ‘You know, there are some Protestants here.’  The Virgin replied, ‘They are all my children.’  The angel came and said, ‘Many cardinals, many bishops and many priests are on the road to perdition and taking many souls with them.  Less and less importance is given to the Eucharist.”

It is interesting to note that in 1967 Conchita Gonzales (one of the seers) started to have doubts about the apparitions:

“Yes, in 1967, sometime after the apparitions had taken place, I did have doubts.   It happened suddenly on August 15.  I will never forget it.  There were many people around me and I was overwhelmed with the feeling that I was not honest.  I felt I was deceiving all those people and that I ought to confess it.  I went to a priest and told him that it was like an illusion or a dream or living a lie, that I had never seen the Virgin and that I had been deceiving everybody all the time... These doubts and denials of the Virgin’s apparitions lasted five or six days.  Since then, up to this time, I have confusion and doubt within me” (from Miracle at Garabandal by Conchita Gonzales with Harry Daley, Dubleday and Company, N.Y., 1983).

We mention this apparition here to show that even in a case where the seer herself is ultimately uncertain of the reality of what she saw, the story still seems to find apparently serious believers.  They are not even discouraged by such disturbing facts as the following, reported by one of the seers:

“After the apparitions started, we never missed a day of communion.  When there wasn’t a priest in town, an angel would come down to give us communion... At one point we were instructed by a priest to ask how it was that, since only a priest could consecrate the hosts, the angel was administering communion to us.  We did ask, and the Virgin said that the angel would come down and take the already consecrated hosts from tabernacles on earth.”

Can we not imagine the consternation this would cause in the church from which the hosts were taken!  Can it be possible that angels need to take hosts from the tabernacles of churches?  In the Orthodox life of St. Onuphrius an angel does, indeed, bring the Holy Communion, but it is quite unthinkable that an angel would need to take the Holy Gifts from an earthly tabernacle.

MEDJUGORJE

The third series of visions we will mention began on June 24, 1981, in the Yugoslavian town of Medjugorje, where a number of young children began to have visions of what they considered to be the Mother of God.  The apparition has claimed that these revelations will be the last in the world.  In November, 1982 the apparition said, ‘After these revelations finish there will be only some false revelations in the world.”  People have flocked to Medjugorje from all over the world even though the local Roman Catholic bishop of Mostar, Pavao Zanic, who denies the verity of the apparitions, made a public declaration in the name of the Yugoslavian Bishops’ Conference to the effect that “It is not permitted for pilgrimages or for other manifestations to be organized which are motivated by the supernatural character supposedly attributed to the events of Medjugorje.”

Already in 1981 the seers were saying: “There will be a visible and lasting sign on the hill of the apparitions; it will come soon, you will see it in a short time.  Wait a little longer, be patient.”  And again: “The sign will be on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, 1981, then at Christmas, then at New Year, etc.”   Needless to say, no sign has yet appeared on the hill.  For an Orthodox reader it is sufficient to know only some of the ecumenical messages given by the apparition to be certain that it is not the Mother of God who is appearing there.  For instance:

“All the religions are the same before God. God commands in all these religions as a king in his realm.” (Counter-Reformation-Catholic, 201 Eng. ed. Cf. Fr. Blaise, 500 Messages a Vivre, p. 370, Montreal, 1986.)  “In God neither divisions or religions count. It is you in the world who have created the divisions because believers have separated themselves from one another.”  (Apparition of the Virgin Mary at Medjugorje, Jan Urban [in Czech].  The Catholic Counter-Reformation in the XX Century, Sept ./Oct;, 1987; Nov./Dec., 1985).

For the uninformed, this message has a seductive appeal and is in keeping with the “one world” thinking.  But as Orthodox Christians we know that to say “all the religions are the same before God” is a denial of Christ as the only Truth.  Is it not He Himself who says, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me (John 14:6).  Therefore, to say that all religions are the same is a denial of Christ!

CONCLUSION

Without attempting to analyze too deeply the meaning of all the messages it is sufficient enough to realize that each one of these apparitions, claiming to be the Mother of God, accepts the sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church (Holy Communion, Priesthood, Confession) as true, grace-filled Mysteries.  This alone makes these apparitions totally unacceptable for us since we know that grace-filled Mysteries can only be found in the one, true Church of Christ.  Since the Western Church separated itself from the one, true Church in the 11th century there can be no question about the existence of true Mysteries in the Roman Catholic Church. 

“The Church is one and only she has the fullness of the grace-filled gifts of the Holy Spirit.  No matter who, or in what way one has fallen away from the Church, whether in heresy, schism, or in uncanonical gatherings, one loses the communion of the grace of God. Therefore no sacraments performed outside the Church have any grace-filled power.” (Archbishop Hilarion, There Is No Christianity Without the Church, p. 114, San Paulo, Brazil, 1954.)  Even the presence of healings is not a proof of the truth of the appearances.  Healings might be from God, from natural causes, or if God allows, from the evil one.  Sozomen, in his Ecclesiastical History (Book II, #5) writes: “The temple of Aesculapius in Aegis, a city of Cilicia, and the temple of Venus at Aphaca, near Mt. Lebanon and the river Adonis, were undermined and entirely destroyed.  Both of these temples were highly honored and revered by the ancients... because those among them who were infirm in body were delivered from diseases because the demon manifested himself by night and healed them.”  In the Vita Patrum of St. Gregory of Tours we read in the life of St. Friardus the Recluse, “And as they courageously persevered in prayer, the tempter appeared at night to the deacon Secundellus, taking the form of the Lord and saying to him, ‘I am Christ, to whom you pray every day. Already you are holy, and your name is written in the Book of Life. So go out from this island and perform healings among the people.’ Secundellus, taken in by this deception, left the island...and even so as soon as he laid his hand upon the sick in the name of Jesus Christ, they were healed.”

The words of Archpriest Boris Molchanov are very timely here:

“It is very important to be aware of that little-known but remarkable spiritual law by which all false and hypocritical Christianity will inevitably lead its followers to acceptance of the Antichrist or to a movement which will prepare for his appearance.  In every false teaching, like in the Pharisee’s attitude towards truth, there is hidden the seeds of eternal damnation. Foolishly and in vain many people do, not accept the importance of dogma.  The close union between dogma of the faith, practical, moral activity, and the struggle for salvation has been expounded on by bishop Ignatius (Brianchaninoff) and His Beatitude Metropolitan Anthony (Krapovitsky).  According the teaching of the Church, there is nothing as import as confessing divinely-revealed Truth, in the work of The Word of God itself bears witness that God must be worshipped in Spirit and in Truth (John 4:23-24).  Truth is not some kind of insignificant thing, which one could relate to as one wishes. In the truth, the Spirit of Truth, Who proceeds from the Father, is present in a real way.  And correspondingly, in every lie, there is present the father of lies, the devil.  Therefore, a person who confesses the truth receives the Spirit of Truth; and the one who confesses a lie will necessarily assimilate the spirit of lies, the fallen spirit.  Outside the one, holy Orthodox Church there are not, and there will not appear the means for recognizing the Antichrist, nor is there any grace-filled power to resist him and all his temptations" (Epoch of Apostasy, Jordanville, 1976, p. 18).

We do not need heterodox apparitions to call us to repentance, prayer, and fasting.  Further, these apparitions accept Roman Catholic sacraments, the papacy, encourage un-Orthodox forms of piety, and embrace false ecumenism.  In our troubled times, times of subtle temptations and sublime deceptions, when false miracles, visions, and apparitions are on the increase, we Orthodox Christians should work out our salvation with fear and trembling, holding firm to our Holy Orthodox Faith and looking for guidance and inspiration to our Holy Orthodox Church alone.

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The Vatican and Russia & Visions Outside the Church
Dcn. Herman Ivanov-Treednadzaty; Monk Gorazd
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Where is the Church?

from Joanna's notepad

Yesterday my friend, Reader Daniel –who converted 50 years ago– expressed a thought that today the apostasy [falling away] is so great that these must be the end times.  He noted that in world-orthodoxy eschatology is suppressed – they want to think that Orthodoxy is going forward and growing into a big beautiful Orthodox world.

This is an excellent observation.  We tend to think that the world apostasizes and WE Orthodox - the tiny ship compared to the world population - are the elect.  But the elect is much smaller than that.

We need to see the huge size the apostasy really is.  And that this apostasy is INSIDE our Church, not outside of it.

Apostasy is a "falling away".  People who were never Orthodox Christian in the first place can not fall away from the Church that they were never in.  They are not apostates: they are heterodox and pagans. 

We say the Roman Church apostasized because it "fell away" from the Orthodox Church.  We don't say that Luther apostasized when he left the Roman Church – he was already in apostasy.

The Great Falling Away is going to be from the Orthodox Church.  If you are part of the majority of people calling themselves Orthodox, then you can be assured that you are in the apostate part, because most of the Orthodox world will fall away.

Read the signs: new calendar, WCC, EP, EP communing with heretics, new-age ideas and positivism being taught in world-orthodox churches, ...

We are truly in the last times, and not in some chiliastic flowering.  This is why world-orthodoxy hides eschatological teachings, because the wolves don't want the sheep to be aware we are in the end times.  But Christ taught us to watch for the signs...

Fr. Seraphim Rose reminds us that the gates of hell will not not prevail against the Church.  The Church will always exist.  The last 3½ years before Christ's 2nd Coming on the clouds the Church is the woman who hides in the wilderness.  Whether She exists is not the question.  The question is, rather, will we be able to find Her. •

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http://orthodoxlifemagazines.blogspot.com/2018/08/1971-3456-christianity-or-church.html

http://christianityorthechurch.blogspot.com

Christianity or the Church?

by the Holy New Martyr

Archbishop Ilarion (Troitsky)

excerpt from the Conclusion:

. . . Sometimes it seems as if our whole Church is in dispersion, in disorder.  One cannot tell who is ours and who is the enemy.  Some sort of anarchy is ruling in the minds (of many).  Too many "teachers" have appeared and a "dividing of the body" (cf. 1 Cor. 12:25) of the Church has occurred.  Ancient Church bishops taught from the "high place."  Now, one who says of himself that he is only "at the porch" or even only "near the church walls," nevertheless considers himself entitled to teach the entire Church, including the hierarchy.  These people gather and compose all their opinions about Church questions from various "public sheets" (as Metropolitan Philaret used to call newspapers), where items on Church matters are written by defrocked priests and Church renegades of all sorts, or embittered and insolent scoffers (as foretold in 2 Peter 3:3), or people who have no connection with the Church and who feel nothing toward it but animosity, for example, the Jews.

In such a mass of confusion, many are already asking with concern: "Where is the Church?"

That is why in our time there are many varied and fantastic "searchings."  In the apostolic age, those who sought the salvation of their souls headed for the Church, and the outsiders did not dare trouble them (Acts 5:13).  Then there was no possibility for the question, "where is the Church?"  It was a clear and definite value, sharply separated from everything not of the Church.  Now there stands some sort of intermediate stage between the Church and the "world" and there is no longer that clear separation: the Church and that which is outside the Church.

There is also some sort of indefinite Christianity and even something else which is not Christianity, but a general abstract religion. These vague concepts of Christianity and religion have darkened the light of the Church so that it is poorly seen by those who seek, which is why "searching" so often now goes over into "wandering."

For this reason there is, in our days, such an abundance of those who are "ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth" (2 Tim. 3:7).  A new sport has been created, if we may call it that, a sport of "god-seeking."  "God-seeking" has become the goal in itself and if their efforts were ever crowned with success, they would feel themselves highly unfortunate and immediately turn, with their former zeal, from "god-seeking" to "god-fighting" (i.e., theomachism).

Many people frankly build a name for themselves in (the sport of) "god-seeking."  One recalls the stern condemnation of Bishop Michael (Gribanovsky) against all such "seeking."  "They seek," he said, "because they have lost all principles; and while they look for better ones (principles), poorer ones take advantage of the confusion and cheat without any twinge of conscience: for what kind of conscience is there when no one knows what is true, what is good, what is evil."

Intermediate understandings of religion and Christianity only estrange many people from the truth because, for one who sincerely seeks God, they become like "toll-houses."  Many join the path of these arduous seekings, but very many do not complete it with success.  A significant proportion remain "travelling from ordeal to ordeal," not finding blessed peace. 

Finally, in this realm of half-light, half truth, in this realm of the lack of understanding and of the indefinite, in this "vague unsettled world," the very soul degenerates, becomes weak, and is poorly receptive to Grace-given inspiration.

Such a soul will continue to seek even after it finds what it is looking for.  Then there is created a pitiful type of "religious idler," as F. M. Dostoevsky called them.

The above mentioned state of affairs imposes a special responsibility on all Church members in our time.  Members of the Church are very guilty in that they fail to point the way clearly and they poorly illuminate with their examples the final point of arrival for those who are seeking.  This point is not the abstract understanding of Christianity, but precisely the Church of the living God.

According to the example of many people who have followed the agonizing path of seeking to its completion, it is possible to discern that a lasting peace draws near only when man comes to believe in the Church; when he accepts, with all his being, the idea of the Church in such a way that, for him, the separation of Christianity from the Church is inconceivable.  Then begins the real quickening of Church life.  Man feels that he is a branch of a great, ever-budding tree of the Church.  He is conscious of himself not as a follower of some kind of school, but as a member of the body of Christ with Whom he has a common life and from Whom he receives this life.

Only one who has come to believe in the Church, who is guided by the concept of the Church in the appraisal of the phenomena of life and the direction of his personal life, one who has felt a Church life within himself, he and only he is on the correct path.  Much that earlier seemed indefinite and vague will become obvious and clear.  It is especially precious that in times of general vacillation, of wandering from side to side, from the right to the left and from the left to the right, every Church-conscious person feels himself standing on a steadfast, centuries-old rock; how firm it feels under his feet.

The Spirit of God lives in the Church.  This is not a dry and dogmatic thesis, preserved only through respect for what is old.  No, this is truth; truth which can be experienced and known by everyone who has been penetrated by Church consciousness.  This Grace-filled Church life cannot be the subject of dry scholastic research, for it is accessible for study only through experience.  Human language is capable of speaking only vaguely and unclearly about this Grace-filled life.

Saint Hilary of Poitiers spoke correctly when he said, "This is the characteristic virtue of the Church - that it becomes comprehensible when you adopt it."

Only he who has Church life knows about Church life, he requires no proofs; but for one who does not have it, it is something which cannot be proved.

For a member of the Church the object of all his life must be constantly to unite more and more with the life of the Church, and, at the same time, preach to others about the Church, not substituting it with Christianity, not substituting life with dry and abstract teaching.

Now, there is too often talk about the insufficiency of life in the Church, about the "reviving" of the Church. All such talk is difficult to understand and we are very much inclined to acknowledge it as completely senseless. Life in the Church can never run low, for the Holy Spirit abides in it until the end of time (cf. John 14:16).

There is life in the Church and only churchless people do not notice this life.  The life of the Spirit of God is incomprehensible to a person who perceives solely with his mind; it may even seem foolish to him, for it is accessible only to a person who perceives with his spirit.  People who are of an emotional mode of thinking seldom receive a feeling of the Church-conscious life; yet even now there are people, simple in heart and pious in life, who constantly live by this feeling of the abundant, Grace-filled life in the Church.  This atmosphere of Church life and Church inspiration can especially be felt in monasteries.

Those who speak about the insufficiency of life in the Church usually refer to the insufficiencies of church administration, the thousands of consistory papers and so on.  For all those who genuinely understand Church life, however, it is as clear as God's day that all these consistories with their ukases do not affect the depth of Church life at all.  The deep river of abundant, Grace-filled life flows increasingly and gives drink to everyone who wishes to quench his spiritual thirst.  This river cannot be dammed up with "paper."

No, it is not the insufficiency of life in the Church which must be spoken of, but of the insufficiency of Church consciousness in us.  Many live a Churchly life, not even clearly realizing the fact.  Even if we consciously live a Churchly life we preach little about the blessings of this life.  With outsiders we usually only debate about Christian truths, forgetting about Church life.  We also are sometimes capable of substituting the Church with Christianity, life with abstract theory.

Unfortunately, we ourselves do not value our Church and the great blessing of Church life enough.  We do not confess our faith in the Church bravely, clearly, and definitely.  While believing in the Church, we constantly seem to pardon ourselves for the fact that we still believe in it. We read the ninth article of the Creed without any special joy or even with a feeling of guilt.

A Church-conscious person is now often confronted with the exclamation of Turgenev's poetry in prose: "You still believe? But you are altogether a backward person!"  And how many have so much courage as to bravely confess: "Yes, I believe in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, I belong to the Holy Orthodox Church and thus I am the most advanced person, for only in the Church is it possible to have that new life, for the sake of which the Son of God came to the sinful earth; only in the Church can one come to a measure of full growth in Christ - consequently, only in the Church is genuine progress possible!"

More often inclined to reply to the question: "Are you not one of Christ's disciples?" with the answer: "I do not know Him."

Conclusion

Thus it must be considered as the most vital necessity of the present time to confess openly that indisputable truth that Christ created precisely the Church and that it is absurd to separate Christianity from the Church and to speak of some sort of Christianity apart from the Holy Orthodox Church of Christ.

This truth, we believe, will illuminate, for many, the final goal in their wearisome journey of seeking; it will show them, not in lifeless teaching, but in Church life, where they can truly "recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will" (2 Tim. 2:26).  This truth will also help us to identify Church life and to "gather the separated" children of the Church, so that all may be one, as the Lord Jesus Christ prayed before His sufferings.

We shall end our discourse with one parable of the type used by the holy fathers. 

The Church is like a strong oak, and a man outside the Church is like a flying bird.  See how the unfortunate bird struggles in a strong wind.  How uneven is its flight!  It either flies upward, or else it is overturned by the wind, or it moves slightly forward, and then it is again pushed backward.  That is how a person is carried by the winds of false teaching.  But just as the bird is calmed in the dense branches of the tree and peacefully looks out of its refuge on the storm raging past, so a man finds peace when he runs to the Church.  From his calm refuge he looks out at the ferocious storm "near the Church walls" and he sorrows for the unfortunate people who are overtaken by this tempest outside the Church and who delay in seeking shelter under its abundant Grace, and he prays to the Lord: "Unite them to Thy Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church... that they also may glorify with us the most honorable and majestic name of God praised in the Holy Trinity."

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from Joanna's notepad

Where is ROCOR today? 

2018

There are basically 3 parts to the ROCOR today:

1. About 1/3 went into various schisms trying to avoid the MP (1994 – 2001)

2. About 1/3 joined the MP (2007)

3. About 1/3 remained in the original ROCOR under Vl. Agafangel

    A. about 1/2 of this 3rd went into schism under Bp. Andronik

    B. about 1/2 of this third remains loyal to Metr. Agafangel

Every group claims to be the true ROCOR.  There is no legalistic way

to judge unless you are a canon expert.   You have to ask God to show

you.  Ask Him.  He will show you.  He does not give a

stone to His child who asks for bread.

The gates of hell will not prevail against the Church.   Fr. Seraphim said there is no doubt that the Church will always be in existence.   Instead the question is, will we always be able to find Her? •

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Blessed Paisius Velichkovsky

Book Review

Blessed Paisius Velichkovsky: 

The Man Behind the Philolkalia

by Schema-monk Metrophanes

translated by Fr. Seraphim Rose 

Introduction by Fr. Seraphim Rose

December 21, 1972, marked the 250th anniversary of the birth of Schema-Archimandrite Paisius Velichkovsky.  This remarkable anniversary went almost totally unnoticed in the Orthodox world, which is so occupied with its worldly problems and its very struggle for survival.  And yet, for Orthodox Christians of the 20th century there is no more important Holy Father of recent times than Blessed Paisius Velichkovsky.  This is so not merely because of his holy life; not merely because, like another Saint Gregory Palamas, he defended the hesychast practice of the mental Prayer of Jesus; not only because he, through his many disciples, inspired the great monastic revival of the 19th century which flowered most notably in the holy Elders of Optina Monastery; but most of all because he redirected the attention of Orthodox Christians to the sources of Holy Orthodoxy, which are the only foundation of true Orthodox life and thought whether of the past or of the present, whether of monks or of laymen.

It is these very same sources – the Divine Scriptures and the writings of the Holy Fathers – which are the foundation of all genuine Orthodoxy in our own times.  The observer of the Orthodox world today can see easily enough what "Orthodoxy" becomes when these sources are not made the foundation of life and thought.

The followers of unenlightened custom are themselves innocent; they merely accept what has been "handed down" to them.  But not seeing the meaning and not knowing the sources of what has been handed down, they are easily led into error, accepting customs which the Church has allowed only out of her condescension or economy as if they were the best of Orthodoxy, and also improper customs of recent heterodox origin and inspiration, together with the pure and meaningful Orthodox customs handed down from the Holy Fathers.  Under strict yet prudent pastors, such people can be guided in the true path of Orthodoxy; but in our own time of such widespread irresponsible Church leadership, these people are more often guided gradually into a path of ever greater and more senseless innovation and reform, the clearest example of which is perhaps the Greek Archdiocese of America, where pews, organs, and Uniat spirituality and theology have become the new "customs" of an unfortunate people whose Orthodoxy has been stolen from it.

Far worse, however, is the state of those who, being unrooted in the true sources of Holy Orthodoxy, occupy the positions of pastors and theologians and in their "learned ignorance" seek to guide their flocks according to some fashionable intellectual current of the day.  Such are the leaders of the "charismatic movement," swept off their feet by an experience which, while compatible with Protestantism and Papism, is easily discerned as a satanic deception by those who are rooted in and live in the Holy Fathers.  Such also are the "theologians" of the "Paris" and other modernist schools who, being at home in heterodox modes of thought and life, dare to present the Holy Fathers themselves according to the disfigured modern understanding of them, transmitting neither their true message nor (much less) their Orthodox savor, giving rather an academic two-dimensional caricature of them, suitable only for presentation in decadent ecumenical salons and in lifeless academic journals.

Both of these types of "Orthodox" people are precisely those who are cut off from the sources of Orthodoxy, and who in turn help to cut others off from these sources.  The movement of true Orthodoxy in our own times has seen with increasing clarity the need to separate itself from this pseudo- or semi-Orthodoxy and refind its roots in the true and unadulterated sources of Orthodoxy, the Holy Fathers.  And this is precisely what the Blessed Paisius saw and did, making him a key figure for us today.  

Having come to love the Holy Fathers and true Orthodox piety in his childhood, Blessed Paisius at the age of 17 saw that even in the best Orthodox school of Russia he was not being given the pure teaching of Holy Orthodoxy from the patristic sources, but rather something second-hand and accompanied by useless pagan learning; and, further, that an over-emphasis on the formal side of the Church's existence, greatly furthered by the Government in its attempt to make the Church a "department" of the State, promoted chiefly the idea that church-minded people, the clergy and even the monks, occupied a definite place in the apparatus of the Church organization.  This overemphasis of a real but decidedly secondary aspect of church life tended to obscure the primary aspect: the love and zeal for true Orthodoxy and true piety, which are what inspire every genuine Orthodox Christian, whether clergy, monk, or layman.  Seeing the difficulty of exercising his love and zeal in the Russia of his time, Paisius left his homeland in search of a place where his tender Orthodox conscience could mature in blessed freedom and in the opportunity to draw instruction and inspiration from the unadulterated sources of Orthodoxy.   Having come to spiritual maturity, Blessed Paisius then himself became a source and seedbed for the great monastic and patristic revival of Holy Russia in the 19th century.  True patristic spirituality and its hesychast tradition, to be sure, never died out in Russia, not even in the 18th century, that age of pseudo-enlightenment when the Empress Catherine closed most of the Orthodox monasteries and strictly regulated the rest of them; no, it remained and provided the fertile ground on which the disciples and the example of Blessed Paisius were to bear such great spiritual fruits.  But it required the patristic bees of the great Elder Paisius, bringing back the pollen of the true and free tradition of Orthodoxy under the much more favorable climate of the 19th century, to cause the native Russian trees to give forth such a marvelous abundance of spiritual fruit.

Today the situation of Orthodoxy is rather different, and much worse, than it was in the time of the Elder Paisius.  In place of the veneer of paganism and Latinism which never actually touched the heart of Orthodoxy, we have today a prevailing atmosphere of modernist heterodoxy and senseless "keeping up with the times" which has pierced the very heart of some Orthodox Churches so deeply that they will doubtless never recover, and their children are deprived of Orthodoxy without even knowing what they have lost.  In place of the heavy hand of governmental bureaucracy, we see the far heavier hand of pseudo-Christian and pagan ways of life which are depriving Orthodox Christians of something which was almost untouched in the time of Blessed Paisius: Orthodox piety, the whole Christian way of life.  And, to make this whole difficult situation virtually impossible, we are beset with self-styled reformers and revivers who neither know nor feel nor love what Orthodoxy is and would "restore" the faithful to the latest fashion of Protestant scholarship or piety.  The 17-year-old Orthodox youth of today has usually not been raised properly and consciously in Orthodox teaching and piety, or, if he has, the ever-increasing tempo of paganized modern life acts powerfully to negate his upbringing; he has usually not come to love the Holy Fathers and the Divine services from childhood, and to hunger for more; and there is scarcely anywhere he can turn in order to correct the deficiencies of his upbringing and environment: of all the Orthodox seminaries in the free world, it is doubtful that any save the Russian-language seminary at Holy Trinity Monastery (Jordanville, New York) will even attempt to give him an education in genuine Orthodoxy.  For such a youth not deeply grounded in Orthodoxy, the human side of the Church all too often becomes the center of attention, and the all too prevalent petty quarrels and injustices among church people are often sufficient to turn his attention away from the Church altogether, or – if some religious interest remains – to turn him toward one of the flourishing religious or social-cults of the day, or even to the widely-advertised life of drugs and immorality.

Truly, we are far more in need today of a return to the sources of genuine Orthodoxy than Blessed Paisius was!  Our situation is hopeless!   And yet God's mercy does not leave us, and even today one may say that there is a movement of genuine Orthodoxy which consciously rejects the indifference, renovationism, and outright apostasy which are preached by the world-famous Orthodox "theologians" and "hierarchs," and also hungers for more than the "customary" Orthodoxy which is powerless before the onslaughts of a world refined in destroying souls.  It is of course true that the world, saturated in Holy Orthodoxy, which produced Blessed Paisius no longer exists; and it is likewise true that the numbers of God-bearing elders whom Paisius met and produced on his path, even in an age of spiritual decline, are simply unheard of in our own days, which are surely the days of the last Christians.  And yet it cannot be that the flame of truly Orthodox zeal will die out before the Second Coming of Christ; nor that if this flame exists, Christ our God will not show His zealots, even now, how to lead a true and inspired Orthodox life.  In fact, the message of Blessed Paisius is addressed precisely and directly to the last Christians: in "The Scroll" he tells us that the Holy Fathers wrote their books "by the special Providence of God, so that in the Last times this Divine work would not fall into oblivion."

Do you hear, O Orthodox Christians of these last times?  These writings of the Holy Fathers, even those dealing with the highest form of spiritual life, have been preserved for us, so that even when it might seem that there are no God-bearing elders left at all, we may still have the unerring words of the Holy Fathers to guide us in leading a God-pleasing and zealous life.  Therefore, they are wrong who teach that, because the end of the world is at hand, we must sit still, make no great efforts, simply preserve the doctrine that has been handed down to us, and hand it back, like the buried talent of the worthless servant (Matt. 25:24-30), to our Lord at His Coming!  Blessed Paisius teaches that "solely by Orthodoxy of faith, without the diligent keeping of all Christ's commandments [i.e., putting Orthodoxy into practice, with great effort], it is not at all possible to be saved."  The time of the end, though it seems to be near, we do not know; however close, it is still future, and in the present we have only the same age-old fight against the unseen powers, against the world, and against our own passions, upon the outcome of which our eternal fate will be decided.  Let us then struggle while it is still day, with the time and the weapons which our All-merciful God has given us!

The Life of Blessed Paisius is of special value to us because it is the Life of a Holy Father of modern times, one who lived like the ancients almost in our own day.  All those deadly anti-spiritual currents which threaten now to enslave man completely – godless humanism, soulless ecumenism, and the fierce Revolution that has brought them to power upon the ruins of civilization in a sea of blood – either existed already or were born in his lifetime.  The spiritual climate of his times was very similar to our own; many of our own temptations were his also; a number of our most pressing questions he answered for us.  This virtual contemporary of ours struggled and was gloriously crowned, and God, seeing his labors, gave to him a hundredfold of spiritual fruits which are nourishing Orthodox Christians even to this day, and revealed in him the fount in modern times of the pure tradition of Russian Orthodoxy.

The reader of this Life must be cautioned, however, against reading it too "enthusiastically".  Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov, the great 19th-century Holy Father who perhaps better than anyone else expressed the meaning of Blessed Paisius' life's work, warns us that "novices can never adapt books to their own condition, but are invariably drawn by the tendency of the book ... If a book speaks of unconditional obedience under the direction of a Spirit bearing Father, the beginner will inevitably develop a desire for the strictest life in complete submission to an Elder.  God has not given to our times this way of life.  But the books of the Holy Fathers describing it can influence a beginner so strongly that out of inexperience and ignorance he can easily decide to leave the place where he is living and where he has every convenience to work out his salvation and make spiritual progress ... for an impossible dream of a perfect life pictured vividly and alluringly in his imagination" (The Arena, Ch. 10).

The Life of Blessed Paisius is not meant to exalt the beginner (and we all, in our spiritually feeble 20th century, are "beginners") and make him think that he is capable of such a life; not at all.  Elder Macarius of Optina, another 19th-century continuer of the work of Blessed Paisius, teaches that "the holy God-bearing Fathers wrote about great spiritual gifts not so that anyone might strive indiscriminately to receive them, but so that those who do not have them, hearing about such exalted gifts and revelations which were received by those who were worthy, might acknowledge their own profound infirmity and great insufficiency, and might involuntarily be inclined to humility, which is more necessary for those seeking salvation than all other works and virtues" (Letters to Monks, Moscow, 1862, p. 370).  Four centuries earlier St. Nilus of Sora wrote, concerning the lives of holy men: "We who are burdened with many sins and preyed upon by passions are unworthy even of hearing such words.  Nevertheless, placing our hope in the grace of God, we are encouraged to keep the words of the holy writings in our minds, so that we may at least grow in awareness of the degradation in which we wallow" (Monastic Rule, ch. 2).  And even in the 6th century, St. John of the Ladder wrote: "Just as a pauper, seeing the royal treasures, all the more acknowledges his own poverty, so also the spirit, reading the accounts of the great deeds of the Holy Fathers, involuntarily is all the more humbled in its way of thought" (The Ladder, Step 26:25).

These are the words of the Holy Fathers of past centuries, when Orthodoxy was firmly rooted in the human soul and had transformed whole societies.  How much more necessary is the humility they speak about in our spiritually uprooted and superficial 20th century!

We must, of course, continue to read Orthodox spiritual texts, such as the Life of Blessed Paisius, or we will spiritually wither and die.  But we must at the same time humble ourselves and use the very height of the life described in these texts as our opportunity to "grow in awareness of our degradation," as St. Nilus so well says.  We must properly apply the Life of Elder Paisius to our own spiritual condition.

Therefore, let all readers be aware:

1. There are no more elders like Paisius today. If we imagine there are, we can do irreparable harm to our souls – "imagination" being precisely one of the forms of prelest or spiritual deception.  We must learn to read of his life and deeds without being able to apply them entirely to our corrupt and degraded life.  At the same time, we must have respect for our spiritual fathers and elders, who at least know more than we and try their best to guide their spiritual children under almost impossible conditions.  Many young people today are seeking gurus and are ready to enslave themselves to any likely candidate; but woe to those who take advantage of this climate of the times to proclaim themselves "God-bearing Elders" in the ancient tradition – they only deceive themselves and others.  Any Orthodox spiritual father will frankly tell his children that the minimum of eldership that remains today is very different from what Blessed Paisius or the Optina Elders represent.

2. The type of community which Paisius guided is beyond the capabilities of our times.  Bishop Ignatius said that such a way of life was not given even to his times – when Optina was at its height; and how much more has Orthodox life fallen since then!  Such a "heaven on earth'' could not exist today, not just because there are no God-bearing Elders to guide it, but because even if there were, the spiritual level of those who would follow is too impossibly low.  Ours is the age of spiritual fakery par excellence, not of the ancient Spirit-bearing life.  The Abbot of any Orthodox monastery today will tell you the same.

But let us therefore learn to make maximum use of the limited opportunities we do have (which still, after all, are "heaven on earth" if compared to the worldly life of today!), not demolishing our few remaining Orthodox communities with self-centered and idle criticism, nor unsettling ourselves and others by dreams of impossibly perfect communities.

3. Our times, above all, call for humble and quiet labors, with love and sympathy for other strugglers on the path of the Orthodox spiritual life and a deep resolve that does not become discouraged because the atmosphere is unfavorable.  We Christians of the latter times are still called to work persistently on ourselves, to be obedient to spiritual fathers and authorities, to lead an orderly life with at least a minimum of spiritual discipline and with regular reading of the Orthodox spiritual literature which Blessed Paisius was chiefly responsible for handing down to our times, to watch over our own sins and failings and not judge others.  If we do this, even in our terrible times, we may have hope – in God's mercy – of the salvation of our souls.  Perhaps the chief function of the Life of Blessed Paisius for us today is to give us the courage to endure the frightful anti-spiritual climate of our times; for as our Saviour has warned us, even in the last times when "the love of the many shall grow cold," he that endureth to the end shall be saved (Matt. 24:13).

The Life of Elder Paisius which we here present was written by his own disciples, chiefly by Schema-monk Metrophanes of Niamets Monastery, and was published in its present form exactly 125 years ago (1847) by the God-bearing Elders of Optina Monastery as the first of the texts of the veritable patristic revival which they inspired in 19th-century Russia.  It is much to be preferred to the 20th-century biography* in that it gives not only the facts of the Elder's life, but more importantly, the very savor of his struggles.  It is itself a patristic text capable of guiding and inspiring the Orthodox believer today.

*Archpriest Sergy Chetverikov, The Moldavian Elder, Schema-Archimandrite Paisius Velichkovsky, two volumes, Petseri, Estonia, 1938.  In the text below some passages (indicated in the footnotes) have been added to the original Life from this source, particularly where the words of Elder Paisius himself have been quoted.  The author did research at Niamets Monastery and was thus able to use manuscripts written by Paisius himself; his whole tone and approach, however, are those of the worldly 20th century, and he does not do justice to the spiritual message of Blessed Paisius.

Meaning of the word: Orthodox