What Should We Do? St. Ignatius Brianchaninov

"What Should We Do"

St Ignatius, with his prophetic spirit, deeply penetrated the spirit of the universal apostasy of the last times. Here we are citing some of his characteristic thoughts, so much current, even today: 

"God permitted apostasy.  We are helpless to stop this apostasy.  Weak hands will have no power against it and nothing more will be required than the attempt to avoid it.  The spirit of the age will reveal the apostasy.  Study it, if you wish to avoid it, if you wish to escape this age and the temptation of its spirits... Only certain Grace of God may stop this pernicious moral epidemic, and to postpone it for awhile, for it is necessary to happen all that was foretold in the Scriptures... There is no one who could renew Christianity.  Vessels of the Holy Spirit everywhere have dried up, even in the monasteries, these treasures of piousness and grace... The salt has lost its savor.  Among church shepherds exists merely a weak, unclear, and inconsistent understanding of the Word, which is destroying spiritual life.  Christianity is in doing and not in words . It's difficult even to look at whom are entrusted, or into whose hands Christ sheep befell, to whom their guidance and salvation is entrusted!  But, God allowed that... God's merciful long endurance postpones the complete breakdown for the sake of few saving themselves, while those who started on the road of perdition have already perished, or are reaching the peak of corruptness...  Let the merciful Lord protect the remnant still believing in Him, but that remnant is few, and getting fewer."

(Words of St. Ignaty are written over hundred years ago)

Ecumenism and Apostasy of the Last Times

Fr Sava Janjic

-- From "What Should We Do"

by Abp Averky