Category Archives: Pastoral Matters

On the So-Called Council

In a few days time there will be a meeting in a modernist concrete building in Calvinist Geneva (instead of at the historic Russian Orthodox Cathedral) to discuss the possible forthcoming meeting of Orthodox bishops (Where? When?), which the US State Department has pretentiously billed as a ‘Pan-Orthodox Council’. In the Ukraine, from where I have just returned (graffiti like ‘Down with Poroshenko’s Party of Thieves and Murderers’ are now even more common), I found two attitudes to this ‘Council’. One was pure ignorance (‘never heard of it’), the other attitude was fear and rejection (‘whatever they decide, we shall ignore them’). If this meeting, against the background of civil wars in the Ukraine and Syria, happens, it does indeed seem to be a most inopportune time.

Popular attitudes like those in the Ukraine are to be expected when there has been no consultation with monastics, parish clergy and people about this ‘Council’, let alone about its virtually unknown and meaningless agenda (try googling for it), and when all preparatory meetings are conducted behind closed doors and no reports on those meetings are issued. As the much-respected Metr Hierotheos of the Church of Greece has written, this ‘Council’ should be stopped, for its agenda contains not a single theological issue (unlike real Councils). And yet the ailing and elderly Patriarch of Constantinople is desperate to see the ‘Council’ take place before he dies, even reconciling himself with Metr Rostislav of the Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia. Going from negative to positive, what are the possible outcomes?

1. The meeting (‘Council’) will not take place. With the difficulty between the Patriarchates of Jerusalem and Antioch, between the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Church of Greece, with the political impasse between Russian and Turkey (and the representatives of the Patriarchate of Constantinople are all Turkish citizens), with calls from senior churchmen in the Ukraine and Greece for the meeting not to be held at all, with its secular agenda on which there is no agreement, this outcome seems quite possible. A non-event.

2. The meeting takes place somewhere and some time in 2016, but it will issue some vague and meaningless statement full of secularspeak, ensuring unanimity but also meaning that the meeting is still a non-event.

3. The meeting takes place but begins and ends in disagreement. Faithful monasteries and parish churches declare that they belong to ‘the Church of the Seven Councils’; schismatic and modernist ones declare that they belong to ‘the Church of the Eight Councils’. Although this may seem the most negative outcome of all, perhaps it is time for there to be a cleansing and that the small minority of Halfodox at last leave the Church, taking their heresies with them, in their apostasy becoming Uniats or forming some new ‘Protestant with icons’ sect, whatever they want. Let the dead bury the dead.

4. The meeting takes place and a miracle happens. It obtains an eternal meaning, becoming a Council. Once hesitant Local Churches affirm Orthodoxy and reject spiritual death; the minority of Orthodox who have compromised return to the Orthodox calendar, refusing to die out in the worship of the past as a 1453 nationalistic irrelevance in a global world, rejecting ecumenism and modernism, adopting the global missionary responsibilities of the Church, launching worldwide mission. In this way this Council confirms, seals and extends the Seven Universal Councils of the Church and the Creed and refuses to act as a secular organization like the Vatican or CIA-run Protestant sects, confirming Christ and rejecting Antichrist.

On the Financing of the Church

Recently someone complained to me that the price of the large candles that we sell in our church, 30 pence, would be multiplied by six or seven times in churches in London, even though the cost price is much less than 30 pence. He asked why. I told him that it is because in London the priest receives his salary from those who buy candles. They are not buying a candle, they are paying the priest. This fact raises the whole question of how we should pay for our churches and our priests. What are the options?

One option is the Greek-Romanian one: the State pays the clergy so that in fact the priests are civil servants. In our view this is a very bad option. First of all, the State is a notoriously bad payer. For example, Romanian priests receive a miserable 200 euros a month, on which they cannot live. However, far, far worse than this, it means that Romanian clergy, from the Patriarch down, are all servants of the State. Sometimes there are the most unfortunate consequences of such a loss of freedom. There is a parallel here with the slavish Church of England, which for the most part follows the policies of whatever atheist Prime Minister is in power. He, after all, appoints all the bishops of the Church of England, making it even more into a bastion of the Establishment. For instance, as one Anglican put it recently, 100 years ago the Church of England was against sodomy, but in favour of fox-hunting, whereas today it is in favour of sodomy, but against fox-hunting. So flows the Establishment tide; the Gospel can easily become irrelevant.

Another option is the ‘candle one’. Not just candles, however. You can charge a great deal for icons, books, crosses, holy water and you can charge, according to a fixed tariff, for baptisms, weddings, memorials, services of intercession etc. The problem with this is that people may well complain about how expensive it is. How can an hour’s work on the part of the priest be priced at £100 and more? (I am told that in the Church of England a wedding costs £400!). How can a 1,000% profit on a candle or an icon or a book be justified? Naturally, people will then, inevitably, start looking at the priest’s car, his wife’s clothes, his house etc. And that is how nasty rumours start and even people stop coming to church. And this, even though the priest’s possessions and his family may all be modest. This is because most of the money raised does not in any case go to the priest at all, but towards the costs of running the church, paying for repairs, maintenance, insurance, heating, electricity, water, the choir etc.

For me there is only one way of financing a church. This is that people become parishioners and begin giving a proportion of their income to the church, paying it directly from their bank accounts to the parish bank account. One question remains. How much should they give? Certainly not a tithe, as in the Jewish Old Testament. We would suggest 2%, of which 1% should go to the priest and 1% should go for the upkeep and adornment of the church. This would mean that for every 100 wage-earners there would be a priest who earns exactly the average wage of his parishioners, and there would be a parish church. On the basis of the ability of a priest to confess 100-200 adult parishioners (of whom 100 are wage-earners) and look after their children, as well as deal with another 100-200 or more irregular visitors, this proposition would surely seem reasonable.

Our Hope for a Russian Orthodox Church in Norwich (Update 9)

The Update

As of 1 January 2016 we are still waiting for legal documents to be exchanged for the premises we are buying in Norwich. After a three and a half month wait to receive planning permission from Norwich City Council, we have now had to wait an additional three and a half months for exactly the same organization to send our solicitor the lease. This means that the entire process has been delayed by over three months. Once we have signed for the premises and bought them, we can finally start building work to transform them into an Orthodox church. At last a permanent home for Russian Orthodoxy in Norwich after over thirty years of struggles. Thank you!

History

In the East of England there is at present only one multinational and multilingual church faithful to Russian Orthodoxy with its own urban premises. This is St John’s Church in Colchester. God willing and with your support, we have now been able to buy a second one, in Norwich, exactly 60 miles, 100 kilometres, to the north of Colchester.

Why Norwich? For the last four years I have been visiting Norwich and some of the 200 Russian Orthodox there, mainly recent immigrants from the Baltic States, especially from Estonia. I have baptized several in their homes, married couples in Colchester, buried, blessed houses, listened to confessions, visiting every few weeks, sometimes twice a month and am Orthodox chaplain at Norwich Prison.

We thought of dedicating our community to St Alexander Nevsky. We attempted to begin liturgies using the Greek Orthodox church building in Norwich, but were impeded. How are our people and English people and others interested in the witness of the Russian Orthodox Church, to be cared for pastorally? Only from a church building. And such life is required not only by Russian speakers, but also by Romanian, Bulgarian and English Orthodox. Most of our regular parishioners, only one of whom has a car, live within easy walking distance of this building.

On Friday 8 May, Fr Andrew saw a leasehold property for sale on the rightmove website for £50,000 at 134, Oak Street, Norwich. It measures 88 square metres externally and is at present used as offices and rooms for a cultural centre. It has electricity, heating and water and is in very good condition. It is so cheap because it is leasehold, in other words, you have to pay £100 rent per month for the ground it is built on. This amount is fixed until 2032. The lease itself is even longer – it lasts until 2047.

On Wednesday 13 May we organized a visit to these premises, attended by 9 local Russian Orthodox.

By Friday 15 May, Orthodox in Norwich had generously promised to donate £5,250.

On Monday 18 May Fr Andrew received Archbishop Mark’s blessing to buy the building if possible, meaning we could start obtaining pledges to donate.

On Thursday 21 May we heard from the surveyor that it would cost £3,000-£5,000 to knock down the internal walls and make good the floor and ceiling, so we could use this building as a church. This was lower than Fr Andrew had estimated.

On Wednesday 27 May we heard that our offer of £42,500 had been accepted. However, since conversion and furnishing costs will come to £12,500, this meant that we would need £55,000 in all.

On Friday 29 May we submitted the planning application for change of use from offices to a place of worship. This, we were told then, would take at least 6-8 weeks but should result in a positive answer.

On Wednesday 3 June we launched an internet appeal for £55,000 in order to set up our own church in Norwich.

By Wednesday 29 July, eight weeks after the appeal launch, total gifts and pledges had reached £55,000.

On Tuesday 29 September, after over three and a half months!, we finally received planning permission to convert the building into an Orthodox church.

Five Digits

In recent years scientists have come up with remarkable discoveries concerning the human body; for example, that over 99% of human DNA is identical to that in chimpanzees. Though this should be put into perspective by the fact that, apparently, some 50% of human DNA is identical to that in bananas! All this merely confirms that all Creation does indeed have the same Creator. In any case, from the first verses of Genesis it is clear that it is not human and animal bodies that are particularly different, for animal bodies and human bodies are all made of the same chemical elements that can be found in ‘the dust of the earth’. The only vital difference between the animal world and the human world is simply that human-beings have an immortal soul, the breath of God (Genesis 2, 7).

This is why the concept of the descendance of the human-being (body and soul) from the monkey (‘animal primates’) is absurd. If it were so, then monkeys would also have immortal souls, which they do not. For the sign of the soul is the presence of the Word, intelligent and sophisticated human speech, far above the instinctive or imitative grunts of the animal world. Of course, there is also another argument against the above absurd argument. If human-beings were descended from monkeys, why do monkeys still exist? Surely they should all have become human-beings by now!

However, there is another and far more interesting question. Why do human-beings (and most jawed vertebrate animals) have five digits? Scientists suggest that the more primitive animals had six to eight digits, so that five digits would be a sign of advance and intelligence. However, this would not explain why many primitive animal species have two, three or four digits. So why do human-beings specifically have five digits? We would suggest that human-beings, who alone among created beings are endowed with souls, have five digits so that they can make the sign of the Cross, thus recognising the Trinitarian God-Creator (‘Let us make man in Our image and after Our likeness’ – Genesis 1, 26) and the two natures of the God-Man Christ. It is as simple as that.

On Atheism

I have always found atheism extremely irrational. Logically, no-one can disprove the existence of God.

On the other hand, agnosticism seems logical. If you have no spiritual experience, then it is reasonable to conclude that you do not know if God exists or not. Clearly, atheism has its roots in psychology, or rather pathology.

We can safely conclude that:

Atheism is a crutch for those who cannot cope with the reality of God.

Three ROCOR Saints for the Life of the Twenty-First Century World

On the surface of the Church, like foam on the ocean waves, we can find the froth of ‘Establishment Orthodoxy’, with its institutes and personalities, its theories and its philosophies, its doctorates and its ologies. If we take that froth for the deep ocean, we are sadly mistaken. We must forget the surf on the surface and head for the deep ocean where we will find the real thing, the depth of the Faith. Incredible though it may sound, some, thinking superficially, forget that the Church does not exist to create intellectuals and academics, but to create saints. The life of the Church is not vain, futile and superficial, as are so many intellectuals, but purposeful and serious, as are the saints.

Indeed, when there is no longer anyone who wants to become and strives to become a saint, then will come the end of the world, because its existence will no longer have any purpose as the seedbed of saints, to be nurtured by the Church. This quest for holiness, which is what real Orthodoxy is, is to be found in the monasteries and convents, among faithful clergy, families and parishioners, not among academics and intellectuals who live on booklore and fleshly reasoning. The Church exists to provide our ‘daily’, that is, ‘essential’ bread, spiritual food, soul food, and not brain food, for humanity does not live by bread alone and if it tries to do so, it dies, as we can see.

This is why the Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) has brought the world three saints. They are St Jonah of Hancow (+ 1925), St John of Shanghai and San Francisco (+ 1966) and the future St Seraphim of Sofia (+ 1950). St Jonah represents Asia, St John, though he lived long in China and Western Europe, represents North America, and St Seraphim represents Europe. His long-awaited canonization is now being prepared by the Churches of Russia and Bulgaria, but most of his life after the fateful events of 1917 was spent in the Church Outside Russia, where he wrote against the foolish heresy of Sophianism and of the Resurrection of Rus as a spiritual and political entity, as the Christian Empire.

All three of these saints were faithful to the Russian Church, all three were hierarchs and ascetics, all three struggled within living memory, and together represent three different parts of the Church Outside Russia. Some will say, surely, our Church has produced more than three saints? They are right. Suggestions have been put forward about other candidates for canonization in other parts of the world, in Australia, in South America, in China, in Western Europe, holy men and women, laypeople, monastics and parish clergy. In God’s good time these three holy hierarchs will be joined by others, whose earthly remains wait to be revealed from their places of rest all over the world.

However, at the moment our attention is turned to these three and especially to the coming canonization of St Seraphim, the preparation for which was announced at the meeting of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church on 23 October 2015. All three saints came forth from Russia and were given as a gift and witness to the world. All three announced the freedom of the Church and awaited its arrival inside enslaved Russia so that they could return to administrative unity with the Church there. All three mystically proclaimed the providential arrival of the Message of Holy Rus, of the Gospel of Christ in its authentic Church context, to the world outside the Russian Lands.

St Seraphim of Sarov (+ 1833) had already prophesied that his veneration would spread worldwide and that he would glorify him who glorified him, meaning that he would bring the worldwide veneration of Tsar Nicholas II (+ 1918), as it is indeed coming about. And as for St John of Kronstadt (+ 1908), he announced that the rebirth of his church in Kronstadt, which has now taken place, would proclaim the rebirth of all Russia. These three saints, representing Asia, North America and Europe, mystically represent not only the first fruits of worldwide veneration, but the actual physical presence of contemporary holiness outside Russia, without which the world will die.

19 October/1 November 2015
St John of Kronstadt

Our Hope for a Russian Orthodox Church in Norwich (Update 8)

The Update

Can all our generous donors please make the remaining pledges, which total £1,700 and are now required, to our charitable trust: East of England Orthodox Church (Registered Charity No 1081707).

Bank: Natwest
Account Name: East of England Orthodox Church
Address: 12 Garfield Road, Felixstowe, Suffolk IP11 7PU, UK
Sort Code: 60 08 17
Account No: 13674013
IBAN: GB18NWBK60081713674013
IBAN BIC: NWBKGB2L

May God bless you for having considered the Russian Orthodox Community in Norwich in your almsgiving.

Fr Andrew
30 October 2015

History

In the East of England there is at present only one multinational and multilingual church faithful to Russian Orthodoxy with its own urban premises. This is St John’s Church in Colchester. God willing and with your support, we have now been able to buy a second one, in Norwich, exactly 60 miles, 100 kilometres, to the north of Colchester.

Why Norwich? For the last four years I have been visiting Norwich and some of the 200 Russian Orthodox there, mainly recent immigrants from the Baltic States, especially from Estonia. I have baptized several in their homes, married couples in Colchester, buried, blessed houses, listened to confessions, visiting every few weeks, sometimes twice a month and am Orthodox chaplain at Norwich Prison.

We thought of dedicating our community to St Alexander Nevsky. We attempted to begin liturgies using the Greek Orthodox church building in Norwich, but were impeded. How are our people and English people and others interested in the witness of the Russian Orthodox Church, to be cared for pastorally? Only from a church building. And such life is required not only by Russian speakers, but also by Romanian, Bulgarian and English Orthodox. Most of our regular parishioners, only one of whom has a car, live within easy walking distance of this building.

On Friday 8 May, Fr Andrew saw a leasehold property for sale on the rightmove website for £50,000 at 134, Oak Street, Norwich. It measures 88 square metres externally and is at present used as offices and rooms for a cultural centre. It has electricity, heating and water and is in very good condition. It is so cheap because it is leasehold, in other words, you have to pay £100 rent per month for the ground it is built on. This amount is fixed until 2032. The lease itself is even longer – it lasts until 2047.

On Wednesday 13 May we organized a visit to these premises, attended by 9 local Russian Orthodox.

By Friday 15 May, Orthodox in Norwich had generously promised to donate £5,250.

On Monday 18 May Fr Andrew received Archbishop Mark’s blessing to buy the building if possible, meaning we could start obtaining pledges to donate.

On Thursday 21 May we heard from the surveyor that it would cost £3,000-£5,000 to knock down the internal walls and make good the floor and ceiling, so we could use this building as a church. This was lower than Fr Andrew had estimated.

On Wednesday 27 May we heard that our offer of £42,500 had been accepted. However, since conversion and furnishing costs will come to £12,500, this meant that we would need £55,000 in all.

On Friday 29 May we submitted the planning application for change of use from offices to a place of worship. This, we were told then, would take at least 6-8 weeks but should result in a positive answer.

On Wednesday 3 June we launched an internet appeal for £55,000 in order to set up our own church in Norwich.

By Wednesday 29 July, eight weeks after the appeal launch, total gifts and pledges had reached £55,000.

On Tuesday 29 September, after over three and a half months!, we finally received planning permission to convert the building into an Orthodox church.

We are now waiting for legal documents to be exchanged in November. Once this has happened we can start building work to transform the building into an Orthodox church. At last a permanent home for Russian Orthodoxy in Norwich after over thirty years of struggles. Thank you!

The Rejection of the Highway of the Cross and the Resurrection Leads to the Byways

Introduction

In His earthly life Christ suffered not only from the cowardly Paganism of the Romans (and Hellenes), but also from the errors of two Jewish sects. These were the deceitful Pharisees, who rejected the possibility of repentance, that is, they rejected the Cross, and the treacherous Saducees, who rejected the Resurrection. Under different names these three errors, Paganism, Saduceeism and Phariseeism, which like all errors separate us from Christ, are still with us today. Human nature has not changed and it is still besieged by pride of mind, which is the origin of all errors.

Time and again we can notice how we make mistakes by pride of mind, lack of humility in our minds. The only guarantee that we are near to the God of Love, to Christ and therefore His Body, the Church, is when we are humble-minded. Pride of mind always results in spiritual catastrophe, separation from Christ and so the inevitable self-imposed obligation to think according to the ways of the world and so follow them. And prince of this world is the cunning devil, who is called Satan, the slanderer. Let us take three examples, one general and two specific to contemporary Russian Orthodox life.

Modern Paganism

Many assert that they cannot believe in a God of Love, Who wants suffering, wars, earthquakes, cancer etc. As a Russian Orthodox priest, I agree with them. For I believe in the God of Love, Who does not want suffering, which is why He became man and was crucified by those who do want suffering. However, unlike these modern pagans, or secularists, whose beliefs are entirely patterned by this world, I believe in the God of Love, Who because He is Love allows freedom of choice. It is not from choice, but from wrong choices that all human suffering stems. It is Satan’s greatest slander that God is responsible for suffering. In reality, it is pride of mind to blame God for suffering and Satan is the source of all pride. It is the refusal to recognize the Fall and so human sin and the sin of our own minds that is to blame for suffering.

Those who reject the God of Love because suffering exists are those who do not believe in the reality of sin, the human capacity for evil. They blame God for everything. They claim personal sinlessness and then make excuses to disguise their actual laziness by asserting that they cannot believe in a God Who allows suffering. For belief in God would entail responsibility, action for self-improvement and love of our fellow human-beings. And they are too lazy for that. So they reject God. This is why their atheism has been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions in the 19th and 20th centuries alone, slaughtered by Nazism, Communism and in the abortion holocaust. The rejection of the God of Love because of the Satanic illusion that God creates suffering creates yet more suffering. This Paganism, today known as Secularism, is the rejection of Jerusalem, of both the Cross and the Resurrection.

Modern Phariseeism

I know a very elderly Russian. He is honest, sincere and a model of integrity. But he belongs to a tiny sect. Why? Because he cannot accept the Russian Orthodox Church as She is, given that the pre-Revolutionary Russian State has not been restored. Only when everything associated with Soviet Communism is removed from Russia will he accept the Russian Church, for he confuses Church and State. He wants perfect restoration of the State now. He does not have the patience to wait for the gradual restoration of an Orthodox Christian State and Empire, for which we are all ardently working, and, worse still, he does not understand that we do not want a restoration of what existed before. We want a restoration to something better than there was before, not to those decadent aristocrats (including most Romanovs who were, to the despair of Tsar Nicholas, vain wastrels) and bishop-apostates who welcomed the Revolution and then later went on to become renovationists.

If what existed before were restored, then there would simply be another Revolution. This elderly man does not want to be with the Russian Church today. Why? Because not all Her members are as demanding as he is. And yet the very Church that he rejects is not only the Church of a great many nominal Orthodox, She is also the Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors. Here there is pride of mind. He wants a Church that is not made up of sinners who want to become saints, of penitents who are following the Cross, as the Church always has been made up of, but a Church of the pure, of ready-made saints. Here we see the pride of perfectionist idealism. He refuses to recognize that the direction we are going in is right, even though we have to allow for the weaknesses of the people we meet on the way, whose repentance is in progress. Sadly, this is the pride of Phariseeism, which joins up with the pride of Saduceeism, for extremes always meet through their mutual rejection of Christ.

Modern Saduceeism

If we come now to an example of pride of mind, specific in both time and place, we can see the same error in the Paris School of Philosophy (or ‘Theology’ as they self-flatteringly call it). Here a group of Russian revolutionary aristocrats and intellectuals, who rejected their oath of allegiance to the Lord’s Anointed in Russia, and overthrew the legitimate government in order to create a Protestant-type secular State in which they would have all the power. Failures, they were then exiled to Paris by the Bolsheviks and there they applied their liberal, modernist, pro-Protestant politics to Church life. The result was a liberal, modernist, pro-Protestant ‘theology’, that is, the basically secularist philosophy of the Paris School, of which the chief representative was the fantasist and heretic Fr Sergius Bulgakov, a Marxist who never cleansed himself from his Marxism, who continued to think that the only resurrection was a this-worldly resurrection, political, economic and social.

Unlike their renovationist cousins in Russia who, despite the support of the Bolshevik atheists, died out because the people would not follow their fantasies, the Paris renovationists did not die out. By cutting themselves off from the people and abandoning the episcopal and liturgical disciplines of the Russian Church, the Paris renovationists were able to survive and develop their peculiar sectarian philosophy. They and their descendants even infected individuals in the then Soviet-run Moscow Patriarchate in Western Europe (which is how it became so impoverished at that time), across the ocean and elsewhere and still practise their errors today. Beneath a mask of outward piety, they show themselves to be pro-Revolutionary and anti-Orthodox, anti-the People and anti-Russian. Little wonder that Western secularists admire them, for, like them, they too reject the possibility of the Resurrection and the importance of the preparation for it here and now. Sadly, their pride of mind is stronger than their nostalgia for inherited childhood memories of piety, which they have since deformed and distorted. This is the pride of Saduceeism.

Conclusion

Modern Secularism, like Paganism of old, rejects the Cross and the Resurrection. However, there are those who, though outwardly confessing Christ, in some way reject the Cross or the Resurrection through their pride of mind. The lack of humble-mindedness always detaches us from the Church and so from Christ and so from Love. Every heresy and every sect, every ‘ism’, from Gnosticism to Roman Catholicism, from Protestantism to Bulgakovism, is always based on human pride. It is visible in Syria today, where the Pharisaic Islamists reject the Cross and the Saducean Zionist West rejects the Resurrection. And, as usual, these two extremes meet and support one another in their hatred for Christ.

Human pride means the rejection of Christ, whatever the outward piety it may be disguised in. Modern Secularism, like Roman Paganism which it imitates, rejects the Jerusalem of the Cross and the Resurrection on account of its pride. Modern Sectarianism, like the Phariseeism of old, rejects the Cross and so crucifies Christ in His Body, the Church, on account of its pride. Modern Renovationism, like the Saduceeism of old, rejects the Resurrection, conforming itself to this world, so denying the power of the Church to prepare us for the life to come on account of its pride. Humility of mind, obedience to the Church of the Cross and the Resurrection, is the only highway, all other ways are byways, where we are no longer in communion with Christ and the Jerusalem on high.

Our Hope for a Russian Orthodox Church in Norwich (Update 7)

The Update

Can all our generous donors please pay their pledges, which are now required, to our charitable trust: East of England Orthodox Church (Registered Charity No 1081707).

Bank: Natwest
Account Name: East of England Orthodox Church
Sort Code: 60 08 17
Account No: 13674013
IBAN: GB18NWBK60081713674013
IBAN BIC: NWBKGB2L

May God bless you for having considered the Russian Orthodox Community in Norwich in your almsgiving.

Fr Andrew
9 October 2015

History

In the East of England there is at present only one multinational and multilingual church faithful to Russian Orthodoxy with its own urban premises. This is St John’s Church in Colchester. God willing and with your support, we have now been able to buy a second one, in Norwich, exactly 60 miles, 100 kilometres, to the north of Colchester.

Why Norwich? For the last four years I have been visiting Norwich and some of the 200 Russian Orthodox there, mainly recent immigrants from the Baltic States, especially from Estonia. I have baptized several in their homes, married couples in Colchester, buried, blessed houses, listened to confessions, visiting every few weeks, sometimes twice a month and am Orthodox chaplain at Norwich Prison.

We thought of dedicating our community to St Alexander Nevsky. We attempted to begin liturgies using the Greek Orthodox church building in Norwich, but were impeded. How are our people and English people and others interested in the witness of the Russian Orthodox Church, to be cared for pastorally? Only from a church building. And such life is required not only by Russian speakers, but also by Romanian, Bulgarian and English Orthodox. Most of our regular parishioners, only one of whom has a car, live within easy walking distance of this building.

On Friday 8 May, Fr Andrew saw a leasehold property for sale on the rightmove website for £50,000 at 134, Oak Street, Norwich. It measures 88 square metres externally and is at present used as offices and rooms for a cultural centre. It has electricity, heating and water and is in very good condition. It is so cheap because it is leasehold, in other words, you have to pay £100 rent per month for the ground it is built on. This amount is fixed until 2032. The lease itself is even longer – it lasts until 2047.

On Wednesday 13 May we organized a visit to these premises, attended by 9 local Russian Orthodox.

By Friday 15 May, Orthodox in Norwich had generously promised to donate £5,250.

On Monday 18 May Fr Andrew received Archbishop Mark’s blessing to buy the building if possible, meaning we could start obtaining pledges to donate.

On Thursday 21 May we heard from the surveyor that it would cost £3,000-£5,000 to knock down the internal walls and make good the floor and ceiling, so we could use this building as a church. This was lower than Fr Andrew had estimated.

On Wednesday 27 May we heard that our offer of £42,500 had been accepted. However, since conversion and furnishing costs will come to £12,500, this meant that we would need £55,000 in all.

On Friday 29 May we submitted the planning application for change of use from offices to a place of worship. This, we were told then, would take at least 6-8 weeks but should result in a positive answer.

On Wednesday 3 June we launched an internet appeal for £55,000 in order to set up our own church in Norwich.

By Wednesday 29 July, eight weeks after the appeal launch, total gifts and pledges had reached £55,000.

On Tuesday 29 September, after over three and a half months!, we finally received planning permission to convert the building into an Orthodox church.

We are now waiting for legal documents to be exchanged. Once this has happened we can start building work to transform the building into an Orthodox church. At last a permanent home for Russian Orthodoxy in Norwich after over thirty years of struggles. Thank you!

‘Prelest’ and Conversion

It is strange that a foreign word, the Slavonic (not Russian) word ‘prelest’, should sometimes be used in English. It is only a translation of the Greek word ‘plani’ and long ago in the fifth century it was translated from Greek ascetic works into Latin by the Gaulish St John Cassian as ‘illusio’. So in English it could be translated simply as (spiritual) illusion, but perhaps the English word ‘self-delusion’ is even more exact. ‘Prelest’ simply means a state of mind in which we imagine that we are something that we are not, in other words, we are deluded. There are two states that greatly contribute to the development of self-delusion.

The first is an emotional state, an excess of imagination and strong feelings. Feelings of self-exaltation, sentimentality, vanity, narcissism and superiority, living in the imagination, which are all simply forms of pride, create fertile soil for self-delusion. Ultimately, these feelings can even develop into psychic phenomena like self-hypnosis, levitation and the production of physical marks like ‘stigmata’. On a simpler level, such states produce pomposity and self-love, the person who is absurdly in love with himself and his gifts, not seeing that anything good is God-given. Such people are easily mocked, as they are ridiculous. Clearly, such feelings are based on vulgar pride. The antidote to them is inner sobriety – a quality most characteristic of the Fathers and the Saints, for it is based on modesty and so humility.

The second state is isolation. People who isolate themselves from others and condemn them, because they think that are better than them, soon fall into self-delusion. They cultivate strange and unique practices because they do not belong to the catholicity of the Church, from which they have cut themselves off. They are too good for the rest of the Church. They do not see that such practices are provincial, literally, ‘parochial’. For example, we can think of one tiny community where all four female members have to wear long, down to the floor, dresses and a strange hat and another where all the men have to be bearded. There is one which is known as ‘the pony tail club’, since that is how the men have to wear their hair like their guru. A fourth practices a ‘secret language’, an esoteric code of garbled foreign words which of course the non-initiated cannot understand. Clearly, the smaller and the more self-isolated the community, the stranger the customs. The antidote to all this is to mix with others, to visit other parishes and monasteries, to see what is normal.

Here we can see the connection between this state of self-delusion and conversion (regardless of the nationality of the neophyte). The essential disease of conversion is to identify the Faith with externals. ‘Beard competition Orthodoxy’ is a typical example of this, but so is wearing prayer knots around the wrist or wearing a large cross outside one’s clothes or women wearing an exaggerated head covering. Genuine conversion is all about not being different in externals, not attention seeking, but about converting the inside. Go to any ordinary parish and you will see people dressed anonymously – they could be anyone, but maybe one of them is a saint. Genuine Orthodox Christians do not stand out, except by their example of living a good life.

There is nothing so disheartening as one who has been a member of the Church for 40 or 50 years, but still calls himself a ‘convert’. It is over – move on. St Paul never refers to himself as a convert. Nor does anyone who has got over the first few months of conversion to the Church and its novelties. All must pray for those who are in the early stages of conversion, that they may get through these stages as swiftly as possible. As Psalm 50 says: ‘The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise’ (Psalm 50). ‘The burnt offerings’ were never necessary, so do not make them.