Category Archives: The Saints

Service to the Holy Martyr Edward, King of England

For nearly twenty years we have been using our own English translation from the original Slavonic of the service to the English King, St Edward the Martyr. Now we are free from the straitjacket of oppression, it is time to publish it.

In it we corrected the many mistranslations, omissions and additions in the foreign translation and also omitted references to venerable Russian saints, like Sts Boris and Gleb, who are not relevant here (the service was composed by a Russian and so gives that perspective). We have also corrected again the Russian cultural confusion between ‘British’ and English’ and sometimes replaced the word ‘relics’ (which exist in only one place) by ‘precious image’, and included the original Epistle and Gospel.

Above all, we have omitted the censorious negativity in the misinformed original in its unproven accusations of murder against St Edward’s stepmother, which were a Norman invention. We have replaced those judgemental accusations, which are so shocking in a liturgical context, with the anonymous word ‘the impious’, leaving God to judge the guilty.

As usual, we do not use the Victorian inversions of the American Hapgood style. She was trying to be more English than the English, with her archaic use of ‘eth’ for the third person verb endings, unnecessary ‘ye’, ‘unto’, ‘upon’, and Latinate Anglicanisms. These are imitations of the style of the old Establishment Anglicanism, to which she as an Episcopalian belonged and which is inimical to our Orthodox Christian Faith.

We also leave aside the use of esoteric and purposely obscure language, which represents the style of the pharisees. Equally, we do not use the ‘anything goes’, ‘make it up as you go along’ style of translation of modernism. The first such translations represent the desire of some for the Establishment religion of old-fashioned Anglicanism and Catholicism, which is political conservatism and old calendarism, the second translations representing political liberalism and new calendarism.

Orthodoxy is and cannot be any of these. Orthodoxy is Christianity. The Church is for all, which is why our translations represent the mainstream and not tiny fringe groups, which try to spread an ideology, and not the Word of Christ. There are those individuals who arrogantly impose and try to force us to speak a foreign language. They do not respect other nations as their equals. We reject their jargon or ‘idiom’ and do not use it in our services.

 

Service to the Holy Martyr Edward, King of England

Commemorated on 18 March

At Vespers

At ‘Lord, I have cried…’, eight stichera, four in Tone I.

As a most fruitful vine of the new vineyard of Christ, planted in thy land at the dawn of its enlightenment, thou didst shine forth in many virtues and wast pleasing to God: therefore, with praises we call thee blessed, O Edward, thou most pious king. (Twice)

Travelling the royal way, O holy king, adorned with the love of Christ, the queen of virtues, thou didst watch over the poor and wretched, and visit the sick, rendering judgement and justice to thy people, O Edward, Who honours God.

Thou didst grant thy precious relics like a great treasure to those who honour thy memory, O Edward. Therefore, thou dost heal the divisions of those who have recourse to them and by thy prayers to God fulfil their petitions which are of profit.

And these stichera, in Tone II.

The iniquitous took counsel against thee, O Edward, likening themselves to those who strived to slay the prophets of God, and they plotted thy murder, for they were not daunted by thy youth, nor by thy meek demeanour, nor yet by thy piety, but benighted through bitter envy they followed the prompting of the devil. (Twice)

Like Judas who betrayed Christ with a kiss, so the impious, plotting evils against thee and taking counsel with their retainers, with deceitful intent invite thee, O king, in full knowledge that they lead thee to the slaughter.

What, then, did you acquire, O foolish ones, who wrested the throne from the lawful king and placed his blooded crown upon the head of another? For, lo! Edward shines forth in the Kingdom of Heaven, adorned with a martyr’s crown, while you, repenting in sackcloth and ashes, pray to receive his forgiveness and intercession.

Glory… Tone VIII.

It is not on a hunt that thou goest forth, O most innocent king, but thou art treacherously called to a council of the iniquitous; thus thou dost not encounter a wild beast, but receivest a cruel death at the hands of beast-like traitors. Yet leaving thine earthly kingdom, thou art crowned with a martyr’s crown and dost inherit the Kingdom of Heaven, making thine abode with the saints and the righteous.

Now and ever… Dogmatikon to the Mother of God in the same tone.

Three readings from Isaiah.

At the Litia, the sticheron of the church and this sticheron to the saint, Tone IV.

Come, let us make haste to King Edward, he who was pleasing to God, and who in the years of his youth received a martyr’s crown, that he may intercede for his people, ever standing before the Heavenly King, praying unceasingly.

Glory… in Tone VI.

Let the impious weep, tearing their garments and hair, beholding thee, unjustly slain, O Edward, and glorified by God with miracles; for thou art vouchsafed a martyr’s crown, while they, mindful of their great guilt and trembling before the impartial Judge, strive to wash their souls with repentance.

Now and ever… Hymn to the Mother of God, in the same tone.

Thou, O pure Bride of God, dost meet and comfort all who suffer sorrows in this earthly life, bringing them consolation and drying every tear from their eyes. Therefore, intercede for all who are in misfortunes and sufferings, granting them swift deliverance, for thou dost assuage every sorrow.

At the aposticha, these stichera, Tone VIII: Special Melody: ‘O most glorious wonder …’

O, glorious wonder! O Divine Providence! A most precious treasure, hidden beneath the earth to preserve it from desecration, is uncovered at the end of the times; for, lo! the holy relics of the martyred king are revealed as a new and much-healing wellspring for all who with faith bow down before them and glorify God, Who is wondrous in His saints.

Verse: I have raised up one chosen out of My people, I have found David my servant.

O wondrous solemnity! O most joyful feast! For we celebrate the most radiant memory of Edward the King, the merciful healer of the afflicted and the sick, the defender of the orphaned, the consoler of the grieving, the uprooter of irreverence and sower of piety, the bold intercessor and advocate for our generation.

Verse: For this I have anointed thee, O God, thy God with the oil of joy more than thy partakers.

O, the wealth of the wisdom of God! O, the Providence of God! The holy relics of the martyred Orthodox king are entrusted to the Orthodox Church! Therefore, let us now bow down with faith, calling on the crowned passion-bearer in prayer: and let us fervently offer thanksgiving to Christ God, Who has granted us such a treasure and ever shows us forth His mercy.

Glory … Tone III.

A valiant warrior who fought against the armies of the foe, O Edward, thou didst array thyself yet more against sinful passions; and revealed as a glorious victor over both, clothing thyself with humble wisdom as with a breastplate, thou didst render glory and honour to Christ God.

Now and ever… Hymn to the Mother of God, in the same tone.

In accordance with the will of the Father, through the Divine Spirit without seed thou didst conceive the Son of God, Who without mother was begotten before the ages from the Father. And for our sakes thou didst give birth in the flesh to Him Who was begotten of thee without a father, and with milk thou didst nourish the Infant. Therefore, cease not to pray that our souls may be delivered from misfortunes.

Troparion, Tone IV.

Celebrating the newly-revealed memory of the holy Edward, who of old shone forth in the virtues and suffered innocently, and bowing down before his precious image, in gladness we cry aloud: truly Thou art wondrous in Thy saints, O God! (Twice)

Rejoice, O Mother of God…

At Matins

At God is the Lord, troparion to the saint twice. Glory… Now and ever… Hymn to the Mother of God, in the same tone, ‘The mystery hidden from the ages…

After the first reading of the Psalter, this sessional hymn, Tone VII.

Passing through the time of the fast in spiritual feats, thou, O Edward, didst ready thy soul for a meeting worthy of the feast of feasts, the holy Easter Festival. But leaving thy life on earth of a sudden, thou didst glorify the Resurrection of Christ in His Kingdom, rejoicing with the angels and the righteous and watching over thy people from heaven.

Glory… Now and ever… Hymn to the Mother of God, in the same tone.

Rejoice, O Virgin Birthgiver of God, full of grace, haven and intercession for the human race, for the Redeemer of the world is incarnate from thee, for thou alone art Mother and Virgin, ever-blessed and most glorious. Pray to Christ God to grant peace to the whole world.

After the second reading of the Psalter, this sessional hymn, Tone V.

Lo! spring has blossomed forth on earth, announcing the end of winter, and the celebration of the spiritual spring of the Resurrection of Christ has shone forth to the world. But thy people, O King, are filled with sorrow, stricken by thine untimely end; therefore, make haste and speedily comfort them, revealing to them that thou dwellest in the Kingdom of Heaven with the Risen Master, Who has granted them to obtain thy sacred relics as a pledge of thy care for those who love thee; that, fleeing to them in reverence, they may receive gifts of healing.

Glory… Now and ever… Hymn to the Mother of God, in the same tone.

O Birthgiver of God, Bride unwedded, thou who changed the sorrow of Eve into joy: we, the faithful, praise and bow down before thee, for thou didst lead us forth from the ancient curse. Pray unceasingly, O all-hymned one, that we may be saved.

Polyeleos and Magnification:

We magnify thee, O holy passion-bearer King Edward, and we honour thy precious sufferings, which thou didst suffer for the sake of Christ.

After the Polyeleos, this sessional hymn, in Tone VIII.

Having suffered death out of season, O blessed one, instead of the cup of treachery thou didst receive an unquaffed cup of joy from the hands of the Saviour. Now, therefore, delighting in the sight of Christ’s most radiant countenance at His banquet, pray that those who honour thee may through Him receive the Kingdom of Heaven.

Glory… Now and ever… Hymn to the Mother of God, in the same tone.

O Sovereign Lady, accept the prayers of thy servants, and deliver us from all want and sorrow.

After Psalm 50, this sticheron, Tone VI.

Though thou didst toil but a little while in the field of Christ, yet having toiled diligently, thou didst receive the promised payment from the hand of God, and didst show thyself to be a faithful steward. Therefore, thou hast entered into the joy of the Lord and acquired boldness before Him, ever interceding for thy people.

Canon to the holy King Edward, the original acrostic of which is: ‘I sing of the memory of the pious King Edward’, Tone VIII.

Ode I

Irmos: Let us sing to the Lord Who led His people through the Red Sea, for He alone has gloriously been glorified.

Let us worthily hymn with songs Edward the King, who shone forth in piety and was glorified by God with many miracles.

Now let the English land keep festival and let the Orthodox Church make glad, glorifying the memory of the divinely wise king.

Having suffered out of season unrighteous killing, thou didst acquire boldness before God, O Edward. Therefore, thou dost grant healings to those who honour thee.

Hymn to the Mother of God: The ranks of angels and the choirs of the righteous, monks and laypeople, poor people and kings, together hymn the Birthgiver of God.

Ode III

Irmos: Thou art the confirmation of those who flee to Thee, O Lord. Thou art the Light of the benighted and my spirit hymns Thee.

Born in accordance with Divine Providence to shine forth in the virtues and show forth an example of piety to thy people, thou didst bring the short course of thy life to a good end.

To Christ, the King of all, thou wast a good and faithful servant, who increased the talent given thee by Him, O wise King Edward. Therefore, thou didst enter into the joy of thy Lord.

Like unto Abel who was slain in his innocence, thou didst endure unrighteous murder; deprived of thy fleeting life, now thou dwellest in the mansions of heaven.

Hymn to the Mother of God: Let us unceasingly hymn the Virgin Birthgiver of God, Queen of Heaven and boast of earthly kings, unshakeable pillar of the Church of Christ and unassailable rampart of the Kingdom of God.

Sessional Hymn, Tone III.

As the pre-eminent Peter said, in every nation he that fears God and works righteousness is acceptable to Him; thus, the saints and the righteous from the ends of the earth have entered into the Kingdom of Heaven. Therefore, O holy passion-bearer and king, come from the West and living righteously, was slain unrighteously out of bitter envy, now partaking of everlasting joys remember also us who honour thee and cry out: Truly art thou wondrous in Thy saints, O God!

Glory… Now and ever… in the same tone.

As an uncultivated vine, O Virgin, thou hast put forth the fairest cluster of grapes, which pours forth the wine of salvation for us, gladdening the souls and bodies of all. Therefore, blessing thee as the cause of good things, with the Angel we ever cry out to thee: Rejoice, thou art full of grace.

Ode IV

Irmos: I have heard of the mystery of Thy Providence, O Lord; I have understood Thy works and glorified Thy Divinity.

Emulating a lamb led to the slaughter, thou, O holy Edward, didst not struggle against the evildoers who slew thee, but yielded up thy soul into the hands of God in an instant.

Celebrating thy joyous memory, we call thy wonders to mind, O Edward, for thou healest the leprous, the paralysed and the blind from birth by thy most bold supplications to Christ.

Desiring to glorify thee openly, Christ God gave healing power to thy precious relics, that, beholding the miracles worked thereby, the pious people might praise the Lord for ever.

Hymn to the Mother of God: The divine prophets have announced thee, O Birthgiver of God; the apostles have proclaimed thee; the martyrs have confessed thee, and the divine minstrels and the venerable have hymned thee in songs of divine beauty.

Ode V

Irmos: Waking early, I cry to Thee: Save me, O Lord, for Thou art our God and we know none other than Thee.

A divine light shone on the woman who was blind from birth when she touched thy body, O King Edward. Therefore, her eyes were opened and she glorified God and thine intercession.

Thy tomb has been shown to be a wellspring of healings for all who have recourse to it with faith, beseeching enlightenment and consolation.

Open the eyes of our hearts also, O Edward, who gavest light to the eyes of the woman born blind, that we may behold God’s most wise providence for us and glorify His power.

Hymn to the Mother of God: Let us not fall idle in our unceasing praise of her who is more honourable than the cherubim and beyond compare more glorious than the seraphim, gazing with the eyes of our minds on her greatness and magnifying her mercy with ardent hearts and warm love.

Ode VI

Irmos: As Thou didst deliver the prophet from the nethermost abyss, O Christ God, as Thou lovest mankind deliver me from my sins and direct my life, I beseech Thee.

When the impious learned of the uncovering of thy relics and of the miracles which had come to pass, O Edward, they desired to fall down in repentance before them, but the power of the Lord then forbade them.

With other kings, thou didst bring thy glory to the Heavenly Jerusalem, O Edward, laying at the feet of the Lord the twofold crown of kingship and martyrdom, and receiving fitting honour from Him.

Thou didst escape the vile pit of perdition, rendering justice and righteousness and feeding the wretched, showing thyself worthy of a royal throne, most wise and right glorious Edward.

Hymn to the Mother of God: May they who do not honour thee as the Birthgiver of God be clothed with shame and fear, denounced by all creation which unceasingly hymns thee.

Kontakion, Tone IV.

As a faithful king and bright martyr, thou didst shine forth in the English land; suffering the wounds and blows of the enemies of the Church and the Sovereign Land, who fell upon thee, thou didst soon pass over to our Saviour; now thou workest a multitude of wonders for those who cry to thee with faith: Cease not to beseech Christ God, that He may return thy homeland to the Orthodox Faith!

Ikos: Lo! the fullness of time is come! Arise, people who bear the name of Christ. For behold! the righteous Judge Who sees all things, mindful of His mercies and compassion, and wishing to fill the dried-up wellspring of piety with life-bearing streams, has revealed to us the relics of His favourite and passion-bearer, Edward the King, which for many years lay hidden beneath the earth; for when the tempest of persecution was raised against the saints of God by impiety and the holy shrines were destroyed, they were buried as a priceless treasure and there they remained even until these days. But now, by the providence and good pleasure of God, the holy relics are once more given to the faithful and again the light of Orthodoxy shines forth in the English land. Therefore, stand fair, O England, thou land of kings! And all you who dwell therein, rejoice, crying out to the blessed Edward, whom the King of kings would fain glorify: Cease not to beseech Christ our God, that He may return thy homeland to the Orthodox Faith!

Ode VII

Irmos: O Lord God of our fathers, Who in the beginning founded the earth and established the heavens by a word: blessed art Thou unto the ages.

Having fought against the foes, and battling the passions yet more, thou wast shown to be a victor over both: but urged on by humility thou didst render glory to God, crying out: Blessed art Thou, O God of our fathers!

The ranks of angels and the choirs of the righteous, accompanying the holy king who is received into the Kingdom of Christ, hymn God, Who is wondrous in His saints, crying out: Blessed art Thou, O God.

Leaving the sin-loving world out of season, thou didst reach the heavenly home, O Edward, where thou prayest unceasingly to the blessed God of thy fathers on behalf of thine earthly homeland.

Hymn to the Mother of God: Fearing not the fiery furnace, the youths who prefigured thee, O Virgin, cried out in thanksgiving for thee: Blessed art Thou, O God of our fathers!

Ode VIII

Irmos: The Lord Who was glorified on the holy mount and Who revealed the mystery of the Ever-Virgin in the burning bush to Moses, hymn and exalt Him supremely unto all ages!

Celebrating the memory of the godly king and marvelling at the wonders that have been wrought by his precious relics, rejoicing in God we cry aloud: Hymn the Lord and exalt Him supremely unto all ages!

Having vanquished all the wiles of hades and put to shame the evil schemes of the impious, called to the Heavenly Kingdom thou didst sing, O holy king: Hymn the Lord and exalt Him supremely unto all ages!

Bowing down before thy precious image and calling on thy name in prayer, O Edward the king most dear to God, we hymn the Lord and exalt Him supremely unto all ages!

Hymn to the Mother of God: Thou didst reveal to men Him, on Whom the angels dare not gaze. Reveal to us also His unutterable mercy, that we may exalt thee supremely unto all ages.

Ode IX

Irmos: Saved by thee, O pure Virgin, we confess thee to be the true Birthgiver of God, magnifying thee with the bodiless choirs.

Thou dost pour forth healings and receive the prayers of the faithful, earnestly praying for those who honour thy memory; therefore, O Edward, we gratefully magnify thee.

Thy memory is glorious and thy rest is with the saints, for thou ever standest before the throne of God. Therefore, we magnify Christ Who gave thee to the people as a new intercessor.

The Orthodox Faith reaches from the East even unto the West. Therefore, the saints of God are glorified throughout the world.

Hymn to the Mother of God: Thy kinswoman Elizabeth has taught us to cry out to thee, O all-pure Birthgiver of God: blessed art thou among women and blessed is Christ, the Fruit of thy womb, Whom we magnify unceasingly.

Expostilarion: Meet it was for thee, who beheld the unwaning Light, to show thy first miracle through light, O most blessed king; for, lo! a heavenly light shone forth on the house where the impious had concealed thy body, and the eyes of the woman blind from birth were opened and giving thanks to God she cried out: Blessed art Thou, O Lord, Who hast revealed to us Thy new favourite!

Glory… Now and ever… Hymn to the Mother of God.

Thou dost cover all the earth with thy radiant stole and embrace the whole world with thy love, O Birthgiver of God, receiving the prayers and entreaties of all who call on thee, and helping all before the throne of thy Son, for He has given thee to mankind as an intercessor forever.

At the Praises, these stichera, Tone II.

Thou dost abide with pious kings in the Kingdom of Heaven, with the fasters and ascetics thou art praised, with the martyrs thou art glorified and with all the righteous thou art blessed, O glorious king Edward. (Twice)

Earnestly we bow down before thine image, celebrating the commemoration of thine untimely end; and mindful of the wonders worked thereby, we ask for thine intercession and help, O righteous king Edward.

O thou who with martyr’s blood didst adorn thy royal raiment more than with purple and amethyst and who has received a crown of suffering from the hand of God, thou didst recline at the banquet of Christ with the elect. O Edward, pray for our souls.

Glory… Tone VI.

Lo! the time is shortened: judgement is at the door! Lo! the souls of the slain cry out for the justice of God: How long, O Lord, dost Thou not avenge our blood? But they are instructed to wait patiently until the number of the saved is completed and the mystery of iniquity is revealed; then will come the Judge, Who will render to each according to his deeds. Thou, O most blessed king, shalt receive the portion of the blessed. Therefore, beseech Christ the Master, that we may be vouchsafed to stand at His right hand.

Now and ever… in the same tone. O Queen and Birthgiver of God, who openest to us the doors of divine mercy, pray to thy Son, with the king and passion-bearer to have mercy on our souls.

At the Liturgy

At the Beatitudes, eight troparia from Odes III and Ode VI.

Prokimenon, Tone VII: The righteous man shall be glad in the Lord, and shall hope in Him.

Verse: Hearken, O God, to my prayer, when I make supplication to Thee.

Epistle to the Romans, Section 99.


Alleluia, Tone IV.

Verse: The righteous man shall flourish like a palm tree, and like a cedar in Lebanon shall he be multiplied.

Verse: They that are planted in the house of the Lord, in the courts of our God shall they blossom forth.

Gospel according to John, Section 52.

Communion Verse.

In everlasting remembrance shall the righteous be, he shall not fear evil tidings.

The Fall of the Moscow Patriarchate and the Rise of the Russian Orthodox Church

‘God so loved the world that He did not send a Committee’.

Foreword: The Hundred Years War Is Ending

The Hundred Years War (1914-2024) is at last ending, not in Sarajevo where the first part began in 1914, not in Warsaw, where the second part began in 1939, but in Kiev, where the third part began in 2014. The second and third parts were made inevitable by the key, first part, caused by rival Imperialisms. All three parts have pulled into Europe the USA, which had profited from them until the last part. But the seeds of US success contained the seeds of its own destruction. In order to maintain its supremacy, the US yoked itself to a delusional madman in Kiev, who has the most developed sense of entitlement of any of his people. When he does not get the means of destruction that he wants, and that is always more and more lethal, he throws a tantrum, like any spoilt actor or diva who wants adulation.

As with any spoilt child, all you have to do is call his bluff, that is, ignore him and walk away. However, he is still by far the most dangerous dictator of the many recruited and employed by the US, in any banana republic whether in Latin America, Western Europe, the Middle East or the Far East, with the possible exception of the equally genocidal maniac, Netanyahu. For Kiev wants nuclear weapons. It was inevitable. All that the US – and hysterical Western Europe – have to do is to pull the carpet from under the Kiev dictator’s feet. However, war victory in the Ukraine, or even the potential peace victory, do nothing to solve the spiritual and structural crisis in the Russian Church, whose jurisdiction used to extend to all the territories of the former USSR and beyond them to the Western world.

The Fall of the Moscow Patriarchate

The Russian Orthodox Church administration in Moscow, founded, named and centralised in Soviet times as ‘the Moscow Patriarchate’, is in great difficulty. It has once again tried to impose impossible political demands on the consciences of clergy and faithful everywhere, just as it did in the late 1920s, of which the ‘Sergianist’ mentality is currently much admired within the Patriarchate. These political demands stretch to outside the Russian Federation and Belarus – though even inside these countries it has great difficulties. There it has even ‘defrocked’ clergy for having political views on the tragic conflict in the Ukraine which are different from those of the Patriarchal authorities.

Wanting to pray not for ‘victory’, but for peace, that is, for the Victory of Christ, persecuted independent clergy have often had to flee abroad. Moscow also finds its churches boycotted by many faithful all over Russia. Surely an Orthodox is defined by his agreement with the Creed, the Symbol of Faith, not by his political views? Why this dogmatisation of political opinions and the canons, as also happened during the Soviet period? Surely the dogmatisation of non-dogmatic political views is, by definition, uncanonical? Outside those two Russian territories, where Patriarchal authority is backed up by the State, the situation of the Moscow Patriarchate is not just difficult, but catastrophic.

Inside the Former USSR

Inside the former USSR, the worst situation is in the Ukraine. Here over 12,000 churches and their clergy no longer commemorate the Russian Patriarch, since he is seen as an enemy leader. This is a pastoral disaster. How does a pastor come to be seen as the enemy of his people? He may reply that their perspective is wrong, but the fact is that that is how they perceive him. And it is too late to do anything about it. In Latvia, Russian Orthodox also no longer commemorate him, as the four besieged bishops there have had to declare independence from Moscow, despite their divided flock, who are often boycotting the Church. The situation is chaotic.

Meanwhile, in Lithuania and Estonia, the Russian Church is faced by schisms due to its disputed authority. Indeed, the Patriarch is not even allowed entry into Lithuania (nor into the UK and Canada). In Central Asia, there is dissidence and some are leaving for abroad, others declare that they are retiring. In Moldova, the only country in the former Soviet Union (apart from Georgia) where there is a canonical alternative to the Moscow jurisdiction, over a hundred more clergy have this year alone left with their parishes for the Orthodox Patriarchate of Romania, tired of Russian nationalism, racism and their mistreatment as third-class citizens.

Outside the Former USSR

Outside the territories of the former USSR, the Moscow Patriarchate finds itself in schism with the imperialistic Greek Orthodox world as a result of mutual disputes regarding ‘canonical territory’. This is not because either is intent on doing missionary work among Non-Orthodox, but rather each is intent on trying to steal each other’s flocks. In North America, Metropolitan Nicholas, the leading bishop of the Anabaptist ROCOR sect, an out-of-control American Protestant-style and anti-Russian (!) schismatic group under the Moscow Patriarchate, finds that people walk out on him when he prays for the Russian Patriarch and people refuse to donate.

In Western Europe many Russian Orthodox priests refuse to commemorate the Russian Patriarch or have left him. As for the Ukrainians, they have set up 100 parishes, separate from Moscow in Western Europe. And Moldovans are doing the same. In Australia and especially in Latin America, many will have nothing to do with the Moscow Patriarchate. In general, outside the former USSR, the parishes of the Moscow Patriarchate resemble ever smaller, ever more inward-looking, ever more nationalistic groups, often numbering only a dozen or two. As for native Orthodox people, everywhere they are tired of being treated as third-class citizens by Moscow and are leaving.

Babylon Versus Jerusalem

Let us be frank. The mentality that now pervades the apparently often ‘effeminate’ upper reaches of the Moscow Patriarchate is careerist, not saintly, political, not pastoral, bureaucratic, not spiritual, nationalistic, not multinational, Statist, not canonical. For that reason, they are losing their authority and people are, as the phrase goes, voting with their feet and leaving them. However, this fall of the ‘cardinals’ (be they overt or covert) of the Moscow Patriarchate and its associated Soviet-period administrative groups, like ROCOR, is leading to the rise of the Russian Orthodox Church, for the fall of Babylon always leads to the rise of Jerusalem, paradoxically the dead hand of the State brings opposition and so life.

The Rise of the Russian Orthodox Church

The fall of top-heavy, militaristic, Soviet-period superstructures like the Moscow Patriarchate or ROCOR is because the grassroots faithful want to return to the authentic Church. The great mainstream tradition of the monastics, pastors and people of the Russian Church is very much alive. Who were Sts Antony and Theodosius of the Kiev Caves? They were real Churchmen, not careerist administrators with their ‘protocols’, they were enlighteners of the peoples of Rus, who brought forth a host of saints, whose holy relics lie in the Kiev Caves today and give out myrrh, calling to God.

Who was the great Russian Orthodox St Sergius of Radonezh? Why is he called the Builder of Russia? He was the heir to that multinational network of monks and saints who spread again the prayer of the heart from St Gregory Palamas and Mt Athos through the Balkans north to the Russian Lands. He and his disciples, like St Nil of Sora, set up dozens and dozens of monasteries to spread the Word of God into still pagan central Russia and this movement spread ultimately to Siberia, the Pacific Coast and even beyond, through St Herman of Alaska and his companions, who spread the Light of Christ to California.

More Recent Saints

Who was St Job of Pochaev? He was the monastic founder who turned the Western Ukraine into an advanced post of Orthodoxy, a bastion against those whose filioquism was a political instrument for the Polish oppression of Orthodox in order to gain more power and wealth. Who was St Paisy (Velichkovsky)? He was the heir to the monastic renewal, forced by persecuting German Tsarinas to take refuge from what is now the Ukraine in what is now Romania, and from there to re-enlighten the Russian Lands, liberating them from the schismatic curses caused by the purely external observances of ritualism and State nationalism.

Who was St Seraphim of Sarov? He was the old, bent-over monk digging in his vegetable-patch in Sarov, whom the rich and ignoble noble regarded as a dirty peasant, because he looked at the saint’s rags and not his praying heart of gold, and who was canonised at the insistence of the pious Tsar against the opinion of bishop-bureaucrats. Who was St John of Kronstadt? He was the righteous and fragrant pastor who prophesied all, exactly as it happened, because the idle rich parasites, who persecuted him and were jealous of him, refused to repent for their persecution of the real Church and the Tsar and enraged the oppressed who then revolted.

The Saints After 1917

Who were the New Martyrs and Confessors, from Tsar Nicholas to St Tikhon, Apostle of America, Bishop of San Francisco and American citizen, who had the services translated into English, and then became the Patriarch of Moscow, from the Martyrs of Solovki to the 20,000 Martyrs of Butovo, from the Martyrs of Kazakhstan to the Martyrs of Kolyma, from St Matrona of Moscow to St Seraphim of Vyritsa, from St Laurence of Chernigov to St Luke of Crimea? Who was the universal missionary St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, persecuted and suspended by ROCOR bishops for being a good pastor and not a right-wing ideologist, and the wise fool Mother Alypia of Kiev, who saw through sinners to their hearts?

These all were those who thought nothing of nationality and politics, but knew that if they sought the Kingdom of Heaven first, then all would be added unto them, and for this reason they became saints. And, despite the persecution of bishop-bureaucrats, effeminates in love with luxury, they were and are followed by a countless host of saints, fools-for-Christ, prophets, faithful women and children, priests and nuns, who are victorious, as they were and are not the practitioners of politicians, but, as practitioners of Christ, the victims of politicians. We know that we are on their side and are undefeatable, for we follow Christ, Who overthrew the devil and defeated our enemy, Death, restoring all to Life.

Jerusalem Conquers Babylon

Faithfulness to the thousands of years of the Saints of the Universal Church, from the Patriarchs and Prophets of the Old Bible, from the Mother of God to St John the Forerunner, from the Apostles to the Martyrs, from St Spyridon to St Nicholas, from St Basil to St John Chrysostom, from St Maximus the Confessor to St Paraskeva, from St Xenia to St Nectarius of Aegina, and faithfulness to the thousand years of Saints of the Russian Lands, are why the Russian Orthodox Church triumphs against the political schisms of mere Patriarchal ‘careerist administrators’ and ‘effective managers’. The Saints all show not the Primacy of ecclesiastical bureaucrats, but the Primacy of the Holy Spirit, the Victory of Christ. 

Afterword: God Gives Opportunities

The territory of the Russian Federation forms by far the largest country in the world. It is the territory of the USA and the Continent of Australia combined. Its natural resources are extraordinary. In a word, it has everything. It could easily support a population five or perhaps ten times greater than it has now. And yet this is the country that suicidally threw so much away in 1917, before which year the Russian Empire had undergone phenomenal growth for a generation, which was to continue. In 1914 its projected population by the year 2000 was some 600 million. That of the Russian Federation today is 145 million.

I remember visiting the USSR in 1973 and 1976 and saying that I would not return until the Church was free. I remember visiting the Russian Federation many times between 2007 and 2018 and always thinking the situation is on a knife-edge. Either it will go one way, towards Orthodoxy, or else to the other, to militaristic nationalism and purely outward and bureaucratic ritualism. It went this other way. However, there is still the chance to step back from suicide, to the catholicity of the Church, towards good relations with the other Local Churches, so rejoining the mainstream of Love and Truth. May it be so!

 

Two Saints of Huntingdonshire

St Neot

This future saint was born in the west of England in the first half of the ninth century. In early life he came under pressure from his father, Ethelwulf, to become a soldier, but instead he became a novice at the monastery in Glastonbury. He was probably helped in this refusal by the fact that physically he was very short. Neot must originally have had an English name. However, as at that time the word ‘neophyte’ was commonly used for monastic novices, this was shortened to ‘neot’, giving the future saint his name.

Neot was admired for his zeal with humility and would get up in the middle of the night to go to the church and pray. In time, pilgrims from all over started going to Glastonbury to listen to Neot’s wisdom. However, he desired to live as a hermit in a quieter spot. Therefore, he travelled westwards, like many English people at the time, to settle near a remote place in central eastern Cornwall, then known as Hamstoke. The location Neot chose was surrounded by thick woodland and hills. In time Hamstoke became known as Neotstoke, for Neot lived here, as if he were a novice, a ‘neot’, mortifying his body by fasting, vigil and prayer.

Later a monastery formed around him and Neot was made Abbot. King Alfred became a visitor and the King’s miraculous healing here came as a result of the holiness of Abbot Neot. In 877 the Abbot fell ill and sensing his earthly end, he took communion. He addressed his flock as a faithful shepherd, instructing all to live in peace and stretching forth his hands towards heaven, he breathed out his spirit. It was 31 July. His relics were kept at the monastery and they attracted considerable numbers of pilgrims.

A century later, and very far from Cornwall in the west, in about 975 a monastery was founded in the east of England, close to the River Great Ouse in Eynesbury. This is in what was until 1974 Huntingdonshire, though now called part of Cambridgeshire. A local nobleman and landowner, usually known by the name of Leofric and his Lady Leofleda, set up a monastery on their land and chose a notable holy person as their patron.

This was St Neot, as he had become famous through his healing of the English King Alfred and many miracles. This choice may also have been influenced by the Celtic blood and speech of many in the local population (see below). An Englishman from Celtic Cornwall would have made this a wise choice. With the support of King Alfred’s great-grandson, King Edgar (+ 975), who was encouraging monastic life, and despite some opposition in Cornwall, St Neot’s relics, apart from one arm, were brought from Cornwall to Eynesbury.

Here they were placed in a shrine at the monastery and Eynesbury came to be renamed Neotsbury, now St Neots. The church at the monastery was consecrated in the presence of the monastic founder Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester (+ 984), Æscwin, Bishop of Lincoln, Brithnoth, Abbot of Ely, and many other notables. Leofric and Lady Leofleda asked Abbot Brithnoth and Bishop Æscwin for their protection and that they would send more monks there from the nearby monasteries in Ely and Thorney.

Although the monastery of Neotsbury, that is, St Neots, was attacked by the Danes in 1010, the buildings were repaired and rebuilt, and it is recorded that the relics of St Neot, which had been saved, had been restored to the monastery by 1020. Although 31 July is St Neot’s Day, locally in St Neots in Cambridgeshire, his feast was kept on 28 October, the day of the translation of his relics from Cornwall. St Neot’s relics disappeared at the Protestant Reformation, but may still be concealed in the town of St Neot’s today and protecting it.

St Ives

St Ives (also known as Ivo) was a bishop, originally from Celtic Cornwall. His relics were uncovered in about 1001 when a peasant found his coffin with an intact body and three other bodies while ploughing at a place then called Slepe, later renamed St Ives, in Huntingdonshire. St Ives appeared to the ploughman in several visions, obliging him to tell a monk at the large monastery at nearby Ramsey, one of the five great Fenland monasteries, of his discovery. The latter did not take this seriously at first, whereon St Ives also appeared to him in visions.

When the monastic community learned of this, they rejoiced at the discovery. Abbot Ednoth of Ramsey set about building a church in St Ives’ honour near the site of the discovery and this settlement was given the right to hold a market and renamed St Ives. On 24 April 1002 Abbot Ednoth translated St Ives’ body and a small monastery was founded in Slepe. His feast was assigned precisely to 24 April. Later there was some confusion and some claimed that St Ives was a Persian saint. This is untrue.

Some non-believers have suggested that St Ives was a pure invention in order to attract pilgrims and so generate income in competition with the nearby town of Eynesbury/St Neots, sixteen miles further down the river. A generation earlier it had obtained the relics of the English St Neot from Cornwall. However, St Neot’s relics were physically brought to St Neots, whereas those of St Ives and his companions were miraculously found. This coincidence and both Cornish connections can perhaps be explained by the fact that the local population in the isolated fenlands, including around St Ives and Ramsey, was, as in other isolated pockets in England, Celtic (‘British’).

Even in the eleventh century Celtic/Brythonic speech could still be heard in the area, notably around nearby Ramsey, where some of the relics found were kept. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FHRTpEhaAs). This indicates that in the fifth and sixth centuries, before the settlement of the English, there may have been a small monastery here, set up from Cornwall to serve local remaining Celtic Christians and then centuries later a ploughman had found the relics of the monastic founders. Although the present location of the relics of St Ives is unknown, the town of St Ives still has a special atmosphere today.

Holy Neot and Ives, Pray to God for us!

The Apostasy of Western ‘Civilisation’ and Our Salvation

Introduction: The Rise and Fall of the Western Empire

It has become customary to speak of the Middle Ages in Western Europe as a ‘Papal Empire’, later of ‘the Spanish Colonial Empire’, ‘the Portuguese Empire’, ‘the French Empire’, ‘the British Empire’ and most recently of ‘the American Empire’. In fact, all these empires have only been facets of one single empire, ‘the Western Empire’. Although this has been an Empire that has covered much of the world geographically, it is also an Empire of the Mind. One day, and probably quite soon, someone will write a book called ‘The History of Western Exceptionalism’ and will show how this imperialist mentality developed. Certainly, this will mention the model of the Pagan Roman Empire that obsessed the barbarians who invaded Western Europe and how a Frankish barbarian princeling called ‘Karl’, later known as ‘Charlemagne’, wanted to ‘renew’ that Pagan Empire and failed, but how he was still ‘the first neocon’.

More interestingly than this failed forerunner, it will then go on to speak of the crucial eleventh century, of the appearance of the Western superiority complex, ‘we are right, everyone else is wrong’, or as they say now ‘West is Best’. They will speak of elitist Papism and castle feudalism, of 1054 and 1066, of the ‘formation of a persecuting society’ to persecute all others, of hatred, intolerance, genocide and ‘crusades’, on which ‘Europe’ was created and united, of the bloodshed on which the Western Empire was founded. Since then, there followed 900 years of slow but steady rise to world domination and then the dramatic and suicidal events that began in Sarajevo in 1914 and led to those in Kiev in 2014, which have led to the progressive fall of that Empire to the mess that it is in today, when we have once more reached a millennial turning-point. Below we give an outline of what is happening now.

Belief and Unbelief

A few years ago, I took part in a BBC Radio 4 ‘religious’ programme – although as with all BBC ‘religious’ programmes its direction was purely secularist and in fact anti-religious. There I was told by a former MI6 agent/BBC journalist who took part that since only 2% of Russians go to church, the Orthodox Church and Orthodox Civilisation in Russia is irrelevant. I was astonished by his total lack of understanding and limited secularist/post-Protestant view of the importance of religion. But then what else can you expect of a typical British Establishment atheist? It is values and actions that matter, not how often you go to church to gain spiritual strength. He had missed the point. They all have.

Although only 2% of the population may be in church on an average Sunday in Russian Orthodox countries (though not necessarily the same 2%), the rest do believe. This is different from the West, where only 2% go to church, and it is the same 2%, but the rest do not believe. In other words, the West has lost the roots of its Civilisation, it no longer has any Civilisation. If it had a Civilisation, it would not support Ukrainian and Israeli genocide and would not promote LGBT. Here is the difference. The West no longer believes in its roots. What remains is its profound self-delusion. Whether it is slanted to the left or to the right is irrelevant – the disease is one and the same.

The European Union Repeats the Soviet Union’s Fate

As a result of this lack of belief in civilised values and actions, the main political and economic institution in the historic European centre of the Western world, the yellow-starred European Union (EU), is corrupting, fragmenting and collapsing in exactly the same way as the old red-starred Soviet Union (SU). It is a Soviet Union II. Just as most had stopped believing in the Soviet Union by the 1970s (as I know from living there then), knowing that its unelected commissars were lieing, that it was bankrupt in every sense and had failed in its aims, so most have stopped believing in the EU, because it too has failed, is bankrupt in every sense and has failed in its aims. Indeed, the EU’s once strongest ‘locomotive’ economy, the German, is being deindustrialised, is in recession and was overtaken last year by the booming Russian economy, which is now the fifth largest in the world and is due to overtake the Japanese economy in two to three years. In front of it then will be only the expanding Chinese and Indian economies and the disastrously flagging US economy.

The EU has not only failed to make Europeans prosperous, but it has also failed in its aim to unite Europe. For instance, it has failed to unite the Western European peninsula edge with most of Europe, which is mainly in Russia, the Ukraine and Belarus. It has failed to unite with the Western Balkans and failed to keep the UK in itself, let alone getting prosperous Switzerland, Norway and Iceland to join itself. On top of that, it is now financing on a huge scale the Nazi regime in Kiev and the proxy war in the Ukraine in order to try and force that country to join it. Just as few in the SU had the courage to say that the SU was dead, so too today, for the same reasons of censorship and punishment, few in the EU have the courage to say that the EU is dead. The difference is that in the SU, all people bought the Izvestiya and Pravda newspapers, because there was no toilet paper, but in the West some people still buy newspapers and, incredibly, read them and actually believe in them, despite the availability of toilet paper. Such is the level of the delusion of some of the EU population.

Delusionists: The Western World

After the defeat of its multinational Western invasion of Russia under Napoleon in 1812 and stalemating in its invasion of Russia in 1854-6 under the Franco-Ottoman-Sardinian-British, the West tried to fight its wars using proxies, ‘colonial’ troops, as cannon fodder. For example, in the nineteenth century in its colonies and also in the First and Second World Wars, which were essentially tribal European Wars, it used millions of Indian and African troops. The Ghurkas and the Foreign Legion are the remnants. The Far West, the USA, used this proxy method too and in both those wars joined in after they had begun, hoping for easy pickings after the suicidal Europeans. In the Second World War, the Anglo-Americans hoped that the Nazis and the Russians and their allies would kill each other and then they would be able to pick up the pieces. That did not entirely happen. Nevertheless, in the 1990s the West used the same proxy technique in yet another anti-Russian war, using Chechens. However, the Chechens realised that they were being used by the West, turned on their Western masters and sided with the Russians.

In the latest Western War against Russia, being fought by proxies in the Ukraine, similar things are occurring, as Ukrainians slowly realise that they too have been deceived and betrayed by the West. Here again, the Western Ukrainian proxies, encouraged to die ‘until the last Ukrainian’, are being routed by joint Russian and Eastern Ukrainian forces. Afraid of facing reality, the delusional West is refusing to negotiate and negotiations have been banned by law by the Ukrainian puppet dictatorship, which tortures those who speak freely, has banned other political parties and democratic elections and plans to ban the Church. It has disguised this refusal to negotiate with the absurd claim that Russia wants to take over Western Europe. This laughable propaganda claim, invented by US and British PR hireling firms in Kiev, has been made in the Ukraine and duly been repeated in the Baltics, Germany, Sweden, the UK and Norway so far. It is the familiar old excuse ever since Napoleon in 1812 and Hitler in 1941, who claimed to be saving ‘Western Civilisation’ from the ‘Asiatic barbarian hordes’ of Russia, ‘better dead than red’.

Realists: Hope in South-Eastern Europe

In its current war against ‘the Asiatic hordes’ of Russia, which war the West began in 2014 with its unprovoked, full-scale invasion of the Ukraine, the West has committed suicide several times. Having given eight years to Russia to prepare a Plan B in case it had to fight a full-scale war against the ever-aggressive West, the West imposed thousands of sanctions which have helped destroy its own economies. The present revolts in Western Europe are about the impoverishment resulting from the facts that so much money has been given to the Ukraine, that there are so many Ukrainian ‘refugees’ being paid for nothing and because the USA ended by violence the supplies of cheap gas from Russia. These revolts are not only of farmers in Poland, Romania, Germany and France, but include mass strikes of millions of workers in the Dickensian UK, Germany and France. In all these countries the destitute have been forced to use food banks to survive. In Northern America too, the rulers are extremely unpopular and revolts are ongoing in Canada and in Texas.

Deluded Western leaders have actually believed their own delusions, which they call ‘PR’. Most people no longer believe in those lies, repeated ad infinitum by the State-controlled Western media and nearly all Ukrainian flags have been taken down in Western Europe – only the now panicking very rich still fly them. Many are beginning to understand the great manipulation. Nowhere is this more obvious in Hungary and Slovakia, whose leaders are the only Western leaders not to be US puppets. As the Russian victory becomes obvious, other countries will also free themselves from US/EU tyranny. Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, and even perhaps neutral Austria may enter this Union of Free Europe. In other words, the whole geographical entity of South-Eastern Europe may come to link itself with Russia and the other BRICS economies, of which Russia is the closest to them. This is the future path to peace, justice and prosperity, away from the disaster and decadence of the warmongering US-created EU vassal.

Conclusion: The Mystical Presence: North-Western Europe

Some ask: How then do you in North-Western Europe, in England, survive, as you still labour under the tyranny of the Norman-imposed British Establishment and its moral perversions and lies, and now completely under the heel of the corrupted Washington elite? Around us blow hurricanes, however we remain calm. Why? We have a secret. It is because our saints, in our case, those of Eastern England, are with us. Never have we felt the intercession and mystical presence of our saints so strongly as over the last three years, when so-called ‘Orthodox clergy’ began persecuting us. Only this week we were in Ely again and felt the prayers of and experienced a miracle of St Audrey, as we bowed before her right hand, whose fingers are still clasped in the sign of the cross after exactly 1350 years. She responds to real veneration, not to that of the pseudo-Orthodox sectarians who suffer from that selfsame American exceptionalist complex that they are right and all others are wrong, They persecute real Orthodox Christians and their families and try and steal our saints and our churches. Those outside the Church cannot feel the mystical presence of our saints, for their pretended veneration is political and sectarian and in fact is a perverted persecution of the faithful.

But we have felt the presences of St Edmund in Hoxne and Bury St Edmunds, of St Fursey in Burgh Castle, of St Botolph in Iken, of St Felix by the old fortress in Felixstowe, of St Osyth in the woods in Chich, of St Cedd in his still standing church in Bradwell on Sea, of St Eanswythe in her relics in Folkestone, of St Walstan in Bawburgh, of St Withburgh in Dereham, of St John in his holy relics in Beverley, of St Guthlac and St Theodore in Crowland, of St Huna by his hermitage-farm in Chatteris, of St Ivo in St Ives and of St Neot in St Neots. They are all present and have all resisted the great millennial apostasy of the new Western world, whose depth has become so astonishing in its present death-throes. The patience of these saints is unending, calling those who live here back to repentance, waiting for them to return, like the father the prodigal son. Victory is theirs and, because we venerate them and ask them for their protection, victory is ours too. We feel the warmth from their relics. It will not be long now. And the same presences are all over Western Europe as the First Millennium says to the finishing Second Millennium: We told you so, but we are still waiting for you to return. Herein is their witness and herein is our salvation from the devil’s yoke.

America, the Ukraine, Russia, the Church: Temptation, Tragedy, Challenge and Opportunity

Foreword

The world is now becoming a post-globalist world. The Globalists (Americans) have been defeated by the Sovereignists. Despite the attempts by the US elite, the power behind the throne, to keep the embarrassingly senile Biden in power until after the next elections, the Ukraine is collapsing (and Gaza genocided by American bombs) and so Biden too will Biden. First in Russia, then in Hungary, then in Slovakia, now in the Netherlands, the Sovereignists are in power. They are increasingly strong in Germany, Italy and France. Union is off the cards. Confederation is the order of the day, as the real New World Order. Sovereignty is beyond the artificial and absurd divisions of left and right, inventions of the Western oligarchies (the mythical ‘democracies’) in order to divide and rule. Sovereignty is what both Russia and China have, though the Globalists falsely call them ‘autocracies’. The Western world has yet to recover its sovereignty. It still can, if it takes the opportunity to return to the Holy Trinity, the model of unity in diversity, what politicians today call multipolarity.

The American Temptation

The American temptation was Empire building, not just in one region, but universally or ‘globally’, as it proclaimed. Let us leave the north to the ice and build ‘from sea to shining sea’, they said. So they stole half a Continent from the natives, whom they slaughtered, bought from a desperate Napoleon, grasped the south from Mexico, began a Civil War with 600,000 dead and invaded small islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific. This culminated in a four-year war and dropping its atom bombs on the big island of Japan in 1945 in order to dominate the Pacific. At the same time, they conquered and occupied the peninsula of Western Europe in 1944-5, which victory followed its expeditionary experiment of 1917-18. The 1945 double victory meant its victory over half the world. The USA was a Superpower. It still had to conquer the heartland of Eurasia, which it thought it had done in 1991, becoming the only Superpower. This was a delusion and it duly proclaimed it as ‘the end of history’. This proud triumphalism, a Non-Jewish Zionism, was failure, for the fall always follows pride – delusions are always countered by reality.

The American Empire depended on using expendable proxies, puppets whom it flattered and told that they were superior to their neighbours. These puppets were hired do the dirty work for the US. Through them it could divide and rule, sowing chaos and destruction, whether in Latin America, East Asia, West Asia or in ex-Soviet Eastern Europe. However, its agents, from Marcos to Somoza, from Hussein to Bin Laden, from Bolsinaro to Zelensky, would go off script, falling into delusion. The USA has always suffered from a ‘spoilt child syndrome’. The spoilt child always shouts: ‘If I cannot have it, then no-one will have it’. And so they destroy their once much-coveted puppets and toys. This I know from experience with an American. Internationally, it can be seen in Latin America, the Philippines, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Israel, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, the Ukraine, Western and Eastern Europe – now isolated from Russia. However, this spoilt-child syndrome only works in a unipolar world of exclusivism, not in a multipolar world. In the latter there is choice and people can escape US despotism, whose policy of containment fails.

The Ukrainian Tragedy

Now desperate the Kiev government wants to mobilise all Ukrainians between the ages of 17 and 70, Berlin-style, and, barbarically, women. The latter are already being killed on the front, where poorly trained and poorly equipped troops without air support, average age 43, are being forced to commit suicide against vastly superior Russian forces. Kiev dead already number between 500,000 and 600,000 and more and more are deserting. The needless death of these troops is a war crime. President Zelensky, like Hitler suicidally forbidding retreat despite military advice, is also isolated and unhinged in his bunker, having banned elections, delusional with his Messiah complex. His PR advisors have told the Western media that Russians have tried to assassinate him five times. Of course, this is nonsense. Zelensky, the brilliant and well-paid actor but utterly incompetent politician, is the greatest asset of the Russians. He may well be assassinated, only by US-backed Ukrainians, which assassination can then be blamed on Russia. The Ukraine has now lost 20%, of its territory, taken back by Russian forces after being ruled by the Ukraine for up to 100 years. But since Kiev refuses to negotiate, it will lose even more.

If the Ukrainians manage to continue losing, they could lose up to 50% of their territory or even more. Russian forces are waiting to fill the vacuum once the Kiev forces collapse and move forward to the River Dnieper and, if necessary, cross it. Whatever happens, Kiev will be forced to surrender unconditionally. There will be no negotiated settlement, as Kiev refused this constantly for eight years. The new, post-Zelensky government in the Ukraine will have to agree to and sign the Russian conditions. It is indeed time to end ‘the magical thinking about Russia’s defeat,’ by which headlines the Wall Street Journal means ending its own delusions and fantasies and those of the whole Collective West and their carefully censored media since 2014. As we have been predicting in over 116 published articles between March 2022 and October 2023, the West is being routed in the Ukraine. Kiev is the second Kabul and even worse in humiliation. As a result, the failed elites in the US and in Europe will fall. NATO and the EU are therefore finished; they were only ever post-1945 relics. Their time is up. Europe’s future is Eurasian and Confederal.

Indeed, the reign of the official Western media like the BBC, used by Western Establishments as propaganda mouthpieces, weapons of mass deception, are over. People are seeing through their lies. The US and the EU made a fatal mistake in forcing Russia into a close alliance with China through their aggression. It was delusional Western hubris that called Russia ‘a gas station with nukes’. Its booming economy has now overtaken the depressed German economy, cut off from cheap energy by US sabotage. As a result of the rout of the Collective West in the Ukraine, worldwide all recognise that there are three Superpowers: China, Russia and USA – and in that order. It is two against one. Queueing up not far behind them are India, the Muslim World, Africa and Latin America, with largely unpopulated Australia left as the natural resource reserve for the great East Asian Superpower – China. Europe discounted itself by allying itself with the US as vassals and client states. Now US failure and humiliation are shared by its lapdogs, Germany, France and especially the UK. France and the UK are to lose their places on the UN Security Council.

The Russian Challenge

Militarily, economically and diplomatically, this is a triumph for the Russian Federation, a Superpower and not ‘a regional power’, as the US President Obama contemptuously called it only a decade ago. Russia is in fact the leader of what used to be called ‘The Global South’, the 90% of the new multipolar world which is Non-Western. Through Russian-founded BRICS +, Russia is the toast of Asia, Africa and Latin America. They too want independence from the neo-colonial West, now that Russia has shown the way through its superiority. It is Russia, backed by China, which with BRICS troops will make peace in West Asia between Palestine and Israel and at last, inevitably, give the Palestinians justice and a homeland. The US is isolated at the UN and has failed because it was one-sided and supported the injustice of Israeli genocide. The US has failed both to divide Europe from Russia and failed to divide and colonise Russia, which was its aim in using Ukrainian soldiers as pawns to attack Russia and die for Washington. However, winning the war in the Ukraine and defeating American Europe is one thing. Russia must also win the peace.

In the Ukraine, this means no occupation of the real Ukraine, where real Ukrainians live, in the north-west and centre-west. It also means that all the Non-Ukrainian parts of the pre-2014 Ukraine, created by brutal Soviet dictators and whose brutality the Collective West has so fervently supported, where Russians, Poles, Romanians and Hungarians live, will at last be able to return to their homelands. They will leave the real Ukraine, about half the Soviet Ukraine. As post-Soviet Russia learned its lesson not to oppress Non-Russian peoples and has never had the slightest intention of occupying the real Ukraine, let alone other Eastern European countries (Zelensky’s Ukraine was in no way defending the West ‘against the Asiatic Muscovite hordes’; that was pure racist propaganda), the peoples of Europe are going to see the real Russia, instead of seeing it through the eyes of their US-selected elite of nonentities, who constantly lied to them. With people’s governments in Europe, a new agreement could be reached, with the abandonment of NATO and mutually beneficial security guarantees.

This means the repeal of the illegal anti-Russian sanctions and respect for the human rights of Russian minorities in all European countries, especially in the Ukraine, where the Orthodox Church has been banned. Tragedy remains. Apart from the unnecessary sacrifice of a whole generation of well over a million Ukrainian men, killed or crippled, Ukraine will need rebuilding – and repopulating. Eight million and more fled Zelensky’s tyranny and his hated SBU secret police and many were needlessly made to fear Russia because of Western propaganda. They emigrated, first to Russia, then to Poland, Germany and elsewhere in Western Europe. The death toll for Russia could well reach 40,000 dead. There were also the 14,000 Russian-speaking civilians massacred by the US-installed Kiev regime in the Donbass since 2014. Apart from this, there is the whole question of the once multinational Russian Church. In February 2022 its leadership took a Russian nationalist stance. This meant that Non-Russians and those Russians who did not agree with the Russian Military Operation in the Ukraine left that politicised Church, some with bitterness.

The Orthodox Christian Opportunity

Clergy and people outside Russia, in the Ukraine, in the Baltics, in Moldova, in Western Europe and one day in Belarus, Kazakhstan and Central Asia, will not return to the Russian Orthodox Church. The Russian Church will have to decentralise and form a family of new and autocephalous (independent) Local Churches for these peoples. This is the challenge and the only way forward. The Russian temptation was to try and dominate the rest of the Orthodox Church because their Church is by far the biggest and so the most powerful, three-quarters of the whole. God has humbled them and they will be reduced to half of the Orthodox world. Russians will have to return to their saints, to Sts Antony and Theodosius of Kiev, St Sergius of Radonezh, St Nil of Sora, St Paisy (Velichkovsky), St Seraphim of Sarov, the Saints of Optina, St John of Kronstadt, the New Martyrs and Confessors, St John of Shanghai. These are the actual spiritual and moral leaders of the Russian Church. Today the Russian Church is at last heading towards becoming a post-post-Soviet Church, that is, to a Church free of centralisation, nationalism, politics, sect and schism.

However, there was also the Greek nationalist temptation, no less historic in its catastrophic proportions. This temptation, which began as long ago as 1917, was to go the way of the world, that is of the USA. Now God has humbled the Greeks too, making them powerless in worldly terms, for they placed their hope ‘in princes and the sons of men’. Their only greatness is in the saints whom they themselves persecuted, St Nectarios, St Paisios and St Porphyrios, to name but a few. The situation reminds us of the following. Some forty years ago St Paisios the Athonite told a then young man, whom I know well, the following. The young man had been scandalised by the conduct of certain bishops. Fr Paisios told him: ‘When you walk along a path on Athos and come across animal excrement, what do you do? You kick it aside into the bushes so that other passers-by will not tread in it and then you wipe your shoes’. This is what we do today. We shall defeat both sectarianism and modernism, for they all end up in the same way, in the bushes, in sect and schism.

On the 1350th Anniversary of St Audrey

Praying before the icon of St Audrey on the iconostasis of St Edmund’s Romanian Orthodox church in the High Street of Little Abington just outside Cambridge, we sang a service of intercession to her, taking hymns from our untampered service composed to her. Then we went to her birthplace in the the village of Exning and her holy well and then on to Ely to pray and sing in front of the holy relic of her right hand. Today is not only her feast-day, but precisely the 1350th anniversary of her repose. St Audrey is the Mother of East Anglia and it is only because of the saints of East Anglia that this part of England survives.

May she who has protected us from the persecution of sectarians and schismatics continue her intercessions for us, always now and ever and unto the ages of ages.

Holy Mother Audrey, pray to God for us!

Archpriest Andrew Phillips,

Romanian Orthodox Metropolia of Western and Southern Europe

6 July 2023

 

The Truth from Childhood

Death is the enemy of Life, but he has many friends among men, in all those authorities in whom a debased sense of Life is linked with temporary power.

 

I knew about the Age of Saints from earliest childhood. The evidence was all around me locally, even if come out of eternity. I was born by a former monastery. My family lived near Bury St Edmunds, in honour of St Edmund, whose mystical presence has followed and guided me all the days of my life, both here and overseas. Near me were old churches dedicated to St Albright, St Botolph, St Osyth and St Cedd (built by himself), St Felix and St Audrey.

I knew all of these places in childhood and then I also read of St Alfred, then later I discovered St Guthlac and read of St Cuthbert and discovered the unique mystical atmosphere in Hoxne in Suffolk, the place of St Edmund’s martyrdom. When I was twenty, I discovered Walsingham in Norfolk, where in a humble village in 1061 the Mother of God appeared in a last consolation of grace, outpoured at the end of the beginning, before the beginning of the end.

These saints taught me that the other world, which in childhood I knew of intuitively, is real. This world is not the real one. This is only a pale reflection, seen in a glass darkly, of the real one. The real one is just beyond the veil, on the other side, a glimmering country of Beauty and Wisdom, where a King and Queen reign, together with all these saints and many more. I understood then that the meaning of life is the seeking and living of that Kingdom just beyond.

Like many others, I was called on to glimpse the world beyond sense and strive to bring down fragments of its Beauty and Wisdom from its stars and to convey them to others, acting as a poor and unwitting messenger of the Sacred and the Eternal. But how did we get from that Age of Saints, who perceived that bright kingdom, from the seventh century on, to this Age of Sin, which does has never even heard of that country, in the twenty-first century?

Why did they undergo a millennium of decline? How did they replace God with man? Why did they make the seeing and singing of what is done in Paradise into a weapon to beat others? Why did the powerful try to make Christ into a political ideology with which to beat and humiliate the righteous? Why did they make Beauty into ugliness and Wisdom into folly? Why did they use Heaven to make a hell on earth, the opposite of the Lord’s Prayer?

I realised that there are the animists and atheists who had stopped before they reached God and then the Non-Christians who had stopped after they had reached the One God, before they had reached Christ. Then there were others who, though advancing further, had stopped after they had reached Christ. Then there were those in the West who, going further, had stopped before they had reached the Holy Spirit. For Him they had substituted others.

These were the quenchers of the Spirit, the Spirit-deniers, the mere formalists and the spoilers, the enemies of all spiritual progress, for there is no-one who can stop after the discovery of the Holy Spirit. But Christ is coming back to overturn the table of these Spirit-resisting frauds and moneychangers in His Father’s House and to return us to our roots. His righteous anger will be terrible to behold and then He will show us His bright Kingdom on a New Earth.

 

 

The Battle for the Holy Spirit

All who are hostile to the Orthodox Christian Faith, whatever label they may carry, including a superficial label of ‘Orthodox’, are hostile to the Holy Trinity, though in different ways.

Thus, Pagans reject God the Father, preferring instead to make idols of mere creation, so worshipping itself. Like the Hindus, in a multitude of gods and goddesses, a sun-god, a moon-god, an earth-god, a king-god, a wind-god, a sea-god, a river-god etc. As animists, they worship spirits, including their own bodies and minds, like the Buddhists, not understanding that any such spirits are fallen human spirits or else, worse still, the fallen spirits of the demons. The only Spirit we can know and worship is the Holy Spirit.

Thus, Heretics reject God the Son, rejecting either His Divinity, like the Jews, the Arians, the Nestorians and the Muslims, or else His humanity, like the Monophysites.

Thus, Western Secularists reject God the Holy Spirit, preferring the values of this world. Therefore they replace the Holy Spirit, Who is the Authority and the Power and the Spirit of the Church, with a Pope in Rome, then with any white man, including Stalin or Hitler, and finally with any human-being who thinks himself equal to the Holy Spirit according to his ‘human rights’. So the world turns full circle and reverts to Paganism, under the humanist delusion of being clever, it narcissistically worships itself.

Thus, lapsed Orthodox replace Him with worldliness, disguised either as a flag-waving nationalism, or as a post-Soviet, get-rich-quick culture which in all practical terms is atheist, or as a spiritually feeble imitation of Western culture, or as a mere right-wing conservative ideology of dictatorial power. All these reject the Revelation of the Holy Spirit.

In order to battle for the Holy Spirit, for nearly 50 years we have called on Christ, the Mother of God and on the Saints of all ages and lands. For though not of this world, the voices of the Saints are the bearers of the Holy Spirit in this world, and in all ages and in all lands, thus witnessing against Pagans, Heretics, Western Secularists and lapsed Orthodox.

On the Slaying of the Seven Fake Orthodoxies

Introduction

In nearly fifty years of association with Orthodoxy, I have seen how the devil can fake everything. This is because he is himself a fake: a fake god – though many still worship him. As ‘a liar and the father of lies’ (Jn 8, 44), he can most certainly fake every human activity, including faith. He can use faith to create fake faith. I have seen this in the seven types of fake Orthodoxy, the deviations which he creates and which I have observed. The first three are primitive deviations, the next two are psychological deviations and the last two belong to the more complex realm of delusional deviations. All of them have one thing in common: they provide no spiritual food at all and so the souls that follow these fakes die of the spiritual famine which they leave in their wake.

Three Primitive Deviations

These deviations are those which are chosen by those who live fleshly lives, the life of the body with its material interests.

The first type of fake Orthodoxy is nationalistic. This involves demeaning Christ to the level of flag-waving and attachments to this world. Beware of churches which proudly display national flags of any sort. They worship not Christ, but the Caesar of their State. This Orthodoxy is deathly, for it kills the Spirit, which is why it is ritualistic and superficial.

The next and second type of fake Orthodoxy is bureaucratic. This is linked to the first fake, inasmuch as it is political. This involves demeaning Christ to the level of paperwork and ‘protocols’, behind which the State bureaucrat with his Church title hides. This Orthodoxy is deathly, for it kills the Spirit, which is why it is cowardly and gutless.

The next and third type of fake Orthodoxy is diplomatic. This is linked to the first and second fakes, inasmuch as it is also meanly political and insincere. This involves demeaning Christ to the level of lies and compromise and the seeking of some worldly advantage behind the camouflage of Christ. This Orthodoxy is deathly, for it kills the Spirit, which is why it repeats the well-worn lie that all faiths are the same – which they are obviously not, for only one Faith comes from the Holy Spirit, Who comes forth from the Father.

Two Psychological Deviations

These deviations are those which are chosen by those who live emotional lives, the life of the feelings and the interests of the ego.

The next and fourth type of fake Orthodoxy is psychological, at worst psychopathological. In any case, it has nothing to do with theology. It involves demeaning Christ to the level of conforming Him to the ways of the (Western) world, with its calendar and all its other compromised values. It is the easy way out, the way of self-justification, for it means living a more or less effortless, secular life behind the mask of Christ. This Orthodoxy is deathly, for it kills the Spirit by creating a worldly, adaptationist, conformist Orthodoxy, a pseudo-Orthodoxy that swims with the secularist tide.

The next and fifth type of fake Orthodoxy is psychological, at worst psychopathological. In any case, it has nothing to do with theology. It involves demeaning Christ to the level of a personal psychological rebellion against the values with which those who confess it were brought up and then hating them. In this way it is also a form of self-hatred. Thus, it disobeys the commandment which tells us to love our neighbour AS OURSELF. This Orthodoxy is deathly, for it kills the Spirit by creating an extremist, aggressive Orthodoxy of hatred that is a negative anti-everything and is therefore not a positive love of Orthodoxy.

Two Delusional Deviations

These deviations are those which are chosen by those who live fantasy lives, the life of the brain and the interests of the fantasy.

The next and sixth type of fake Orthodoxy is an intellectual conceit. It involves demeaning Christ to the level of cold, bookish knowledge which is merely the arrogant delusion of the puffed-up mind, of ‘fleshly reasoning’, the pompous pretentiousness of those who can talk about everything, but know nothing and live by nothing. This Orthodoxy is deathly, for it kills the Spirit by creating fantasist philosophies and is therefore not Orthodoxy.

The next and final and seventh type of fake Orthodoxy is a pietistic conceit. This is linked to the sixth inasmuch as it comes from the brain and the imagination. It involves demeaning Christ to the level of delusion through spiritual pride, of the pseudo-ascetic, of the depressed, of esoteric exotica, pretending to be ’spiritual’, pretending to be what they are not, with spiritual pride and imagined superiority, condemning others as ‘not spiritual’, being full of pretentiousness, foreign words, dressing up in black like monks or nuns, play-acting, pseudo-holiness, obsessively and self-flatteringly claiming charlatans and frauds who deceive and mislead the simple as their ‘spiritual fathers’. This delusional Orthodoxy is deathly, for it kills the Spirit by pretending to be what it is not. It is therefore anti-spiritual, for the spiritual is always founded on the real, not on the imaginary.

Conclusion

If you are at any of the above stages or at any combination of them, you must renounce and kill this spiritual enslavement at once and move on to Freedom, to Real Orthodoxy, which is simple. It means loving God and loving our neighbour as ourselves, living in and according to the Church, following the Lives of the Saints, of the real holiness of those who really lived, who were incarnate in life, in the real world. Real Orthodoxy is not Death, but is Life itself, it is living in the Creator of Life, living in Christ, but that Life is reached only by first slaying in yourself the dragon of all these seven fakes.

 

The Russian Orthodox Émigré Contribution to the Future World Orthodox Church

A few years ago the now Metropolitan Tikhon of Pskov asked us the question: What distinctive contribution can the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) make to the Church inside Russia? Here is my answer to him in the light of the most recent events:

Our Orthodox Christian Faith is Trinitarian: God the Father, Who is the instinctive knowledge of the existence of God, God the Son, Who represents the Incarnation of the Faith in all human affairs on earth (as denied for a thousand years by the Western world), and God the Holy Spirit, Who sanctifies all the nations who accept Him. This Trinitarian knowledge has always been expressed in the Russian Orthodox words: ‘For the Faith, For the Tsar, For Rus’. This motto was in turn expressed in recent history by the three ROCOR Saints, the Three Saints of the Emigration:

‘For the Faith’ was expressed by St Jonah of Hankou (+ 1925), the first ROCOR saint. Fleeing as a refugee with the White Russians and absolutely faithful to the fullness of Russian Orthodoxy, within a very short time of becoming a bishop at a very young age in Manchuria, he established an orphanage, a school, and a dining hall for the poor. Thus he combined the love of the Liturgy with practical love for our neighbour, as the Gospel calls us to do. This is indeed the essence of the Orthodox Christian Faith.

‘For the Faith and for the Tsar’ was expressed a generation later by St Seraphim of Boguchar (+ 1950). He expressed the values of Russian Orthodoxy in his writings and was also the great defender of Orthodoxy against both the heresies of the renovationist Paris School in the 1930s and ecumenism, notably at the Inter-Orthodox Council of Moscow in July 1948. He asked: What is the role of the Tsar? He answered that he is the incarnation of the Faith in the life of the State, in social, political and economic affairs. This is why we await the coming of the next Tsar, the White Tsar, whether he is a man of piety, or Christ Himself in His Second Coming.

‘For the Faith, for the Tsar and for Rus’ was then expressed by St John of Shanghai (+ 1966). The first ‘universal saint’, as he has been called, he lived all over the planet and celebrated the Liturgy and preached in many languages, extending the understanding and practice of ‘Rus’ worldwide far beyond East Slavdom, which stretches from Slovakia to the shores of the Pacific. Now we talk about American Rus, Australian Rus, English Rus, French Rus, German Rus, Irish Rus, Peruvian Rus, Swiss Rus. Wherever, worldwide, there is the uncorrupted Christian Faith of the Russian Orthodox world, there is Rus.

Some in Russia would say that this is what they have always believed. True, but the emigration expressed it with a refined purity and much extended significance, all of which became possible only after the catastrophe of the 1917 Revolution.  All three saints together, the Three New Pillars of Orthodoxy, completed their lives on three different continents: St Jonah in China in Asia; St Seraphim in Bulgaria in Europe and St John in San Francisco in North America.

It is this, the global reality of Rus, which the Church inside Russia is now learning from us. Once captive inside the mental borders of the Soviet Union, the multinational Russian Orthodox Church has recently established a Western European Exarchate and a South-East Asian Exarchate, becoming ever more deeply the Church of Eurasia. Now, with the long-expected apostasy of Greek Churches, far too weak to stand up to corrupting American pressure, there has appeared the possibility of setting up a Turkish Exarchate in Asia and solving the old calendarist schism in Greece in Europe.

Moreover, extending to a new Continent, it could set up an African Orthodox Church with local, not colonial, bishops. Beyond this there is the possibility of founding a real North American Orthodox Church, with the future merger of the healthy elements of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) with ROCOR. And ROCOR in turn can, with canonical and practical support from inside Russia, help set up a Church of Oceania and a Church of South America. It is our hope that we shall yet see founded a church dedicated to the Three New Pillars of Orthodoxy, the Pillars of the Russian emigration of three different continents. The future begins now.