Blessed Archbishop Averky of Jordanville: A Sign of the Times

“Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times” (Matt. 16:3).

 

 

Every time, every era in the life of mankind has its own distinguishing feature, which is especially characteristic of it, predominantly before all other eras.

Observing the events taking place in the present century, we cannot but come to the conviction that the most characteristic feature of the time we are living through is the loss of the fear of God, and in close connection with this, the loss by the majority of modern people of God’s voice in the human soul, that is, the conscience.

The modern era, more than any in the past—we mean, of course, chiefly the Christian period of the history of mankind—may be called godless and conscienceless. And an entirely natural consequence of this is the now so widespread lack of principle, indifference to good and evil, immorality, opportunism, the pursuit of material goods with complete disregard for spiritual goods, shameless, almost open debauchery, and ever-increasing crime, against which the authorities find it ever more difficult to struggle.

And all this is completely contrary to the rosy forecasts and enthusiastic “predictions” which we so often heard at the beginning of this century, that the twentieth century would be an age of extraordinary flowering and all-round progress for mankind, when there would be neither wars nor civil strife, but a universal life happy and joyful for all would set in, universal well-being and prosperity, almost a paradise on earth.

Now we see well what all those rosy “predictions” were worth, and to what kind of “progress” and “paradise on earth” we have lived to see!

There has, of course, been progress in technology and in various scientific discoveries and inventions, but all these airplanes, radio, television, and along with them atomic and hydrogen bombs, etc.—the “delights” and “achievements” of our century—are these really what can give people unprecedented “prosperity,” “well-being,” and “happiness”?

And instead of the promised “peace of the whole world” and the end of wars and civil strife, there have in fact been two terrible world wars, unprecedented in the history of mankind, bloody revolutionary civil conflicts that have swallowed up millions of victims, and now the looming threat of an even more terrible third world war, already being called in advance an “atomic” one!

All this is the consequence of sin progressing more and more.

Usually people object to us: people, they say, have always sinned and do sin, and there is supposedly nothing especially new in what is happening now.

Yes, sin has always, to some extent, been and remains characteristic of men who inherited from our first parents a nature corrupted by sin, and therefore “there is no man who lives and does not sin,” and only God alone is without sin.

But sin is not always the same. Formerly, for the most part, people sinned in secret—so that no one would know—for every sin brought upon itself universal condemnation; and having sinned, they very often afterwards repented sincerely, with all their soul, and amended themselves, radically changing their life and disposition for the better. Repentance, of course, when sincere and deep, is capable of blotting out all sins and healing their destructive consequences, regenerating a man to a new life. We have many examples when great sinners became great righteous ones, saints.

It is not so now. Now almost no one is ashamed of sin and no one condemns it, sometimes even cunningly making use of Christ’s saying: “Judge not, that ye be not judged” (Matt. 7:1), as though sin did not in itself deserve condemnation. And now people sin openly—brazenly and shamelessly—without thinking in the least about repentance, but quite the contrary, justifying themselves in every possible way and cynically arrogating to themselves, as it were, a right to sin.

The very concept of sin among modern people, with few exceptions, has been eradicated from consciousness: sin has become something ordinary and no longer subject to society’s condemnation, nor even to the voice of conscience.

To those who assure us that there is nothing special, nothing new in our days, we shall reply with these questions:

When before, and especially in the era of Christian history, has there existed a vast and powerful state, stretching over a sixth part of the world, whose leaders were guided in their activity by a God-fighting ideology and made one of the chief aims of their work the planting everywhere of atheism, or godlessness?

Where and when have representatives of state authority proclaimed an “anti-divine front” and recruited members into a “League of Militant Atheists”?

Where and in what other century, after the final victory of Christianity over the darkness of paganism, did there arise such a frenzied, fierce persecution of the true faith and the Church of Christ, such a horrifying terror prevailed, and the innocent blood of millions of people was shed?

All this is among the vaunted “achievements” of the “progressive” twentieth century!

Where and when in Christian countries was such shameless, almost open debauchery permitted, such an almost complete nakedness of everything connected with carnal sin, and such moral dissoluteness?

Where and when in the past did state authorities legalize the mass killing of unborn children, solely at the whim of their depraved parents, who do not wish, in accordance with the law of nature, to bear, raise, and bring up the children they have conceived, and thus to bear full lawful responsibility for their conception?

Where and when in Christian mankind were people morally perverted, morally maimed—human degenerates—recognized as having rights to the sin of Sodom, that sin for which God Himself so sternly punished the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, sending upon them a rain of fire and brimstone, in order to burn out with fire this vile impurity, this loathsome unnatural sin?

Where and when was it ever seen in the past that people not only were not ashamed of these carnal sins, but even brought them literally out into the streets, shamelessly advertising themselves and even agitating among others?

And all this is the “progress” of the vaunted twentieth century!

But the most terrible thing is that this moral decomposition has already entered into the religious life of people. In the religions of the West, which long ago fell away from the true faith and the Church, this is not so surprising, although it cannot but especially attract our attention that this moral decomposition has advanced at an especially rapid pace precisely in our own time. The monolith of Roman Catholicism has been shaken to its foundations by the last two popes and by the Second Vatican Council, while the Protestants have already gone so far as to deny many of the basic dogmas of the Christian faith and are ready to merge completely with this world, which lieth in evil, in which all is “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16).

Indeed, dreadful for us, and most terrible of all for all true believers, is the fact that enemies have already entered into the very midst of our Orthodox Church and are attempting, and not altogether without success, to blow it up from within. Of course, we believe that according to the promise of Christ the Savior Himself, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18), and that it shall remain until the end of the age (Matt. 28:20), but for how many weak souls there threatens the mortal danger of losing the faith and perishing forever! It is not without reason that Christ the Savior called His true followers a “little flock” (Luke 12:32), and said moreover that when He comes again to the earth, He will hardly “find faith on the earth” (Luke 18:8).

In the Orthodox Church, as has become especially clear in recent years, from the beginning of this twentieth century there has been observed a striving for reformation in a purely Protestant spirit, with essentially but one aim: to legalize lawlessness.

Freedom and moral looseness, increasingly coming into fashion under the influence of society’s dechurching, appeared all too seductive.

And so, under the cunning and deceitful pretext of “returning the Church to Apostolic times,” there arose a desire not only to cast aside, as already “outlived” and “not corresponding to the spirit of the times,” the whole of Church discipline, divinely and wisely worked out by the pillars of our Church—the holy fathers—over the course of many centuries, but also to remake much of it in order to indulge laziness and the lowered moral life; they have even gone so far as to speak of the supposed necessity of re-editing the text of Holy Scripture in accordance with their perverted tastes—as a concession to their passions.

These attempts began long ago and finally resulted in the creation of the so-called “Living Church,” and then “Renovationism” among us in Russia during the years of general ruin in the time of the revolution. But at that time the Russian people, still strong in spirit and faith, decisively rejected the “Living-Churchists” and the “Renovationists,” and this whole undertaking, ruinous for souls, collapsed disgracefully, despite the powerful support of the godless Soviet authority interested in the destruction of the Church.

In place of the “Living-Churchists” and the “Renovationists” there appeared “Sergianism,” which at first did not so openly break with true Orthodoxy, but immediately set itself openly in the service of the God-fighting authority. Gradually, however, it too (and it could not have been otherwise with so close an alliance with the God-fighters!) took shape as an apostasy from true Orthodoxy through the merging of its ideology with the ideology of this world, which lieth in evil, and through recognizing atheism as having a right to exist.

This is eloquently testified to by the public statements and declarations of its “leaders,” and by the very fact of their entry into the “World Council of Churches.”

This movement soon spread to other Churches of the Orthodox East as well, beginning with the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which in 1923 officially recognized the “Living Church” in Russia as the lawful Church.

In 1923, the “Pan-Orthodox Congress” was convened by Patriarch Meletios IV of Constantinople, at which the following “reforms” were proposed for the abolition of the existing canonical rules and institutions of the Orthodox Church:

• A married episcopate;

• The remarriage of clergy;

• The new calendar;

• The shortening of the divine services;

• The abolition of the fasts and of monasticism;

• The simplification of clerical dress, that is, permission for the clergy to wear secular clothing and to adopt a secular manner of life.

At that time these “reforms” provoked many protests and objections, including from other Eastern patriarchs, who declared that for the implementation of such “reforms” an Ecumenical Council was necessary, since it alone is the one authoritative supreme authority in the Church.

With the passage of time, such attitudes and tendencies not only did not disappear, but became even more firmly entrenched in various local Orthodox Churches, and now their supporters are vigorously advocating the convocation of an “Eighth Ecumenical Council” in order to implement them.

Knowing the present disposition of many Church “leaders” and their aggressiveness in carrying out their destructive plans, we can clearly imagine what sort of “Ecumenical Council” this will be! Even without waiting for official decrees, many have already put some of these “reforms” into practice, ignoring in their activity very categorical Church canons. But of course, in some cases conscience still speaks, and therefore they would like to “legalize” the lawlessness they are committing on their own authority.

For this is the reason why these cunning men, though bearing an outward form of piety but having denied its power, so press for the convocation of this “Eighth Ecumenical Council.” They are confident that at the “council” those like themselves will be in the “majority,” and therefore that by a “majority of votes” they will carry through everything they desire—that is, they will, quite officially, with every appearance of legality, formally legalize lawlessness.

But will such an “Ecumenical Council” truly be authoritative for all and an indisputable expression of the voice of the Holy Spirit (“It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us”...), as were the former seven Ecumenical Councils recognized by our whole Church?

Of course not!

All the former Ecumenical Councils began their decrees by affirming all that had been decreed at the preceding Councils, whereas this one, as can already now be seen, will set as its chief task the overthrow of the entire former order of the Church, of everything that was decreed before. And therefore, this will not be the “Eighth Ecumenical Council,” but a “Second Robber Council,” after the model of that council of the year 449 in the city of Ephesus, which entered the history of the Church under the name of the “Robber Council.”

Who needs such a “council”?

Of course, only the enemies of the Church, both open and hidden.

All the true children of the Church of Christ will not recognize it as lawful and will not accept its decrees, and there will occur only new schisms and divisions—which is precisely what the enemies of the Church, preparing the triumph of Antichrist, desire.

Their first trial attempt has already been made in the form of the arbitrary and self-willed introduction of the new calendar by certain individual churches, which everywhere brought about only enmity and divisions among the faithful, as for example in Greece, where the people have been split into two groups: the “Old Calendarists” and the “New Calendarists.”

All this is a sign of the times!

And yet we are called “to serve,” as the great father of Orthodoxy, St. Athanasius of Alexandria, taught, “not the times, but God.”

Therefore, fear this deceit and flee from it, all faithful children of the Holy Church!

 

Russian source:

https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Averkij_Taushev/hristianin-v-sovremennom-mire/#0_5

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