“Walling off from heresy must be done according to the rules left by the Holy Fathers, not according to personal opinions and impressions…” - Hieromonk Spiridon Roșu

 

On the eighteenth Sunday after the Descent of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Fathers appointed that the parable of the miraculous catch of fish be read in the Church. This miracle, described by the Holy Evangelist Luke (5:1–11), took place at the beginning of the Savior’s work on earth, and it corresponds to the calling to the apostolate of the first disciples.

The Jews of that time had not yet come to discover who Jesus Christ truly is, but they had sensed that no one until then had spoken as He did, and especially that no one among those on earth had performed such great miracles. Wherever it was heard that Jesus of Nazareth was coming, there was a great stir; simple people left everything and crowded together to listen to Him Who proclaimed the word of God. Thus we read in the Gospel: “…the multitude pressed upon Him to hear the word of God.” (Luke 5:1)

We ask ourselves whether the spiritual concerns of the Christian people today still resemble those of the Jewish people from 2,000 years ago? More precisely, do Christians still have the thirst to hear the word of God, putting worldly cares aside? Each one of us must give the answer. I fear that the majority of the faithful have lost this thirst for spiritual knowledge, that people have been reading less and less lately. But if people are so greatly preoccupied with worldly cares and obligations, then how will they succeed in overcoming the increasingly cunning temptations of the last age in which we live?

Some Christians of our days deceive themselves, saying that if they too had lived at the time when the Savior dwelt on earth and had seen and heard Him with their senses, then they too would have been more faithful and more zealous. Only they, without realizing it, make a great mistake. They do not take into account the fact that the Christ Whom the Apostles saw and preached is identical with the Christ Whom the Orthodox Church preaches today through all the Holy Mysteries and the holy Services. Saint Symeon the New Theologian answers these deceived Christians who seek to justify their formal faith with a fearful word: “He who hears Him now crying out every day through the Holy Gospels and proclaiming the will of the blessed Father, and does not listen to Him with fear and trembling (Eph. 6:5), and does not keep the things commanded by Him, would by no means have endured believing in Him, even if he had been present, had seen Him, and had heard Him teaching. Moreover, I fear that, not believing at all, he would have blasphemed Him, considering Him an adversary of God and not true God.” (Catechesis 29, p. 30)

Returning to the Gospel account, we see that after He had ceased teaching the multitudes, the Savior commanded Simon, the future Apostle Peter, to take the boat out into the deep and to let down the nets for a catch. If at first Simon wanted to object, saying that they had labored in vain for an entire night, nevertheless, afterward, he obeyed the Savior’s command. There were enough reasons to give up: he had the opinion that they knew the craft of fishing well, they were tired and it was time to return to their homes, and not least, they could not have full trust in Him Whom they knew only a little. But he rejected all these reasons then and resolved to be obedient, saying: “but at Thy word I will let down the nets.”

What followed, we know, of course: “they caught a great multitude of fish, so that their nets were breaking.” (Luke 5:6)

The cause of the disciples’ astonishment was not only the enormous quantity of fish which they had gathered, but a fact more difficult to understand from a superficial reading of the Gospel. Perhaps in the life of fishermen, it has sometimes happened that they succeeded in catching great quantities of fish; but to fish in a certain place by obeying the command of someone who sees into the deep is something altogether extraordinary. Thus there arose in the hearts of the disciples the conviction that Jesus Christ is “He Who sees into the deep.” Therefore, Christ sees beyond the limits beyond which ordinary man cannot penetrate.

We say in the ecclesiastical texts that Jesus Christ is the Knower of hearts, that is, being God, He knows all the hidden mysteries in the hearts of men. He also knows future events, but He does not determine them automatically; rather, He waits for man to cooperate freely with Him. He waits for man to obey Him unconditionally. If man refuses to do the will of God, then He does not force him, but leaves man to wander and to feel the fruits of his disobedience. God is so long-suffering, to such an extent that He lets man fight against the truth, to “kick against the goads” (Acts 9:5), so that in this way he may return to repentance.

The question is raised: what is the criterion according to which the Savior chose the disciples?

Did He choose them because they were prominent men of society? Or because they were aristocrats, or because they had been learned in the things of the world? The Holy Apostle Paul shows that these were by no means the criteria for the choosing of the disciples, for he says: “God chose precisely the foolish things of the world in order to put the wise to shame; God chose precisely the weak things of the world in order to put the strong to shame.” (1 Cor. 1:27)

Then what was the criterion for the choosing of the twelve disciples? It was the capacity to deny oneself, the capacity to make unconditional obedience. This is seen from the account of the Gospels, where it is written that the disciples left everything and followed Christ quickly and enthusiastically. We too learn from this that if we want to become disciples of Christ, we must do what the Apostles did in this parable. We must deny ourselves, we must humble ourselves easily, saying each time: at thy word I will do what thou askest of me, only with the desire to give rest to thy soul, the soul of the neighbor with whom we live.

People today complain that God no longer gives us spiritual fathers, but they do not want to see the cause for which this happens. The reason is that there are no longer true disciples who love obedience. Only he who was at first a good and steadfast disciple will be able, through spiritual growth, to become a true father, who can himself form other disciples.

Let us try to cast a glance at the ecclesiastical situation of our days. We know that it is a time of the free spreading of heresy; therefore, in order to relate correctly to this situation, we must analyze how the holy confessors fought against the heresies of their time.

Before all else, we must clarify a teaching which emerges precisely from the parable of this Sunday. Is only the Savior the One Who sees into the deep? No, but God also gave this charisma to the Saints who followed Him in everything and always fulfilled all His commandments. How could this charisma of seeing into the deep be understood more simply?

It is a power of understanding, accompanied by spiritual discernment, of difficult situations which cannot be comprehended only with the powers of human nature.

The Holy Confessors who fought against the heresies had in their souls a conviction and an assurance that they were fighting for the truth, not only from a conviction arising from the human mind, that is, for the reason that they knew well the teaching of the Church, but they had that seeing into the deep; they were seers of mysteries. Their pure heart was a dwelling place of the working of grace, and therefore God mystically revealed in their heart a truth above nature. The Saints felt within themselves an inward fire which urged them: “Go to the end, endure with courage and dignity every affliction, persecution, or suffering; confess the truth in which you believe and which you love!” The Saints confessed the dogmatic teachings with exactness and theological precision in word; there was nothing unclear or ambiguous in their confession. The word of the Saints was with power; their conduct was full of peace, far from every selfish interest; they were devoid of every trace of malice toward the enemies of the right faith; they had much compassion for those who had been deceived. And the Christians of their time, seeing with what clarity and strength, with what courage and love the Saints confessed the truth, awoke as from a sleep from the deception into which they had been led through ignorance by shepherds fallen into heresy. And after that, what did they do? They abandoned the heretics, ceased communion with them, and joined the Saints on the narrow path of confession. This is the miraculous catch which the Holy Confessors worked with men of all times.

When we look at the struggle of Saint Maximus the Confessor to defend Orthodoxy from the attacks of the Monothelite heretics, we ask ourselves how he was not frightened, nor weakened, nor ceased the struggle, although he saw what powerful enemies he had to face: heretical emperors, fallen patriarchs and metropolitans united among themselves in the same heretical camp, abbots of monasteries, and many deceived people. This Saint did not stop in his confession, not even when it seemed that all were against him, because he had within himself “the vision of mysteries”; he felt the gift which God had given him, and Saint Maximus put this gift into operation for the benefit of the many, although he suffered terribly for this. Saint Maximus did not live to see, during his earthly life, the victory of the true ecclesiastical teaching, but this did not discourage him at all. Nor did he need a confirmation here on earth of the truth for which he was struggling, because he was fully convinced through grace that what he taught was the only saving dogma.

Why did Saint Theodore the Studite suffer all the persecutions from the iconomachists, expulsion from the monastery, prison, beatings, hunger, humiliations, without being frightened and without caring whether he would see here on earth the crowning of his righteous struggle? He had through grace the assurance that only by struggling for the dogma of the veneration of the icons can someone be saved. He who was a seer of mysteries no longer needed the correctness of the struggle he waged to be confirmed to him by arguments of earthly logic.

But Saint Theodore also did a remarkable thing when he saw that many Christians were wavering in times of persecution, not knowing what to do. To these the Saint wrote many epistles, through which he showed them in detail how to wage the good struggle against the heretics.

Only several decades after the martyric end of Saint Theodore the Studite, at the Council of Constantinople in the year 843, were people able to be convinced of the truth which this Saint confessed and defended.

How is the fact explained that Saint Gregory Palamas did not take into account the slanders and unjust attacks of the Patriarch of Constantinople, John Kalekas? We know that for Saint Gregory’s boldness in publicly rebuking the Patriarch’s heresy and in interrupting communion with him, he had to endure unjust condemnation and the absurd punishment of anathema. Who gave Saint Gregory Palamas the courage to go to the end and to confess the Orthodox teaching concerning the uncreated energies? It was the grace of God, through which this Holy Hierarch saw into the deep and did not stop at the vain talk and threats of the deceived rulers of this world. He felt that he had no way to stop, because the truth must be confessed whole, to the end.

And if we come to times nearer to us, let us take heed how the Holy Confessing Hierarchs struggled during the time of the Bolshevik persecution. Let us look at the sacrifice of the Russian Orthodox hierarchs, priests, monks, and laymen who did not accept even the slightest compromise with Metropolitan Sergius and with the clerics who were in obedience to him. All these confessors understood the betrayal of Orthodoxy which Metropolitan Sergius had committed by placing the Church at the disposal of the atheists. How did these clerics have the conviction and the power to endure unjust judgments, lying accusations of schism because they had dared to cease commemorating the traitorous Metropolitan? And not only these things, but we have further seen how these hierarchs, priests, monks, and faithful went calmly and joyfully to torments and death in the Soviet prisons and camps, as though they were going to a wedding. From where did this power come to them? From human nature? No, but from the grace which worked in them, making them seers of mysteries.

When we look today at the struggle of these martyrs, “of whom the world was not worthy” (Hebrews 11:38), we understand one more important thing: that they did not sacrifice themselves only in order to save themselves, but sought to gather into the nets of their love as many as possible of those who desired to be saved. This is the work of their miraculous catch, which continues in history down to our days.

The prophecy spoken by the Savior to the disciple Peter and to all the others, “Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men,” was fulfilled with all the twelve Holy Apostles through the founding of the Christian Church in Jerusalem and through the work of the Apostles in Christianizing the Jews and the pagan nations. The nets which are let down into the deep are the same, that is, the unchanged teachings of the Gospel. The fishers of men in our times are the Orthodox bishops, assisted by Orthodox priests, because only they are the true successors of the Holy Apostles in an uninterrupted succession of 2,000 years. We could liken the community of Orthodox Christians to a sheepfold of rational sheep which is shepherded by men chosen by God: “first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers.” (1 Cor. 12:28)

Many afflictions and evils have come upon the Orthodox Church throughout the centuries, but over all of them it has come out victorious, by the mercy and help of God.

For more than 100 years, from the year 1903, there has infiltrated into the life of the Church, and has developed unpunished, the most cunning and most dangerous of all the heresies that have ever appeared, namely the pan-heresy of Ecumenism. The characteristic of this movement of occult origin is that it does not have a clearly defined doctrine, but only a sum of principles formulated vaguely and generally, certain attractive humanist ideals through which an attempt is made to lead the majority of people into error. One of the basic heretical teachings of Ecumenism is that at present the Church is divided into a multitude of so-called churches, and that each of them possesses only some parts of the truth of faith. The ecumenists consider that at the moment when all these “partial and incomplete churches” unite into a broad and single religious confederation, then the “true church” will appear. Through these false teachings, all Orthodox ecclesiology is directly attacked, because all the Saints confess that the Orthodox Christian Church is the only true Church — she is “the Church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.” (1 Tim. 3:15) There are no heterodox churches outside the Orthodox Church, but only heretical confessions, and if their members desire to be saved, they must repent, reject all erroneous teachings, anathematize them together with their supporters, and then receive Orthodox Baptism.

Since the times through which we are passing are difficult, the faithful seek at least some counsel in connection with the many problems that assail them. In this regard, we rejoice to listen again to recordings of the sermons of some Romanian hierarchs who, a few years ago, spoke courageously and convincingly about certain dangers that had come upon ecclesiastical life. Grave sins were being incriminated, which were spreading in society, both because of propaganda coming from abroad and because of certain anti-Christian laws approved and imposed by politicians. It was a matter of the unrestrained spread of prostitution, pornography, the rights granted to sexual minorities, violence and immorality disseminated throughout the entire media space in the form of an aggression without precedent in history against Romanian society. These older recordings still circulate among Christians, and each one expects from the one to whom he has given them to hear some word of appreciation. People would like you to praise these hierarchs in comparison with the present ones, who are more submissive to worldly rulers than those of the recent past.

But I feel obliged to draw attention to the fact that those beautiful and edifying discourses of the hierarchs of the recent past did not have their effect, but remained only beautiful and powerless speeches, because they were lacking one essential thing. Here it is a matter of a deficiency in the ecclesiastical policy of the Romanian Orthodox hierarchs, more than a century old.

What is that thing which is lacking in the discourse of the hierarchs? It is the Orthodox counteroffensive, proven by deeds. This means that after they described and evaluated the attack of the forces of evil upon Orthodox Christianity, the counter-reaction should have appeared promptly as well. When a citadel is attacked by enemies, it is not enough to warn about the danger produced by them, but one must necessarily arm oneself and fight if one wishes to survive. I think that a contemporary confessing hierarch ought to make statements of the following kind: “In the event that you, politicians, or any category of worldly rulers, disregard the will of Christians and force us to accept your laws against the commandments of the Gospel, then we, the clergy and the people, headed by the Patriarch, will wage war against you with all the spiritual weapons with which God has armed us, and with which we are obliged to defend our Church and our nation. We make it known to you that we will cease every collaboration or connection with the anti-Christian state power. This change in the relations between ecclesiastical power and state power will be followed by several concrete measures: the non-acceptance of the interference of the political factor in the election of hierarchs; the refusal of state subsidies with regard to the salaries of priests and non-clerical church personnel, and with regard to the construction and restoration of churches, but with the recovery of church goods abusively confiscated by the secular authorities over time; the revision of the relations of the Orthodox Church with the other heterodox confessions, ignoring the principles of Ecumenism; the cessation of church activity in state institutions; the canonization of the Holy Martyrs of the twentieth century without the approval or agreement of the worldly political power being necessary; civil disobedience with regard to laws with anti-Christian content, such as the imposition of biometric documents, the rights and privileges granted to sexual minorities to the detriment of the rights of Christians, the conditioning of religious crowning upon the prior performance of civil marriage, etc.; the public rebuke of worldly rulers for the errors and abuses which they commit against the faithful Orthodox people; and other measures in this sense which concern the relationship between Church and state. We will go on the narrow path of confession and of enduring persecution, knowing well that “we must obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:29)

Without doubt, to many faithful of our days such a manner of confessing the faith will seem exaggerated. Yet throughout history the Holy Confessing Hierarchs assure us not only that this Orthodox counteroffensive, proven by deeds, is correct, but that it is the only possible path to salvation when pagans or heretics attack the Church. In this sense we offer a few examples.

Saint Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and of All Russia, in the most difficult moments, when the Tsarist empire was collapsing into anarchy, rose up alone and punished with anathema the Bolsheviks who were in power and were mercilessly persecuting the Church. In a pastoral letter from 1918 Saint Tikhon wrote: “We turn with profound pain toward these monsters and address to them a warning which they should fear: ‘Madmen! Come to yourselves! Cease the massacres! Your conduct is not only cruel, but truly satanic, worthy of eternal fire in the life to come and of a fearful curse upon your descendants here on earth! In the name of the power which God has given us, we excommunicate you, casting anathema upon you, if you still bear the name of Christian, for by birth you belonged to the Orthodox Church.’”

If he had not performed this heroic deed of Orthodox counteroffensive, he would have lost everything, including salvation. The communists arrested him, but they gave up killing him, because they knew that the people loved him very much and they feared that if they killed him, they would honor him as a Saint.

Another example of Orthodox confession is constituted by the sacrifice of the Holy Hierarch Ambrosi the Confessor, Patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Georgia. He had been arrested together with other hierarchs of the Synod because he had sent abroad a memorandum in which he described the persecution of the Church of Georgia by the Soviet Russians, because he had hidden the treasury of the Church, and because he opposed the churches being handed over to the state in order to be profaned. Saint Ambrose the Patriarch declared before the Soviet Tribunal: “Just as to our ancestors the receiving of sufferings for homeland and faith seemed sweet, so also this punishment which the Supreme Tribunal will give me will be pleasant to me, because I did not remain silent with regard to the defense of the national Church and the freedom of the Georgian people. This will be the crowning of the cross which I have borne for a lifetime, namely for 37 years since I have served Christ.” For this courageous confrontation of the communists, he was condemned to heavy years of prison, but he yielded nothing and did not make even the slightest compromise with the enemies of the faith. Through all the deeds of his life, not only did he gain for himself the crown of martyrdom, but he showed the Christian people that in times of persecution only the path of confession is the sole path of salvation.

Learning of these models of confession of the faith, we ask ourselves: has it ever been heard in the last hundred years that any Romanian Orthodox hierarch has said that the punishments given by enemies are pleasing to him because he did not want to betray the rights of the Church?

The answer is negative, unfortunately. No one has heard such courageous confessions.

Because of this cowardice manifested at the summits of ecclesiastical leadership, neither do the priests of our time dare to go out on the path of confession. Today, the majority of priests follow the same model of conduct as that of their hierarchs, hierarchs who yield the rights of the Church to worldly rulers hostile toward the faith.

Another example of a Holy Confessing Hierarch from the twentieth century is Saint Gorazd, Bishop of Bohemia, from Czechoslovakia. He was initially a Catholic priest, but later converted to Orthodoxy together with 100,000 Czech Catholics. He was ordained Bishop of Moravia and Silesia. In the year 1942 he was arrested by the Nazis because of his involvement in the national resistance movement against the Nazi occupation of Czechia. In the crypt of the cathedral in which he served, he sheltered several fighters from the resistance movement, but he was betrayed and placed in the situation of saving his priests and Orthodox faithful from Nazi reprisals. In order to save the lives of the innocent people of the community and of his concelebrating priests, he freely gave himself up and offered his life in exchange for the saving of their lives. In a letter addressed to the German Protectorate, Saint Gorazd wrote: “I place myself at the disposal of the authorities. I am ready to endure anything, even the death penalty.” He was arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and in the end condemned to death and shot; and the Orthodox Church, for his sacrifice, courage, and love toward the faithful Orthodox people, numbered him among the Holy Martyrs.

Seeing the three examples of Holy Confessing Hierarchs, the conclusion emerges that when the Church is persecuted, regardless of the kind of aggression exercised by atheists, heretics, or pagans, the only possibility of salvation is the courageous confession and defense of the Truth; and those who do not confess, through this, deny the faith.

In these times dangerous for salvation, the only true shepherds and seers of mysteries are the Saints who have already condemned, in written or spoken word, the heresy of Ecumenism: the Holy Hieromartyr Hilarion Troitsky, Saint John Maximovitch, Saint Philaret of New York, Saint Seraphim Sobolev, Saint Justin Popovich, Saint Seraphim Rose, Saint Paisios the Athonite, hierarchs such as Metropolitan Augustine of Florina, Archbishop Averky Taushev, and others. From these true shepherds we, the priests of today, must learn the pastoral art of fishing for men, not from the stormy sea of this life, but from the troubled and poisoned waters of the destructive heresy. It is true that we do not have their spiritual height, nor the power and experience of their struggle, but we have the desire to make unconditional obedience to them, knowing that this is the only path of salvation. If we feel that the writings and the example of their life have moved our hearts, and we have begun through deeds to follow them, this would be a sign that we too may consider ourselves a small and insignificant part of their miraculous catch.

But did the Holy Apostles accomplish only one miraculous catch in their life? Are we to be so ignorant as to believe that after the Holy Apostles succeeded in converting a city or a province to Christianity, they stopped only at that, isolated themselves from the rest of the world, and abandoned the mission entrusted to them by the Savior? Behold what the Holy Apostle Paul confesses: “For if I preach the Gospel, I have nothing to boast of; for necessity is laid upon me. For woe is me if I do not preach the Gospel!” (1 Cor. 9:16)

When the bishops abandon the struggle to defend Orthodoxy and pass over to the side of heresy, then the second echelon, represented by the priests, ought to rise up. If these also do not fulfill their duty as shepherds and confessors, then their struggle must be taken up by the monks and even by the simple faithful. The courageous confession of the truth is not a charisma granted rarely only to certain faithful, but is a duty for every Christian who wants to fulfill the commandment of the Gospel: “Whosoever shall confess Me before men, him will I confess also before My Father Who is in heaven; but whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father Who is in heaven.” (Matt. 10:32–33)

The Dogmas and dogmatic Canons are the eternal boundaries which precisely describe the limits of the Orthodox faith. Beyond these boundaries one falls into the cursed realm of heresies.

When a Christian knows these teachings and makes obedience to a shepherd who observes the dogmas with exactness, it becomes unacceptable for him to disregard them even partially or inconsistently, only for certain periods of time.

What does it mean that a faithful person, after it has been explained to him many times, with all the arguments, that he must wall himself off from the heresy of Ecumenism, refuses to do so and participates alternately, sometimes at the services of the Orthodox who have walled themselves off, and sometimes at the services of the ecumenists? This shows that for him it is all the same to live in a “house built upon the rock” (Matt. 7:24), represented by the divine commandments, as to live in a “house built upon the sand” (Matt. 7:26), that is, a house of erroneous human opinions mixed with relativistic teachings of demonic origin. Just as “no man can serve two masters” (Matt. 6:24), so also no one can have at the same time both an Orthodox faith and a heretical faith. People ought to understand that those faithful who have not walled themselves off have remained in communion with the ecumenist bishops and priests and have a faith different from ours, that of the Orthodox who have walled themselves off. Our faith is the entire inheritance received from the Holy Apostles, the Holy Martyrs, and the Holy Fathers, which we want to preserve without additions, without omissions, and without changes. This is the reason why we have no ecclesiastical mingling with them.

If nevertheless, after all the efforts made to determine that man no longer to frequent the assemblies, the services, of the ecumenists, he still does not renounce this sin, then, with pain and regret, he must be temporarily excluded from the Orthodox community walled off from heresy. In this case the priest ought to say to him: “Dear brother, or sister, when you decide to separate yourself definitively from the ecumenists, we will receive you back among us, but until then we can no longer receive you at our services, but only pray for your repentance.”

Two years ago [in 2016], we committed ourselves to the difficult and painful path of confessing Orthodoxy, with the aim of defending and preserving the right faith whole, unchanged, and unfalsified by heretics. We took this step not from an egoistic impulse or personal ambition, but having the blessing of all the Holy Martyrs and Confessors of the Church.

Perhaps some do not understand that walling off from heresy must be done according to the rules left by the Holy Fathers, not according to personal opinions and impressions, because in this latter case the struggle against heresy becomes an illusion and an erroneous model which can lead many faithful into error.

The Christianity of today has reached such a decline that those who are Christians only in name are not only devoid of spiritual sight, but even boast of their blindness, for which reason they often trumpet erroneous conclusions publicly. Thus they say: “We see that nothing has changed with the approval of the documents of the Council of Crete, because neither the dogmas nor the services have changed.” Through this they demonstrate that they are blind and cannot see how the ecumenists have annulled the synodality of the Church, have corrupted the dogma concerning the uniqueness of the Church, have cunningly mocked the Mystery of Marriage, have relativized the importance of fasting, and more recently seek also to dishonor the Mystery of the Priesthood through the fact that they disregard the truth of Holy Scripture, namely, that the priest can be the husband of one wife (Titus 1:6).

In these times of apostasy preceding the apocalyptic events, there are many evil and cunning fishers who skillfully spread their innumerable and dense nets with the aim of catching as many men as possible in order to lead them to perdition. Spiritual fishers who know how to fish in the deep are becoming rarer and rarer in our times.

Returning to the Gospel account of this Sunday, we see that it concludes in a blessed manner: “And when the disciples had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed Him.” (Luke 5:11)

What do we understand from this? The fact that after, with the blessing of the Lord Jesus Christ, they had unexpectedly caught a great multitude of fish, afterward they allowed themselves to be caught by the Savior, becoming, from fishermen, Apostles and pillars of the Church. This is the second mystical catch, which surpasses the first incomparably. It is the response to the call to the apostolate of the Savior’s first disciples.

It is said that the disciples left everything and followed Christ. But being poor, what could they leave?

They left all natural desires, that is, the need for food, for rest, the need to have a quiet and secure shelter, and in general every good for bodily life. They left and despised all the goods after which men generally struggle and run. And what did the Apostles receive as a result of the renunciation of natural desires? They received the grace to learn the art of saving and shepherding human souls.

The Russian Martyr Priest Valentin Sventitsky wrote around the year 1920 that: “In the last times pseudo-Christianity will merge with anti-Christianity. As a result, the centuries-long history of Christianity will end in a state of profound and total falsehood and unbelief. In fact, the peoples will become estranged from the Gospel, although for a time the Church will continue to exercise over them an apparent authority and a powerless power.” This prophecy is taking shape more and more clearly with each passing day. Now nothing remains for us except to wake up and to try to awaken others also, before it will be too late.

Translated from the original Romanian.