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Author: Alexander
Kalomiros
First edition: Astir, 1964.
Second edition, Zefyros, 1995
Prologue, by Fotios Kontoglou
Also in English, by St. Nectarios Orthodox Press
Translation by George Gabriel.
Thoughts of an Orthodox Christian, concerning the attempts for union of the One , Holy, and Apostolic Church, with the so-called churches of the West.
From the time of its first appearance in 1964 (1967 in English), Alexander Kalomiros’ Against False Union, has been widely acclaimed. Orthodox and non orthodox alike have made reference to it, quoting especially from its chapters on ecclesiology, salvation and the participation of the orthodox catholic church in the “World Council of Churches”
In this days, when “because of the abounding of iniquity the love of many hath grown cold”, we hope this book will continue to be a source of inspiration, edification and guidance unto salvation for pious and orthodox Christians, as well as for those that are not in the orthodox faith. (Excerpt from the preface of the English edition)
For neither at any
time have we used flattering words,
as ye know, nor a cloak of covetousness; God is witness,
nor of men sought we glory.
(I Thess. 2:5)
It is possible to
find a middle word that between two
views will signify both. But a middle view between two
opposite views concerning the same thing is impossible...
There is no room for compromise in matters of the
Orthodox Faith.
(St. Mark of Ephesus)
Truly “great is the mystery of piety”, as the blessed Apostle Paul says. Piety and faith, because they are mysteries, yield fruits that knowledge cannot give.
The author of this book is not a theologian trained in the schools where they study the unstudiable - theology. He studied medicine, something which can be studied because it is worldly, human knowledge. He drew his Orthodox Faith and piety from Tradition. He received it in the way, as he himself says, faith and piety are transmitted - from teacher to disciple, from parent to child, from elder to disciple, from Christian to Christian. For this reason he “is one who experiences divine things, not one who learns about them”, having faith as a guide and not knowledge. “He walks by faith and not by sight”, as the Apostle Paul says. And this is why his book is harsh; it does not have the compromises that reveal little faith, nor accomodations to avoid unpleasantness for people of contrary views, nor any false brotherliness. Devotion to truth permits no concessions. His book is harsh and brusque, although the author himself is in fact humble, peaceable, meek, gracious, and modest. But faith gives him the sword of the Spirit, and this humble, sensible, and gracious man, filled with love, appears harsh and brusque. Does not St. Johm the Theologian, the preacher of love, seem to be harsher and brusquer than the other Apostles and preachers of the Gospel, as he appears in his First Epistle and in the Book of Revelation?
The author of this book is young. But “let no one disdain his youth”. I made his spiritual acquaintance when he was studying medicine in Switzerland, and we were publishing the periodical Kibotos (the Ark). He wrote me a letter then about some satanic articles by a Roman Catholic in the newspaper Le Courrier, and asked us to protect our Orthodox Faith from the snares of heretics. Afterwards, he wrote me many letters, and to the present day he writes me letters which are always very informative and beneficial, and which have the sweet fragrance of deep faith and love for our holy Tradition. This is why I insistently urged him to write at greater length on the subjects he briefly outlined in his letters. And I asked him to consent to their being printed in a book, knowing his modesty. Finally he consented, and this small book is the first which he has sent to the publisher, Mr. Alexander Papademetriou, who offered with pleasure to publish it.
We realize this book, written “with much understanding”, will be condemned by many people as rude and bad-tempered, for in our hypocritical time only those men are respected as genuine Christians who do not have within their hearts the fire of faith, and especially of the Orthodox (that is, the true) Faith - and this is why they are lukewarm, spiritless, compromising, and obliging, as are many of those persons systematically involved in theology. The world has learned to regard such people as good and forbearing Christians, whereas it detests those who are like the author of this book - that is, “fervid in spirit” - as fanatics, intolerant, superstitious, and narrow - minded worshippers of empty forms. Alas! today theologians have ended up being “disputers of this world”. Men who are concerned with religion write piles of books, big and important, filled with so-called “theological learning” which, owing to its method of inquiry into religious matters, is nothing else than the worldly knowledge the Apostle Paul calls “vain deceit” and “cunning deception”. The Holy Gospel, which is simplicity itself, is dissected, examined, and dismembered according to systems of philosophy, of “vain deceit”. Confusion, complexity, theories which confuse man, “foolish searchings and geneologies and legalistic battles”, mud which clouds the clear water springing up unto eternal life, all these things are written in the name of Him Who came into the world to save the lost sheep - the man of vain knowledge - from the burden of his sinful mind, crying: “Come unto Me all ye who are heavy written in the name of Christ and His Gospel, which the simplest heart experiences; while those who write these innumerable books have been wandering around in the maze and the darkness of their own wisdom, far from the Christ they have forgotten, engulfed by the vanities of their own intellects. Their hearts no longer feel the breath of God; they are deadened and dried up by their self-con-ceited wisdom for which men horor them
The divine-tongued Apostle Paul meant them when he wrote, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine: but after their own desires shall they heap to themselves teachers, tickling their hearing; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned unto fables” (II Tim. 4:3, 4). “They shall heap to themselves teachers” - they shall bring forth many teachers, and in hearing them they shall be gratified because their empty wisdom shall tickle their ears. But in order that they may not hear the truth, the simple truth of religion, they shall stop up their ears while they wish to be told myths, that is, theories and fantasies void of meaning. Thus today do we not see such “heaps” of teachers who with their talk tickle the ears of students and other Christians?
And so Kalomiros’ book will upset those spirits who have reduced the religion of Christ to a system of worldly knowledge, to rationalism, who detect and mock every “sound doctrine”, which for them is a naive conception of religion, filled with the superstitions of tradition. In fact, what can anything written by a man tile Kalomiros who has not been to a big school (especially a foreign one) be to them?
But fortunate Kalomiros drank from the spring of the living water, from Tradition, and studied the Fathers day and night. And having faith as his guide he was “taught by God”. Christ says, “When the good shepherd putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth forth before them, and the sheep follow him for they know his voice” (John 10:4). That is, “My disciples hear My words with a simple spirit, and they accept them in their hearts without passing them through their complicated intellects and creating theories; they accept them with faith like the innocent sheep which hear the voice of the shepherd and run close to him”. Faith opens the mouth of the believer, and His preaching opens the hearts of Christians, according to the saying of Christ Who said: “He that belieyeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38).
Those of “foolish wisdom” who teach “in persuasive words of human wisdom” do not accept the true preachers of the Gospel, and this is because the true preachers do not conform to this world, but are “transformed by the revewal of their mind” (Rom. 12:2).
They will find, therefore, many occasions in this book for condemnation. They will condemn the author for not having the hypocritical affability they have towards heretics, in spite of the fact that the author is not impertinent, but has the courage of a soldier of Christ and procceds according to the words of the Apostle Paul, who said: “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of wisdom” (II Tim. 1:7).
Another fault they find is that his message is watered with affliction in Christ, with gladdening sorrow; whereas they are optimistic, having their minds turned to the things of this world. But let them see what the Apostle Paul says: “Sorrow in God worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of, but the sorrow of the world worketh death” (II Cor. 7:10). The sorrow a man who believes in God goes through is sorrow which is sweetened by hope, and this is why it is a joyful sorrow, “gladdening sorrow”, and with repentance it brings him to the salvation of his soul.
I praise this blessed young man* who has written such an edifying book - one that breathes forth the spirit of true Orthodoxy. And I glorify and laud the all-honorable name of the Lord, Who gives to the Orthodox Church jewels such as these, which shine in the darkness of error and ruin. May our very merciful Lord and God be glorified and blessed, Who makes steadfast the Orthodox Faith with such stones that “the builders reject”.
Photios Kontoglou
CHAPTER ONE
The tragic experience of recent generations has brought to humanity an intense trirst for peace. Peace is now considered a good higher than many ideals for which people formerly gladly shed their blood. Contributing very much to this is the fact that war is not what it often was in the past, that is, a conflict between injustice and justice, but has become a conflict without meaning between which the injustice of various parties has used to appear just in the eyes of its followers, has caused people to lose faith in the existence of justice and to fail to see anything before them that is worthy of defending. Thus war, any form, seems to be something completely absurd.
This reluctance on the part of humanity for any kind of conflict would have been something admirable if it were the offspring of spiritual health. If injustice, hatred, and falsehood had ceased to exist, then peace would have been the consummation of human happiness. Unity would have been a natural and not an artificial result. But something totally different is noticeable. Today when everyone is speaking of peace and unity, self-love and hatred, injustice and falsehood, ambition and greed, are at their zenith. All - everyone in his own way - speak of love for man, of love for humanity. But there has never existed a greater hypocrisy than that so - called love. Because love towards something theoretical, for something imaginary, such as the concept “humanity”, is equally theoretical and imaginary. It has no relation to love for the particular man we have before us. This love for a particular person, when it exists, is the only real love. It is the love for our neighbor that Christ asked.
This particular man with his imperfections and weaknesses, instead of being loved, has been hated in our time more than in any other age. Not only has he been hated, but he has been scorned and humiliated; he has been regarded as a “thing” without any particular value, a means for the attainment of “high goals”, a particle of the mass. Those who speak the most of love towards man and humanity, of peace and union, are precisely those who hate their neighbor, their acpuaintance, the most. They love man the creation of their own imagination; they do not love man the reality. This worship of the idol “man” is in reality narcissism; it is the worship of the ego.
It would be naivete, therefore, if one were to believe that the pacifist disposition that characterizes humanity today proceeds from love. These words about love are hypocrisy and self-deception. The desire for peace proceeds from the loss of ideals, from fear, and from the love of comfort. It is the desire to be left in peace to enjoy the good things of this earth. It is the conventional cooperation for the acquisition of goods which each person separately would not be able to acquire. It is a universal understanding upon something which has become the passion of the wincle earth: sensualism and materialism. It is a product of necessity.
The peace of which the world speaks is an unconditional capitulation of everything good and sacred and great, and the dominance of pettiness, mediocrity, and lukewarmness. It is the blotting out of the personality of individuals and of peoples. It is a marmelade of compromises and calculations, a sea of hypocrisy, indifference for the truth, the betrayal of everything holy and sacred.
War is a terrible thing, a result of the fall of man, and no one is about to praise it. But the peace for which the world is haggling is something infinitely more fearful. A fever is a very unpleasant thing, but it shows at least that the organism is reacting against something bad which has entered it. The peace which they wish to bring is not, unfortunately, that which comes from the victory over evil, but that which comes from defeat. It is the feverlessness of a corpse.
At bottom, the peace which men pursue is not only a peace of weapons. It is the peace of conscience. They wish to reconcile good with evil, justice with injustice, virtue with sin, truth with falsehood, in order to be able to make peace with their conscience.
So-called Christians play a significant role in the world’s effort for peace. With the slogan “Christians unite”, they set out for the bazar where truth will be sold out.
Once, Christians had faith and were ready to die for their Faith. Today their zeal for the truth has cooled. They have begun to consider it as something secondary. They find the differences between churches, for which in former times Martyrs eagerly sacrificed themselves, the Fathers were exiled, and the faithful mutilated, as unimportand and unworthy of mention.
Most of them are sickly and incorrigible sentimentalists who think that the religion of Christ is an ethical system concerning human relations. Others pursue political purposes and dark interests. All of them together are building the city of Antichrist. They seek union, being indifferent to truth; they seek an external rapprochement, ignoring internal dissensions; they seek the letter, being indifferent to the spirit.
How is it possible for them to hope that what failed in the first centuries of the schism shall be accomplished now that the differences in dogma and mentality have, with the passage of centuries, widened from breaches to gulfs?
The mere fact that they speak of the union of the churches shows that their thought is quite anti-Christian. They thereby concede that the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church which we confess in our Sympol of Faith (Creed) has ceased to exist; that it has been severed into many churches which are no longer catholic, that is, they no longer contain the whole truth and grace as do the local Orthodox churches, but have a greater or lesser part of truth and grace. Consequently, they think that the truth no longer exists upon the earth and that Christ came in vain. For in the confusion of the truth with falsehood, it is impossible for the truth to which Christ came to bear witness to be rediscovered. And hence it is impossible to rediscover Christ, Who is Himself the Truth.
But then why did Christ say that He will be with us until the end of the world? “And I will be with you all the days unto the end of the world”. Why did He say that the Holy Spirit will guide the disciples to the fulness of truth and that the gates of Hades will not be able to prebail against the Church?
If the Church has been divided - and if it has need of union, it means it has been divided - then all that Christ has promised has turned out to be lies! But God forbid such blasphemy! The Church lives and will live until the end of the world, undivided and invulnerable, according to the promise of the Lord. All who speak of “union of the churches” simply deny Christ and His Church.
When an Orthodox patriarch accepts the participation of the Orthodox Church in the Protestant World Council of Churches as one among many “churches”, what else is he doing but publicly confessing, like the Protestants, the existence of many churches, and therefore the division of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church? What else is he doing but denying Christ?
But in their profane efforts, these people bring forward the Church’s liturgical texts and Christ Himself as their allies. Indeed, Christ prayed for His disciples “that they may be one”, and the Church prays at every. Liturgy “for the union of all (hyper tes ton panton henoseos)”.note1
But these phrases do not mean that the Church prays that someday Christians should be united with mutual compromises in their beliefs. They do not refer to pursuits of compromising agreements by which variously named elements are united. They have no relation to the protocols for an alliance, or agreement, or union, such as those between different nations which are signed after many negotiations. No, these phrases mean none of these things. The Church does not pray to God that variously opposed elements be united, but that all men should become ONE. In other words, that they should all accept the truth with great contrition and humbly prostrate before the Church and be numbered among her members. That they come to realize the error under which they have lived and hasten to the light and the truth, that is, to the Church. This is what the Church prays for. Exactly what she also prays for in the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great: “Return [O Lord] those in error and unite them to Thy Catholic and Apostolic Church”. Only this prayer and desire proceeds from genuine love, because it seeks the healing of the sick and not their delusion.
A few naive Orthodox think that this rapprochement of the churches is not taking place for the purpose of union, but for the purpose of enlightenment and mission to the heterodox. “These are”, they say, “manifestations of love for our brothers”. “If we shut ourselves in our shell”, they often say, “if we do not attend the international conferences and send observers to the Papal synods, etc., then how will the Westerners Know the Orthodox Church, and how will they be attracted towards her?”
But how will the Westerners be taught that the Orthodox Church is the One and True Church when they see her consorting with the false “churches” as an equal among equals? Will they not think, therefore, that Orthodoxy is also like the others - relative and partial? Or is it reasonable for one to hope that those councils of fanatic biretta - wearers and befrocked pastors will ever be able to recognize the truth? They are only flattering the Orthodox in order to draw them over to their side. If they had a genuine nostalgia to know Orthodoxy, they would have no need for councils and conferences. They would have gone to drink from her sources, from her Fathers and Saints.
No! the best way to convince others of the truth is to believe in it yourself. Do not discuss it, only confess it. The councils and conferences debate the truth. But this is a betrayal, because in such instances it is not a matter of dialogue with and admonition to heretics, but of discussion with “churches”. Christ does not ask for debaters, but for confessors. The truth which He taught us is not the kind that is debatable. In the various ecumenical conferences the discussion takes the form of commerce, where an exchange of compromises takes place in matters of faith in order to arrive at a final agreement. Under such conditions even the mere attendance of an Orthodox at an ecumenical conference is a betrayal of Christ. It is the betrayal of Christ to unbelievers for thirty pieces of silver, because by attending, the Orthodox admits his Faith to be debatable, and permits the notion that he too will make compromises if he is given a satisfactory exchange.
If, instead of this, all those who speak of union today would confess Orthodoxy as the only and absolute truth and refuse every official and unofficial ecclesiastical contact with heretics, without fearing to name them as such, then their voice would be heard much farther; and more important, it would be respected and would provoke thought. Whereas now their voice is a voice of compromises, a voice which does not move anyone, a voice which, deep down, no one respects.
The Fathers did not enter into discussions with heretics. They confessed the truth and refuted their claims without courteousness and compliments. They never arrived at mutual understandings with heretical “churches”. Their dialogue was always public and had a view to the salvation and edification of souls. The Orthodox Church did not converse with “churches” of the heretics. It was not a discussion of the Church with churches, but a dialogue between the Church and souls who had lost their way. The Church does not discuss, for she does not seek. She simply gives - because she has everything.
But why are our Christians so easily moved by sermons about the union of the churches? And instead of being filled with zeal for the transmission of the truth to this world which lacks it so much, they suck on the caramel of peace, weighing to see which are more, the things which separate or those which unite Christians. It is because they themselves lack knowledge of the truth. Most of them being members of social-Christian organizations and brotherhoods, were catechized from their earliest years in an ethico-philosophical system with a Christian veneer which led them to believe that the purpose of Christianity is to achieve the peaceful coexistence of men in the spirit of love. Eternity and the vision of God are things very distant for these Christians, and often of no interest. Most of them, being extroverts, are men of action who came to Christianity to find an organized and directed modus vivendi, a way of living as good and honorable citizens upon this earth. For such people, God is the Great Sevant of their personal interests, and eternal life is a good but, fortunately, distant hope of restoration.
In Christians such as these, the sermons about union take root very easily. How good it would be, really, if the circle of our own honest and virtuous people were to be extended on a world-wide scale. We could have transactions without fear of perhaps being fooled; we could have good and peaceful relations without ever being in danger of persecution or of having to struggle. As for the truth, “What is truth?” We all believe in Christ, that is sufficient. Besides, the world today faces difficult times. Christians must be united quickly to face communism, for example. They ask, “Who will guide and who will save this contemporary world? Only a single, united Christian Church”, they reply.
But Christ did not become man in order to save this world which abides in wickedness. Rather, He came to save His own from the world, to pull them away from the ranks of the evil one, to unite them to Himself and to deify them by grace, and with them to save the entire groaning creation. The world is walking the way of death. It is following the ruler of this world, the enemy of God. “I do not pray for the world, but for those whom Thou hast given Me” (John 9:17).
But such people take the part of the world and sacrifice the jewels of the Christian faith and life for that diabolical party which will never be saved. It is not Christ Who asks for the so-called union of the churches, but the world. Christ does not ask for the union of falsehood with truth, but it is the world that seeks to adulterate the truth, to make it relative and partial. This is why, when a discussion arises about the union of the churches, one sees that it is supported enthusiastically by people who were never previously interested in matters of religion. Union is the best way of neutralizing Christianity that the devil’s party has discovered. It is the beginning of the dissolution of Christianity and its submission to the whims of politics; it is the conversion of Christianity into a servant of the interests of the world.
With union, Christianity may acquire greater world power, but it will lose all its spiritual strength, exactly what troubles the world. Has it not already happened to the Roman Catholic “Church”? The Papists’ thirst for world power has made them descend to the well-worn path of political machinations, from which they have emerged as tools of the great political trends.
All those who speak of union have not understood why Christ came into the world. They think that He came to preach an artificial ethical message like their own, that He came to teach us how to live upon this earth as good citizens. They say over and over again that people must follow the law of Christ in order that the Kingdom of God might finally come upon the earth. Some speak of a “Christian Greece”, others, of “Christian democracies”, others of “Christian Kingdoms”, and none of them realize how much their expectations resemble the expectations of the Jews who wanted the Messiah to be an earthly King.
They do not want Christ as He is; they do not want the Christ Who refused to submit to the devil’s temptations in the desert. They want a Christ Who will submit to them. They want a Christ Who desires the Kingdoms of the earth, a Christ Who will turn the stones into bread so that men may be satiated, a Christ who will overwhelm the world with miracles that inspire awe and constrain men to submit.
In other words, these people do not wait for Christ, but for the Antichrist. Until the Second Coming, Christ will remain humble and hidden, far from earthly powers and earthy comforts, without forcing anyone to follow Him, and only asking of those who would come near Him to resemble Him in humility and obscurity, and to expect nothing earthly.
The “Christians” who speak of a “nation of God”, “Christian Greece”, “world Christianity”, and “union of the churches” do not want that kind of Christ. Like the Grand Inquisitor of Dostoyevsky, they are ready to cast Christ into the fire because He upsets their plans which they have been persistently cultivating for years. “You came and taught us a Christianity which is inhuman and hard”, says the Inquisitor to Christ, “and we’ve labored for so many centuries now to make it a human religion. And now that we’ve succeeded, you’ve come to spoil our efforts of so many centuries? But you won’t accomplish it. Tomorrow I shall order them to burn you as a heretic”.
Yes, people want a Christ Who will talk about this life and not the other, a Christ Who will offer the pleasures of this life and not of the next. They do not want wealth that cannot be weighed and touched, but wealth that is tangible here and now. They do not want Him as ruler of the future age, but of the present one.
This is why they do not care what will become of the truth when the wavering and so-called Christian churches unite after a thousand and one compromises. This is why they are not interested in what will become of the life in Christ after the invasion of the clean land of Orthodoxy by so many religious barbarians and spiritual nitwits. The truth does not interest them; Christ does not interest them, nor the life in the Spirit and grace. They are interested only in the earthly power that unity gives and world rule under a single world-view.
These people want to be called Christians without really being Christians. Most of them believe that they are true Christians, because they do not know what Christianity is and confuse it with philosophical theories and “world theories”, to use a favorite term of theirs. In actuality, they are followers of the Antichrist like the Jews of Christ’s time, like the Jews of every age.
The Jews awaited the Messiah for centuries, and when He came they did not accept Him; instead, they hung Him on the Cross. And why? Because Christ was not what they were waiting for. And that is why they were not able to recognize the Messiah in His person. They were waiting for an earthly king, a world conqueror. They awaited someone who would subject all the races of the world at the feet of the nation of Israel, who force the Roman rulers of the world to bow and worship him, who would give power and glory to his followers.
When they saw Him poor and humble, meek and full of peace, one Who offered no earthly goods but spoke of heavenly things, and not only that, but even asked them to deny the earthly and tangible so that liberated they could reach the heavenly and itangible, they realized that He was not for them. He was not the Messiah they awaited, but exactly the opposite. He Who refused to turn the stones into bread for all to be filled, Who refused to overwhelm the mobs with His power and did not agree to subjugate the kingdoms of the earth, was not the appropriate leader for them. That is why they crucified Him and began awaiting another. And they still await him. And along with the Jews are millions of people awaiting the Messiah of the Jews, and most of them are called Christians. And they have no idea that they await the same Messiah as the Jews.
The tragedy is that the Messiah whom the Jews await will come. It was said by the mouth of Christ and by the mouth of the Apostles; it is written in the books of the New Testament. The Messiah of the Jews shall come. He will give the bread which Christ refused to give, and along with that, all the material things which He refused to give. He will overwhelm them with signs and wonders which people unto the ends of the earth will fear and be amazed at, and they will come grovelling to fall at his feet. He will unite all the nations and races and kingdoms of the world into one state. He will fill the hearts of the Scribes of the law and the Pharisees with joy - the hearts of every race of “Jews”. Yes, the Messiah of the Jews shall come. He will be what Christ is not, and he will not be what Christ is. He will be the Antichrist.
“Children, it is the last hours, and as ye have heard that the Antichrist cometh...” (I John 2:18).
“Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and by our gathering together unto Him, that ye be not shaken in mind or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means, for that day shall not come except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. Remember ye not, that when I was yet with you, I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity already doth work, only until he who withholdeth be taken out of the way. And then shall the wicked one be taken out of the way. And then shall the wicked one be-revealed, whom the Lord shall consume by the breath of His mouth and by the brightness of His coming shall destroy him, him whose coming is according to the working of Satan with all power and signs and false wonders and with every deception of unrighteousness in them that perish, because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them a working of delusion that they should believe a lie, that they all might be judged who believed not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (II Thess. 2: 1-12).
The Antichrist will not appear in history with a fearful and shocking manner by which all would recognize him, nor will he have an ugly appearance, nor yet will he do immoral works. He will come in such a way that very few will realize who he is. He will come after a long preparation of centuries which started in the first days of the Church and which continues with increasing progress in our days. Humanity will see in his person its greatest benefactor.
So many centuries of apostasy have cultivated humanity and have prepared it to accept him. Humanity awaits him as its ideal I eader. All the developments of history lead to the Antichrist.
Catholicism permitted the worldly spirit to nourish the Christianity of the West. It steeped Christian thought in the rationalism and the pagan disposition of the ancient Greeks. Finally, with the Infallibility of the Pope, Catholicism brought a mechanical element into the relation between God and man, teaching that God promised to speak through the mouth of sinful and haughty men, as many of the Popes have been. The Renaissance and humanism were the completion of the Western Christian world’s turn toward idolatry. In reality these were manifestations of men’s disillusionment with an adulterated Christianity. Today humanism has become the religion of the age, unfortunately preached even by so-called Christians as “Hellenic - Christian” civilization.
Protestantism drew Papist rationalism to its extreme conclusions. Protestantism rejected the holiness of the Church and her guidance by the Holy Spirit because it saw neither holiness nor truth in the “church” of the West. Thus it abolished Tradition and left its believers with no criterion of truth or falsehood, estranging the grace of God from its realm forever.
From Protestantism to atheism and materialism, there was no longer a great distance. Many kinds of philosophies began to lay claim to the position of Christian faith in the minds of man, and in the end scientism conquered the world. It had a special power of winning over the masses because its achievements in the field of technology evoked the wonder and rapture of the masses, which, lacking spiritual criteria, fell an easy prey to materialism. Science further gave humanity the false sense of knowledge. It may have changed its views and theories at every moment, but each time these views and theories had the sanctity of proven knowledge; and that influences peoples’ minds in a magic way.
Finally, when humanity, having descended by such steps, became enslaved to the passion of materialism, communism sprang forth. When people even came to believe that the only real good is money, it was natural to demand its equitable distribution from governments which were apathetic towards the pain of the impoverished people. This demand filled souls with hate and malice and made them even more unhappy, opening unbridgeable chasms between people and leading many to the hate of Cain. (Whatever we write here does not mean that the fair distribution of money is not an obligation, and a rather fundamental one, of government). That is how the war started between capitalism and communism, which are actually two sister systems identically materialistic and money-worshipping, and divided only by their own interests and the battle over the distribution. The program of both is to turn stones into bread, to unite the world under their influence, and to astonish the world with accomplishments that man could not even imagine. Thus humanity has gradually reached the outer gates of the Antichrist’s kingdom. It has arrived at the point where it has not only the will, but also the ability to respond positively to the three temptations of Lucifer. In a little while, all that will remain will be for the Antichrist himself to take over the general leadership of the universal state, to do away with hunger and poverty forever, and to provide men abundantly with material goods so that in their hearts, filled with pleasure and comfort, there will no longer be a place for God.
When one considers all this, he realizes that in a humanity concerned with nothing else but its own tranquility, which holds nothing sacred and holy but its own materialistic interests, that in a world of pragmatic men who regard any discussion concerning truth as useless babbling, not only is the union of the churches not difficult, but on the contrary, it is inevitable. Moreover, I dare say that not only is the union of the so-called Christian churches inevitable, but the union of all religions generally.
In his kingdom the Antichrist will not tolerate discord; he will not tolerate religions or quarrels over religious questions. He will sit in the temple of God as God, and all the people of the earth will worship him, because “power was given him over every race and people and tongue and nation. And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life” (Rev. 12: 7-8). For those people, then, “whose names are not written in the book of life”, only one religion will exist, the religion of the Antichrist.
Already, right now there are specimens of religions such as can comprehend all religions - forerunners of the religion of the Antichrist. One such religion is Freemasonry. It has already been embraced by the more progressive of the world’s leaders. With its syncretism it can reconcile in the minds of fools all the religious antitheses of humanity and overcome all the obstacles and difficulties to union which the various churches will meet. What reason is there, indeed, for exerting so much effort to find acceptable solutions for dogmatic and other differences between the various denominations, and afterwards for the differences between religions, and not for advancing directly to the union of all religions? To a kind of Freemasonry?
And having realized this, most of today’s religious leaders, at least the “greatest” and most “important”, have hot-footed it (progressive as they are) to become Masons, without its preventing them from wearing their cassocks or vestments, or from celebrating their Liturgies. But because the laity are not quite ready yet, it is necessary that the former keep up appearances and proceed first to union of the churches, and then to union of the religions.
These, then, will be the developments in the not-so-distant future. That is why the Lord asks whether He will find any faithful when He comes to the earth again. “When the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18Q8).
A glance into the past will teach us much about the course ecclesiastical matters have taken and will take.
The Byzantine emperors’ first tendencies to unify with Papal error fortunately were cut off by the attitude of the people and the subjugation of Byzantium to the Turks. But as soon as the Greek nation found its liberty, the old temptation knocked at its door again. In the beginning, the true Greeks, men of the people and of the traditions, resisted the current of Europeanization. But they were unlettered, and even though they had shed their blood for the freedom of their land, they were quickly pushed aside by the newly learning creates, had the power of King Otto’s court. “These degraded the fatherland and the religion which is now shaken by the irreligious. In the time of Turkish occupation, not one stone from the old churches was disturbed. Phanariotes and the like who were contaminated in Europe, and they spoiled our monasteries and churches, befouling some and turning others into stables. We suffered these things from many such priests, and from laymen, military men, and politicians. Even though we shed our blood, we are in danger of losing our fatherland and our religion” (Macriyiannis, Memoirs, p. 398).
These half-educated intellectuals scorned the Greek people with the passion of fifth columnists. They disdained their language, their customs and manners, and their mentality. They used all possible means at their disposal to adulterate the truth of their Faith and to graft secularism and rationalism onto the holy tree of Orthodoxy, which for so many centuries remained undefiled under the barbarian conqueror. To strike the Church at her heart, they struck at her monasteries. They closed some, confiscated the property of others, and to others they sent “progressive” abbots who dissolved them more easily than any double-edged sword of state.
Without her monasteries, and with her bishops enslaved to the state, the Church became an unfenced vineyard. The education of the nation left the Church’s hands and fell into the hands of a Christian civilization, was and remains completely pagan. Everything began to be adapted to the taste of the nouveau riche and provincial Athenian society.
The worship of the Church began to deteriorate to something more worldly. Byzantine music began to be Europeanized and degenerated into theatrical four-part harmony. The icons began to look too austere and ugly to the eyes of the women of the “upper” classes, who wanted “sweet Jesuses” full of indulgence for their iniquities, incapable of evoking awe and reverence. The beards and long hair of the clergy began to bother them, and the clergy, responsive to the demands of the contemporary public, began to groom atmosphere was replaced by Edison’s lights, making the church resemble an imperial hall appropriate for the weddings and official appearances of the ruling class.
But that was not all. Not only primary and secondary but also higher education left the hands of the Church. Thus the theologians, future priests, and hierarchs were not born in the bosom of the Church, their natural mother, but in the bosom of a state university full of the stench of rationalism and spiritual shallowness, without any possibility of tasting of the mystical life of holiness in Christ, which alone makes true theologians. And so there sprouted up, like tares in the Church, theologians who had their minds filled with many philosophical theories of Protestant or Roman origin, but their hearts empty of the life of Orthodoxy.
These people were incapable of seeing the chasm that divides the Eastern Church from the Western “churches”. They considered it only a question of dogmatic formulas, not a matter of life and essence. For them life in Christ was a series of emotional states and ethical acts, just as it is for Westerners. The revelation (the inner vision) of God, the living experience of the presence of Christ, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, that is, the abiding of truth in a man’s heart, were unknown to them. When they speak of truth, they mean a cut-and-dried dogma. Dogma, however, for them as for the Westerners, was a separate world of intellectual formulas, burden some enough, and whose value, after this split between life and faith, they were incapable of appreciating.
The foundations, then, upon which even our most well-intentioned theologians were going to build in order to defend their Orthodoxy, were rotten to the core. It is frightening when one considers that the whole of contemporary Greek religious life is built upon these rotten foundations. At one time the piety of the people sprang from the monasteries, which were its spiritual bulwark and guide; in the Greek Kingdom piety came to be founded on the theologian, lay or clerical, whom we have described. This theologian, imitating Western examples, organized brotherhoods and Christian unions and took preaching and catechism into his own hands. And whereas before, the piety of a place had as its center the local monastery and the priests of the Church, and the Christian of Area A did not differ in any way from the Christian of Area B because all were children of the same Orthodox Church, now the theologian organized factions; and now in one and the same place there are Christians of Faction A and Christians of Faction B, always rivals and distrusting, divided - without either side understanding what their differences are. But in spite of all the hate and schisms between them, the factions agree that as far as the Westerners are concerned, “there are more things uniting us than there are separating us”, and “we must look to the things which unite us and overlook those which separate us”. In other words, they regard union and love with their Western “brothers” (whom they have never seen or known) easier than with their Orthodox compatriots and neighbors, whom they see daily and know. As we have said, today people labor for the love of man, for the abstract love of humanity, at the same moment that they are incapable of loving their neighbor.
In this atmosphere of deterioration, there suddenly came, after pressure from the state, the first official step of the Greek Church towards the Pope: the adoption of the Papal calendar.
Unfortunately, few have understood the significance of the “old calendar” issue, as the matter is called. Most attribute the resistance of the Old Calendarists^ to the narrow-mindedness of the uneducated, this being another indication of the deep contempt nurtured by the conceited educated towards the unlearned. But in order for these uneducated people to resist the way they did, they must have had, if nothing else, a religious zeal and spiritual concern lacking in the masses of the indifferent who, not knowing the true nature of the problem, followed the majority of the hierarchy. None of the enlightened theologians and their followers even showed any indication of pain over the division of the Greek Church, nor did any of them seek to answer the painful cries of so many thousands of faithful. The majority were on their side; their numbers always gave them a sense of security. In actuality, though, they did not even have the numbers on their side. For although there were only a few thousand Old Calendarists and millions of followers of the new calendar, those few thousands were thousands of faithful suffering for the Church. Whereas among the millions of the indifferent, the materialists and atheists, followers of the new calendar, it is doubtful that one could find a few thousand really faithful people. They only sneered at those simple new confessors of Orthodoxy, saying that they refused out of superstition to correct their calendar which is not accurate.
But the problem did not lie there. They were unjustified in accusing the Old Calendarists of fighting over a calendar. The issue was not over which of the two calendars is correct. It is a known fact that both calendars are inaccurate. Neither had the Old Calendarists insisted on the old calendar, nor had the New Calendarists brought forth the new calendar, for reasons of astronomical accuracy. The reason that prompted the decision for the introduction of the new calendar into Greece was neither astronomical nor theological. It simply involved one of the many capitulations of the state-enslaved hierarchy to its lord, which asked it of them in order to facititate its business transactions.
The reason for the Old Calendarist refusal to comply was very theological and sprang from a deep ecclesiastical consciousness. Actually, the liturgical unity of the Church was risked in favor of political interests. With the change of the calendar there followed a severance of the liturgical accord between the Greek Church and the other Orthodox Churches, which preserve the old calendar to this day. And it was not only a matter of discord in the liturgical life of the militant Church - the continuity of the liturgical life of the militant Church with the triumphant also was broken.
In Greece when the church bells call the faithful to celebrate Christmas and the chanters chant joyfully the “Christ is born, glorify ye”, millions of our Orthodox brothers throughout the rest of the world and on the Holy Mountain are still in the fast of Advent: and they do not hear the bells, nor chant with us the joyful hymns of Christmas.
Can one imagine anything worse for the Church than this break in liturgical concord which estranges us spiritually not only from the triumphant Church of those who have fallen asleep in Christ, and from the Saints who celebrated and performed the Liturgy according to the old calendar which we rejected?
So many efforts of our Fathers, so many synods were needed to enact that festal calendar - and all this so that there would be liturgical harmony between the Christian churches, because this harmony and accord expresses the internal liturgical unity of the Church. This is what makes the Church visibly one, despite the multiplicity of local churches. The Church is not made one the way the Pope thinks, by hard discipline and obedience to a prescribed hierarchy which has as its head a single individual who claims to replace Christ on earth, but the Church is made one by the mystical communion in the Body and Blood of Christ. Every church where the Holy Eucharist is performed and where the faithful are gathered “in the same place” comprises the whole image of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. What makes one parish comprise one body with all other parishes, and one diocese comprise one body with all other dioceses, is the mystical communion of all in the Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy Spirit and truth.
The unity of the Church, therefore, is a mystical bond which is forged during the Holy Eucharist when the faithful partake of the Body and Blood of Christ. Christians are one body, those who live upon the earth today and those who have lived before us in past centuries, and also those who will live in the years to come; and this is because we have a common root, the Body of Christ. “We many are one bread, one body, for we all partake of the one Bread”.
The unity of the Church, therefore, is not administrative, is not disciplinary or organizational, but liturgical. That is why the festal calendar is so important. The unity which springs from the Holy Eucharist, the one Faith, and the one Baptism ceases to be manifested externally when there is liturgical anarchy. The form and the words of the Liturgy have been prescribed so that all the churches can worship God in the same way. And the service book for each month (Menaion) contains the daily hymns commemorating the Saints of the day and the chants for every holy day. In this way no discord can disrupt the liturgical harmony. Even the music and the iconography, which are called liturgical arts, have similarly been prescribed so that no icon painter or chanter can paint an icon or chant according to his own imagination, but is compelled to adapt his personal skill and ability to prototypes of the most austere spiritual realism. And similarly, the calendar of festivals has been prescribed in order that no priest can celebrate the holy days whenever he wishes, but that there be complete communion of prayer among all the faithful upon the earth.
Therefore, what the artist does who paints the icons of the Church according to his own tastes, disdaining the Tradition, and what the chanter does who destroys the liturgical harmony by singing theatrically in church instead of chanting, the Greek hierarchs have likewise done, spoiling the liturgical harmony of the Orthodox Church by deciding to follow a different calendar of festivals in Greece than that which the other Orthodox churches and the Holy Mountain of Athos follow. Thus on the Holy Mountain they celebrate a different Saint and chant different hymns than they do in Thessalonika; the Transfiguration of the Lord is celebrated on one day in Athens and on another in Jerusalem, Sinai, and Moscow.
The tragedy of this discord is difficult to conceive of in this country [i.e., Greece] because of the distances. But it becomes painfully perceptible to one who travels to Europe and sees in the neighborhoods of the same city the Russians celebrating one holiday and the Greeks another, or one hears the bells of the Greek church calling the faithful while the bells of the Russian church remain silent. And then one asks himself if both churches are Orthodox.
It has not been realized in Greece how serious a compromise with the elements of the world and how serious a blow against the Church was the abolition of the old calendar in favor of the new. And if a few did understand, they did not have the strength to raise their stature and proclaim the truth. No one of worldly wisdom and strength found the words to protest. Thus it was proved once again that “God has chosen the weak of the world to shame the strong”, and that “God hath made foolish the wisdom of the wise”, because whereas the wise were silent and accepted it, the uneducated faithful were aroused. And they “spake not foolishness as did the foolish wise of the world”. They did not resort to astronomical theories and mathematical calculations, but they spoke in the name of Tradition, which they felt was something holy which no one can trample upon in favor of science which continually rejects its own theories, or in favor of the political and economic interests of a country.
But “the disciples of the wise men of this world consider those taught by God fools”. Thus from the beginning until today, they consider the Old Calendarists fools, religious fanatics, superstitious, etc., and they rejoice at their own knowledge which places them above such “trifles” so that they do not make issues out of “nothing”.
But when you reckon one element of Tradition as trivial, then at the first opportunity you will consider trivial whatever other things you do not like in the Tradition. That is what happened with the iconography; that is what happened with the psalmody; that is what happened with the appearance of the priests. Now the robes seem too black for them; later the beards and the hair will seem too long. They want to put musical instruments in the church. They do away with the stalls on the sides of the church and replace them with comfortable pews. They revile monasticism, slander the monks, confiscate the properties of the monasteries, carry on systematic propaganda against monasticism. They overlook the canons which pray together with them. They are indifferent to the opinion of the Liturgy and cut out sections from the services “so that people won’t get tired”. In other words, they change the Orthodox customs according to the tastes of a decadent society full of the worship of the flesh and materialism.
In this way the fabric of the Tradition begins to unravel, and no one knows where it will stop or if it will stop. And besides, this unraveling is so easy today because it has the approval of the world, of the influential, and of the educated. The educated especially consider it their honor not to agree with the Fathers of the Church, but to agree with a certain great, scholarly professor of Protestant theology or with a certain Jesuit professor who is famous in Europe, and so on.
How then shall the Orthodox Tradition and Faith not be adulterated? And how, under such conditions, shall we not discuss the union of the churches and not consider it something which can easily has acquired the same mentality and the same dispositions as the Western “churches” to be united with them? Is the day far off when we shall go to church on Sunday and hear the priest praying: “and for our Father the Pope of Rome”? Will anyone react if such a thing happens? Or will it seem natural to all that we have finally jumped over the differences which separate East and West?
But let all who speak so lightly about the union of the churches understand that the unity of the Church is a mystical gift of the divine presence. It is not something which is decided upon at conferences, but something which either exists or does not exist. No decision of men can constrain God.
Of course, externally union can come about, and all can declare - Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox - that now we are at last one church, and we can commemorate the Pope of Rome, and the Pope of Rome can commemorate the Patriarch of Constantinople. If we all agree upon one “minimum of truth”, upon one simplified creed, and if a few other issues are settled there can be union. It will be a legally and externally valid system, but it will be a system that has no relation with the Church of Christ, even if all the external appearances make it resemble the Church. “God is not mocked”. When the conditions of His presence do not exist in men, God does not come to men.
The Church of Christ was never a human system. The Church was born, it was not made. The discussions of men can make something to which they can give the name “Church”. But this fabrication will be something with no life. The living Church will have no relation to it. She will exist somewhere far from all these fabrications, unaltered, full of truth and light, pure of every falsehood of compromises, with the Holy Spirit lighting her steps and enveloping her like the light of the sun, guiding her “to the fulness of thuth”.
As for how many true Christians there will be, it does not matter, even if they can be counted on one hand. They will be the bearers of the Tradition, which they will not simply have learned, but have lived, having had its living experience. Christians live in the Tradition as in an element, as fish live in water.
Let all who truly seek God stop talking about the union of the “churches”. The Church does not admit of union because she was never broken. Men leave her, even if they retain many of her external marks. Let all who love God return to the Church and humble themselves that they may enter, because her gate is narrow and one must berd very low in order to pass through.
But in the chaos and hypocrisy of the contemporary world, it is not easy to discern the Church of Christ and to draw near her, because it is not sufficient for a church to be named Orthodox in order to be such literally. Unfortunately, apostasy exists even under the externally Orthodox cassock, and under Orthodox domes, and among the practicing Orthodox people. But this is nothing new; the Church it from her first steps, but now it has reached unusual dimensions.
We must learn to discern the Church behind appearances. As far as appearances are concerned, in the Orthodox Church today confusion and chaos prevail externally. Everyone - educated or uneducated, believer or unbeliever - has his own view of what Christianity or Orthodoxy is and supports his view fanatically. And in this storm it is impossible to find your course without a compass. There is one infallible criterion: the continuation of Tradition. Wherever the Tradition is preserved living and pure without disruption or change from the times of the Apostles, as many faithful - bishops, priests, or laymen - live and transmit this Tradition, there is the Orthodox Church, and they constitute the Body of Christ. All others, priests or laymen, who wish to be called Orthodox without following the living Tradition of the centuries are intruders; they are tares in Christ’s field.
Today the tares are very many and the ears of wheat very few, but the field is God’s field, and in spite of the variety of tares, the wheat remains the same from generation to generation, from seed to seed, the same as that first wheat which the Holy Spirit planted in that same divine field on the day of Pentecost.
That living Tradition has never been disrupted, because the very mouth of Christ promised the Church that “the gates of Hades shall not prevail against her”, and the mouth of God does not lie. Those who search to find the Tradition of the Christian Church of the first centuries or of the centuries before the schism in order to follow it confess that they have lost the continuity of Tradition. But they are very going to find it no matter how much they push forward their researches, because the Tradition is something living and transmitted as life from the living to the living. It is not something which is discovered through scholarly studies, nor is it something which is learned intellectually.
Those millions or tares which have sprung up in the bosom of the Orthodox Church in recent times have brought a secular spirit with them, so that no Orthodox Church has been able to keep her outward marks unchanged. Even the Old Calendarists, who have kept such a good line in the calendar issue, in the case of iconography clearly bear stigmas of betrayal of the Tradition. This fact is a common sin of all the Orthodox churches of late.
Fortunately up to now, all the deviations from the Tradition which we have described have not cut off the Orthodox churches from their root. The tree remains alive and thriving in spite of all the garnishes which they have added to it. The Orthodox churches have not withered as has happened to the “churches” of the West. If you just shake off the dust which the secular spirit has scattered upon them, you will find the fresh leaves of the authentic Tradition. Tradition has never ceased to live and to be in force in the sphere of Orthodoxy. There are still monks who live Orthodox monasticism. There are still genuine theologians who have not defiled the truth, but keep it shining and pure, far from every alien mingling. There are still Byzantine chanters and true bearers of the Orthodox iconographic tradition. There are still priests like the old ones dedicated to their sacred function, whose constant contact with God does not permit them to be distressed over their long beards and black robes, but rather makes these things radiate holiness. There are still simple people who are worthy of seeing great miracles.note2
The true Tradition, then - the life, the spiritual experience, and the teaching of the Apostles and the Holy Fathers of all ages, these imprints of the walking of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of Christians - exists and continues alive among the living without any break from the Apostolic times. There is a constant harmony in all the actions of Orthodox of all ages up to the present day, written and unwritten; and this is the golden rule upon which everyone must measure his thoughts and actions in order to see if he is within or out of the scope of Orthodoxy. The outward signs might give the impression that the continuity has been corrupted or broken, but if one looks a little further he will see that it still blossoms and refreshes those who seek it.
The Tradition exists and will continue to exist until the end of the world. But every passing day makes its discovery more difficult. Every passing day adds more garnish upon the tree of Orthodoxy, and that is how people become confused and do not know where the truth lies.
Someday sooner or later, no one knows exactly when, the “churches” and the religions will be united. In that chaos of falsehood even the chosen will be in danger of losing their way. It will be the age of the Antichrist.
How and when the Antichrist will come, no one can say. And it is unknown how many shall be able to recognize him when he comes, because he will come as a benefactor of humanity. For the present, one thing can be said with certainty: all these movements towards union among nations and churches, all these compromises, all this uniformity of humanity gradually produced under the steamroller of technological culture are paving the way for the coming of the Antichrist.
This development of humanity, according to the criteria of the world, is wonderful. But according to Christian criteria, it is a development towards destruction.
This does not surprise or frighten the Christian. He knows that the world has condemned itself. And that is why Christ refused to pray for the world. “I do not ask for the world”. The ruler of this world is the devil, and the devil “from the beginning was a murderer”.
Death will find the world at the height of its glory, at the height of self-conceit, at the summit of the tower of Babel, when man will be at the zenith of his very old attempt to become god by his own powers, apart from God. When the Son of man comes, he shall find man in the fully glory of his satanic mania.
God does not ask the Christian to save the world. Any attempt on the part of Christians to change the course the world has taken would be futile and ridiculous. The world is a sinking ship, and it is sinking because its very structure is rotten. God does not ask the Christian to save the ship, but to save as many of the shipwrecked as he can.
The new Ark of Noe, the Church of Christ, sails near the site of the shipwreck. Any who wish to be saved from the waters must seek refuge in her. But in order to find refuge they must forsake the world, not so much geographically as essentially. “Wherefore come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not any unclean thing, and I will receive you” (II Cor. 6:17).
But here is where the difficulties begin. How can you forsake the world when your whole life is bound up in it? But to answer this question is not the purpose of the present book. One finds it in the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers. Besides, the whole life in Christ is a struggle for freedom from the world, from the “Egypt” of the passions, and for refuge in the Ark of the Church.
But when the age of the Antichrist approaches, even the Ark of the Church shall be difficult to discern. Many will say, “Behold, here is Christ”, and “There is Christ”, but they will be false prophets. Whatever will be accepted officially as the Church, having little by little already betrayed the treasures of the Faith, will have been assimilated by the indescribable, unifying marmelade which will retain most of the outward signs of the Church with satanic cleverness. Here and there small groups of faithful with some priest will still preserve the true Tradition alive.
But who will be able to recognize the Church of Christ in those small, scorned groups of faithful that lack all worldly splendor? Yet at the end of time the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church will be just those forgotten and outwardly disunited little parishes which may even be ignorant of the others’ existence, but will be united among themselves by the mystical bonds of the Body and Blood of the Lord, in the Holy Spirit, with the common Faith and Tradition which they will preserve undefiled.
In those days even the chosen will be in danger of being led astray. Much courage is needed for one to side with the few and to go against the currents of the world, with the danger of being ridiculed by the “smart” and abused by the strong. Much wisdom is needed in order for one to discern the truth there exactly where the whole world sees nonsense and stupidity. Besides, the followers of falsehood will have the miracle on their side, the miracle which the devil asked of Christ in the desert, the signs and wonders of the false prophets and the false Christs. “For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and they shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect” (Mat. 24:24). How many shall be able to find their way when all the beacons will be misguiding? Then, “he who persists to the end shall be saved”.
For the present, let all who wish to live near Christ hasten to acquire discretion in order to recognize beforehand the false prophets and false Christs, and let them wear the armor of the Faith so that they will be able to strike them and their followers invincibly.
For our age is a cunning age, where falsehood is disguised and poison is offered sugar-coated, where the roads are full of snares and well-camouflaged pits. Whoever is misled by appearances is lost.
We must learn to distinguish the Church from the world, for the destiny of the Church is one thing and that of the world another. We must have as much distrust of the world as we have faith in the Church, as much hate towards the world (not towards men, but the world) as we have love for the Church, as much pessimism for the world as we have optimism for the Church.
The world is the camp, the mentality, and the intentions of those who have rejected the offering of God, who have turned their backs when He wanted to speak to them, who have separated themselves from Him forever. These people have given preference to death over life. They are not punished, just as the demons are not punished, for no one wishes them any harm. Of their own accord they chose death, of their own accord they chose to be enemies of God and to stand far away from Him.
This choice is made in life, independent of moments and time, in the depths of our heart, and it is irrevocable. Freedom separates the spiritual beings into two camps. There are two types of people, as there are two types of angels: the friends of God and the enemies of God.
Freedom does not lie in individual actions, but in the whole inclination and disposition of man, in the final positive or negative response to God’s call. Freedom lies in the general direction of man’s life, and not in the details of that life.
The details are deceiving: they make the Pharisees and Scribes appear to be friends of God, and the thief, the harlot, the publican, and Saul [Paul] appear to be His enemies.
We must be able to recognize the true enemies and the true friends of God under the masks of hypocrisy or weakness.
We are in an age where the masks of hypocrisy have multiplied and reached an astonishing degree of perfection. From one moment to the next we are in danger of being deceived by men who, while wearing the mask of the friends of God, are actually His enemies.
Such are those who speak of the union of the churches. They are the Church’s most dangerous enemies, the false prophets of the Gospel.
The enemies who appear without any mask - the atheists, the materialists, the communists - cannot fool anyone. They are the ones who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But the others - “Orthodox” patriarchs, bishops and archbishops, leaders of Christian organizations, theologians and professors of theology - all who speak with hypocritical Christian love for our “brothers” the heretics and spread the message of union, all of these mask-wearers may not be killing the body, but they are surely killing the soul. This is why the battle against them must be relentless.
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