By Father Geoffrey Korz

See original article at: http://www.orthodoxcanada.com

The reception of converts from heterodox confessions inevitably raises a variety of questions. The method of reception, the question of serving an Orthodox marriage for those who have lived married for years before coming to the Church, and questions surrounding clerical office are most common. The question of the need for catechism is not usually up for grabs: it is assumed that any convert would receive some kind of satisfactory catechism before (and sometimes even after) entering the Church.

An interesting twist on this question recently arose in an Orthodox forum on the topic of ecumenism: what would happen if notable heterodox, such as a Roman Catholic pope, were to convert to Orthodoxy? What about someone that the Roman Catholics recognize as a saint? Surely, such individuals would have immense learning, perhaps extensive theological degrees, and in some cases, even immense holiness? Surely, such an individual would not require catechism? They could teach the Orthodox a thing or two about their own Orthodox Faith - couldn’t they?

The fact that the question emerges reveals something of the lack of a deep understanding of the nature of Orthodox catechism, something which is not only relevant with such celebrated conversions, but more importantly, in cases of catechism for all of us “regular” folk. If catechism is such an important process (and it is), how can one determine if one is actually receiving a “good” catechism?

We must begin by asking, what is the purpose of Orthodox catechism? Unlike catechism amoung heterodox believers, catechism is not primarily about understanding what the faith believes, or the liturgical life, or the meaning of icons. All these things come into play during proper catechism, but none of them represent the essence of true Orthodox catechesis. The primary purpose of a good catechism is to help the catechumen acquire the mind of the Church - the same manner of seeing the world, God, and our human condition, that the saints of all times and places share.

Catechism is about acquiring an Orthodox heart, not about academic study. Although reading is helpful and important, it is not the heart of the matter. Many so-called “Orthodox” academics and some seminaries have forgotten this, adopting the westernized concept that we know God through the mind. Such thinking leads to the idea that even liturgical and prayer should be reconstructed based on academic study, rather than inherited, living experience of Holy Tradition. This is foreign to the mind and heart of the Church - the mind and heart that one must desire more than anything, if one is to be one with the Body of Christ, the Orthodox Church.

Many converts to Orthodoxy (and not a few Orthodox who have been raised in the Church) suffer from what has been called “pseudomorphisism” - the approach to the Faith using “false forms” of understanding or outlook. In this respect, it is harder to come to the Church from heterodoxy than from a non-Christian background. The differences are sometimes subtle, and we can think we know what we do not.

How does this “pseudomorphisism” manifest itself? False forms (that is, forms of worship and belief foreign to the collected wisdom and experience of the Church) are evident in the casual incorporation into prayer and worship of practices with which an individual or group is comfortable, but which have no root in Orthodox practice. A convert from Pentecostalism who raises her hands during the Divine Liturgy, or a convert from Roman Catholicism who continued to use the Rosary would be two examples. There are examples, both ancient and modern, of converts who are warm to the idea of “speaking in tongues”, not as it is seen at the first Pentecost, but rather as it is displayed at protestant charismatic revival meetings. Some of these kind of practices - including this manner of “speaking in tongues” - have been condemned as heresies by the Church long ago, while others simply run counter to the witness of Holy Tradition, that collected measure of belief, morals, and worship shared by the saints across time and place.

“When I became a Christian I voluntarily
crucified my mind, and all the crosses
that I bear have been only a source of
joy for me. I have lost nothing and
gained everything.”
Blessed Father Seraphim (Rose) When one comes to the Church, it is reasonable to assume that an individual wants all She has to give: the fullness of faith, practice, and belief, the life-changing medicine of ascetical discipline, and the Holy Mysteries. In coming to the Orthodox Church, one is saying no to the spiritual salad bar of our times, and yes to the Orthodox Faith. This move means leaving the mind of the world - including the heterodox mind - behind, in order to humbly seek instruction from the Bride of the Lord, His Church and its saints, who reflect His Likeness.

Posted on 02/13/07. Filed under: The Contemporary World • The "New Christianity" • Neo-Roman Catholicism • Neo-Protestantism • • Email This Entry

The Vatican’s Representative Speaks Frankly and Openly of What Ecumenism Means to Rome, the Importance of “Common Baptism” and How They Understand the Latest Liturgical “Offerings” of the Orthodox

Here is a very good opportunity for all Orthodox to see clearly the face of Ecumenism and, in particular, Roman Catholic Ecumenism. What follows is an analysis of key aspects of a speech delivered by Bishop Brian Farrell, the Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, in Dublin at the beginning of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (2007).

What do the heterodox understand from Orthodox “overtures” and “love”? Here is one of the Vatican’s point men talking about how he understands the Patriarch of Constantinople’s stance during the recent visit of the Pope.

Our commentary is within the frames.

The full text can be found here.

Take especial note of the history of “the prayer for Christian unity” and what was (and is) meant by this unity.

Bishop Brian Farrell speaking during the recent Papal visit to Constantinople.

January 24, 2007

On reaching Christian unity (Part 1)

DUBLIN, Ireland (Zenit.org)—Here is the first part of a homily delivered on Thursday in Dublin…

…Every time the baptized come together to pray, it is the Spirit who guides them and teaches them how to pray.

* Again and again the followers of the pope stress the idea of a “common baptism” of all Christians, in which the Holy Spirit is present and works. It is this idea of a “common baptism” which is nothing less than another version of the branch theory, which itself states simply that there are various branches of the Church, divided but nonetheless THE CHURCH. In the “common baptism” theory this same idea is expressed, for the WHOLE Christ is present in Baptism, nothing less, and therefore the WHOLE Church is present, too, for the Body cannot be separated from the Head.*

Pope John Paul II sprinkling, not baptizing.

It is the same Spirit who builds the Church’s unity. Naturally, people have been praying for the unity of Christ’s followers since the beginning. Christians who take to heart the 17th chapter of John’s Gospel know that things are not as they should be and that the scandal of division weakens the proclamation of the Gospel; they know that the ecumenical movement is not a luxury in the life of the Church. We cannot separate our following of Christ from our passion for the unity of the Body of Christ that is the Church.

This year, the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is 99 years old.

Ninety-nine years ago, Father Paul Watson, an Anglican priest and co-founder of the Society of the Atonement, introduced a Prayer Octave for Christian Unity that was celebrated for the first time Jan. 18-25, 1908.

Unity for Father Watson meant a “return” to the Roman Catholic Church, hence the symbolic dates of the feast of the Chair of Peter, which at that time was celebrated Jan. 18, and the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul on Jan. 25. This is usually regarded as the beginning of the week as we know it today.

In 1936, a pioneer of ecumenism in French Catholicism, the Abbé Paul Couturier, brought in a new interpretation of the Unity Octave, when he saw that the idea of “return” made it difficult for many Christians to join with Catholics in prayer. He began what he called the “Universal Week of Prayer for Christian Unity,” keeping the same dates of Jan. 18-25, but urging people to pray for the unity of the Church “as Christ wills it.” That is what we are here for this evening: to pray together for the unity, the full communion, of all the baptized, in the way and at the time that the Lord, through the work of the Holy Spirit, will arrange.

* We should remember this deceitful and cunning method when we hear the flattering words of the Pope and his bishops. They are always talking out two sides of their mouth. About such men the Apostle writes: “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways."*

* Then, in part two, Bishop Brian continues…*


Official international delegations to visit Benedict XVI: from the World Alliance of Reformed Churches; from the Lutheran Church of Finland, of Norway, of Sweden; from the World Methodist Council; the Lutheran World Federation; the visit of the archbishop of Canterbury; the archbishop of Athens and All Greece. As every year there was an exchange of delegations between the Pope and the Ecumenical Patriarch, at the end of June for the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, the patron saints of Rome, and at the end of November for the feast of St. Andrew, the patron saint of Constantinople. Except that this year the Catholic delegation to Constantinople was led by Pope Benedict himself.

People want to see results from all this activity. But the communion we seek is neither a question of Church diplomacy nor of strategic agreements made in ecclesiastical back-rooms. In its original sense it has to do with “participation,” having a part in, sharing in God’s gift of redemption and grace. We are brought into communion—with God and with one another—when we all share in the same grace: one Lord, one baptism, one Spirit, one Father of all.

* Actually, the passage of Scripture from which this phrase is taken says: “There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.” (Eph. 4: 4-6).

We see that he left OUT two or more important phrases . Why? Well, because if, as the ecumenists say, all Christians share “one baptism”, or a “common baptism,” why is it that the Apostle (Eph. 4:5) does not in the least separate the one baptism from the one body, one faith and one Lord, one Spirit, and one Father? The Apostle does not separate them, but the inventors of the “common baptism” theory do! The separate it because it serves their interests, or the interests of the enemy of our salvation, who wants to mix truth with falsehood, light with darkness, Christ with the idols - just the opposite of what the Apostle Paul has written elsewhere:

“Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? 15 And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? 16 And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? (2 Cor. 6:15).

Examine all their rhetoric about our “common baptism” and you will see that they want us to believe that in this “common baptism” we already share in the same grace and therefore have communion. For in their legalistic and rationalistic theology they separate the Mysteries from the power of jurisdiction, which rests in the Pope’s hands alone. That is why they can say that the Orthodox have the Mysteries but are separate from the one who holds the keys of the Kingdom, who has jurisdiction. Therefore, it is a great TRAP for the Orthodox to accept their innovation regarding a common baptism, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the Patristic tradition regarding the acceptance of heretics by oikonomia. In the Patristic tradition a kat’oikonomia exception cannot be and is not a basis for our ecclesiological self-understanding. The first is pastoral, the second is dogmatic.*

…Our ecumenical journey is not towards a mere appearance of unity—towards some sort of ecclesiastical good neighborliness. The communion we seek has its source, its model and its fulfillment in the very life of the Trinity. Superficial gestures will not bring about the unity for which the Lord prayed.

Very often it is the significant though almost imperceptible gesture that marks the progress being made. Let me give a few examples.

First, that the Patriarch and the Pope exchanged the sign of peace during the Divine Liturgy itself. Up to now, at the Phanar, this gesture had always taken place after the celebration itself, given that for our Orthodox brothers the sign of peace within the liturgy expresses a very weighty commitment, introduced by the deacon with this exhortation: “Let us love one another that with one mind we may together make our profession of faith.” And then follows the Creed. This may seem like a small thing; but it has much spiritual meaning.

“...that we may confess” the episcopacy of the pope.

* The ecumenists and secularized Orthodox may now take lightly the meaning of our liturgical practices, but the Papists do not. Let all of those Orthodox who downplay the significance of the Patriarchate’s actions read and re-read the above. Is it not clear that step by step a unity, a very real unity, is being forged between the ecumenist-minded of the Patiarchate and other Local Churches and the heterodox - WITHOUT, however, there being ANY real and concrete repentance and change on their part? It is quite clear for him who has eyes to see.*

Posted on 02/05/07. Filed under: The Contemporary World • The "New Christianity" • Neo-Roman Catholicism • • Email This Entry

<< Cardinal Bernard Law, the former archbishop of Boston, followed the late pope’s example at a suburban mosque in 2002. As the Boston Globe reported on Nov. 25, 2002, “Law removed his shoes. Then, as the imam chanted the sunset prayers, the bishop knelt with his forehead just inches from the carpet and offered praise to Allah.” Afterward, Law partook of the meal that breaks the day-long Ramadan fast. ''I feel very much at home with my fellow fundamentalists here,” Law said, “who are convinced that God must be at the center of our lives.” >>

-- This article further illustrates the deluded and apostate state of the leadership of Roman Catholicism. This tragedy of the further apostasy of the leadership of Roman Catholicism should only go to drive home in the hearts and heads of every Orthodox Christian our own hierarchy’s tragic error in identifying themselves with such a decrepit and dying institution.

SLOUCHING TOWARD SUICIDE

By Joseph D’Hippolito

FrontPageMagazine.com | November 13, 2006

During his visit to Germany, Pope Benedict XVI stunned the world on Sept. 12 by issuing a subtle, discreet yet formidable challenge to Islam – a challenge that drew praise from various observers.

The pope’s rhetoric, however, contrasts with his failure to confront a more fundamental problem: the Catholic Church’s willingness to concede its own worship space to Muslims, without regard for the consequences.

In Europe and the United States, Catholic authorities have encouraged the transformation of Catholic schools and churches into Muslim schools and mosques. One order of friars is helping Italian Muslims build a mosque right next to its monastery. In Belgium, meanwhile, the Catholic bishops let illegal Muslim immigrants live and worship in churches to force the government to grant amnesty.

Those same Catholic authorities would not grant similar concessions to Protestants or Eastern Orthodox, whose theologies are infinitely more similar.

Given the violent, anti-Semitic and anti-Western ideology permeating contemporary Islam – as well as decades of massive Muslim immigration to Europe – the implications are obvious.

“While Western Europe is turning Muslim, its Christian churches are committing suicide,” wrote The Brussels Journal’s Paul Belien in May.

The Norwegian author Fjordman expressed the situation less dramatically but no less accurately for the same outlet in September: “The ideological civil war within the West is not just between secularists and religious people; it runs straight through the Church itself.”

The Catholic Church’s problem has its roots in an ecumenism that borders on syncretism and a sense of compassion that crosses into indulgence. Pope John Paul II set the example by praying in a Damascus mosque during his 2001 trip to the Middle East.

Cardinal Bernard Law, the former archbishop of Boston, followed the late pope’s example at a suburban mosque in 2002. As the Boston Globe reported on Nov. 25, 2002, “Law removed his shoes. Then, as the imam chanted the sunset prayers, the bishop knelt with his forehead just inches from the carpet and offered praise to Allah.”

Afterward, Law partook of the meal that breaks the day-long Ramadan fast. ‘’I feel very much at home with my fellow fundamentalists here,” Law said, “who are convinced that God must be at the center of our lives.”

Law’s basic attitude appears to be prevailing as Catholicism declines in the West. In Detroit, Our Lady Help of the Christians Catholic Church held its final Mass on Oct. 29. The Archdiocese of Detroit sold the church’s property to the Islamic Center of North Detroit, which plans to convert the complex into a mosque, an Islamic community center and a school for the neighborhood of Bangladeshi immigrants.

The archdiocese had leased another one of its properties to Muslims, the Detroit News reported Oct. 27, but did not disclose the location. The church, built in 1923 for Polish immigrants, was serving just 124 families when it closed.

The same month in Italy, the Capuchin Franciscan friars agreed to help the Union of Islamic Communities and Organizations in Italy (UCOII) build a mosque in Genoa immediately adjacent to one of its monasteries. The order agreed to exchange the land for an abandoned factory that the union had planned to convert into a mosque – and even agreed to build the new mosque’s foundation.

One of the deal’s most vociferous opponents is Magri Alam, an Egyptian immigrant to Italy who became a conservative journalist and a passionate critic of radical Islam.

In the Oct. 16 edition of the Milan daily Corriere della Sera, Alam wrote that the UCOII encourages “an extremist version of the Qu’ran, where Christians, Jews and Westerners are criminalized, as well as women and other Muslims who don’t submit to their rule.”

The union’s president, Mohammed Nour Dachan, has refused to sign a document in which Muslims pledged to accept Italy’s constitution, denounce terrorism and recognize Israel’s right to exist. His organization also demands Islamic schools, Islamic banks and clerical supervision of textbooks, as Front Page Magazine reported in its article, “How Will Rome Face Mecca?”

In Glasgow in 2003, Catholic officials approved attempts by Muslims to turn St. Albert’s School into an Islamic institution. More than 90 percent of the school’s 360 students were Muslim.

“We are in favor of Muslim schools,” an unidentified church spokesman told Edinburgh’s The Scotsman on Nov. 23, 2003. “We support faith schools across the board. In the case of St. Albert’s, we see a school in which for 95 percent of the children, the festival of Eid has more significance than Christmas or Easter. It is de facto not a Catholic school.”

The Catholic Establishment’s indulgent sense of compassion manifests itself most powerfully in its attitude toward immigrants. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster in London, demonstrated that attitude in his May 1, 2006 sermon at Westminster Cathedral:  “In migrants, the Church has always contemplated the image of Christ who said, “I was a stranger and you made me welcome” (Matthew 25:35). Their condition is, therefore, a challenge to the faith and love of believers who are called on to heal the evils caused by migration and discover the plan God pursues through migration even when there are obvious injustices. God’s appeal, made so forcefully in both the Old and the New Testaments, is for fraternity – for there to be new bonds of friendship forged between newcomer and native.

“The Church does not approve of illegal immigration…But nor can the Church ignore the plight among us of those who are here without legal status…We stand in solidarity with you too.” The Church, said Pope John Paul II in his migration day message, “is the place where illegal immigrants are also recognized and welcomed as brothers and sisters.”

“It is one of the central tasks of Christians – a constant theme of the Old and New Testaments – to offer hospitality to the exile and the stranger, seeing in him and her, the face of Christ. Faith in the presence of Christ in the migrant leads to a conversion of mind and heart, which leads to a renewed spirit of communion.”

The Catholic Establishment is so infatuated with creating such a spirit that it refuses to ask immigrants even to show a fundamental respect for others, let alone to assimilate into their new societies and obey the laws. Perhaps this is most true in Belgium, where the bishops encourage illegal Muslim immigrants to take over churches in virtually every diocese.

Posted on 11/15/06. Filed under: The Contemporary World • The "New Christianity" • Neo-Roman Catholicism • • Email This Entry

Strange “forces of evil” have kept the Roman Catholics and Orthodox apart, and inventiveness born out of our mutual love will lead us onto new paths to overcome these forces. . .

These words of the Pope [see below] wonderfully express the great error of ecumenism and delusion of ecumenists. It is not anyone’s error or pride, nor dogmatic error, and certainly not heresy, that has created and maintained the division, nor will humility and repentance overcome it, but “inventiveness”, as if
Thomas Alva Edisonwe were called to imitate Thomas Edison in some laboratory. The Pope and those with him - including some Patriarchs and bishops - resemble technicians or mathematicians who are seeking after some formula for which to “discover” unity - a unity which essentially already exists, like some hidden power of nature, but which simply awaits the right “moment in history” to make its debut and revolutionize humanity, etc. No repentance is necessary. No repudiation of heresy or even admitting that heresy ever existed. Rather, we will “invent” a new path out of our great love for one another.

All of this is such nonesense it is simply astounding that some Orthodox bishops and theologians go along with it or even, at times, believe in it. It is precisely inventiveness - i.e. innovations - that the whole of Orthodox tradition and patristic witness work against. We “follow the Holy Fathers” and preach and proclaim “as the Prophets fortold, as the Apostles proclaimed, as the Fathers declared” etc. The spirit underlying the Pope’s words and the whole mentality on display in the Ecumenical Movement is totally one with the age and is chiliastic, promising new and ever greater things and a kingdom of this world. In the end the only ones at fault here are “forces of evil”. (One is reminded of Eve in the garden who essentially said that “the devil made me do it”. The only problem is that man is free and responsible for his actions, and, what’s more, if he is truly spiritual and of Christ not under the control or sway of the evil one.)

All who would save their soul in this day and age must fight this spirit and delusion with all his might - first in himself and then for the sake and love of the brethren.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Pope: Catholics, Orthodox will find full unity
By Cindy Wooden
2/28/2006

Catholic News Service (http://www.catholicnews.com)
Pope Benedict XVI
VATICAN CITY – With deeper conversion and greater love, Catholics and Orthodox will find the path to full unity, Pope Benedict XVI told staff and students from a Greek Orthodox theological college.

Meeting the group from the Apostoliki Diakonia theological college of Athens, Greece, Feb. 27, the pope said that, despite “the forces of evil” that have kept Catholics and Orthodox from full unity, visits, cultural exchanges and joint projects have brought new hope to ecumenism.

Progress in dialogue, he said, brings hope for “a new dawn, that of the day on which we will understand fully that being rooted and grounded in the love of Christ means concretely finding a way to overcome our divisions through personal and communal conversion, the exercise of listening to the other and prayer in common for our unity.”

The pope said the exchange program with the Orthodox Church of Greece, which includes a scholarship program for Orthodox priests and seminarians to study in Rome and Catholic priests and seminarians to study in Athens, is especially important for preparing future church leaders for ecumenism.

“I am certain that mutual love will increase our inventiveness and will lead us to follow new paths,” the pope said.

Posted on 03/01/06. Filed under: Ecclesia • Ecclesiology: The Church and Ecumenism • The Contemporary World • The "New Christianity" • Neo-Roman Catholicism • • Email This Entry

A Response to Christianity and the Challenge of Militant Secularism by Bishop Hilarion of Vienaa

If it be blessed, please allow me to offer some thoughts on the paper entitled ”Christianity and the Challenge of Militant Secularism” by Bishop Hilarion of Vienna.

It is astounding to me that, on the one hand, His Grace pinpoints the problem as being a backlash against the totalitarianism of the Papacy - not anti-christianity, but anti-catholicism - but, on the other hand, sees Catholicism as our main ally. Our main ally is the root of the problem? Our main ally is the root cause of the whole demise of Western Europe?

To Defeat Secularism, Religion Must Be Rooted Up

It seems to me that one must understand where we stand in the flow of history to understand why this stance is naive, if not dangerous. Suggesting the Orthodox Church join hands with the religions – the Papacy, Judaism, Islam - in the fight against secularism reveals a misunderstanding of the deeper nature of the problem, namely, that religion (not revelation) necessarily leads to secularism, is the other side of the coin, so to speak. Just as communism and capitalism, and ethnicism and ecumenism, are two sides of the same coin, so are religion (without revelation) and secularism two sides of the same coin. Both religion and secularism have man as the ultimate value because both derive from man and lead to man. Religion, when connected to Revelation, is the human in the divine-human. Religion of itself, however, is merely human because it is merely man’s search for God, producing in the end (when autonomous) a man-made God - God in man’s image. Without revelation (“Thine own of Thine own”, religion remains man-centered (“our own of our own”. 

Posted on 12/07/04. Filed under: The Contemporary World • The "New Christianity" • Neo-Roman Catholicism • • Email This Entry

A short exposition of the experiences of Roman Catholic saints according to the principles laid down in the Philokalia

From Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra

Contents:
1. Introduction
2. Francis of Assisi
3. Blessed Angela
4. St. Catherine of Siena
5. Teresa of Avila
6.Teresa of Lisieux
7. Ignatius of Loyola
8. The wisdom of the fathers of the Philokalia (Saint Nilus of Sinai, St. Symeon the New Theologian, St. Gregory of Sinai)
9. Conclusion

1. Introduction:

...Frequently I am asked the question: “What is the difference between
Catholicism and Orthodoxy? Wherein lies its fault? Is it not, in fact, just a different
path to Christ?” Many times I have seen that it is enough to provide a few examples from the lives of catholic mystics for the inquirers to say: “Thank you, now it is
clear. That’s enough.”

Indeed, every Local Orthodox Church or non-Orthodox church can be judged by
her saints. Tell me who your saints are and I will tell what your church is.
Every church regards as saints only those who have realized the
Christian ideal in their life, as this Church understands it. That is why the
canonization or glorification of a particular saint is not only a testimony of the Church
about this Christian, who according to her judgment is worthy of her glory
as an example to follow. It is likewise a testimony of the Church
about herself. By the saints we can best of all form a judgement concerning
the true or imaginary sanctity of the Church.

Here are a few examples to illustrate the idea of sanctity in Catholicism.

2. Francis of Assisi

One of the greatest Catholic saints is Francis of Assisi (13th century). His
spiritual outlook is revealed through the following facts. Once Francis
prayed for a long time (the subject of his prayer is very indicative) “about
two mercies”: “The first is … that I can go through all the sufferings that
You, O Sweetest Jesus, have gone through in Your excruciating passions. And
the second mercy… is that I could feel the infinite love, with which you,
Son of God, were burning.” As we see, Francis was concerned not about the
feeling of being sinful, but he openly claimed for equality with Christ!
During this prayer Francis “felt absolutely turned into Jesus”, Whom he saw
at once as a six-winged Seraph, striking him with firing arrows at the
points of cross wounds of Jesus Christ (hands, feet and the right side).
After this vision painful bleeding wounds (stigmata) appeared - the traces
of “Jesus’ passions” (M.V.Lodyzhensky. Invisible light. - Pg. 1915. -
P.109).

The nature of such stigmata is well-known in psychiatry: permanent
concentration of one’s attention on the Christ’s passions excites the nerves and
psyche of a person and may cause such an effect after prolonged exercise. There is
grace-giving in it, because in such compassion with Christ there is no true
love, about which the Lord directly said: He who has my commandments, and
keeps them, he is the one who loves me (Joh.14:21). That is why substitution
of struggle with one’s old man by imaginary emotions of “compassion” is one
of the gravest mistakes in the spiritual life, which leads many ascetics to
self-conceit, pride - to apparent spiritual deceit accompanied by direct
mental disorder (comp. Francis’s “sermons” to birds, wolf, turtle-doves,
snakes, flowers, his awe of fire, stones, worms).

The goal of life set by Francis is also very indicative: “I laboured and
want to labour further…, for it brings honour” (St. Francis of Assisi. - M.,
Izd.Frantsiskantsev, 1995. - P.145). Francis wishes to suffer for the others
and atone their sins (P.20). And at the end of his life he frankly said: “I
do not know any transgression of mine that I have not atoned by confession
and repentance” (M.V.Lodyzhensky. - p.129). All this testifies for his not
seeing his sins, i.e. his total spiritual blindness.

For a comparison I’ll describe to you a moment from life of St. Sisoe the
Great (5th century). “Just before his death, surrounded by the brethren,
when Sisoe looked like talking with invisible ones, to the question “Father,
tell us, whom are you talking with?” he said: “The angels have come to take
me, but I pray to them that they let me stay here for a short time for
repentance”. Knowing that Sisoi was perfect in virtues the brethren objected
to him: “Father, you have no need in repentance”, and Sisoi answered like
this: “Verily, I do not know, if I have at least started the cause of my
repentance” (Lodyzhensky. - p.133). This deep understanding and vision of one’s
imperfection is the most distinctive trait of all true saints.

Posted on 11/16/04. Filed under: The Contemporary World • The "New Christianity" • Neo-Roman Catholicism • • Email This Entry