Friday, March 11, 2022

Wounding the Holy Theotokos

This appeared in the English version of the Interfax-Religion page:

 

Drops of red appeared on the icon of the Virgin in Russian army's main church

Moscow, March 8, Interfax - Drops of red appeared on the icon of the Mother of God Softening of Evil Hearts in the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ near Moscow, the main church of the Armed Forces of Russia.

Parishioners of the church posted a video of how it looked on social networks, specifying that the icon "bled" during the prayer service. The priests do not know whether it is blood or not, but many who were present in the church perceived what was happening as a sign.

According to the clergy, this icon has been streaming myrrh before, but it was on Forgiveness Sunday that drops similar to blood were noticed on it.

 

 

I have retained a screenshot of the report against the time when the Putin regime realizes what this sign means and tries to suppress the report of this miraculous condemnation of the fratricidal war in Ukraine. 

Pray for peace.  Pray to the Theotokos, indeed the Softening of Evil Hearts, that the heart of Vladimir Putin and of those in his military willing to carry out attacks on civilian will be softened and come to true repentance for the bloodshed unleashed for the worldly glory of the Russian state.

Sunday, March 29, 2015

Colonel Philip Ludwell, III

It recently came to my attention that a cousin of Martha Washington, one Col. Philip Ludwell, III (1716–1767), seems to have been the first Orthodox Christian to reside in North America.  

Col. Ludwell, who was received into the Church in 1738 during one of his many visits to London, made the first English translation of the Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, which translation was used by ROCOR cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Washington, DC for the celebration of the Liturgy on 20 March this year.  He also prepared an English translation of the Orthodox Confession of Peter Mogila, Metropolitan of Kiev, which was approved by the Holy Synod of Moscow,  and a tract for visitors on how to behave during Orthodox services.  His daughters were also received into the Holy Orthodox Church

So, when the Russians and Greeks are quarreling about who was here in America first, just remember -- we converts from Anglicanism were here before either of them!!!

Monday, April 08, 2013

Margaret Thatcher -- Memory Eternal!

I read with sorrow this morning the announcement of the death of Baroness Thatcher.

In my youth, while a student at Dickinson College, I and my fellows in the Dickinson College Tory Club sent a telegram congratulating Thatcher on her election. We insisted that it be sent in old form with the word "STOP" in place of periods:

Congratulations STOP Whatever you plan to do don't stop STOP

As one of the giants who led the West in the defeat of the Soviet Union, with the consequent freeing of the Orthodox Church from the Bolshevik Yoke, Thatcher should have the gratitude of all Orthodox Christians, even those who might disagree with some of her stances on some matters involving what the Latins call "prudential judgements".

Memory Eternal! Memory Eternal! Memory Eternal!

Wednesday, October 05, 2011

Steven Paul Jobs Memory Eternal!

Memory eternal! Memory eternal! Memory eternal!

Friday, July 29, 2011

The Debt Ceiling and the Renunciatory Quest

Let's forgive Senator McCain for confounding Middle Earth with The Shire.

The Senator's sudden insertion of Tolkein's Lord of the Rings into the debate over the U.S. national debt immediately evoked in me the reaction "Senator McCain is, evidently, casting himself as Saruman." Saruman and his minions are the only characters in the entire trilogy to sneer at hobbits, and Senator McCain's brand of bipartisanship so often seems to echo the fallen wizard:

"But we must have power, power to order all things as we will, for that good which only the Wise can see."

"And listen, Gandalf, my old friend and helper!" he said, coming near and speaking now in a softer voice. "I said we, for we it may be, if you will join with me. A new Power is rising. Against it the old allies and policies will not avail us at all."

"This then is one choice before you, before us. We may join with that Power. It would be wise, Gandalf. There is hope that way. Its victory is at hand; and there will be rich reward for those that aided it. As the Power grows, its proved friends will also grow; and the Wise, such as you and I, may with patience come at last to direct its courses, to control it."


Now, President Obama hardly rises (or descends) to the level of the Dark Lord Sauron, the "new Power" Saruman advocates joining, but Gandalf's description of Sauron "weighing everything to a nicety in the scales of his malice" and not being able to imagine that anyone would not want the power he seeks to wield seems to fit the Democrats collectively: they can't really believe that people are motivated to limit government, to destroy the very "ring of power" they want to wield. Tea Partiers can't really be after limited government, they must be racists or be trying to seize the reigns of government for some nefarious purpose.

And McCain, like Saruman, wants to play their game in hopes of the GOP wielding the same power of bloated government in place of the Democrats. Of course, this is a fool's errand, just as Saruman's attempt to set up on his own in competition with Mordor was. America has no need of two parties of big government, and when the GOP try to be a party of big government, making an Isengard as a slave's flattery of Barad-dur, they always lose.

For those steeped in Tolkien's mythos, branding the Tea Party as "hobbits" actually seems oddly appropriate. Tolkien's "little people" lived in the "fly over country" of Middle Earth, the Shire, ignored by the Wise (Gandalf the Grey, excepted) and the Enemy, ignored by the elves who traveled across the Shire on their way to the sea. They were farmers and shopkeepers and artisans, whose government was limited to a postal service, a few "Shirrifs" who mostly served as haywards, the "Bounders", a sort of border patrol, and one elected and one hereditary office. They had fixed laws "ancient and just", and thus no need for a legislature. Mostly they just wanted to be left alone to live peaceful, prosperous lives, very much as the Tea Party really just wants to be left alone.

But there is also a similarity between the Tea Party caucus in Congress and the hobbits who became notable among the Wise: like the Ring-Bearer, Frodo, they are engaged in a renunciatory quest. They did not go to Washington to wield the "ring of power" of deficit spending and powers accreted to the Federal government, if not in violation of the Constitution as interpreted by the courts, at least in violation of its plain meaning, but to destroy it.

Those of us sufficiently hobbit-like to just want to the Federal government to leave us alone, those of us who hope our children can live free, prosperous lives unburdened by the monstrous debt that now drags our country down like the Ring weighing on Frodo as he plodded to Mount Doom, must hope that they do not lose their nerve at the last moment as Frodo did, or if they do, that unaccountably someone from the other side of the aisle will step in to play the role of Gollum, and destroy their "Precious".

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Emmanuel Goldstein Sarah Palin Two-Minutes Hate

It was nearly eleven hundred, and in the RECORDS DEPARTMENT
newsroom at MSNBC, they were dragging the chairs out of the cubicles and grouping them in the centre of the hall opposite the big telescreen, in preparation for the Two Minutes Hate.



The next moment a hideous, grinding speech, as of some monstrous machine running without oil, burst from the big telescreen at the end of the room. It was a noise that set one's teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of one's neck. The Hate had started.



As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein Sarah Palin, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen. There were hisses here and there among the audience. Goldstein Palin was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how long ago nobody quite remembered), had been one of the leading figures of the Party a governor, almost on a level with BIG BROTHER OBAMA himself, and then had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities run for Vice President and lost, had been condemned to death political oblivion and had mysteriously escaped and disappeared reappeared as a major media figure.



The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein Palin was not the principal figure. He She was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party's purity Hope and Change. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his her teaching. Somewhere or other he was still alive She was off in the wilds of Alaska and hatching his her conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters, FOX News perhaps even - so it was occasionally rumoured - in some hiding-place in Oceania itself
on Facebook.



Winston's diaphragm was constricted. He could never see the face of Goldstein Palin without a painful mixture of emotions. It was a lean Jewish face, with a great fuzzy aureole of white hair and a small goatee beard - a clever face genial, WASPy face with whispy bangs--a pleasant face, and yet somehow inherently despicable, with a kind of senile silliness in the long thin nose, near the end top of which a pair of spectacles was perched. It resembled the face of a sheep, and the voice, too, had a sheep-like quality. Goldstein Palin was delivering his her usual venemous attack upon the doctrines of the Party - an attack so exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able to see through it, and yet just plausible enough to fill one with an alarmed feeling that other people, less level-headed than oneself, might be taken in by it. He She was abusing BIG BROTHER OBAMA, he she was denouncing the dictatorship of the Party, he she was demanding the immediate conclusion of peace with Eurasia end of quantitative easing, he she was advocating freedom of speech, freedom of the Press, freedom of assembly, freedom of thought, the right to keep and bear arms, he she was crying hysterically that the American Revolution has been betrayed - and all this in rapid polysyllabic speech a soothing, folksy tone which was a sort of parody of the habitual style of the orators of the Party, and even contained Newspeak words: more Newspeak words, indeed, than any Party member would normally use in real life. And all the while, lest one should be in any doubt as to the reality which Goldstein's Palin's specious clap trap covered, behind his her head on the telescreen there marched the endless columns of the Eurasian army TEA Partiers - row after row of solid ordinary-looking men and women with expressionless Asiatic faces, American flags and home-made signs who swam up to the surface of the screen and vanished, to be replaced by others exactly similar. The dull rhythmic tramp of the soldiers' boots plodding of the protesters' shoes formed the background to Goldstein's Palin's bleating voice.



Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room. The self-satisfied sheep-like face on the screen, and the terrifying power of the Eurasian army behind it, were too much to be borne: besides the sight or even the thought of Goldstein
Palin produced fear and anger automatically. He She
was an object of hatred more constant than either Eurasia or Eastasia, since when Oceania was at war with one of these Powers it was generally at peace with the other John McCain or Ron Paul, since from time to time either would take positions supporting the Party. But what was strange was that although Goldstein Palin was hated and despised by everybody, although every day and a thousand times a day, on platforms, on the telescreen, in newspapers, in books, his her theories were refuted, smashed, ridiculed, held up to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbish that they were - in spite of all this, his her influence never seemed to grow less. Always there were fresh dupes waiting to be seduced by him her. A day never passed when spies and saboteurs acting under his her directions were not unmasked by the Thought Police. He She was the commander of a vast shadowy army, an underground network of conspirators dedicated to the overthrow of the State restoration of Constitutional government.



In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen. The little sandy-haired woman had turned bright pink, and her mouth was opening and shutting like that of a landed fish. Even O'Brien's heavy face was flushed. He was sitting very straight in his chair, his powerful chest swelling and quivering as though he were standing up to the assault of a wave. The dark-haired girl behind Winston had begun crying out 'Swine! Swine! Swine!' and suddenly she picked up a heavy Newspeak dictionary and flung it at the screen. It struck Goldstein's Palin's nose and bounced off; the voice continued inexorably.



In a lucid moment Winston found that he was shouting with the others and kicking his heel violently against the rung of his chair. The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.



The Hate rose to its climax. The voice of Goldstein Palin had become an actual sheep's bleat, and for an instant the face changed into that of a sheep. Then the sheep-face melted into the figure of a Eurasian soldier an evangelical Protestant who seemed to be advancing, huge and terrible, his sub-machine gun roaring waving a leather-bound Bible, and seeming to spring out of the surface of the screen. But in the same moment, drawing a deep sigh of relief from everybody, the hostile figure melted into the face of BIG BROTHER OBAMA.



Winston had heard the whispered story of a terrible book, a compendium of all the heresies, of which Goldstein Palin was the author and which circulated clandestinely here and there was a best-seller on Amazon. It was a book without title reputedly entitled "America by Heart". People referred to it, if at all, simply as the book. But one knew of such things only through vague rumours. Neither the Brotherhood TEA Party nor the book was a subject that any ordinary Party member would mention if there was a way of avoiding it.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

St. Ignatius of Antioch weeps