Secularism

The aggressive secularization of America

As an American I have watched with sadness, the eroding of our Christian values and standards of living. When I was in grade school, each day was begun with the reading of the Bible, broadcast over the intercom system (yes, we had the technology when I was little). At my graduation from high school, there were two public gatherings in the gym, the first being the baccalaureate service, where the minister chosen by the seniors gave an inspirational address, and religious hymns and patriotic songs were sung. The second public gathering was the actual graduation ceremony. The baccalaureate service is long gone from the American scene, found, as it were, to be an unconstitutional infringement on the separation of Church and State.

Gone, also, are the student Christian organizations, banned as they were, from the use of public school facilities, again on the basis of the separation of Church and State. Yet many of these same schools have given over classroom space for Muslim students to perform their required prayer times.

Our courts have aggressively moved to push the Christian faith further from the public forum. Attacks toward public displays of religious themes, such as the Ten Commandments, Nativity Creches, and even crosses from the graves of soldiers, have increasingly become the norm. There is even a movement to force police and fire department chaplains to remove the cross from their badges, something we’ve all vowed to resist.

This aggressive move towards secularism has increasingly become a part of American foreign policy, with the move to pressure other countries to follow our lead. Just as the Russian Revolution was supported, in the very beginning, by the anti-monarchist sentiments of the American government, so too, are we seeing an increase in the negative attitudes of the American government towards the rise in power and influence of the Russian Orthodox Church. At a time when our governmental leaders are pushing Christianity from the public forum, we criticize the Russian government because of it’s close ties with the Russian Orthodox Church. We even question the sincerity of Russian leaders Orthodox faith, perhaps because we know that many of our own leaders have put on the veneer of being Christian, for political survival.

Russians know the dangers of aggressive secularism, having suffered seventy years of state sponsored atheism, and many Russians look with amazement at what they see as American capitulation to a secularism that has promoted a sort of state atheism of it’s own.

The Moscow Patriarchate has announced a “War on Aggressive Liberalism”, and called upon believers to fight the “anti-clerical forces” and “false values of aggressive liberalism.” The Patriarchate will not sit back complacently, and watch a replay of the rise of anti-Church forces that hurled the Russian people into the dark days of the Communist aggression against the Church, and against believers.

The same forces that are aggressively seeking to discredit the clergy, divide Russian society, and turn Russians away from their temples, is at work in the United States. The time has come for all Christians to stand firm, and resist the forces of aggressive secularism. Whether we be Russian, Canadians, British, Greeks, or Americans, we need to stand united, and work to return Western civilization to her Christian roots.

As Americans, we need to make sure our governmental leaders know that we will not allow our nation to make war, either in reality, or in theory, against a land that is attempting to return Christ to the centrality of their national identity. Russia is not our enemy, and to treat her as such, is certain to further erode the American way of life. We can not continue, as a nation, to place profit, worldly influence, military power, and oil, over and above our Christian values, for to do so will lead to our certain doom.

An American Catholic Bishop stated recently: “I shall die in my bed, my successor shall die in prison, his successor will die as a martyr in the public square”. God will protect his Orthodox Church from the Gates of Hell…but the blood of the Martyrs waters the seed of the Church.

With love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon

Photo: Our cat Hammi, enjoying a moment with Father Moses.

Friday October 24, 2014 / October 11, 2014

20th Week after Pentecost. Tone two.
Fast. By Monastic Charter: Strict Fast (Bread, Vegetables, Fruits)

Holy Apostle Philip of the Seventy, one of the seven deacons (1st c.).
Venerable Theophanes the Confessor and Hymnographer, bishop of Nicaea (850).
Venerable Leonid of Optina (1841).
Synaxis of the Saints of Optina: St. Leonid (repose) (1841), St. Macarius (1860), St. Moses (1862), St. Anthony (1865), St. Hilarion (1873), St. Ambrose (1891), St. Anatole (the “Elder”) (1894), St. Isaac I (1894), St. Joseph (1911), St. Barsanuphius (1913), St. Anatole (the “Younger”) (1922), St. Nektary (1928), St. Nikon the Confessor (1931), New Hieromartyr Archimandrite Isaac II (1937).
New Hieromartyrs Philaret and Alexander priests (1918).
New Hieromartyr Juvenalius (Maslovsky) bishop of Riazan (1937).
Venerable Theophanes, faster of the Kiev Caves (12th c.).
Martyrs Zenaida (Zenais) and Philonilla of Tarsus in Cilicia (1st c.).
Sts. Nectarius (397), Arcadius (405), and Sinisius (427), patriarchs of Constantinople.
St. Gommar, patron of Lier (775) (Neth.).
Venerable Ethelburga, abbess of the monastery of Barking (England) (676) (Celtic & British.).
Venerable Cainnech (Kenneth), abbot of Aghaboe (Ireland) (600) (Celtic & British).
St. Philotheus (Kokkinos) of Mt. Athos, patriarch of Constantinople (1379).
Commemoration of the miracle from the Icon of Our Lord Jesus Christ in Beirut of Phonecia.

The Scripture Readings for the Day

Philippians 3:8-19

8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; 10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, 11 if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Pressing Toward the Goal

12 Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. 13 Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, 14 I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

15 Therefore let us, as many as are mature, have this mind; and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you. 16 Nevertheless, to the degree that we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule,[a] let us be of the same mind.

Our Citizenship in Heaven

17 Brethren, join in following my example, and note those who so walk, as you have us for a pattern. 18 For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: 19 whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame—who set their mind on earthly things.

Luke 9:12-18

12 When the day began to wear away, the twelve came and said to Him, “Send the multitude away, that they may go into the surrounding towns and country, and lodge and get provisions; for we are in a deserted place here.”

13 But He said to them, “You give them something to eat.”

And they said, “We have no more than five loaves and two fish, unless we go and buy food for all these people.” 14 For there were about five thousand men.

Then He said to His disciples, “Make them sit down in groups of fifty.” 15 And they did so, and made them all sit down.

16 Then He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, He blessed and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the multitude. 17 So they all ate and were filled, and twelve baskets of the leftover fragments were taken up by them.

Peter Confesses Jesus as the Christ

18 And it happened, as He was alone praying, that His disciples joined Him, and He asked them, saying, “Who do the crowds say that I am?”