The Scandal of the Cross

What did ye go out into the desert to see?

The words of the Saviour are poignantly addressed to us, not just those who went out in the desert to hear the testimony of St. John the Baptist. Many times, we answer by our lives that we went out to see ourselves and our self righteousness, our wants and desires affirmed by a Prophet of God and our pride and intellectual cloud castles given divine sanction, no matter the inconsistencies and outright moral and theological contradictions involved. We have gone out to the desert so we must be right!

While what we really are denying is the Cross and Precious Blood of Christ who has born our sins and justifed us before the Father by uniting our nature to Him. All we need is to take up the cross and follow Him, to live a Christocentric life and imperative to holiness to allow freely given grace to be operative within us.

Therein lies the scandal: not carrying our cross but daring to act, that we will return to Cyrene and say that we have witnessed it, even assented to it, but never will do it, for to our pride "it is an unrealistic standard," which to us is unnecessary folly. "We have a better way" we have come up with.

But in actuality WE DON'T. No, we must bear the Cross, for it has borne up our sins and washed them away with His Precious Blood shed on it for our salvation.

So today we have in Moscow (and wherever he is sent) a person so scandalized by the Cross and the Church's witness of the life in Christ that he dares to deride it as "superstition," (No, no, the deifying witness of twenty centuries must be modified by a post Soviet "modernization")as a "war of fanatics against wafers (No for Him, Christ is not the "leaven of life" Who is now the Leaven for the "bread of haste"-TO THIS RENOVATIONIST UNIATE, Christ bears no fulfillment of the Holy Scriptures)," a war of the "spiritually ignorant" against papal erudition (Indeed, Timothy Ware and the higher critics know more than the Saints and even the Canons and the Scriptures /which it turns out, "they didn't really write"/, but somehow it MUST BE IGNORED! WARE's NEO RENOVATIONIST ECUMENISTS have missed how the WAY OF ORTHODOX SAINTS ALONE and their pathes have produced the fragrance of deified Holy Relics or even how they faithfully bear witness to the MIND OF CHRIST and the VOICE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT WHO ABIDES WITH HIS CHURCH EVEN TODAY AND SAYS, "I AM GOD, NOT A DEMIGOD. DO NOT BLASPHEME THE WORK OF HOLINESS AND GRACE-I PROCEED FROM THE FATHER."), a "rebellion against the enlightened authority of modernity," (After all, St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite was an innovator according to Professor Erickson, formerly of St. "Vlad's," while the Holy Canons of the Seven Ecumenical Councils are only the bigotry of antiquity-We must accept that heretics have valid Mysteries for modernity mandates a rending of the Body of Christ to achieve this demonia) all without the Saviour, His Precious Blood and the Redemption on the Cross. What did Metropolitan Alfeev come to the Church to see? Not the Cross, but a papal tiara. Has he even ventured into the wilderness?! No, the only cross a Nikodimite will bear is a stamp on a CPSU passport or a scrawling on a vaunted Order of Lenin and the only wilderness he will suffer is a papal concert hall.

Just recently, the OCA has been confronted with the fruits of pushing a FAILED RENOVATIONIST ECUMENIST agenda to the point of suicide. Thoroughly marginal personae have given way to further cover ups of sexual immoralities in at least the persons of the "resting" Archbishop of Canada and the formerly embezzling, male hustling Metropolitan Theodosius. A SECTARIAN ECUMENIST-RENOVATIONIST priest by the name of Father Leonid Kishkovsky seems to think that even by his very name, he is a "true blue" American native while speaking with a Russian accent. The recession is blamed for further declines in membership, now approaching 85% declines of 1976 total membership (It seems, they can't fit that many Orthodox Christians in their churches, but they sure can fit in the Renovationism, the New Calendar, embezzlements and homosexual hierarchs). Metropolitan Jonah has only presided over an increase in flight from and financial ruin for the OCA while his appeals to Anglicans to "forge concordats" for a "new Christian unity in America" have only been met with curses from the Anglicans and reproofs from those Orthodox faithful to the Holy Tradition. Indeed, the way of New Skete comprehensiveness and veneration of clearly spiritually deluded heretics like Francis of Assisi, John of the Cross, Therese of Lisieux, Rowan Williams et al. has not produced any type of spiritual renewal but only affirmed the evil banality and ineffectiveness of the quieted apostasy of ecumenism. No, St. John of San Francisco was never enough for Metropolitan Jonah. Fr. Seraphim (Rose) bore a "cross of bigotry" he would never bear. His mentor Archimandrite Anastassy (Newcomb) was simply a dupe for the "Russian Bishops" who was "too spiritually immature" to get that the scandal of the Cross was "inessential," because modernity's cross offers cheap grace without the Precious Blood with a modern messiah and a Marin County "enlightenment" channeled by a "new" guru preaching inclusiveness and not the "reaction of the Crucifixion." Joan Baez is singing in Bolinas! The OCA is lost, because it has resorted to such charlatans in cassocks with their ecumenist gimmicks and betrayals of Christ. Ersatz "traditionalists" who worship their delusions to simply allow them to see themselves in a mirror, rather than face the love and salvation of Christ IN FAITHFULNESS TO HIM IN HIS SOLE TRUE CHURCH. They don't want to see the Cross.

Over ten years ago now, the Holy Order of MANS group left quasi Greek Old Calendarism (in counterfeit of ROCOR) for mainly the OCA. Since that time, its communities have increasingly become more "modern" and "enlightened" in the Metropolitan Jonah mould. Gone are the Feasts on the Old Calendar, conferences about piety and fasting, "Synodal services," and in Phoenix, AZ all mention of even Platina. Indeed, Bradley Nasif and Frederica Matthews Green are the new gurus. Pews, flower petals, priests in gym shorts and resident charismatic theologians are all the rage. No, the Cross is not only a scandal, but an antique which will be kept in a photo album while we rap our ways to 21st. century American Orthodoxy without "the interference of the Russian Bishops." All that is missing is Shirley McClain and a service to "Mother Goddess Sophia."

In ROCOR, the mask has fallen away and the masonic forces which led Russia to Golgotha and martyred the Royal Family are now unashamedly the "enlightened masters" of ROCOR's fate. Where a Metropolitan denies participation in this luciferian cult while receiving its patronage in Latin American courts to fight schism. And ROCOR silences any talk of a freemasonic Metropolitan. It toils to shout down denunciations OF A SECTARIAN WHO WORSHIPS AT TWO ALTARS. For them, their "precious blood" is precious even when it comes from a thirty third degree black mass, BUT THIS IS NOT THE PRECIOUS BLOOD OF CHRIST, AND IT IS NOT THE SALVATION OF THE CROSS! Indeed, all those years of Red Bating were a camouflage for the truly inherent evil ROCOR sheltered in receiving the freemasons who SACRIFICED RUSSIA to their dark lord. They kept their secrets safe in order to serve them WHEN THE TIME CAME. With this current scandal of a Metropolitan, their time has come. The demons singing in the trees St. John of Kronstadt heard now give concerts against the Cross outside of Synod.

Just recently, the pathetic Neo-Sergianist Pashkovsky of Odessa began commemorating the DEPOSED Patriarch of Jerusalem. Compounding error with folly. The "Authentic Orthodox" of Greece, Bulgaria and Romania maintain Communion with this DEPOSED churchman, even joining in the chorus of condemnation of "party members in cassocks" while failing to recognize that Pashkovsky IS A VERY REAL ORANGE party member in a cassock. Do they even see the Cross? Do they even recognize the Precious Blood that has cleansed their sins in Christ's Church or are they our twenty first century Tartars of Kazan who are bathing in the Volga trying to wash it off? On the cross of Pashkovsky, Christ is not to be found. On his cross, Stepan Bandera and George Soros have opened a Walmart and a theatre devoted to a Passion play for Neo Sergianist schismatics.

Let us pray for the Holy Spirit to lead us in faithfulness to follow Christ in His Holy Church in witness of the sovereign Love of God the Father, to bathe ourselves in Jesus' Precious Blood and carry the Cross which has born away our sins. Let us convict ourselves and renew our faithfulness to Christ and His Church this Lent. Convict ourselves and reflect on how we must overcome ourselves and put on Christ who has put on and saved our humanity.

For His Cross will even save a vile reprobate like me and His Precious Blood washes my sins away. I believe and I confess that HE ALONE IN HIS ONE TRUE CHURCH, HIS PRECIOUS BODY, IS TRULY THE CHRIST, THE SAVIOUR OF ALL MANKIND. I confess with my intellect, my heart, my body and soul, by my entire being.

We all are sinners, and I am much worse the filth than all I have mentioned and beg Christ to help me repent. I recognize my mistake of going out into the wilderness only trying to catch a glimpse of myself to make my pride and falleness hallowed.

Please forgive me, brothers and sisters. God forgives.

Rostislav Mikhailovich Malleev-Pokrovsky, Tserkovnye Vekhi blog