When the Emperor Julian (A.D. 361-3), a Christian who apostacized and tried to reinstitute pagan worship in the Roman Empire, wished to attack Christians in Constantinople, he devised a plan to defile Christians during the first week Great Lent when the fast was strictest and cause them to break the fast. He ordered the governor to sprinkle blood for sacrifices offered to pagan gods to be sprinkled on all the food in the market, so that when Christians, hungry from the fast of the first week came to buy food, they would be triply defiled: one, by eating something from an animal forbidden during the fast; two, by eating something that had been sacrificed to idols; three, by eating blood—the latter two forbidden to Christians at the Council of Jerusalem in A.D. 50. By God’s grace, the Great Martyr Theodore the Recruit (+305) appeared in a dream to Archbishop Eudoxius and ordered him to tell the Christians not to buy anything in the markets but to eat boiled wheat with honey (kolivo) at home. In this way, God delivered the faithful in the capital from breaking the fast and defiling themselves.

The Prophet Daniel and his three friends faced the question of defilement, too. In spite of the king’s expectation that they would dine from the provisions of the king’s table, the young men firmly purposed in their hearts to keep the Mosaic Law and not defile themselves with non-kosher meat and wine that had been offered to idols. The other Hebrew youths who were captives with them did not make this resolve and defiled themselves. They thought, “We are captives. We must obey the king. We do not want to rock the boat. Who could possibly blame us when we were compelled to do it so that we might live normally?” But God provided a way for His faithful children in response to their faithful resolve to escape defilement, and He so blessed them that they finished their training to far exceed all the others In knowledge and understanding.

Our brotherhood perceives that we face a similar trial now with the so-called vaccinations for the virus. The shots are at least doubly tainted, first, as nearly all modern vaccines are, by substances poisonous to the body (though manufacturers claim they are not present in sufficient quantity to do harm). Secondly, they are tainted by the use of cells and tissue from aborted babies in their development.

The first defilement can result in physical sickness and death, both soon after receiving a shot and later on down the road. Through December 24, 2021, The VAERS (vaccine adverse event reporting service, established in 1990) data released by the CDC in the US reported the following for the three COVID shots used in the USA: 21,002 deaths, 110,609 hospitalizations, 3,435 miscarriages, and 35,650 people permanently disabled. Independent studies of the effectiveness of this reporting service indicate that only 1% to 13% of all vaccine adverse events are reported to VAERS. If this is true for the shots being administered for COVID, we can multiply the figures reported here by a factor from 8 to 100 to see physical harm from “vaccines” at an unprecedented level for any vaccine. The mainstream media admit that some people are harmed or killed by the “vaccines”, but they continue to chant the mantra that serious problems are “very rare.” They are not. Any new vaccine in the past that generated a tenth of these reports of adverse reactions would have been long pulled from the market.

The result of the second defilement is spiritual sickness. It renders us unfit to receive the abundance of grace God desires to pour out on us. Acquiescing to evil so that “good” may come is not how a Christian follows Christ. To use medicines developed, let alone containing, the cells and tissues of aborted children, is to embrace evil for the greater good. It is a form of idolatry, an offering of a sacrifice to a false god. The offerings are the innocent babies killed in their mother’s wombs, whose parts are harvested. Among the false gods now widely worshipped in the Western world are Safety and Health. Some Christians have been unaware of this idolatry. Other Christians have been conditioned to accept this over the years as a necessary evil as growing numbers of vaccines, medicines, and other products are produced using the sacrifice of infants. This acceptance of evil because some ‘good’ seems to come from it is a defiling compromise. It is not something God can bless. It gradually conditions those who subscribe to it to give their loyalty and love to whatever and whomever promises health and safety rather than to trust in the Living God who governs all by His loving providence. Daniel and the Christians saved from defilement by St. Theodore trusted the latter. Today, many, even some Orthodox Christians, appear to trust the former.

Is there not a third defilement in the current shot? These experimental mRNA vaccines offer man-made programming to human cells. Those creating them know neither the real effectiveness nor the long-term effects. But at a deeper level, this should concern us. Man, in his overweening pride, continues to play games with the Creator’s crowning work. He is not content with man. He wishes to improve him. For long years, it has been by birth control, test-tube babies, or plastic surgery that man has tried to “improve” on the Creator’s will and work. Yet man in his pride aspires higher, to clone, to grow new organs, to reprogram the Creator’s software, and to transcend by technology and science man’s created limitations. All this leads to transhumanism, a modern tower of Babel. This project offers insult to the Creator. It is blasphemy. It is nothing any Christian should support.

The current crisis appears to us to be a call to awaken from our sleep and repent. A growing number of drugs, vaccines, and other products are being developed by the use of cells and tissues from aborted babies. To partake of any product that contains such material or that relied upon the use of such material to develop it is as much defilement as was eating blood or foods sacrificed to idols. As the Holy Synod of the OCA wrote in their Encyclical Letter in 2001, “We cannot, however, condone the manipulation of embryonic cells in any form for research purposes, including lines developed from destroyed embryos. Rather, we can only express dismay at the fact that the debate over this issue has avoided major considerations regarding the very meaning and value of human life. President Bush’s proposal to use only the existing sixty lines of stem cells because the embryos had already been destroyed (i.e., killed) falters on the precept enunciated by the apostle Paul in Romans 3:8, ‘We may not do evil so that good may come.’ The very act of destroying those embryos is evil, and we may not profit from evil even to achieve a good and noble end.”

In light of this, shall we continue to defile ourselves with such products? Shall we justify it on the basis that it is widespread and that we have already participated in it? Is this not akin to the ancient practice of offering children to Molech to propitiate the god so that good would come upon the people? Rather, is it not time to acknowledge our fault and repent and stop defiling ourselves spiritually and harming ourselves physically? As Christians, we cannot abide in the spirit of our age. We cannot “go with the flow.” If we do, we have betrayed the Faith and our Lord.

The OCA bishops went on to warn that President Bush’s decision in 2001 “unwittingly opens the floodgates to ever more utilitarian manipulation of human life. Research on existing stem cell lines should be prohibited for the simple reason that those embryos should never have been created in the first place. The moral line has been crossed, and Mr. Bush’s proposed limitations do little to prevent an inevitable descent down an increasingly slippery slope.”

In 2021, we readily see the truth of the bishops’ words. We know of the trafficking by Planned Parenthood in aborted baby parts. We know of the ongoing use of tissues and cells from aborted babies to make or attempt to make products that are promised to bring us health and healing. All we have to do is accept the evil already done so that we may receive what is presented to us as good. All we have to do is eat the king’s meat and drink, or buy what is offered for all in the market. But we cannot do evil that good may come. Knowing of the evil and how widespread it is, it is time to turn away from it and stop defiling ourselves. We must find alternative ways of cultivating health. Ultimately, as Christians, we entrust our lives to God on whom we depend and do not cling to man’s defiled products.

As St. Paul warns, “Ye cannot drink thecup of the Lord, and thecup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils” (I Cor 10:21).

We face a choice—to drift along with the flow of our sinful generation and continue to defile ourselves or to stand up against our faithless generation in faithfulness to God. It will be as inconvenient for us as bucking the king’s policy was for Daniel or as having to make special arrangements to procure suitable food was for the Christians of Constantinople, but the reward of so doing is the true blessedness every true Christian craves: “Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord.”

Your Servants,

THE BURNING BUSH BROTHERHOOD

January 10th + The Year Of Our Lord 2022

“Do you want to be healed?” St John 5:6

To our beloved Shepherds, Brother Concelebrants, and Faithful in Christ the Lord,

With deep concern and from the urging of our conscience in Christ, we write to address the continued troubled state of our Nation and of many in the Church.

Only a few days ago, on September 9th, the President of our Country issued a disquieting executive order that has as its goal the forcing of the current COVID vaccine—a form of experimental gene-therapy—on millions of American citizens. The disquiet of many of the clergy and faithful was exacerbated on September 16, by the statement of the Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church of America and Archbishop Elpidophoros’ tweet stating “there is no religious exemption in the Orthodox Church for Her faithful from any vaccine, including the COVID19 vaccine.”

The civil and legal aspects of this issue are being addressed elsewhere by many and will be a matter of civil discord and debate for the foreseeable future. The intent of this epistle is not to address the troubling civil aspects of compelling people to receive an experimental and inadequately tested gene-therapy injection but, more importantly, our intent is to focus on the spiritual aspects and dangers of such a statement and the mentality surrounding it.

The “health crisis” that the world was forcefully subjected to well over a year and a half ago has been revealed as an even deeper spiritual crisis. In the name of health and protection, much that is harmful and destructive to both body and soul has been perpetuated. At current, under the new decrees of the Federal Government, millions of fellow Americans and thousands of Christians are being backed into an agonizing corner. Many, for very substantial and plausible reasons, have made an informed and free choice not to receive a novel gene-therapy injection. Now in the name of safety from a virus from which more than 99% recover, their very means of livelihood are being threatened. The current willingness of some to deprive other persons of their work, livelihood, studies, and even, possibly, access to stores, hospitals, and places of religious worship reveals that the goal of mandates does not have the well-being of humanity at heart whatsoever, as it constantly claims.

No person should be deprived of their ability, in good conscience and freewill, to question and refuse a proposed medical treatment. Neither the efficacy nor the safety of the available injections has been sufficiently determined. Normal safety studies have not been done. The long-term effects on people both physically and spiritually are unknown. Many people for good reasons still have very substantial ethical, moral, and spiritual concerns about the development, ingredients, and effects of the proffered injection. But some in the Church are all to willing to trample upon the conscience of their brothers and sisters in Christ, whether out of fear or out of unquestioning faith in the honesty of government, its chosen experts, and the mainstream media. The concerns of many Christians are not due to politics or ignorance but are based firmly upon their deep faith and belief in Christ and their love for truth. A troubling new ideology is developing in which even Christians are willing to advocate the “necessity” for the “greater good” of forcing vaccination – injections – against the will and conscience of another believer, in the name of “love.” Such attempts at compulsion through manipulating and distorting the meaning of “love” are abhorrent to the Christian and a distortion of true love found within the phronema of the Church.

Modern man’s fallen state has subjected him to a disease much deadlier than any virus the world is facing: self-assertive human pride. Finding himself in this state, he cannot truly love nor can he know the definition of love. We see evidence of this in everyday life as so many politicians and leaders carry out soul-destroying policies and behaviors under the banner of “love.” It is how our vice-president can approve of the most egregious abortion policies but has the audacity to tout “that the act of getting vaccinated is the very essence of what the Bible tells us when is says ‘love thy neighbor.’” What we are witnessing is a distorted version of love that can “easily turn into aversion, and even into bitter hatred,” says St. Ignatius Brianchaninov a distorted love that “has even been expressed by the dagger.”^[i] This sort of love only wants what is earthly and is compelled by self-assertive pride. True love is spiritual love, which desires for that which is lofty, “it knows no unjust partiality; it is reasonable and strict, wishing for the beloved not deceptive—and often harmful—earthy treasures, but true treasures, spiritual ones.”^[ii] Unfortunately, we have witnessed persons within the Church become mouthpieces for the improper and imperfect love taught by worldly people and very seldom do we hear of true spiritual love. St. Ignatius Brianchinonov reminds the faithful that the command to “love thy neighbor” is far from the fallen human heart and it is a spiritual command that is only realized through cleansing and purification. Therefore, for this love to be realized the spiritual life must be taught—an inoculation against sin—not the abandonment of the faithful and coercion of an experimental injection. When leaders preach distorted worldly love they are nothing more than wolves in sheep’s clothing, for this perversion of love that masquerades as Christian love consumes and devours the souls of men. Such wolves would like us to believe that distorted love is “the essence of what the bible tells us” but inside it is full of rot, vanity, and preferers worldly status over spiritual ascent.

God has endowed man with the ability to act freely within boundaries and the free-will of man is a characteristic of his rational soul being created in the image of God.^[iii] Freedom is the greatest gift God bestowed upon man at creation, “and it was this freedom of will that defined the high dignity of man—a dignity that raised him infinitely above every other creature.”^[iv] Freedom of will was bestowed on man out of the true love God has for him, and it is true love that desires a free response—“love for love—that is in no way forced. Only this kind of love has any worth: love that flows freely from a loving heart, without any compulsion or coercion.”^[v] As a faithful shepherd has recently called to mind the words of St. Irenaeus: “For there is no coercion with God, but a good will towards us is present with Him continually. And therefore does He give good counsel to all. In man, as well as the angels, He has placed the power of choice…”^[vi] This power of choice is so sacred that God Himself does not impede on it, allowing man to choose to act freely. St Nektarios writes, “So great and valuable is this freedom of man that God himself shows respect [for it] and honors it.”^[vii] The value of this freedom is witnessed by our beloved Savior’s ministry on earth to such an extent that He said to His betrayer, “What you are about to do, do quickly.” If the Lord does not constrain Judas, how do we think it is proper to constrain brothers and sisters into injections against their free-will? What are the faithful to do when, instructed by the likes of St. Theophan to never act against their conscience, they are commanded to do so by politicians and unsupported in following their conscience by their hierarchs? To impede upon man’s will and to break his conscience in order to subject him to anything against his will is not true love or recognition of the dignity of humanity. In truth, it is only the devil who seeks to trample upon man’s will in order to ensnare and enslave him for evil bidding through sin. St Symeon the New Theologian writes: “The devil bred spite among people and seduced them to love it. And so they arm themselves against one another, thinking that they are fulfilling their own desires but do not understand that in this way they serve the devil and are in slavery to him. The harassing of one another, this plunder, usurpation, and all iniquity are nothing but the consequences of this slavery.”^[viii] As fathers and shepherds, as icons of Christ the High Priest, it is right for the leaders of the Church to enable their reason-endowed sheep to listen to their conscience.

Moreover, the dividing of people into “vaccinated” and “unvaccinated” goes contrary to the truth of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. The emerging environment of segregation, discrimination, suspicion, division, and exploitation of fear bears many signs of demonic inspiration. The Apostle warns us in no uncertain terms: “I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them.”^[ix] We judge such divisions and the policies that foment them to be the work of our enemy to neutralize the Church and destroy souls.

It is the devil who wants us to view our fellow man as unclean. It is the enemy who seeks to equate humans with a virus, shunning them as if they were tainted by hell itself. The demons desire that we begin to fear, not the contamination of willful sin and the passions, but rather physical illness. Motivated by this fear of bodily sickness and death, we have fallen to such a state that we are willing to brand and stigmatize even our brethren. We have never found such a mentality in the sacred Traditions of our Holy Faith. With great sobriety we recall the turbulent history of our world over the 20^th and into the 21^st century. As Orthodox Christians we remember well that it was in the name of “fraternity and the well-being” of humanity that the godless regimes of Secular Communism were instituted in Russia and throughout Eastern Europe. Under the banner of the betterment of humanity millions of people were systematically dehumanized, discriminated against, brutalized, and slaughtered. People were divided into card-carrying Communists or not. Those who did not conform to the government agenda and propaganda were painted as “enemies of the people” who obstructed the advancement of society. Papers of government approval were necessary for basic living. We know most certainly that the spirit behind these works was intensely anti-Christian and antichrist. Numerous fabricated “humanitarian crises” were used as means to attack and deconstruct the Christian understanding of society and human interaction and moreover the Church.

Our brotherhood firmly rejects the exploitation of a person’s acceptance or rejection of a medical treatment to institute a system of discrimination and ostracization not only in the world, but, most of all, in the Church. Can we as Christians morally segregate people in Church on this basis? Can we justify in effect rewriting our Lord’s command to say, “Come unto Me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden—but only if you are vaccinated—and I will give you rest?” Can we justify before Christ making “proof of vaccination” a requirement to enter a Church and participate in worship? Are not such things totally foreign to the spirit of true Orthodoxy? The thought of such things taking place fills us with grief.

We are dedicated to ministering to all who seek Christ without any distinction between “vaccinated” and “unvaccinated.” Could we justify any other practice before God? The unequivocal answer is no.

To the faithful whose conscience is awake and pricked by the insolence of leaders and employers coercing you to partake of these novel injections or face the cost of your livelihood, freedoms, and participation in social life, we will be writing a more detailed epistle soon. Listen to your conscience, do not cave into social pressure, and join our brotherhood in our prayer rule. For now, we leave you with the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and encourage you to read his essay Live Not By Lies in full, which is easily found online and deserves careful study and application in the days ahead:

“Yes, at first it will not be fair. Someone will have to temporarily lose his job. For the young who seek to live by truth, this will at first severely complicate life, for their tests and quizzes, too, are stuffed with lies, and so choices will have to be made. But there is no loophole left for anyone who seeks to be honest: Not even for a day, not even in the safest technical occupations can he avoid even a single one of the listed choices—to be made in favor of either truth or lies, in favor of spiritual independence or spiritual servility. And as for him who lacks the courage to defend even his own soul: Let him not brag of his progressive views, boast of his status as an academician or a recognized artist, a distinguished citizen or general. Let him say to himself plainly: I am cattle, I am a coward, I seek only warmth and to eat my fill.”^[x]

Your Servants,

THE BURNING BUSH BROTHERHOOD

September 18^th + The Year Of Our Lord 2021

^[i] Archbishop Averky Taushev, The Struggle for Virtue: Asceticism in a Modern Secular Society, p. 57

^[ii] Archbishop Averky, p. 59

^[iii] St John Damascene: “From the earth God formed man’s body and by His own inbreathing gave him a rational soul, which last we say is the Divine Image—for ‘according to His image’ means the nous and free will, while ‘according to His likeness’ means such likeness in virtue as is possible.”

^[iv] Archbishop Averky, p. 71

^[v] Ibid.

^[vi] St. Iranaeus, Against the Heresies, IV, 37, I; Quoted by Bishop Siluan in an archpastoral letter dated Sept. 10^th, 2021.

^[vii] St. Nectarios of Aegina, Habitation of Holiness: “The Relation of True Freedom with Moral Freedom,” p. 20

^[viii] Quoted in Archbishop Averky, p. 74

^[ix] Romans 16:17

^[x] Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Live Not By Lies

“Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” Romans 14:23

The Christian life is a life of faith. We walk by faith, not by sight (2 Cor 5:7). Without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb 11:6). To believe that Jesus is the Son of God is to do the work of God (John 6:28, 29).

All that we do at church is done in faith that God is and has revealed Himself to us in His Son Jesus Christ. We leave our homes and come to Church and gather with our brethren in faith. We kiss the icons in faith. We kiss the cross in faith. We kiss the chalice in faith. We kiss the priest’s hand in faith. In faith, we lay down our lives as a living sacrifice to God, which is our rational worship (Rom 12:1) and put them in God’s hands. In Faith, we receive Holy Communion, and, in return, Christ imparts His life to us. All that we do at church is done in faith, walking by faith, and not by sight. And, of course, all that we do in life outside of church is to be done in faith, for “whatsoever is not of faith is sin” and “without faith, it is impossible to please God” (cf. Rom. 11:6).

Christ himself depicts fear as being in direct opposition to faith. When He and the disciples were on the sea in a storm and He was asleep, the disciples awakened Him, saying, “Lord, save us: we perish!” His response is one we must take to heart: “Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?” Then he calmed the sea. He said much the same to Peter when the apostle, attempting to walk on the sea in the storm, became afraid of the storm and began to sink. “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”

Faith in Christ and fear of life’s storms stand in opposition. Who has greater power: Christ, or the stormy sea of temptation Satan stirs up in this life? Where is our faith? Is it placed in Christ, our Savior, or is it placed in the storm and its ability to harm us? Christ the Lord clearly instructs us, “Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Lk. 12:32). At Great Compline, we lustily sing “God is with us, understand all ye nations and submit yourselves, for God is with us.” If we truly believe this, how can we be afraid of anything? God is with us. During the storm on Galilee, Christ reproached his disciples for their fear of the storm and their lack of faith in Him who was with them. In light of this, what does now He have to say to us now?

Despite the survival rate of more than 99%, the media has relentlessly whipped up a storm of fear over SARS-CoV-2 virus, and many Orthodox Christians are succumbing to fear. Compared to the gale of Bubonic Plague and the other great plagues of history, the virus looks like a stiff breeze generating a few whitecaps. But even if we were in the midst of a raging pandemic with people falling dead on the street, Christ would continue to speak as He speaks to us now: “Why are you fearful, O you of little faith? Did I not die and rise again? Did I not plunder Hades? Did I not ascend into heaven and keep your true life with me at God’s right hand? Do you not believe that I am good? that I love you? That I am working all things for your eternal well-being? Do you not believe the Psalmist, who wrote ‘You shall not fear the terror by night…A thousand shall fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand, but it shall not come near you’ (Psalm 90)? Do you not believe My words? Why are you afraid? Your life is hidden with Me; it is not in this world to which you are clinging. ” Faith does not permit us to be afraid for our health when we come to church, even in the midst of a storm of plague.

Every day, we Orthodox Christians pray multiple times, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. In the services, we repeatedly commend ourselves, each other, and all our life unto Christ our God. We hereby acknowledge that our lives are His for Him to do whatever He wishes with; He has purchased us with the price of His precious blood, and our life is no longer ours to control. Thus, when we come to Church in time of plague, the question is not whether the chalice, or the spoon, the icons, the cross, or the priest’s hand could be the means of conveying illness. The question is, do we come with faith? “Whatever is not faith is of sin.” Do we come with faith in our good, loving God that He will give us at church what we need for our salvation and our eternal well-being? Does our faith include accepting the possibility that the Great Physician may prescribe sickness and even death for our body to heal our soul? Yes, we all generally want health and continued life on this earth, but, if we live by faith, we do not fear illness. Yes, we want to live, but we do not fear death.

Do we truly understand Pascha? Do we appreciate the power of Christ’s resurrection? Or is the troparion of the feast but empty words for us? “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life.” How can we sing this at Pascha and then quail in fear before a virus? Doing so, we reveal the weakness of our faith, and we betray the Orthodox Faith. The martyrs went to their deaths in the face of torture in the faith that their true life was hidden with Christ. They knew that they must die in this world, sooner or later. They knew that Christ’s resurrection was the ultimate defeat of death, and that they need not live in fear of it. If we are afraid now, Christ stands before us, reproaching us, “Why are you fearful, you of little faith?”

Why do we quail in fear before this virus? Do we not quail before the virus because of our lack of faith in Christ’s resurrection and because we are still attached to this world? Do we not fail to see our true life hidden with Christ at the right hand of God? Do we not still think of our life in terms of the earthly pleasures and earthly aspirations and so fear losing those things? As the Athonite saying puts it, “If you die before you die, when you die, you will not die.” If by faith in Christ we have detached ourselves from the world and live in confident expectation of the resurrection and Christ’s kingdom, this world holds no fear for us. But if we have not died with Christ to this world, if we still live attached to the world, we will live in fear of every turmoil of the world that threatens our comfort, and we will die spiritually when we die physically. Unless we repent of this lack of faith, we will sink in the face of the storm of fear whipped up by secular agendas and blasted full force on the media.

Your Servants,

THE BURNING BUSH BROTHERHOOD

September 7th + The Year Of Our Lord 2021

“Brother Christians! Raise your voices in defense of the Church’s Apostolic Faith, the holy things of the Church, the Church’s heritage.”

+New-Hieromartyr Hermogenes of Tobolsk

The current spiritual attacks on the Truth of Christ and His Church in these troubled times are not new or novel. The main goal of the enemy of our salvation is to destroy Truth and to sow unbelief and despair in people’s hearts. His top targets are Orthodox Christians. How well are we standing firm against him?

To assist us in this battle, we have excellent examples from a host of Saints of our times on how to respond to the assaults of the militant secularism that faces us today. The army of New-Martyrs and Confessors, who fought the good fight under various Soviet-Communist Countries, offer us a clear and true Orthodox response to the godlessness of our times.

On such example is found in the New-Hieromartyr Hermogenes of Tobolsk. We have as a testimony his bold confession of faith during the time of the Bolshevik take over in Russia. He clearly shows that the “privatization” of “religion,” which amounts to a subjectivizing of religious claims, is an important step in marginalizing the Church’s claim to possess the Truth. The truth of Orthodox Christianity is then seemingly reduced to – “that is your private opinion.” Further, when faith becomes a mere “private matter”, the necessity of corporate worship is greatly diminished. From this point, it is easier to justify steps to limit and then prevent corporate gatherings of believers, which, after all, are not “essential.” Yet for the Orthodox Christian, corporate worship is absolutely essential. St. Hermogenes clearly tells us that the goal of such steps is to kill faith in the hearts of believers and make them atheists! The demonic powers understand that the only thing that is able to withstand their assault is steadfast Orthodox Faith.

What follows are the saint’s own words. Their relevance to our times is more than evident.

“The antichristian decree declares that ‘religion is a private matter’ – the personal matter of each separate person, but not of society or the State. In these words is contained the greatest untruth and the greatest harm for every religion in general, and especially for the universal religion of Christianity

and for the Universal Church of Christ. In actual fact, the Christian faith is a public, conciliar, universal faith. “The Christian cannot be saved on his own, in separation from others.

‘Where two or three are gathered together in My name,’ said Christ, ‘there am I in the midst of them.’ The Christian is saved in the Church - in the society of believers: it is to this society of the Church that the grace of the Holy Spirit is given, which acts and is bestowed upon believing people only in the Church, for the sake of the common Church faith and love, for the sake of the common good.

“The society of the Church is like the body of a man: in the body all the members are linked together, they live and act together. If the link between the separate members is broken, the body is destroyed and perishes. A man perishes in exactly the same way if he departs from the society of the Church,

if he does not want to be saved together with the others, if he wishes to be an autonomous person, not subject to the spirit and rules of the lawful Church union of all the believers.

“Christians cannot be saved without common prayer, without the carrying out of public services, without the participation of the whole people in the sacraments, without doing good works with the participation of all: pan-ecclesiastical charity, education, and care for each other, etc.

“The decree declares religion to be a private matter, because its composers do not want to recognize the Orthodox Church as a Divine institution; they are striving to disunite and disperse the Christians; they even want to place all of them under suspicion and subject them to house arrest, forbidding them to go to the churches for common Church prayers; they want to kill faith in their hearts and make them atheists!

“Brother Christians! Raise your voices in defense of the Church’s Apostolic Faith, the holy things of the Church, the Church’s heritage. Defend your right to believe and confess your faith as you learned it in days of old, as you were taught it by the holy apostles, the holy martyrs, the God-wise fathers of the Church, the Christian ascetics. Take care of the holiness of your souls, the freedom of your consciences. Say loudly that you have been accustomed to pray and save yourselves in the churches, that the holy things of the Church are dearer to you than life itself, that without them salvation is impossible. No power can demand from you that which is against your faith, your religious conscience: ‘We must obey God rather than men’, said the holy apostles. That is what we, too, must say. The apostles joyfully suffered for the faith. Be you also ready for sacrifice, for podvig, and remember that physical arms are powerless against those who arm themselves with powerful faith in Christ. Faith moves mountains, ‘the faith of the Christians has conquered the pagan boldness’. May your faith be bold and courageous! Christ destroyed hades. He will also destroy the snares of the enemies of our Church. Believe - and the enemy will flee from before your face. Stand in defense of your faith and with firm hope say: ‘Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered!’”

Your Servants,

THE BURNING BUSH BROTHERHOOD

August 25th + The Year Of Our Lord 2021

TO OUR BELOVED HIERARCHS, BROTHER CONCELEBRANTS, AND OUR FAITHFUL FLOCKS

“Gird yourselves with sackcloth and wail you priests.
Mourn, you who serve the altar.” Joel 1:13.

Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ!

We write this letter in anguish and pain of heart, carrying a burden we have borne in silence for too long. Today we write with boldness, a boldness that is found not in ourselves but in our desire to hold fast to the Holy Traditions of our beloved Orthodox Faith—the true medicine of the world. We write as a brotherhood of clergy in America not bound by jurisdiction or diocese. The fires of current trials have brought us together, and our brotherhood has been forged in tears, brokenness, and prayer. It is in the ashes of what this past year and a half has wrought that we have felt the disruption of the Church at many levels, but have found like-minded brother priests whose resurrectional joy, silent suffering, and confessor-like endurance kept the spark of zeal ignited. Sadly, because of the nature of our testimony, we cannot publicly disclose ourselves, but we judge our voice to be a necessary voice crying in the wilderness out of love and pain for the Church. We are keeping anonymity not on account of cowardice but for the reason we have been silent for many months: we have deep concern what may happen to our flocks if we are identified. Truly, a lamentable predicament to be in! It is the suffering cries of the laity and our flocks, however, that have inspired us to speak out with a necessary tone of repentance and healing. We will address the laity whom we have neglected, exhort our brother priests to awake, and exhort our beloved fathers and chief hierarchs to fervent apostolic witness.

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Firstly, to the faithful. The past year has revealed much in our hearts. It would be easy to place the blame on some outside circumstances or some other person—society at large or authorities in the government or in the Church. Yet we acknowledge that, above all else, sin starts in our own hearts. Above all else, we are personally responsible for the shortcomings and failings that the Lord has laid bare. It is He who has allowed the many tribulations and temptations of the past year on account of our many sins. These trials are for our chastisement and healing; they are for the turning of our hearts back once again to the Lord Jesus Christ. We believe, as the saints testify, “Because of your sins the Lord has allowed this trouble to come upon you, because you keep forgetting God” (St. John of Kronstadt).

As clergy, we take responsibility for the many stumbling blocks set before the flock of Christ the Lord, especially in the turbulent year 2020. We acknowledge that, in many ways, we, the clergy, acted out of weakness and ungodly fear. We humbly ask for forgiveness. We know that the actions of clergy made dire prophecies ring true. “The time will come when we will not find even a tiny piece of antidoron, and we will say to ourselves, ‘Where can I get a little antidoron? I used to have it every day. I took and ate it by the handful. Where are you my little antidoron, that I might partake of you?’ The time will come when we will not have either antidoron or holy water.”^[1]

Forgive us for not sounding a clear call to repentance. Forgive us for closing churches in a time of deep spiritual need. Forgive us for limiting services and restricting attendance. Forgive us for turning the people of God away from Church and the Holy Mysteries in a time of profound need, effectively “not allowing those who are entering to go in.” Forgive us for allowing the altering of the mode of Holy Communion for fear of the spread of illness, such as the use of multiple spoons and the wiping of the communion spoon in a disinfectant. Forgive us for refusing in-person holy confession during a time of great crisis. Forgive us for forbidding the proper veneration of icons held by the Holy Fathers of the 7^thEcumenical Council, a veneration our forefathers and mothers shed blood for. Forgive us for making face-masks a requirement for entering the Holy Temple of our Lord. Forgive us for placing secular narratives above the teachings of the Holy Orthodox Faith.

Forgive us, for we should have served more services. We should have had public repentance, prayer and fasting. We should have had processions with holy icons and fervent supplications. We should have served the service of blessing of holy water and the sprinkling of the people of God therewith. We should have served Holy Unction, for the healing of soul and body. We should have called, in both word and action, the people of God first and foremost to a hope, trust, and faith in God above all else. We should have shown forth steadfast courage and faith in the holy things of the Faith. Forgive us for failing to walk in the way of our Holy Fathers. Forgive use for blurring the divine lines of the Holy Liturgy with the dark ink of fleshly reasoning and justification.

Forgive us for neglecting your children and reversing their catechism, asking them to experience God through a screen and forcing them to conceal their angelic faces behind an iconoclastic mask. We did not heed the words of our Savior, Who calls your children to Him, and we allowed the millstone of directives to drag us into the dark depths of a burdened conscience. We beg for your forgiveness and for theirs, seeking the life giving breath of repentance.

We firmly resolve never to abandon you or your families again, no matter the circumstance or the cost—to the shedding of our blood.

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Secondly, to our brother priests and deacons. We must confess, in the words of the New Hieromartyr Peter, “But this is our grief – we have invented all the wrong means by which we think to be saved from this terrible sickness that has mercy on no one. We try to utilize various serums and vaccines … and the vast majority of people almost completely leave out the spiritual starting point in a person—his soul.” We started from externals and not from the spiritual starting point. Our weakness and sin, manifest in the past year, are but symptoms of a more profound ailment, one that surpasses COVID in gravity and it appears has infected a large amount of people.

We have led Orthodox Christians to reason more according to the spirit of the fallen world than by the Life and Spirit of Holy Orthodoxy. Our hearts have gradually grown accustomed to worldly thinking rather than having the mind of Christ. The past year was not the ailment, it but revealed in a more acute light the ailment already afflicting us. When, as priests, we received the Holy Body of our Lord into our unworthy hands at ordination, we pledged to preserve it whole and unharmed until our last breath, acknowledging our accountability at the Second Coming. How have we slipped so far as to forget our promise before God and become so foreign to the ways of our holy fathers who served worthily before us?

We have permitted a humanistic ecumenism to supplant the Divine One Holy Catholic and Ecumenical Church, which is the very Body of the Theanthropos. The predominance of our placing faith in the resolutions of men reveals that we have begun, in the words of St. Justin Popovic, “to replace faith in the God-man with a belief in man, to replace the Gospel of the God-man with a gospel according to man, to replace the philosophy of the God-man with a philosophy according to man, to replace the culture of the God-man with a culture according to man. In brief, they [we] seek to replace life according to the God-man with life according to man.”

In many places we allowed our liturgical life to cease, depriving the world of the sacred power of the divine liturgy which restrains the power of the evil one. “Do you know how much this guards us? An elder once told us that when a person carries the Gospel with him, it protects everyone in the surrounding neighborhoods. Just imagine then, the power of Christ’s sacrifice that happens every day.”^[2] Today, clergymen stand in awe at the evil that has escalated over this past year but have neglected to see the cosmic significance that our vocation plays in it. “The Divine Liturgy is the way we know God and the way God becomes known to us,” says St. Sophrony. It is the Church’s greatest mission, and we laid it aside! In this great work, the Lord’s work, the same Saint says, “We feel His Divine presence within us, outside of us, at the highest grandeur of the universe, in the face of man and in the radiant intellect. And in the hours that the unwaning light illumines, our hearts we realize we will not die.” However, many of us allowed the divine presence of God that is imprinted on the dear faces of our people to be concealed under a mask and abandoned them to be pursued by the jaws of wolves without participation in divine services. Furthermore, we let down the world and ceased to sanctify it, allowing evil to unmask itself and act more openly.

Much of this was done under the guise of love—but it was not Christian love. It was a “love” defined by politicians and slick spokesmen who also advocate for the “right” to murder unborn children, who bomb our Orthodox countries on Pascha, and who will not even lift a finger for the poor of their own cities. Some of our people died without the Holy Mysteries, without the faithful by their bed, without proper burial. Others withered away in loneliness, battled thoughts of suicide, and were lost to the clutches of this world.

Open and common prayer with heretics and schismatics, contrary to the canons, has become all-too common. And this sad sin has widened its wound now to encompass prayer with non-Christian groups. “What harmony,” we ask, “has Christ with Belial? Or what portion has a believer with an unbeliever.”^[3] Blatant rejection of the clear Orthodox teaching on morality is permitted in broad daylight, bareheaded, and those who uphold the Orthodox Faith remain silent. The broad and easy path of compromise is continually sought and the healing traditions of the Holy Fathers are neglected.

For these things, we ought to offer the world our public repentance. We have forgotten God by trusting more in the powers of this world. The world now needs priests and deacons who are confessors, men of prayer, and who strive for an austere life of asceticism. If we are lukewarm, not only will we be spit out by our Lord, but also by the world—for it knows all too well the wretched stench of a compromising clergyman.

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Lastly, to our beloved shepherds, the bishops. Often when we look back upon the deep wounds experienced by the Church throughout history, we see the abnormal break between the people and their shepherd as the cause of that wound. We, as a brotherhood of your priests whom you endearingly call sons, have now experienced such a break and suffer feelings of orphanhood. The biggest anguish this year has brought is the absence of courageous apostolic shepherds.

The voice of your fatherly guidance and protection became to us the voice of a stranger, for no longer did we hear the consoling voice of the Lord, the Holy Fathers, or the healing medicines of the Church, but the voice of the world, corrupt politicians, and medical advisors that are now profiting off a dire situation. The wolves in politicians’ dress co-opted Christian morality, and the same that teach our women to murder their children in their womb pontificated “love for neighbor”—and the hierarchy parroted this shamelessly. “Love for neighbor” became not burying our dead properly and isolating our flocks to the point of suicide. It contributed to the escalating rise in household abuse, and more. Fear and this pseudo “love for neighbor” led our bishops [you!] to instruct us not to allow our people into the temple for healing. All of us in this brotherhood began to realize that your voices had become foreign worldly, full of fear, and not the voice of Whom we pledged our lives to serve—our One Good Shepherd.

We love you and we long for your care, but if you continue to be strange voices we cannot do anything but heed the One True Voice that leads us to the pastures of life. We do not see this path as disobedience, but the ultimate obedience to our Lord and His Bride—the Holy Church. For, under the guise of obedience, we were told to follow this strange new path that is unprecedented in our history as a people of God. In many cases, we have silently resisted this new strange voice that we have heard and have led our people as best we could—struggling on our own in silence. In heartache and despair, we have watched our shepherds become drunk with the drink that this world offers and uncover themselves; we have labored to hide your nakedness from your sheep. They love you—they thank you in their prayers for not shutting them out, not forcing masks upon them, not changing the method of communion, etc., when in reality you told us to force these deadly ideas upon them. Forgive us, but we had to find the Voice of the Master and in grief we had to resist the strange path we have seen you sadly forge because there is no life in it—all we saw in the parishes from these worldly measures was spiritual death.

Please return to us once again as loving shepherds with the Voice that brings us life. We have felt orphaned, without apostolic guides, and have suffered the unnatural severance between father and son. Whether you have been silent or have outright supported the deterioration of our parishes through worldly mandates, you have grieved us and have shaken the innermost depths of our hearts. We cannot fully express in words how this betrayal has affected us—you saw the wolf and ran, you have scattered the sheep, but there is time to return to care for the flock. In great sadness we have watched you now pat yourselves on the backs, congratulating yourselves and boasting that the impositions over the past year were right and correct. Yet, when your people for long months were deprived of the medicines of the Church, were pushed to the brink of darkness, were seized in the clutches of the children of hell, and forced to participate in the liturgy through a screen like starving children watching a feast through a window, you must admit that this truly was not a victory.

As your sons, we must tell you that we cannot be obedient to the voice of the murderous spirit of this age and that we have found it coming from your chanceries in the form of mandates, sermons, political conferences, and zoom meetings. We have great love for you and reverence your office, but sadly cannot follow you down a foreign road so we beg you to return to bold apostolic speech. We know that obedience is discriminate, not indiscriminate, from both our Holy Fathers and the divine Scriptures, for both speak of true and false shepherds. We know the holy examples of St. Maximus the Confessor and the erring hierarchy who aligned with the impious Emperor. We remember St. Athanasius and the heretical presbytery who opposed him. We recollect the faithfulness and boldness of St. Mark of Ephesus and how the compromising hierarchy were shamed by the laity on the docks of Constantinople. We are inspired by the recent boldness of the Russian martyrs who were imprisoned and suffered under Sergianism and its allegiance to an atheistic regime. The path of schismatics is riddled with disaster, and this path we will never take, but we discern in the lives of these holy ones the painful path of blessed disobedience. “Obedience makes the subordinate one with the one he obeys. The Holy Writ says: ‘and the flocks conceived before the rods’ (Gen. 30, 39) […]. One may say: the subordinate’s faith can replace the elder’s inadequacy. Wrong! Faith in truth saves. Faith in lies and in diabolical deceit harms!”^[4]

St John of the Ladder writes, “Above all, you should leave the integral faith and the pious dogmas as a legacy to your children, so that not only your children but your grandchildren too will you manage to guide towards the Lord by walking the path of Orthodoxy.”^[5] This is the legacy that is not foreign, and in these times it is impossible to be silent as a shepherd in the face of treachery. Teach us, lead us, and leave us the legacy of Truth and Life. St Paisios warned us saying: “If Christians don’t begin to witness their faith, to resist evil, then the destroyers will become even more insolent. But today’s Christians are no warriors. If the Church keeps silent, to avoid conflict with the government, if the Metropolitans are silent, if the monks hold their peace, then who will speak up?” Truly, we must recognize that it is because of the Church’s silence that evil has all the more prevailed in these times.

Speak, beloved hierarchs! Speak out against the mandates that have deprived us of spiritual life, speak out against the immoral agendas of the LGBTQ movement that publicly seeks to snatch your children, speak out against false unions! Embolden your priests and do not deprive us of shepherds for the sake of ease, of legal immunity, or out of indifference. We are the prey of this current age, save us! We feel as the prophet wrote, “As I live, saith the Lord God, surely because my flock became a prey, and my flock became meat to every beast of the field, because there was no shepherd, neither did my shepherds search for my flock, but the shepherds fed themselves, and fed not my flock. Therefore, O ye shepherds, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I shall visit the shepherds; and I will require my flock at their hand, and cause them to cease from feeding the flock…”^[6] Return to feed us, your poor priests and people.

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To all, in humility before God, we vow not to return to the strange path of the past year that so many have experienced and are still suffering under. We will not return to practicing the following.

1. We will not deprive the people of the life-giving sacraments of the Church out of fear.

2. We will not change the method of Holy Communion.

3. We will not limit the occupancy in the Temple of God.

4. We will not deprive the faithful of the veneration of holy icons, relics, and other holy objects or vessels.

5. We will not require the iconoclastic masking of our people.

6. We will not urge or require our people to inject themselves with experimental injections, especially those manufactured and/or tested on aborted fetal cell lines.

We therefore resolve to uphold the Holy Orthodox Faith of our Fathers and we call upon all faithful Orthodox to do the same. First and foremost, this is a call to deeper repentance and spiritual resolve. We all have a responsibility to identify ­the sickness of the modern age and to heal it by calling on the sweetest name of our Lord Jesus, saying, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.”

Your Servants,

THE BURNING BUSH BROTHERHOOD

July 31^st/July 18^th + The Year Of Our Lord 2021

^[1] Gerondissa Makrina Vassopoulou, Words of the Heart, pg 504. She said these prophetic words on the 19th of December, 1992.

^[2] Gerondissa Makrina Vassopoulou, Words of the Heart, pg 504. She said these prophetic words on the 19th of December, 1992.

^[3] 1 Corinthians 6:15

^[4] Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov, op. cit., tome I, pp.141.143.146ff

^[5] Saint John of Sinai, On the Shepherd 97, edition Holy Monastery of Paraclete, Horopos Attica,

19946, p.402 (PG 88, 1201A).

^[6] Ezekiel 34, 8-10 (KJV)