THE RESTORATION OF ROMANITY

The kingdom of this world
has become the Kingdom of our Lord
and of His Christ. (Revelation 11.15)

As we survey the history of the Orthodox Church in the twentieth century, we can see that the two seemingly minor breaches in the Orthodox world-view made in 1905 - the limitation on the Tsar's autocratic powers made in the October manifesto, and the April decree on toleration, - led to an almost complete devastation of the former lands of Holy Orthodoxy. The first, by implication, declared that the Orthodox Autocracy was not a Divine institution sanctified by and united with the Divine institution of the Orthodox Church, but a merely human organization that needed "checks and balances," supplied by other purely human and secular organizations. And the second, by implication, declared that Orthodoxy was not the One, God-inspired Truth, which it is the duty of all men to seek out and obey, but simply one religion among many others deserving of no special privileges or support. The great prophet of the twentieth century, St. John of Kronstadt, opposed both measures. Now we can only lament the consequences of disobeying the prophet's word and seek to draw lessons from them.

The tragedy of our century is clear for all to see: the Church has been secularized and politicized. From the left she has been conformed to the image of an autocratic party-state (the Sergianist Soviet Church); from the right she has taken on the shape of a democratic federation of states (the World Council of Churches); while on all sides nationalist self-worship has replaced the worship of the Man Who died for all men, to create a Nation which exists to embrace all nations. The Church has come to be seen as the servant, not of God, but of the world, a pander to man in his fallen desires: "Ecu-communism" has abolished the boundaries between the Church and the world.

The roots of this tragedy lie in two rebellions against the Church: the autocratic rebellion of the Pope in the eleventh century, which gave birth, as Tyutchev and Dostoyevsky saw, to Communism; and the democratic rebellion of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, which gave birth to Ecumenism. And these rebellions, though rapidly declining in strength as they degenerate into simple paganism, are with us still. But the real tragedy lies in the fact that the spirit of rebellion has entered into the heart of the Orthodox Church, allowing the surrounding political culture and ideology to seep into the Church's organism and to drive out the life-giving sap of the Holy Spirit from whole autocephalous Churches, making them of one flesh and spirit with the surrounding world.

God has fearfully punished this rebellion - and yet it continues. The situation is as the prophet described: "O sinful nation, a people full of sins, an evil seed, lawless children: ye have forsaken the Lord, and provoked the Holy One of Israel. Why should ye be smitten any more, transgressing more and more? The whole head is pained, and the whole heart sad. From the feet to the head, there is no soundness in them; neither wound, nor bruise, nor festering ulcer are healed: it is not possible to apply a plaster, nor oil, nor bandages. Your land is desolate, your cities burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is made desolate, overthrown by strange nations. The daughter of Sion shall be deserted as a tent in a vineyard, and as a storehouse of fruits in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. And if the Lord of Sabaoth had not left us a seed, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been made like unto Gomorrah" (Isaiah 1.4-9).

The punishment of the rebellion began some eight months later, on the night of October 25, 1917, when the Winter Palace fell to the Bolsheviks at the same time that the following lesson was being read in the churches: "Thus saith the Lord, What trespass have your fathers found in Me, that they have revolted far from Me, and gone after vanities, and become vain? And they said not, Where is the Lord, Who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, Who guided us in the wilderness, in an untried and trackless land, in a land which no man at all went through, and no man dwelt there? And I brought you to Carmel, that ye should eat the fruits thereof, and the good thereof; and ye went in, and defiled My land, and made Mine heritage an abomination. The priests said not, Where is the Lord? And they that held by the law knew Me not. The shepherds also sinned against Me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal, and went after that which profited not. " (Jeremiah 2.5-8).

And as Russia and the Russian Church was the de-facto leader of Orthodoxy, the catastrophe that took place there was allowed to spread to all the other Orthodox Churches, which had become infected by a similar worldliness. Thus, the Orthodox monarchies disappeared throughout Eastern Europe, while the schism of the new calendar forced a faithful remnant to dissociate itself from the official Churches, taking as their banner faithfulness to the traditions of the holy Apostles and Fathers of the Church. For the basic cause of this catastrophe, as Elder Ambrose of Optina foretold, was indifference to, and disdain for, the holy traditions of the Orthodox Church.

As regards the tradition of the Orthodox Empire, the Russians' loyalty to it was eroded by their infection with the heresy of democratic Socialism. Few were those who understood and esteemed the holy mission of the Orthodox emperor, and that, as St. Seraphim said: "After Orthodoxy, zealous devotion to the Tsar is the Russian's first duty and the chief foundation of true Christian piety." The great majority either actively called for the abdication of the Lord's Anointed or passively acquiesced in it, doing very little to save him from death at the hands of his and Russia's enemies. And their punishment has been correspondingly severe.

However, the other Orthodox peoples must also bear their share of responsibility. Most of them fell victim to the other western heresy of nationalism, and strove to put their own national interests above the interests of what was in fact the Pan-Orthodox Empire. For if the spirit of a society is its religion, then its soul is its national self-consciousness. And when the spirit is weakened or lost, it is the soul that becomes the dominant power - but in the fallen, egoistical state that is the inevitable consequence of the loss of spirituality.

The Greeks, for example, having already succumbed to nationalism themselves, tended to see in Russia's self-sacrificial wars in the Balkans merely the expression of nationalist Pan-Slavism. For their own nationalist dreams of the restoration of the Byzantine empire prevented them from admitting that the fully legitimate successor of Byzantium already existed - in Holy Russia. For this they were punished by the extinction of the last remnants of Greek Orthodoxy in Asia Minor. In the same way the Georgians, having gleefully thrown off the yoke of Orthodox Russia, immediately fell under the far harsher yoke of Bolshevism - inflicted, moreover, not by the Russian Lenin but by the Georgians Stalin and Ordzhonikidze.

Thus, both Russian and non-Russian Orthodox forgot the words of the Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremiah II to Tsar Theodore in 1589: "You are the protector of all Orthodox Christians everywhere". For Moscow was indeed "the Third Rome," the lawful successor of the New Rome, Constantinople; and the better Russian Tsars took this role and its attendant responsibilities very seriously. They waged successive (and usually successful) wars to liberate the Orthodox Balkans from the Turks and protect them from the western powers; they spent large sums of money to support the Orthodox monasteries and patriarchates of Mount Athos and the Middle East; and Tsarism itself fell in a self-sacrificial war to protect Orthodox Serbia from Catholic Austro-Hungary.

The abdication of the Russian Emperor led, some twenty-five years later, to the fall of the Orthodox monarchies of Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria, to be replaced eventually by the "people's democracies" of militant atheism. Only Greece preserved some remnants of Orthodox statehood. But this was only a semblance. And there was much truth in the Greek newspaper report on the democratic revolution of 1924: the new democracy had cast down the Cross together with the Crown.

It would appear to follow that if the Cross is once again to be raised in triumph over the formerly Orthodox lands, the Crown, too, must be raised with it. For if the fall began with the killing of the king, the resurrection can only come with the resurrection of the kingdom. This gives particular significance to the fact that, in spite of the victory of the "true" democracies of the West in the cold war, monarchist sentiment is rising throughout Eastern Europe. Could it be that, just as the age of the Roman catacombs was succeeded by the triumph of the Cross under the Emperor Constantine the Great, so the emergence of the True Church from the Soviet catacombs will be followed by a restoration of the Orthodox empire? Could there yet be a restoration of Romanity - the religio-political unity of the Orthodox peoples - in our time?

The Cross is the symbol both of the victory of Christianity and of the basic Christian virtues of humility, love and self-denial, the latter being the means to the attainment of the former. Now while the Christian virtues can be practised under any circumstances and under any regime, including that of the Antichrist, the Holy Spirit will be quenched in most souls, given the weakness and fallenness of human nature, unless His workings are supported by a Christian State with a Christian code of laws. Conversely, if the Cross reigns in the hearts of a large enough segment of society, then the leaven of the Spirit will rise to influence and change in a Christian direction even what would seem to be its most crusty and irredeemable parts - its political structure and philosophy.

This is what we see in the time of the first Christian Emperor, St. Constantine and his successors. The power of Roman Christianity, working from below, broke the mould of Roman pagan society and transformed its most pivotal and anti-Christian element, the worship of the imperator-pontifex maximus, into the Christian system of the "symphony" of the powers of the Church and the State under the supreme lordship of Christ. Succeeding Orthodox emperors, in the Spirit of Christ and for the sake of the salvation of all their subjects, introduced a Christian system of laws whose basic principle was that it should in no way conflict with the laws of the Church, but should rather support them. The unity of the State was a reflection of, and inspired by, the deeper unity of the Church; just as God ruled His Kingdom in heaven, so the emperor and bishops ruled His kingdom on earth in the image of His authority.

The Emperor Justinian expressed this vision in his Novella VI (535) as follows: "There are two greatest gifts which God, in his love for man, has granted from on high: the priesthood and the imperial dignity. The first serves divine things, while the latter directs and administers human affairs; both, however, proceed from the same origin and adorn the life of mankind. Hence, nothing should be such a source of care to the emperors as the dignity of the priests, since it is for their (imperial) welfare that they constantly implore God. For if the priesthood is in every way free from blame and possesses access to God, and if the emperors administer equitably and judiciously the State entrusted to their care, general harmony will result, and whatever is beneficial will be bestowed upon the human race."

This vision is based on the belief that the Crown, no less than the Church, is directed by the Providence of God. As Pope John II wrote to Justinian: "'The King's heart is in the hand of God and He directs it as He pleases' (Proverbs 21.1). There lies the foundation of your Empire and the endurance of your rule. For the peace of the Church and the unity of religion raise their originator to the highest place and sustain him there in happiness and peace. God's power will never fail him who protects the Church against the evil and stain of division, for it is written: 'When a righteous King sits on the throne, no evil will befall him' (Proverbs 20.8)."

This aim is indeed a laudable one. However, the argument fails to take into account the fact that nature abhors a vacuum, so that the disestablishment of the Church will unfailingly lead to the establishment of some other institution or philosophy in her place - Masonry, for example, or secular humanism, or one of the more extreme ideologies of nationalism. For the disestablishment of the Church from the State also entails the disestablishment of the State from the Church; if the State is not governed by Christian principles, it will inevitably come to be governed by anti-christian principles. Eventually, deprived of the sanctifying influence of the Church, it will turn against the Church. And then the Church, instead of freeing herself from politics, will find herself having to resist a determined invasion of her realm by politicians, as has happened in all Orthodox countries since 1453 and especially since 1917.

The solution, therefore, is to preserve the relative autonomy of the two realms without legislating for their absolute independence. For the relationship between the Church and the State is like that between the soul and the body - distinct substances which are meant to work together through the Spirit, even if sin has damaged that cooperation. Just as the soul is the life, the guiding principle of the body, so is the Church of the State. The Church sets the standards and the essentially other-worldly goals of the whole of society, provides the motivating force and legitimizes and sanctifies its political institutions. The State, on the other hand, protects the Church against external foes and provides her with essential material assistance, especially in the spheres of education and welfare.

If, however, the State renounces Orthodoxy, the Church can withdraw her legitimization, as she did when the All-Russian Council anathematized Soviet power in 1918. This is in order to preserve the soul of society by preserving its communion with the heavenly world intact, even while the body, the political covering, dies. Then the Church enters the condition of isolation symbolized by the woman fleeing into the wilderness in Revelation 12.

The period since 1914 has been precisely the period following the breakdown of lawful monarchy, first in Russia and then successively in each of the Orthodox Balkan States - Greece in 1924, Serbia in 1934 with the murder of the pious King Alexander, Bulgaria in 1943, with the murder of the pious King Boris III. The True Church, in all of these countries (with the partial exception of Greece, although here, too, the True Orthodox have been outlawed at times), has fled into the wilderness, while the false Church has remained wedded to the rotting corpse of the now definitely anti-christian State. The fall of Communism presents the Orthodox with an opportunity unparalleled since 1914 to unite under the aegis of a truly Orthodox monarchy.

For, as "a Hieromonk of the Orient" has written: "The monarchy is not an anachronism, nor the daydream of nostalgic aristocrats. In recent times one has seen the monarchy as a serious guarantee for democratic government - which should never be confused with democratic ideology. They are two quite different concepts. Democratic government allows the people to constitute a certain determining factor in government and even, at times, directly or indirectly, to choose the leader of the nation. Democratic ideology, on the other hand, insists that the authority to govern belongs to the people. That is an abominable heresy, for all power and authority to govern belongs to God. Even when a leader is elected (legally) his authority to govern, once elected, comes from God. As God shares with the human parent His own power to create pro-creating, the head of a State shares in or collaborates in God's power to govern. That is why the monarch is monarch "by the grace of God". It is for this reason that the Christian Orthodox obey and honour the legitimate authority, in so far as that authority does not order anything in contradiction to moral law."

"Our Tsar," wrote St. Barsonuphius of Optina, "is the representative of the will of God, and not the people's will. His will is sacred for us, as the will of the Anointed of God; we love him because we love God. If the Tsar gives us glory and prosperity, we receive it from him as a Mercy of God. But if we are overtaken by humiliation and poverty, we bear them with meekness and humility, as a heavenly punishment for our iniquities, and never do we falter in our love for, and devotion to, the Tsar, as long as they proceed from our Orthodox religious convictions, our love and devotion to God."

Perhaps the most glaring example is the Babylonian welter of ethnic jurisdictions in the diaspora, even among those who are united for or against Ecu-communism. In America, for example, the jurisdictional confusion now is in total contrast to the unity of all the Orthodox under the Russian Archbishop and future Patriarch Tikhon which prevailed until the revolution. This leads to a general weakening of the Orthodox witness to those outside, who in spite of all obstacles - not the least of which is the Orthodox Primates' shameful decision to eschew all proselytism in western countries - are coming in larger and larger numbers to the light of Orthodoxy.

Thus Fr. George Metallenos writes about the Byzantine Empire: "A great number of peoples made up the autocracy but without any 'ethnic' differentiation between them. The whole racial amalgam lived and moved in a single civilization (apart from some particularities) - the Greek, and it had a single cohesive spiritual power - Orthodoxy, which was at the same time the ideology of the oikoumene-autocracy. The citizens of the autocracy were Romans politically, Greeks culturally and Orthodox Christians spiritually. Through Orthodoxy the old relationship of rulers and ruled was replaced by the sovereign bond of brotherhood. Thus the 'holy race' of the New Testament (I Peter 2.9) became a reality as the 'race of the Romans', that is, of the Orthodox citizens of the autocracy of the New Rome."

The Russian Empire was an even more extraordinary success, extending as it did over an area and a population many times greater than that of the Byzantine empire. Of course, there were mistakes, and there were periods - notably the eighteenth century - when the Orthodox symphony of powers was dangerously distorted in the direction of western absolutism. But even in the eighteenth century it would be difficult to characterize the Russian empire as chauvinist - if only because it was the Russian people who suffered most from the mistakes of her (non-Russian) leaders.

For the Russian idea is in essence Orthodox Christian and therefore universalist. As Nicholas Lossky wrote, quoting Dostoyevsky: "The eastern ideal, that is, the ideal of Russian Orthodoxy, is 'first the spiritual union of humanity in Christ, and then, by virtue of this spiritual union of all in Christ, and undoubtedly flowing from it - a correct state and social union' (Diary of a Writer, May-June, 1877)." Of course, this idea has never been fully incarnate in Russian history, and Leninism and "Soviet patriotism" were grotesque mockeries of the Russian idea and Russian patriotism. As for today's post-communist Russia, it is far from incarnating that universalism which Dostoyevsky extols. Nevertheless, those nations, both Orthodox and non-Orthodox, who see Russia as always having been a chauvinist and expansionist State make both an historical and a moral error.

With the possible exception of Bessarabia in 1812, Russia has never forcibly annexed territories belonging to other Orthodox nations. As regards non-Orthodox nations, Russia first began to expand eastwards in the sixteenth century, and this took place partly through the peaceful colonization of sparsely inhabited areas, as in the Russian north and Siberia, and partly through military conquest, as in Ivan the Terrible's conquest of Kazan. However, it must be remembered that the wars against the Tatars were wars against the former conquerors of Russia herself, and the Golden Horde continued for many centuries to be a threat to the existence of Russia both physically and spiritually. With regard to the West - to the Poles, the Swedes, the French and the Germans - Russia's wars have almost always been defensive in character, involving the recapture of Russian lands with large Russian populations whose spiritual and physical identity was most definitely under the most serious threat. Only very rarely has Russia embarked upon a purely offensive war; and as Henry Kissinger has remarked, "Russia has exhibited a curious phenomenon: almost every offensive war that it has fought has ended badly, and every defensive war victoriously - a paradox."

A paradox, yes; but one with a clear explanation: when Russia has fought in defense of her Orthodox Christian idea, the Lord has given her victory, withdrawing His support only when she has betrayed that idea. Therefore as long as Russia remains true to her idea, we can expect her to come into conflict with other nations only when that idea is itself under threat. At the present time, that idea is not yet incarnate within Russia herself; for neither Lenin's Russia, nor Yeltsin's Russia, nor Zhirinovsky's Russia is the true and Holy Russia. But, as the true and holy Russia struggles to surface from under the rubble of ideologies alien to herself, that conflict will inevitably arise.

And at that point it will be up to the other Orthodox nations to overcome their own nationalist and self-justifying anti-Russianism and understand that their own survival as Orthodox nations depends on Russia now just as it did when Russia was the sole protector of the Orthodox against the Turks and the West. For the words of Tyutchev, written 140 years ago, are still true: "For a long time now there have existed only two real forces - the revolution and Russia. These two forces now stand in opposition one to another, and tomorrow, perhaps, they will enter into battle. There can be no negotiations or treaties between them; the existence of the one is equivalent to the death of the other! On the outcome of the battle between them, the greatest battle the world has ever seen, depends the whole political and religious future of mankind."

The tragedy is that nationalism now is not only dividing Orthodox from Orthodox: it is enabling completely unscrupulous and essentially anti-Orthodox tyrants, such as the present Serbian leaders, to undertake barbaric wars in the name of Orthodoxy which only defile the holy name of Orthodoxy throughout the world. For while the threat to Serbia from Catholicism and Islam is real, the evil methods used to defend her can only harm her in the long run. The Orthodox everywhere must realize that the nationalist-communist thugs that lead the Serbian nation now have nothing in common with the holy ideals and past of Orthodox Serbia, that evil can be overcome only by good, and that a Greater Serbia - great in the spiritual sense - can be restored only by purity and penitence, not by "ethnic cleansing" and rape. And the same applies to the idea of a Greater Greece or a Greater Russia. For "righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin diminishes peoples" (Proverbs 14.34).

The second important obstacle in the way of the restoration of Romanity is the continuing adherence of the majority of Orthodox Christians to the heresy of Ecumenism. For even while "Communism", and to an increasing degree "Ecumenism", too, are already discredited words, especially amidst the Church intelligentsia in Russia, the majority still follow hierarchs who are deeply mired in the anti-christian heresy. This is illustrated by the sequel to Patriarch Alexis' ecumenical speech in a New York synagogue in November, 1991, when, although many condemned the speech as heretical, no large-scale movement out of the patriarchate ensued.

Orthodox Romanity stands for the principle of true Catholicity, whereby each local Church contains the fullness of grace in union with, but independently of every other, and decisions are made through the conciliar agreements of in essence equal bishops whose authority rests on their complete faithfulness to Apostolic Tradition. It also stands for the relative independence of the spheres of Church and State, the latter being an Orthodox autocracy, pledged to incarnate the law of the Gospel within its boundaries, and to protect and stimulate the spread of Orthodox Christianity beyond them.

Roman Catholicism, on the other hand, stands for the destruction of Catholicity, insofar as no local Church can have grace independently of Rome, and the decisions of any and every council of bishops, even an Ecumenical Council, have no legitimacy until endorsed by the Pope. Its authority rests on an abrogation of Apostolic Tradition and the substitution of the Pope's fiat for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of truth. It also stands for the abolition of the distinction between Church and State, the Church becoming a State and requiring the submission of all other States to itself, ideally on the basis of a Socialist leveling of all traditional values and institutions.

As Fr. Ilia Fratsea writes: "the Unia is the consequence of the attempts of the Catholic Church to impose - by political rather than ecclesiastical means - the sovereignty and jurisdiction of the Pope on the Orthodox lands. The Unia was born only where Orthodoxy, Romanity met Roman Catholicism… There is no 'Unia' in the lands of Protestantism or the Anglican Church, in spite of the fact that dialogues have taken place between them. More accurately, the Unia accomplishes the penetration of Papism into Orthodoxy, a Roman Catholic parasite in the body of Romanity."

In spite of this fact, and the fierce condemnation of Uniatism by the Local Orthodox Churches at the 1992 Pan-Orthodox Council in Constantinople, the "World Orthodox" continue to work for a full unia with Rome by the year 2000. Thus at the Orthodox-Roman Catholic meeting at Balamand in Lebanon in 1994, the Orthodox delegates recognized the Catholic Church as a "sister church" in the full sense of the word. As Patriarch Bartholomew put it, Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism are like "two lungs" of a single body. Such statements demonstrate yet again, if further demonstration were needed, that the hierarchs of official "World Orthodoxy" have entirely lost the salt of true Romanity, having become uniates in spirit and in truth.

And yet, paradoxically, the fall of Ecumenism looks more and more inevitable as it appears to reach the zenith of its power. Thus as the Pope - that totalitarian wolf in an ecumenist sheep-skin - sets his geopolitical plans ever wider, his priests flee from the priesthood in their thousands to marry, his theologians become ever more Protestant in their theology, and his laity rebel against everything from the style of the liturgy to the permissibility of abortion and contraception, from the relationship of the Church to Socialism to the authority of the Pope himself. The Anglican Church is disintegrating as the "comprehensiveness" it so prides itself on removes from it the last remnants of a common faith and discipline, while Protestants advocate the "rights" of homosexuals and every kind of deviant. And "new age" paganism penetrates everywhere. The decline of the West, obvious to western observers already at the beginning of this century, has now become a steep descent into an ever deepening "black hole."

However, just as Solzhenitsyn used to tell the West during the Cold War, that its greatest ally in the struggle against the Soviet Antichrist was the Russian people, so the greatest ally the Orthodox have, after God and His Saints, in their struggle against the European Antichrist, may well prove to be the unconscious striving for their lost Romanity, of the peoples of the West. For, as "the wood, hay and stubble" of post-schism western civilization burns away, so its pre-schism foundation, in the true and Orthodox faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, is laid bare. Thus the British are returning with a renewed interest to their Celtic and Anglo-Saxon saints, and the French to their Gallican churches and liturgies.

It is the Romanity of the West, the heritage of its first Christian millennium, which is the only real basis for the reunification of Europe. For that heritage began to be lost when a Frank and a stranger to Romanity, Charlemagne, created a second Christian Roman Empire (800); when another Frank and stranger to Romanity, Pope Nicholas I, tried to introduce the Filioque into the Creed and the papal autocracy into Orthodox Bulgaria (861); when a German stranger to Romanity, the "Holy Roman emperor" Henry II reintroduced the Filioque at his coronation in Rome (1014); and another German, Pope Leo IX, removed the epiklesis, the invocatory prayer to the Holy Spirit, from the Liturgy and died just before the Great Church of Constantinople cut him off the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church (1054).

As the life-creating breath of the Holy Spirit withdrew from the altars of St. Peter's in Rome, the death-creating poison of the prince of darkness took His place in the thrones and cathedras and chalices of Western Romanity. This was the primal tragedy; and this is the tragedy which must be reversed if the restoration of Romanity is to be accomplished. That such a reversal will indeed take place, albeit in the wake of a terrible world war, is the message of several Orthodox prophecies.

Each of these, while professing different religions, have a common hatred of Orthodoxy and a common addiction to communist patterns of social organization. Probably the most dangerous of them, although seemingly the most "eirenic," is the first one - the "Holy Roman Empire" in the form of the European Union - which is already exerting enormous influence on the political and ecclesiastical life of the Orthodox lands. This Western Babylon acts like a magnet for the semi-destitute peoples of Eastern Europe, who, blinded by the ideology of Democracy, seem unable to see that the new Europe has all the makings of a second Socialist monolith built on essentially the same atheist-humanist foundations as the Soviet monolith whose demise they have just celebrated. Fortunately, most of the Orthodox peoples of Eastern Europe seem too poor and unstable to qualify for membership in the new Europe in the near future. But while they are prevented, even against their will, from being included in the new socialist colossus, the latter is injecting all their past enemies in Central Europe.

If the threat of the resurrection of Socialism in Western Europe seems exaggerated, we should remember that Socialism will always remain a temptation for a society that has lost its grounding in the Heavenly Church. In one form or another, Socialist-type States have appeared from the earliest times, and the eclipse of Soviet-style Socialism does not guarantee that a less crude, more "eirenic" form of the same experiment will not be tried again. As long as peace on earth (rather than peace with God) and material plenty (rather than spiritual wealth) are the goals men place before themselves, the failure of one attempt to achieve them by the organization of men into a centralized, all-encompassing State will only make them more eager to try again. And in an increasingly complex and unified world, a super-complex and ultra-unified World State will come to be seen as the only solution to the problem.

In this context, the Russians, with their unparalleled experience of the true nature of Socialism, have the greatest responsibility to take the lead in rejecting the new danger. They are the only Orthodox nation with real military and political power; only they can take on the mantle of Christian Rome; only they can draw the other Orthodox nations from the abyss and bring the light of Orthodoxy to the benighted nations to the East and West. For, as the Pskov Elder Philotheus told Tsar Basil II: "Moscow is the Third Rome, and a fourth there shall not be…"

What is needed is a leader who will reject westernism without necessarily rejecting the West, who will fight the revolution without employing the weapons of the revolutionaries - that is, who will think and act in the conviction that the end does not justify the means. Thus he must be an enlightened patriot who is not a chauvinist nationalist, an Orthodox zealot who is yet a humane Christian, an autocrat who loves and serves, without pandering to, his people. The democratic West neither believes in nor desires such a ruler. For it desires only to be free from all rule, human or Divine - which, as Dostoyevsky's Shigalev prophesied and the history of the twentieth century has irrefutably proved, is the surest path to absolute tyranny. But the Orthodox East lives by faith; and when she has started to produce the works of faith, the Lord will undoubtedly satisfy her fervent desire for a righteous king.

But we must beware of a counterfeit, especially since the false Russian democracy and false Moscow patriarchate is already playing with the idea of creating a puppet "autocracy" that will have the name Romanov but not that family's piety. For, as a Catacomb priest writes, for the genuine regeneration of Russia, "even if a tsar is elected, he must necessarily belong to the True Orthodox Church. And to this Church must belong all the people who represent the regenerate Russia… The first union of people can arise at an extremely unpropitious historical and political moment on the territory of Russia or even on some small part of it… It is possible that such a union 'into Russia' can encompass only 100-200 people, who can be joined by other people later. At some point an Orthodox Tsar could even be elected in their midst…"

That Russia will be saved and a truly Orthodox Tsar arise from the midst of the Russian people is indicated by several prophecies. And if this still seems unbelievable to many, let us recall that other miraculous restoration of Romanity in the history of Russia, when Palm Sunday in the year 1611 was celebrated by only one man - the Martyr-Patriarch Hermogenes. In those terrible times, when the boyars openly rose up against the lawful political authorities, and bands of foreigners and robbers rampaged around the countryside, the Lord called a representative of the clergy, Archimandrite Dionysius of the Trinity - St. Sergius Lavra, a representative of the nobility, Prince Demetrius Pozharsky, and a representative of the people, the butcher Cosmas Minin, who, in response to the patriarch's appeal and with the aid of the wonderworking Kazan icon of the Mother of God, liberated Moscow from the Catholics, restored order, and convened the zemsky sobor which elected the first Romanov tsar.

This century's Hermogenes, his Holiness Patriarch Tikhon, already issued his appeal some sixty years ago: "We call on all of you, believing and faithful children of the Church: stand in defence of our Holy Mother who is now being reviled and oppressed. The enemies of the Church are seizing power over her and her heritage by the power of death-dealing weapons. But you withstand them by the power of your faith, the powerful cry of the whole people, which will halt the madmen and will show them that they do not have the right to call themselves fighters for the good of the people and builders of a new life according to the people's reasoning, for they are even acting directly against the conscience of the people. But if it will be necessary to suffer for Christ, we call on you, beloved children of the Church, we call on you to undertake these sufferings together with ourselves in the words of the holy apostle: 'Who shall separate us from the love of God? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?' (Romans 8.35). And you, brother archpastors and pastors, do not delay one hour in your spiritual activity. With flaming zeal call on your children to defend the rights of the Church which are being trampled on, quickly form spiritual unions, call on them, not from necessity, but of their own free will to enter the ranks of the spiritual warriors, who will oppose external power with the power of their holy inspiration. And we firmly hope that the enemies of the Church will be defeated and dispersed by the power of the Cross of Christ, for the promise of the Divine Cross-bearer Himself is unlying: 'I shall build My Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against her.' (Matthew 16.18)."

Today's Archimandrite Dionysius and his monks are represented by the Catacomb Church, which, robed in the purple of countless new martyrs and confessors, has experienced in herself the whole weight of the Antichrist's assault, while preserving her confession of the Orthodox Faith pure and whole. If the people finally recognize her hidden beauty, and renounce their adhesion, not only to the God-fighting communist power, but also to the apostate Moscow Patriarchate, then the Lord will summon new Pozharskys and Minins, and a new Michael Romanov will ascend the throne of the Orthodox tsars, to the defence and confirmation of Orthodoxy throughout the world. Nor is this an impossible dream, but a necessary hope: for "where there is no vision, the people perish" (Proverbs 29.18).

As New Hieromartyr John, Archbishop of Latvia, and the first non-Russian hieromartyr of the Soviet yoke, said: "The Lord is the same, yesterday and forever. When the shame of godlessness and impiety now presses upon the children of the new Israel, Holy Russia, somewhere in the plains of Russia, or in the Siberian forests, or in some one of the countries of exile and diaspora of the great God-bearing people, there is already being prepared a grace-given field which will cause to sprout up a chosen one of God for the deliverance and rebirth of the God-bearing people. There are no more leaders, and pastors are in straitened conditions. The human eye does not see from where deliverance might come; but the All-knowing knows this. The Lord, by ways known to Him alone, will raise up suitable men at a suitable time. Of this we can and must be convinced."

Let the last word be from three True Orthodox documents written in the Brezhnev period. The first is a samizdat document of the Catacomb Church: "All the arguments in defence and justification of the Moscow Patriarchate are contradictory and, in the last analysis, not serious. They are based on a desire to view the existing situation in the church as natural and, from the spiritual point of view, (supposedly) satisfactory. The contradiction is easily laid bare: when talk is of the external assault upon the church, it is said that 'our kingdom is not of this world'; but when the spiritual compromise with the prince of this world is pointed out, it is replied that this is essential for the preservation of the hierarchical succession, churches, etc. - that is, the external organization of the church.

Naturally, such an indefiniteness testifies to the spiritual unsureness, the internal (not to mention external) disorder of the Moscow Patriarchate. Such a situation cannot continue forever. Religious awareness must either entirely become aware of itself, or else disappear altogether as religious awareness. The latter course, abstractly speaking, is likewise possible: after all, the once flourishing Church of Carthage disappeared. We, however, fortify ourselves with the faith that the spiritual renewal of Russia and the liberation of the Church will yet occur. We believe that if the world does not perish, sooner or later in liberated Russia there will be a Local Council of our Church, to which the fruits of their labours and exploits for the long period without a Council (for one cannot call Councils those convocations of Soviet hierarchs which the Council for Religious Affairs organizes together with the patriarchate) will be brought forth by the Moscow Patriarchate and the by the persecuted Russian 'Catacomb' Church, to which the authors of this article belong, and of the continuing existence of which they consider it a sacred duty to bear witness at the first opportunity that has offered itself. To this future Council the 'Catacomb' Church will bring the testimony of the purity of her faith, unstained by any kind of compromise with the enemies of Christ; for prayer that has been bought is impure prayer. The 'Catacomb' Church will bring also the testimony of the exploits in the name of Christ of her martyrs and confessors… She will bring also the testimony of her unwavering faith in Jesus Christ, by which alone she has fortified herself and lived already for decades, preserved by Divine Grace amidst persecutions and betrayals. For just as the Soviet kingdom is a prefiguration of the Antichrist, so also the 'Catacomb' Church is the nearest of all prefigurations of the Church in the time of the Antichrist - the Woman clothed with the sun who has fled into the wilderness. Her garments are woven of the exploits of saints. Just as in the time of the Prophet Elijah, the Lord has preserved for Himself seven thousand faithful, until the time known to Him alone.

"Our Church lives a difficult life; her members are mercilessly exterminated by the authorities; we are betrayed by brethren who consider themselves Orthodox. We are scattered like wheat, but we believe that in the hour when it is necessary Christ will send His faithful disciple, who will strengthen His brethren. Together with the Apostle Paul we dare to say: 'We are not of them that shrink back to perdition, but of them that have faith unto the saving of the soul' (Hebrews 10.39). And this our faith, 'by which kingdoms are subdued' (Hebrews 11.33), gives us the strength to await the hour of God's visitation. 'God is with us, understand, ye peoples, and submit, for God is with us!'"

The second document is a sermon by Archbishop Averky of Syracuse: "It must be absolutely clear to every rational believing Russian person that if the first Time of Troubles lasted for only 15 years, while the second one, now, which is many times more terrible, has continued already for more than fifty years, and up to now no ray of hope is visible, then this is only because that former burning faith does not exist in Russian people, and there is no real, sincere feeling of repentance, no true and effective prayer and the required hope on help from on high - on the intercession of the fervent Defender of the Christian race, who has so often saved the Russian land in a wondrous manner…

"The main task of the contemporary Russian person who sincerely longs for the salvation of our Homeland Russia, therefore is: not to fight savagely over forms of government, not to construct any purely human plans, and work out political programmes, but to take all measures, with the help of God, decisively to eliminate everything that hinders sincere, unhypocritical repentance, and never in any way to return to those moods which brought our Russia to destruction. Lack of faith, godlessness, carnal impurity and dissolution, nihilism and cosmopolitanism, neglect and disdain for all that which is native and holy from ages past - all this must become completely foreign to the soul of the Russian person, if he really wants to see the Homeland resurrected to new life.

"Then, when this saving metamorphosis in the souls and hearts of Russian people takes place, they will be able sincerely, from the depths of their souls, in tears of repentance, to call on the fervent Defender of the Christian race: 'O Sovereign Lady and Queen, help and defend all of us who in troubles and sorrows, in illnesses and burdened with many sins, stand before they most pure icon with tears, praying to thee with compunction of soul and contrition of heart'… and truly, 'with one heart and mouth', they will prayerfully cry out as they cried out before: 'O Mother of God! Save the Russian Land!'"

The third document is a sermon on Russia by the great wonderworker and apostle of the Russian diaspora, the recently canonized Archbishop John Maximovich of Shanghai, Western Europe and San Francisco: "Russia will arise as she arose before. She will arise when faith is enkindled. When people arise spiritually and a clear, firm faith in the truth of the words of the Saviour will become dear to them: 'Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness and all the rest will be given to you'. Russia will arise when she loves the Faith and confession of Orthodoxy, when she sees and loves the Orthodox righteous and confessors.

"Today, on the day of all the Saints who shone forth in the Russian land, the Church points them out and the Orthodox see with spiritual joy how many there are in the Kingdom of God! And what an innumerable number who have not yet been glorified here. See how silently and calmly Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev goes to his death. The murderers lead him out of the gates of the Lavra to kill him outside the city, as they killed the Lord and Saviour, and the hierarch silently, like a lamb ready for the slaughter, accepts death for Christ, for the Faith, for the Russian Church, for the fact that he sought first of all to acquire the Kingdom of God, eternal life.

"A multitude of martyrs and confessors, and again we see the blessing of God on their exploit of faith, and again we see the incorruption of their relics: the bodies of the righteous who already live according to the laws of the life to come, where there is no suffering and corruption, to which the incorruption of their relics testifies. Thus incorrupt are the remains of Great Princess Elizabeth Fyodorovna, which repose in the Gethsemane monastery, witnessing to her righteousness in the eyes of God.