IT IS TRUE ENOUGH, to be sure, that an Orthodox awakening would be much to
be desired in our days, when many Orthodox Christians have lost the salt of
true Christianity, and the true and fervent Orthodox Christian life is indeed
rarely to be seen. Modern life has become too comfortable; worldly life has
become too attractive; for too many, Orthodoxy has become simply a matter of
membership in a church organization or the "correct" fulfillment of
external rites and practices. There would be need enough for a true Orthodox
spiritual awakening, but this is not what we see in the Orthodox
"charismatics." Just like the "charismatic" activists among
Protestants and Roman Catholics, they are fully in harmony with the spirit of
the times; they are not in living contact with the sources of the Orthodox
spiritual tradition, preferring the currently fashionable Protestant techniques
of revivalism. They are one with the leading current of today's apostate
"Christianity": the ecumenical movement.
There have been true Orthodox "awakenings" in the past: one thinks
immediately of St. Cosmas of Aitolia, who walked from village to village in
18th-century Greece and inspired the people to return to the true Christianity
of their ancestors; or St. John of Kronstadt in our own century, who brought
the age-old message of Orthodox spiritual life to the urban masses of
Petersburg. Then there are the Orthodox monastic instructors who were truly
"Spirit-filled" and left their teaching to the monastics as well as
the laymen of the latter times: one thinks of the Greek St. Symeon the New
Theologian in the 10th century, and the Russian St. Seraphim of Sarov in the
19th. St. Symeon is badly misused by the Orthodox "charismatics" (he
was speaking of a Spirit different from theirs!); and St. Seraphim is
invariably quoted out of context in order to minimize his emphasis on the
necessity to belong to the Orthodox Church to have a true spiritual life. In
the "Conversation" of St. Seraphim with the layman Motovilov on the
"acquisition of the Holy Spirit" (which the Orthodox
"charismatics" quote without the parts here italicized), this
great Saint tells us: "The grace of the Holy Spirit which was given to us
all, the faithful of Christ, in the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, is sealed by the
Sacrament of Chrismation on the chief parts of the body, as appointed by the
Holy Church, the eternal keeper of this grace." And again: "The
Lord listens equally to the monk and the simple Christian layman, provided
that both are Orthodox."
As opposed to the true Orthodox spiritual life, the "charismatic
revival" is only the experiential side of the prevailing
"ecumenical" fashion - a counterfeit Christianity that betrays
Christ and His Church. No Orthodox "charismatic" could possibly
object to the coming "Union" with those very Protestants and Roman
Catholics with whom, as the interdenominational "charismatic" song
goes, they are already "one in the Spirit, one in the Lord," and who
have led them and inspired their "charismatic" experience. The
"spirit" that has inspired the "charismatic revival" is the
spirit of antichrist , or more precisely those "spirits of
devils" of the last times whose "miracles" prepare the world for
the false messiah.
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