{"id":9376,"date":"2026-03-27T11:33:27","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T10:33:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hesychia.eu\/?p=9376"},"modified":"2026-03-28T09:08:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T08:08:20","slug":"orthodox_worldview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hesychia.eu\/index.php\/2026\/03\/27\/orthodox_worldview\/","title":{"rendered":"Lectures of St. Seraphim of Platina – Living the Orthodox Worldview"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cLiving the Orthodox Worldview\u201d is a recording of a lecture given by Fr. Seraphim Rose at the 1982 St. Herman Pilgrimage at the St. Herman Monastery in Platina, California. It was the final pastoral talk of Fr. Seraphim\u2019s life\u2014the fruit of his spiritual growth as an Orthodox Christian and his matured outlook as an Orthodox pastor. It contains many of the themes that he emphasized during the final years of his life: the need to have one\u2019s Orthodox Faith enter into and transform the whole of one\u2019s life, not just certain compartments of it; the need to cultivate a loving, merciful, and forgiving heart, to be simple and innocent in one\u2019s spiritual life; the need to have a conscious Orthodox Faith, an Orthodox worldview, so that one will not be easily influenced by worldly ways of thinking and behaving; the need to be aware of the signs of the times and of the totalitarian demands that the modern world makes on one; the need to be down-to-earth and at the same time to have one\u2019s heart in the other world with Christ; the need to nourish oneself with the Divine services, the Holy Mysteries, the Holy Scriptures, the Lives of Saints, and the writings of the Holy Fathers; the need to form the soul through the best artistic expressions of Christian culture, including Western Christian culture; and finally the need to take lessons from the experience of suffering Orthodox Christians behind the iron curtain.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Talk<\/h1>\n

Introduction<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Before beginning my talk, a word or two on why it is important to have an Orthodox world-view, and why it is more difficult to build one today than in past centuries.<\/p>\n

In past centuries\u2014for example, in 19th century Russia\u2014the Orthodox world-view was an important part of Orthodox life and was supported by the life around it.\u00a0 \u00a0There was no need even to speak of it as a separate thing\u2014you lived Orthodoxy in harmony with the Orthodox society around you, and you had an Orthodox world-view provided by the Church and society.\u00a0 \u00a0In many countries the government itself confessed Orthodoxy; it was the center of public functions and the king or ruler himself was historically the first Orthodox layman with a responsibility to give a Christian example to all his subjects.\u00a0 \u00a0Every city had Orthodox churches, and many of them had services every day, morning and evening.\u00a0 \u00a0There were monasteries in all the great cities, in many cities, outside the cities, and in the countryside, in deserts and wildernesses.\u00a0 \u00a0In Russia there were more than 1,000 officially organized monasteries, in addition to other more unofficial groups.\u00a0 \u00a0Monasticism was an accepted part of life.\u00a0 \u00a0Most families, in fact, had somewhere in them a sister or brother, uncle, grandfather, cousin or someone who was a monk or a nun, in addition to all the other examples of Orthodox life: people who wandered from monastery to monastery, and fools for Christ.\u00a0 \u00a0The whole way of life was permeated with Orthodox kinds of people, of which, of course, monasticism is the center.\u00a0 \u00a0Orthodox customs were a part of daily life.\u00a0 \u00a0Most books that were commonly read were Orthodox.\u00a0 \u00a0Daily life itself was difficult for most people: they had to work hard to survive, life expectancy was not great, death was a frequent reality\u2014all of which reinforced the Church\u2019s teaching on the reality and nearness of the other world.\u00a0 \u00a0Living an Orthodox life in such circumstances was really the same thing as having an Orthodox world-view, and there was little need to talk of such a thing.<\/p>\n

Today, on the other hand, all this has changed.\u00a0 \u00a0Our Orthodoxy is a little island in the midst of a world which operates on totally different principles\u2014and every day these principles are changing for the worse, making us more and more alienated from it.\u00a0 \u00a0Many people are tempted to divide their lives into two sharply distinct categories: the daily life we lead at work, with worldly friends, in our worldly business, and Orthodoxy, which we live on Sundays and at other times in the week when we have time for it.\u00a0 \u00a0But the world-view of such a person, if you look at it closely, is often a strange combination of Christian values and worldly values, which really do not mix.\u00a0 \u00a0The purpose of this talk is to see how people living today can begin to make their world-view more of one piece, to make it a whole Orthodox world-view.<\/p>\n

Orthodoxy is life.\u00a0 \u00a0If we don\u2019t live Orthodoxy, we simply are not Orthodox, no matter what formal beliefs we might hold.<\/p>\n

Life in our contemporary world has become very artificial, very uncertain, very confusing.\u00a0 \u00a0Orthodoxy, it is true, has a life of its own, but it is also not very far from the life of the world around it, and so the life of the Orthodox Christian, even when he is being truly Orthodox, cannot help but reflect it in some way.\u00a0 \u00a0A kind of uncertainty and confusion have also entered into Orthodox life in our times.\u00a0 \u00a0In this talk we will try to look at contemporary life, and then at Orthodox life, to see how better we might fulfill our Christian obligation to lead other-worldly lives even in these quite terrible times, and to have an Orthodox Christian view of the whole of life today that will enable us to survive these times with our faith intact.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Life Today Has Become Abnormal<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Anyone who looks at our contemporary life from the perspective of the normal life lived by people in earlier times\u2014say, Russia, or America, or any country of Western Europe in the 19th century\u2014cannot help but be struck by the fact of how abnormal life has become today.\u00a0 \u00a0The whole concept of authority and obedience, of decency and politeness, of public and private behavior\u2014all have changed drastically, have been turned upside down except in a few isolated pockets of people\u2014usually Christians of some kind\u2014who try to preserve the so-called \u201cold-fashioned \u2018way of life.<\/p>\n

Our abnormal life today can be characterized as spoiled, pampered.\u00a0 \u00a0From infancy today\u2019s child is treated, as a general rule, like a little god or goddess in the family: his whims are catered to, his desires fulfilled.; he is surrounded by toys, amusements, comforts; he is not trained and brought up according to strict principles of Christian behavior, but left to develop whichever way his desires incline.\u00a0 \u00a0It is usually enough for him to say, \u201cI want it!\u201d or \u201cI won\u2019t do it!\u201d for his obliging parents to bow down before him and let him have his way.\u00a0 \u00a0Perhaps this does not happen all the time in every family, but it happens often enough to be the rule of contemporary childrearing, and even the best-intentioned parents do not entirely escape its influence.\u00a0 \u00a0Even if the parents try to raise the child strictly, the neighbors are trying to do something else.\u00a0 \u00a0They have to take that into consideration when disciplining the child.<\/p>\n

When such a child becomes an adult, he naturally surrounds himself with the same things he was used to in his childhood: comforts, amusements, and grown-up toys.\u00a0 Life becomes a constant search for \u201cfun\u201d which, by the way, is a word totally unheard of in any other vocabulary; in 19th century Russia they wouldn\u2019t have understood what this word meant, or any serious civilization.\u00a0 Life is a constant search for \u201cfun\u201d which is so empty of any serious meaning that a visitor from any 19th-century country, looking at our popular television programs, amusement parks, advertisements, movies, music\u2014at almost any aspect of our popular culture\u2014would think he had stumbled across a land of imbeciles who have lost all contact with normal reality.\u00a0 We don\u2019t often take that into consideration, because we are living in this society and we take it for granted.
\nSome recent observers of our contemporary life have called the young people of today the \u201cme generation\u201d and our times the \u201cage of narcissism,\u201d characterized by a worship of and fascination with oneself that prevents a normal human life from developing.\u00a0 Others have spoken of the\u2019 plastic\u201d universe or fantasy world in which so many people live today, unable to face or come to terms with the reality of the world around them or the problems within themselves.
\nWhen the \u201cme generation\u201d turns to religion\u2014which has been happening very frequently in the past several decades\u2014it is usually to a \u201cplastic\u201d or fantasy form of religion: a religion of \u201cself-development\u201d (where the self remains the object of worship), of brainwashing and mind-control, of deified gurus and swamis, of a pursuit of UFO\u2019s and \u201cextra-terrestrial\u201d beings, of abnormal spiritual states and feelings.\u00a0 We will not go into all these manifestations there, which are probably familiar enough to most of you, except to discuss a little later how these touch on the Orthodox Christian spiritual life of our days.
\nIt is important for us to realize, as we try ourselves to lead a Christian life today, that the world which has been formed by our pampered times.\u00a0 makes demands on the soul, whether in religion or in secular life, which are what one has to call totalitarian.\u00a0 This is easy enough to see in the mindbending cults that have received so much publicity in recent years, and which demand total allegiance to a self-made \u201choly man\u201d; but it is just as evident in secular life, where one is confronted not just by an individual temptation here or there, but by a constant state of temptation that attacks one, whether in the background music heard everywhere in markets and businesses, in the public signs and billboards of city streets, in the rock music which is brought even to forest campgrounds and trails, and in the home itself, where television often becomes the secret ruler of the household, dictating modern values, opinions, and tastes.\u00a0 If you have young children, you know how true this is; when they have seen something on television how difficult it is to fight against this new opinion which has been given as an authority by the television.
\nThe message of this universal temptation that attacks men today\u2014quite openly in its secular forms, but usually more hidden in its religious forms\u2014is: Live for the present, enjoy yourself, relax, be comfortable.\u00a0 Behind this message is another, more sinister undertone which is openly expressed only in the officially atheist countries which are one step ahead of the free world in this respect.\u00a0 In fact, we should realize that what is happening in the world today is very similar whether it occurs behind the Iron Curtain or in the free world.\u00a0 There are different varieties of it, but there is a very similar attack to get our soul.\u00a0 In the communist countries which have an official doctrine of atheism, they tell quite openly that you are to: Forget about God and any other life but the present; remove from your life the fear of God and reverence for holy things; regard those who still believe in God in the \u201cold-fashioned\u2019 way as enemies who must be exterminated.\u00a0 One might take, as a symbol of our carefree, fun-loving, self-worshipping times, our American \u2018Disneyland\u2019; if so, we should not neglect to see behind it the more sinister symbol that shows where the \u2018me generation\u2019 is really heading: the Soviet Gulag, the chain of concentration camps that already governs the life of nearly half the world\u2019s population.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Two False Approaches to Spiritual Life<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But what, one might ask, does all this have to do with us, who are trying to lead, as best we can, a sober Orthodox Christian life? It has a lot to do with it.\u00a0 We have to realize that the life around us, abnormal though it is, is the place where we begin our own Christian life.\u00a0 Whatever we make of our life, whatever truly Christian content we give it, is still has something of the stamp of the \u2018me generation\u2019 on it, and we have to be humble enough to see this.\u00a0 This is where we begin.
\nThere are two false approaches to the life around us that many often make today, thinking that somehow this is what Orthodox Christians should be doing.\u00a0 One approach\u2014the most common one\u2014is simply to go along with the times: adapt yourself to rock music, modern fashions and tastes, and the whole rhythm of our jazzed-up modern life.\u00a0 Often the more old-fashioned parents will have little contact with this life and will live their own life more or less separately, but they will smile to see their children follow after its latest craze and think that this is something harmless.
\nThis path is total disaster for the Christian life; it is the death of the soul.\u00a0 Some can still lead an outwardly respectable life without struggling against the spirit of the times, but inwardly they are dead or dying; and\u2014the saddest thing of all\u2014their children will pay the price in various psychic and spiritual disorders and sicknesses which become more and more common.\u00a0 One of the leading members of the suicide cult that ended so spectacularly in Jonestown four years ago was the young daughter of a Greek Orthodox priest; satanic rock groups like Kiss\u2014\u201d Kids in Satan\u2019s Service\u00a0\u00bb\u2014are made up of ax-Russian Orthodox young people; the largest part of the membership of the temple of satan in San Francisco, according to a recent sociological survey\u2014is made up of Orthodox boys.\u00a0 These are only a few striking cases; most Orthodox young people don\u2019t go so far astray\u2014they just blend in with the anti-Christian world around them and cease to be examples of any kind of Christianity for those around them.
\nThis is wrong.\u00a0 The Christian must be different from the world, above all from today\u2019s weird, abnormal world, and this must be one of the basic things he knows as part of his Christian upbringing.\u00a0 Otherwise there is no point in calling ourselves Christian\u2014much less Orthodox Christians.
\nThe false approach at the opposite extreme is one that one might call false spirituality.\u00a0 As translations of Orthodox books on the spiritual life become more widely available, and the Orthodox vocabulary of spiritual struggle is placed more and more in the air, one finds an increasing number of people talking about hesychasm, the Jesus Prayer, the ascetic life, exalted states of prayer, and the most exalted Holy Fathers like St.\u00a0 Symeon the New Theologian, St.\u00a0 Gregory Palamas, and St.\u00a0 Gregory the Sinaite.\u00a0 It is all very well to be aware of this truly exalted side of Orthodox spiritual life and to have reverence for the great saints who have actually lived it; but unless we have a very realistic and v very humble awareness of how far away all of us today are from the life of hesychasm and how little prepared we are even to approach it, our interest in it will be only one more expression of our self-centered, plastic universe.\u00a0 \u201cThe me-generation goes hesychast!\u201d\u2014that is what some are trying to do today; but in actuality they are only adding a new game called \u201chesychasm\u201d to the attractions of Disneyland.<\/p>\n

There are books on this subject now that are very popular.\u00a0 In fact, Roman Catholics are going in very big for this kind of thing under Orthodox influence and themselves influencing other Orthodox people.\u00a0 For example, there is a Jesuit priest, Fr.\u00a0 George Maloney, who writes all kinds of books on this subject and translates St.\u00a0 Macarius the Great and St.\u00a0 Symeon the New Theologian and tries to get people in everyday life to be hesychasts.\u00a0 They have all kinds of retreats, usually \u201ccharismatic\u201d; people are inspired by the Holy Spirit, supposedly, and undertake all types of these disciplines which we get from the Holy Fathers, and which are far beyond the level at which we are today.\u00a0 It is a very unserious thing.\u00a0 There is also a lady, Catherine de\u00a0Hueck Doherty (in fact, she was born in Russia and became a Roman Catholic), who writes books about Poustinia, the desert life, and Molchanie, the silent life, and all these things which she tries to put into life like you would have some fashion for a new candy.\u00a0 This, of course, is very unserious and is a very tragic sign of our times.\u00a0 These kind of exalted things are being used by people who have no idea of what they are about.\u00a0 For some people it is only a habit or a pastime; for others who take it seriously, it can be a great tragedy.\u00a0 They think they are leading some kind of exalted life and really they have not come to terms with their own problems inside of them.<\/p>\n

Let me re-emphasize that both of these extremes are to be avoided\u2014both worldliness and super-spirituality\u2014but this does not mean that we should not have a realistic awareness of the legitimate demands which the world makes upon us, or that we should cease respecting and taking sound instruction from the great hesychast Fathers and using the Jesus prayer ourselves, according to our circumstances and capacity.\u00a0 It just has to be on our level, down to earth.\u00a0 The point is\u2014and it is a point that is absolutely necessary for our survival as Orthodox Christians today\u2014we must realize our situation as Orthodox Christians today; we must realize deeply what times we live in, how little we actually know and feel our Orthodoxy, how far we are not just from the saints of ancient times, but even from the ordinary Orthodox Christians of a hundred years or even a generation ago, and how much we must humble ourselves just to strive as Orthodox Christians today.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What We Can Do<\/h2>\n

\"\"
\nMore specifically, what can we do to gain this awareness, this realization, and how can we make it fruitful in our lives? I will try to answer this question in two parts: first, concerning our awareness of the world around us, which as never before in the history of Christianity has become our conscious enemy; and second, concerning our awareness of Orthodoxy, which, I am afraid, most of us know much less than we should, much less than we have to know if we wish to keep it.<\/p>\n

First, since whether we wish it or not we are in the world (and its effects are felt strongly even in a remote place like our monastery here), we must face it and its temptations squarely and realistically, but without giving in to it; in particular, we must prepare our young people for the temptations facing them, and as it were inoculate them against these temptations.\u00a0 We must be aware that the world around us seldom helps and almost always hinders the upbringing of the child in the true Orthodox spirit.\u00a0 We must be ready every day to answer the influence of the world by the principles of a sound Christian upbringing.<\/p>\n

This means that what a child learns at school must constantly be checked and corrected at home.\u00a0 We cannot assume that something he is going to learn at school is simply something that is profitable or secular and has nothing to do with his Orthodox upbringing.\u00a0 He may be taught useful skills and facts (although many schools in America today are failing miserably even at this; many school teachers tell us that all they can do is keep the children in good order in class without even teaching them anything), but even if he gets this much, he is also taught many wrong attitudes and philosophies.\u00a0 A child\u2019s basic attitude towards and appreciation of literature, music, history, art, philosophy, even science, and of course life and religion\u2014must come first of all not from school, for the school will give you all this mixed up with modern philosophy; it must come first from the home and Church, or else he is bound to be miseducated in today\u2019s world, where public education is at best agnostic, and at worst openly atheistic or anti-religious.\u00a0 Of course, in the Soviet Union all this is forced upon the child, with no religion whatsoever and an active program of making the child an atheist.<\/p>\n

Parents must know exactly what is being taught their children in education courses, which are almost universal today in American schools, and correct it at home, not only by a frank attitude to this subject (especially between fathers and sons\u2014a very rare thing in American society), but also by a clear setting forth of the moral aspect of it which is totally absent in public education.<\/p>\n

Parents must know just what kind of music their children are listening to, what is in the movies they see (listening and seeing together with them when necessary), what kind of language they are exposed to and what kind of language they use, and give the Christian attitude to all this.<\/p>\n

Television\u2014in households where there is not enough courage to throw it out the window\u2014must be strictly controlled and supervised to avoid the poisonous effects of this machine which has become the leading educator of anti-Christian attitudes and ideas in the home itself, especially to the young.<\/p>\n

I speak about the raising of children because this is where the world first strikes its blows at Orthodox Christians and forms them in its image; once wrong attitudes have been formed in a child, the task of giving him a Christian education becomes doubly difficult.
\nBut it is not only children, it is all of us, who are facing the world which is trying to form us in anti-Christianity, by means of schools, television, movies, popular music, and all the other influences that pound in upon us, most of all in the big cities.\u00a0 We have to be aware that what is being pounded in upon us is all of one piece; it has a certain rhythm, a certain message to give us, this message of self-worship, of relaxing, of letting go, of enjoying yourself, of giving up any thought of the other world, in various forms, whether in music, or in movies, television, or what is being taught in schools, the way subjects are emphasized, the way the background is given, and everything else; there is one particular thing which is being given to us.\u00a0 It is actually an education in atheism.\u00a0 We have to fight back by knowing just what the world is trying to do to us, and by formulating and communicating our Orthodox Christian response to it.
\nFrankly, from observing the way Orthodox families in today\u2019s world live and pass on their Orthodoxy, it would seem that this battle is more often lost than won.\u00a0 The percentage of Orthodox Christians who retain their Orthodox identity intact and are not changed into the image of today\u2019s world, is small indeed.<\/p>\n

Still, it is not necessary to view the world around us as all bad.\u00a0 In fact, for our survival as Orthodox Christians we have to be smart enough to use whatever is positive in the world for our own benefit.\u00a0 Here I will go into a few points where we can use something in the world which seems to have nothing to do directly with Orthodoxy in order to formulate our Orthodox world-view.
\nThe child who has been exposed from his earliest years to good classical music, and has seen his soul being developed by it, will not be nearly as tempted by the crude rhythm and message of rock and other contemporary forms of pseudo-music as someone who has grown up without a musical education.\u00a0 Such a musical education, as several of the Optina elders have said, refines the soul and prepares it for the reception of spiritual impressions.<\/p>\n

The child who has been educated in good literature, drama, and poetry and has felt their effect in his own soul\u2014that is, has really enjoyed them\u2014, will not easily become an addict of the contemporary movies and television programs and cheap novels that devastate the soul and take it away from the Christian path.
\nThe child who has learned to see beauty in classical painting and sculpture will not easily be drawn into the perversity of contemporary art or be attracted by the garish products of modern advertising and pornography.<\/p>\n

The child who knows something of the history of the world, especially in Christian times, and how other people have lived and thought, what mistakes and pitfalls people have fallen into by departing from God and His commandments, and what glorious and influential lives they have lived when they were faithful to Him\u2014will be discerning about the life and philosophy of our own times and will not be inclined to follow the first new philosophy or way of life he encounters.\u00a0 One of the basic problems facing the education of children today is that in the schools they are no longer given a sense of history.\u00a0 It is a dangerous and fatal thing to deprive a child of a sense of history.\u00a0 It means that he has no ability to take examples from the people who lived in the past.\u00a0 And actually, history constantly repeats itself.\u00a0 Once you see that, it becomes interesting how people have answered problems, how there have been people who have gone against God and what results came from that, and how people changed their lives and became exceptions and gave an example which is lived down to our own times.\u00a0 This sense of history is a very important thing which should be communicated to children.<\/p>\n

In general, the person who is well acquainted with the best products of secular culture\u2014which in the West almost always has definite religious and Christian overtones\u2014has a much better chance of leading a normal, fruitful Orthodox life than someone who knows only the popular culture of today.\u00a0 One who is converted to Orthodoxy straight from \u201crock\u201d culture, and in general anyone who thinks he can combine Orthodoxy with that kind of culture\u2014has much suffering to go through and a difficult road in life before he can become a truly serious Orthodox Christian who is capable of handing on his faith to others.\u00a0 Without this suffering, without this awareness, Orthodox parents will raise their children to be devoured by the contemporary world.\u00a0 The world\u2019s best culture, properly received, refines and develops the soul; today\u2019s popular culture cripples and deforms the soul and hinders it from having a full and normal response to the message of Orthodoxy.<\/p>\n

Therefore, in our battle against the spirit of this world, we can use the best things the world has to offer in order to go beyond them; everything good in the world, if we are only wise enough to see it, points to God, and to Orthodoxy, and we have to make use of it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Orthodox Worldview<\/h2>\n

\"\"
\nWith such an attitude\u2014a view of both the good things and the bad things in the world\u2014it is possible for us to have and to live an Orthodox world-view, that is, an Orthodox view on the whole of life, not just on narrow church subjects.\u00a0 There exists a false opinion, which unfortunately is all too widespread today, that it is enough to have an Orthodoxy that is limited to the church building and formal \u201cOrthodox\u201d activities, such as praying at certain times or making the sign of the Cross; in everything else, so this opinion goes, one can be like anyone else, participating in the life and culture of our times without any problem, as long as we don\u2019t commit sin.
\nAnyone who has come to realize how deep Orthodoxy is, and how full is the commitment which is required of the serious Orthodox Christian, and likewise what totalitarian demands the contemporary world makes on us, will easily see how wrong this opinion is.\u00a0 One is Orthodox all the time every day, in every situation of life, or one is not really Orthodox at all.\u00a0 Our Orthodoxy is revealed not just in our strictly religious views, but in everything we do and say.\u00a0 Most of us are very unaware of the Christian, religious responsibility we have for the seemingly secular part of our lives.\u00a0 The person with a truly Orthodox world-view lives every part of his life as Orthodox.
\nLet us, therefore, ask here: How can we nourish and support this Orthodox world-view in our daily life?
\nThe first and most obvious way is to be in constant contact with the sources of Christian nourishment, with everything that the Church gives us for our enlightenment and salvation: the Church services and Holy Mysteries, Holy Scripture, the Lives of Saints, the writings of the Holy Fathers.\u00a0 One must, of course, read books that are on one\u2019s own level of understanding, and apply the Church\u2019s teaching to one\u2019s own circumstances in life; then they can be fruitful in guiding us and changing us in a Christian way.
\nBut often these basic Christian sources do not have their full effect on us, or don\u2019t really affect us at all, because we don\u2019t have the right Christian attitude towards them and towards the Christian life they are supposed to inspire.\u00a0 Let me now say a word here about what our attitude should be if we are to obtain real benefit from them and if they are going to be for us the beginning of a truly Orthodox world-view.<\/p>\n

First of all, Christian spiritual food, by its very nature, is something living and nourishing; if our attitude towards it is merely academic and bookish, we will fail to get the benefit it is meant to give.\u00a0 Therefore, if we read Orthodox books or are interested in Orthodoxy only to gain information\u2014or show off our knowledge to others, we are missing the point; if we learn of the commandments of God and the law of His Church merely to be \u201ccorrect\u201d and to judge the \u201cincorrectness\u201d of others, we are missing the point.\u00a0 These things must not merely affect our ideas, but must directly touch our lives and change them.\u00a0 In any time of great crisis in human affairs\u2014such as the critical times right in front of us in the free world\u2014those who place their trust in outward knowledge, in laws and canons and correctness, will be unable to stand.\u00a0 The strong ones then will be those whose Orthodox education has given them a feel for what is truly Christian, those whose Orthodoxy is in the heart and is capable of touching other hearts.<\/p>\n

Nothing is more tragic than to see someone who is raised in Orthodoxy, has a certain idea of the catechism, has read some Lives of Saints, has a general idea of what Orthodoxy stands for, understands some of the services, and then is unaware of what is going on around him.\u00a0 And he gives his children this life in two categories: one is the way most people live and the other way is how Orthodox live on Sundays and when they are reading some Orthodox text.\u00a0 When a child is raised like that he is most likely not going to take the Orthodox one; it is going to be a very small part of his life, because the contemporary life is too attractive, too many people are going for it, it is too much a part of reality today, unless he has been really taught how to approach it, how to guard himself against the bad effects of it and how to take advantage of the good things which are in the world.<\/p>\n

Therefore, our attitude, beginning right now, must be down-to-earth and nominal.\u00a0 That is, it must be applied to the real circumstances of our life, not a product of fantasy and escapism and refusal to face the often unpleasant facts of the world around us.\u00a0 An Orthodoxy that is too exalted and too much in the clouds belongs in a hothouse and is incapable of helping us in our daily life, let alone saying anything for the salvation of those around us.\u00a0 Our world is quite cruel and wounds souls with its harshness; we need to respond first of all with down-to-earth Christian love and understanding, leaving accounts of hesychasm and advanced forms of prayer to those capable of receiving them.
\nSo also, our attitude must be not self-centered but reaching out to those who are seeking for God and for a godly life.\u00a0 Nowadays, wherever there is a good-sized Orthodox community, the temptation is to make it into a society for self-congratulation and for taking delight in our Orthodox virtues and achievements: the beauty of our church buildings and furnishings, the splendor of our services, even the purity of our doctrine.\u00a0 But the true Christian life, even since the time of the Apostles, has always been inseparable from communicating it to others.\u00a0 An Orthodoxy that is alive by this very fact shines forth to others\u2014and there is no need to open a \u201cdepartment of missions\u201d to do this; the fire of true Christianity communicates itself without this.\u00a0 If our Orthodoxy is only something we keep for ourselves, and boast about it, then we are the dead burying the dead\u2014which is precisely the state of many of our Orthodox parishes today, even those that have a large number of young people, if they are not going deeply into their Faith.\u00a0 It is not enough to say that the young people are going to church.\u00a0 We need to ask what they are getting in church, what they are taking away from church, and, if they are not making Orthodoxy a part of their whole life, then it really is not sufficient to say that they are going to church.<\/p>\n

Likewise, our attitude must be loving and forgiving.\u00a0 There is a kind of hardness that has crept into Orthodox life today: \u201cThat man is a heretic; don\u2019t go near him;\u201d \u201cthat one is Orthodox, supposedly, but you can\u2019t really be sure;\u201d \u201cthat one there is obviously a spy.\u201d No one will deny that the Church is surrounded by enemies today, or that there are some who stoop to taking advantage of our trust and confidence.\u00a0 But this is the way it has been since the time of the Apostles, and the Christian life has always been something of a risk in this practical way.\u00a0 But even if we are sometimes taken advantage of and do have to show some caution in this regard, still we cannot give up our basic attitude of love and trust without which we lose one of the very foundations of our Christian life.\u00a0 The world, which has no Christ, has to be mistrustful and cold, but Christians, on the contrary, have to be loving and open, or else we will lose the salt of Christ within us and become just like the world, good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden underfoot.<\/p>\n

A little humility in looking at ourselves would help us to be more generous and forgiving of the faults of others.\u00a0 We love to judge others for the strangeness of their behavior; we call them \u201ccuckoos\u201d or \u201ccrazy converts.\u201d It is true that we should beware of really unbalanced people who can do us great harm in the Church.\u00a0 But what serious Orthodox Christian today is not a little \u201ccrazy\u201d? We don\u2019t fit in with the ways of this world; if we do, in today\u2019s world, we aren\u2019t serious Christians.\u00a0 The true Christian today cannot be at home in the world; he cannot help but feel himself and be regarded by others as a little \u201ccrazy.\u201d Just to keep alive the ideal of other-worldly Christianity today, or to get baptized as an adult, or to pray seriously, is enough to put you into a crazy house in the Soviet Union and in many other countries, and these countries are leading the way for the rest of the world to follow.<\/p>\n

Therefore, let us not be afraid of being considered a little \u201ccrazy\u201d by the world, and let us continue to practice the Christian love and forgiveness which the world can never understand, but which in its heart it needs and even craves.<\/p>\n

Finally, our Christian attitude must be what, for want of a better word, I would call innocent.\u00a0 Today the world places a high value on sophistication, on being worldly-wise, on being a \u201cprofessional.\u201d Orthodoxy places no value on these qualities; they kill the Christian soul.\u00a0 And yet these qualities constantly creep into the Church and into our lives.\u00a0 How often one hears enthusiastic converts especially, express their desire of going to the great Orthodox centers, the cathedrals and monasteries where sometimes thousands of the faithful come together and everywhere the talk is of church matters, and one can feel how important Orthodoxy is, after all.\u00a0 That Orthodoxy is a small drop in the bucket when you look at the whole society, but in these great cathedrals and monasteries there are so many people that it seems as though it is really an important thing.\u00a0 And how often one sees these same people in a pitiful state after they have indulged their desire, returning from the \u201cgreat Orthodox centers\u201d sour and dissatisfied, filled with worldly church gossip and criticism, anxious above all to be \u201ccorrect\u201d and \u201cproper\u201d and worldly-wise about church politics.\u00a0 In a word, they have lost their innocence, their unworldliness, being led astray by their fascination with the worldly side of the Church\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

In various forms, this is a temptation to us all, and we must fight it by not allowing ourselves to overvalue the externals of the Church, but always returning to the \u201cone thing needful\u201d: Christ and the salvation of our souls from this wicked generation.\u00a0 We needn\u2019t be ignorant of what goes on in the world and in the Church\u2014in fact, for our own selves we have to know\u2014but our knowledge must be practical and simple and single-minded, not sophisticated and worldly.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n

\"\"
\nIt is obvious to any Orthodox Christian who is aware of what is going on around him today, that the world is coming to its end.\u00a0 The signs of the times are so obvious that one might say that the world is crashing to its end.<\/p>\n

What are some of these signs?<\/p>\n

\u2014The abnormality of the world.\u00a0 Never have such weird and unnatural manifestations and behavior been accepted as a matter of course as in our days.\u00a0 Just look at the world around you: what is in the newspapers, what kind of movies are being shown, what is on television, what it is that people think is interesting and amusing, what they laugh at; it is absolutely weird.\u00a0 And there are people who deliberately promote this, of course, for their own financial benefit, and because that is the fashion, because there is a perverse craving for this kind of thing.<\/p>\n

\u2014The wars and rumors of wars, each more cold and merciless than the preceding, and all overshadowed by the treat of the unthinkable universal nuclear war, which could be set off by the touch of a button.<\/p>\n

\u2014The widespread natural disasters: earthquakes, and now volcanoes\u2014the newest one forming not far from here near Yosemite Park in central California\u2014which are already changing the world\u2019s weather patterns.<\/p>\n

\u2014The increasing centralization of information on and power over the individual, represented in particular by the enormous new computer in Luxembourg, which has the capacity to keep a file of information on every man living; its code number is 666 and it is nicknamed \u201cthe beast\u201d by those who work on it.\u00a0 To facilitate the working of such computers, the American government plans to begin in 1984 the issuance of Social Security checks to persons with a number (apparently including the code number\u00a0666) stamped on their right hand or forehead\u2014precisely the condition which will prevail, according to the Apocalypse (ch.\u00a0 13) during the reign of antichrist.\u00a0 Of course, it doesn\u2019t mean that the first person to get himself stamped 666 is the antichrist, or the servant of antichrist, but once you are used to this, who will be able to resist? They will train you first and then they will make you bow down to him.<\/p>\n

\u2014Again, the multiplication of false Christs and false Antichrists.\u00a0 The latest candidate just this summer spent probably millions of dollars advertising his impending appearance on world television, promising to give at that time a \u201ctelepathic message\u201d to all the world\u2019s inhabitants.\u00a0 Quite apart from any occult powers that might be involved in such events, we already know well enough the opportunities for presenting subliminal messages by radio and especially by television, as well as the fact that this can be done by anyone with the technology for breaking into normal radio and television signals, no matter how many laws there might be against it.<\/p>\n

\u2014The truly weird response to the new movie everyone in America is talking about and seeing: \u201cE.T.\u201d, which has caused literally millions of seemingly normal people to express their affection and love for the hero, a \u201cSaviour\u201d from outer space who is quite obviously a demon\u2014an obvious preparation for the worship of the coming Antichrist.\u00a0 (And incidentally, the movie editor of the official Greek Archdiocese newspaper in America, an Orthodox priest, has heartily recommended this movie to Orthodox people saying that it is a wonderful movie which can teach us about love, and everyone should go see it.\u00a0 There is quite a contrast between people who are trying to be aware of what is going on, and those who are simply led into the mood of the times.)<\/p>\n

I could go on with details like this, but my purpose is not to frighten you, but to make you aware of what is happening around us.\u00a0 It is truly later than we think; the Apocalypse is now.\u00a0 And how tragic it is to see Christians, and above all Orthodox young people, with this incalculable tragedy hanging over their heads, who think they can continue what is called a \u201cnormal life\u201d in these terrible times, participating fully in the whims of this silly, self-worshipping generation, totally unaware that the fool\u2019s paradise we are living in is about to crash, completely unprepared for the desperate times that lie just ahead of us.\u00a0 There is no longer even a question of being a \u201cgood\u201d or a \u201cpoor\u201d Orthodox Christian; the question now is: will our Faith survive at all? With many, it will not survive; the coming Antichrist will be too attractive, too much in the spirit of the worldly things we now crave, for most men even to know that they have lost their Christianity by bowing down to him.<\/p>\n

Still the call of Christ comes to us; let us begin to heed it.\u00a0 The clearest expression of this call today is coming from the enslaved atheist world, where there is real suffering for Christ and a seriousness of life which we are rapidly losing or have already lost.\u00a0 One Orthodox priest in Romania, Fr. George Calciu, is now near death in a communist prison for daring to challenge young seminarians and students to put off their blind allegiance to the spirit of the times and come forward to labor for Christ.\u00a0 After speaking of the emptiness of atheism, he tells today\u2019s young people: \u201cI call you to a much higher flight, to total abandonment, to an act of courage which defies reason.\u00a0 I call you to God.\u00a0 To the One that transcends the world so that you might know an infinite heaven of spiritual joy, the heaven which you presently grope for in your personal hell, and which you seek even while in a state of non-deliberate revolt\u2026 Jesus has always loved you, but now you have the choice to respond to His invitation.\u00a0 In responding, you are ordained to go and bear fruit that will remain.\u00a0 To be a prophet of Christ in the world in which you live.\u00a0 To love your neighbor as yourself and to make all men your friend.\u00a0 To proclaim by every action this unique and limitless love which has raised man from the level of a serf to that of a friend of God.\u00a0 To the prophets of this liberating love which delivers you from all constraint, returning to you your integrity as you offer yourself to God.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fr.\u00a0 George, speaking to young people who had little inspiration to serve Christ\u2019s Church because they had accepted the worldly opinion (common also among us in the free world) that the Church is only a set of buildings or a worldly organization, calls them and us to a deeper awareness of Christ\u2019s Church and of how our \u201cformal membership\u201d in it is not enough to save us.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Church of Christ is alive and free.\u00a0 In her we move and have our being, through Christ Who is her Head.\u00a0 In Him we have full freedom.\u00a0 In the Church we learn of truth and the truth will set us free (John 8:32).\u00a0 You are in Christ\u2019s Church whenever you uplift someone bent down in sorrow, or when you give alms to the poor, and visit the sick.\u00a0 You are in Christ\u2019s Church when you cry out: \u2018Lord, help me.\u2019 You are in Christ\u2019s Church when you are good and patient, when you refuse to get angry at your brother, even if he has wounded your feelings.\u00a0 You are in Christ\u2019s Church when you pray: \u2018Lord, forgive him.\u2019 When you work honestly at your job, returning home weary in the evenings but with a smile upon your lips; when you repay evil with love\u2014you are in Christ\u2019s Church.\u00a0 Do you not see, therefore, young friend, how close the Church of Christ is? You are Peter and God is building His Church upon you.\u00a0 You are the rock of His Church against which nothing can prevail\u2026 Let us build churches with our faith, churches which no human power can pull down, a church whose foundation is Christ\u2026 Feel for your brother alongside you.\u00a0 Never ask: \u2018Who is he?\u2019 Rather say: \u2019He is no stranger; he is my brother.\u00a0 He is the Church of Christ just as I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

With such a call in our hearts, let us begin really to belong to the Church of Christ, the Orthodox Church.\u00a0 Outward membership is not enough; something must move within us that makes us different from the world around us, even if that world calls itself \u201cChristian\u201d and even \u201cOrthodox.\u201d Let us keep and nourish those qualities of the true Orthodox world-view which I mentioned earlier: a living, normal attitude, loving and forgiving, not self-centered, preserving our innocence and unworldliness even with a full and humble awareness of our own sinfulness and the power of the worldly temptations around us.\u00a0 If we truly live this Orthodox world-view, our Faith will survive the shocks ahead of us and be a source of inspiration and salvation for those who will still be seeking Christ even amidst the shipwreck of humanity which has already begun today.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/span>

St. Seraphim of Platina<\/h3>
\n
\n \n <\/div>\n
\n
\n \"album-art\"\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>

<\/h3>
<\/div>