An homily from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, for the Feast of the Holy Prophet Elijah, 7534/2026, by Priest Paul Siewers.

Today we commemorate the Holy Prophet Elijah, known in Greek and Slavonic as Elias. One of the greatest prophets of the Old Testament, he lived nearly 3,000 years ago. His life is chronicled in the 3^rd and 4^th books of Kings in the Orthodox Christian Bible. The Prophet Malachi predicts he will return, because he did not die but was taken up into heaven in a fiery chariot in a whirlwind. He is mentioned in the Gospels, identified with the work of John the Baptist as Forerunner, and appears talking to Christ and Moses at the Transfiguration. In references in the Book of Revelation to two mysterious witnesses standing up to the Antichrist that Holy Fathers of Orthodoxy see the final bodily return of Elijah with a lesson for our own lives.

In Elijah’s day, little more than a century before his nation Israel would be forced into exile in Assyria and not return due to its apostasy from God, he was a faithful prophet of God who faced off against King Ahab and Jezebel. They had chosen to leave the God of the Old Testament and to worship the pagan idol Baal. Elijah gave many mighty proofs of his faith in miracles and courageous preaching. But King Ahab and Jezebel seemed to have all the worldly power and he became depressed, feeling that the people of his country Israel had left their faith in the God of Abraham and of Moses. At one point in despair Elijah went out into the wilderness and hid in a cave at Mount Horeb, also known as Mount Sinai. This was where Moses, about 1,500 years before Elijah, had received the law of God. God had revealed Himself by name to Moses as “I Am the Existing One,” and Jesus later referred to Himself also with that phrase “I Am.” 

Elijah was faithful to Moses’ vision from our Lord, and received visions from Christ. But his life was a type of the encounter with Antichrist who would deny our Lord and His Church. For King Ahab in his evil rule was a type of Antichrist, and Jezebel was a type of the Whore of Babylon also in Revelation. Elijah, despite his success, was tempted by the devil and felt a failure. He felt alone. Then God came to the prophet as if in a still small voice and showed His glory, to tell him that there were yet a few thousand believers in Israel. He inspired Elijah to overcome his demon of depression and continue. With God’s help, he triumphed in showing all the true God, the I Am He Who Exists, our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ. In his amazing witness, Elijah was taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot in a whirlwind rather than experiencing death. 

The Church Fathers indicate that the prophet will return in the latter days as one of the two witnesses against Anti-Christ described in the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible. The Fathers identify most often the second witness as Enoch, who in deep repentance walked with God and was also taken up by God without dying as part of God’s future plan. Their return may sound incredible yet consider the wonder-working nature of Elijah’s work in the Old Testament, defying with fire from heaven the prophets of Baal, healing and raising the dead, providing food miraculously, showing the penalty for idolatry in drought, preaching against evil. Elijah lived in effect in another dimension, one connected with Paradise, which while it had disappeared to mortal eyes in the Fall, still hovers over and around us, so much so that St. Ephrem the Syrian described Paradise as a hollow mountain above and around us, inside which we live unknowingly. In fact, Holy Elijah in many ways was a prototype for Christian monasticism.

The teacher and preacher Archimandrite Athanasios Mitilinaios in modern times synthesized patristic teachings on the Book of Revelation, including about Elijah’s final return. He wrote extensively of Elijah as one of the two witnesses just prior to the second coming of our Lord. Father Athanasios’s Orthodox commentary challenges us with signs of the end times, including the public widespread nature of sexual perversion and abuse of children, corruption, tnormalizing of mind-altering drugs and media, global apostasy and hostility toward traditional Christian faith. 

He wrote that, “we should see that while the antichrist is reigning, the two witnesses will be feverishly working on an international level for the preservation of the world, and especially for the apathetic Christians who will have believed in the works of the Antichrist. The apathetic Christians will be those most victimized by the corruption of the Antichrist, while the Church, remaining unshakably steadfast and unmercifully persecuted by the Antichrist, will have fled into the desert, in other words, back into the catacombs. Are we prepared for any of this?” he asks (vol. 3, p. 122).

We in this humble temple are a Church in the wilderness in the sense of being in the country, off the beaten track thanks God. But more importantly we should be so in our hearts in separating ourselves from the evil of our times, and growing closer to God and to one another in the mystical union of our Lord’s Church. This is harder today because of our online world and life. But God provides for us, just as He will send His two witnesses at the right time, and restrain the power of Antichrist long enough for them to expose him and also to shore up those believers who remain faithful, and to test our faith.

Scripture tells us that the Beast, or the Antichrist, that came from the bottomless pit, the abyss, will come and kill the two witnesses after a period given as three and a half days or years in which they had preached and done true miracles against Antichrist. Scripture tells us their dead bodies shall lie in the streets of the great city spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, where our Lord was crucified. Their dead bodies will be viewed by the world, perhaps online, three and a half days, unburied. Many will rejoice over their deaths and send gifts to each other, because the two witnesses had bothered them about repentance. But after three days and a half, the Scripture tells us, “the Spirit of life from God entered into them.” They stood up. “They heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in in a cloud.”

Then the angel sounds the seventh trumpet, and then is recorded the wonder of the Woman with child, surviving and triumphing, and the defeat of the devil, which many Church Fathers take as a prophecy of the Church in the wilderness in the end times. The two witnesses, including Elijah, before that are given their time to expose and oppose Antichrist. Then Antichrist reigns for the same period of time, but God keeps the period short, and resurrects the two witnesses as a sign of the triumph of the faithful, before the coming of Christ. Glory to God!

But will we be faithful in such trials, in the Church in the wilderness? This is a question personally, as well as for the end times. The Beast or the Antichrist comes from the abyss or bottomless pit, a spiritual darkness devoid of true faith in God. Archimandrite Athanasios warns that each of us as we waver or are lukewarm potentially are in that abyss. “This occurs, beloved, because we Christians are fully engulfed in the secular spirit and move about in this world with no regard for the existence of God, Christ, and death, hell, or the Kingdom of God. If we reach this deplorable state (God forbid) and live such a life, then we can be certain that we ourselves have become the walls of the abyss that will spew out the Antichrist.”

And that Antichrist will kill the two witnesses. Yet there is hope. God offers us the testimony of the witnesses, Elijah with courage and Enoch with repentance. Our Lord gives us in love the Gospel and mysteries of His Church. He gave His only begotten Son. And afterward will come the resurrection of the two witnesses and the coming again of Jesus Christ. Help is on the way.

Brothers and sisters, courage is one of the seven biblical virtues that are grace, a gift of the Holy Spirit, exemplified by Elijah. Even he faltered, but God’s grace upheld him and comforted and strengthened him. So too we look for the return of our Lord, and must keep our hearts warm and open to Him in faith and to one another through His loving grace, both in our daily personal lives, and in the challenges of the end times. Archimandrite Athanasios suggests that we test ourselves, engage in exercises, so we will not falter at the appearance of Antichrist or his forerunners, at their delusional victories, such as the temporary death of the two witnesses, but will have courage like Elijah. Daily prayer, confession, heartfelt preparation and participation in the Eucharist, all guide us on the right path, so we will not despair when the witnesses are killed. They will rise again and be taken up to God. We live and move and have our being in God, as the Scriptures tell us, and in Him there are more dimensions to life than we can imagine. Even as we go out to bless our cars after the service in memory of Elijah’s fiery chariot, he remains part of our story, as we are in his, the living story of our Lord’s Church, the Gospel story of Creation in which we too are called to be witnesses and to be saved. For blessed is our God, always now and ever and unto ages of ages.

Above, an illustration of Alyosha and the children at the funeral in the ending of The Brothers Karamazov.

In a memorable scene from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Alyosha while mourning the passing of his Elder weeps and waters the earth with his tears, and then is described as rising up as if touched by someone (presumably his holy spiritual father) strengthened for future work.

Sinner that I am, I could not claim as deep an experience recently at the graves of my family in Chicago, but it was a moving and healing one nonetheless.

Having moved out of state, I had not visited their graves since their deaths decades ago, touched by tragedy, and repenting of sin on my part in my early family life then, in what seemed another life.

Yet on this most recent trip I brought along my priest’s satchel thinking that I might visit their graves again at last, now as an unworthy priest, to say graveside prayers there.

They were not Orthodox, so my prayers were the basic Trisagion invocations, and blessing their graves with holy water.

The cemetery is in the middle of a modern booming suburban area, and in fact could be seen from the high-rise hotel room where my older son and I were staying while visiting a living relative with health needs.

One morning on our short stay I got up early to go to the cemetery, and was grateful when my son expressed that he wanted to go with me. He had never known my parents and sister (or my grandparents) who were all buried there. Yet he helped me find the graves, and prayed with me.

All these years later, the prayers were still a release, a refreshment, an opportunity for penitential reflections on my failings as a family member, on my sinful life before becoming an Orthodox Christian almost three decades ago now (near the end of my parents’ lives and after my sister’s earlier passing), and my continued failings and sins since.

It marked a link also to memories of my final moments with each of my parents, when I was able to pray the Jesus Prayer with them as a newly baptized Orthodox Christian.

How wonderful are the prayers of our Church and is our God, that we can reach out in prayer to the past, redeem memories good and bad, and share that experience with our family members, both in our household and in our family that is the Church, and, we hope, with those of who have passed on not in the Church.

The prayers and the reaching across generations with my son present were a reminder, also, of a statement by Alyosha in Dostoevsky’s novel, that one good memory from childhood can be enough to save us, for (in my own terms) it can help to lead us to faith by the grace of our Lord.

Glory to God for all things!

The Orthodox Church. “No one can have God for his Father who has not the Church for his Mother,” wrote St. Cyprian of Carthage. The Orthodox Church, founded by Jesus Christ and His Apostles, the Body of Christ or Bride of Christ, began at Pentecost with the descent of the Holy Spirit around 30 A.D., was prefigured in Old Testament times and is the biblical Israel today, continuous in episcopal succession and in doctrines and governance. Upholding the Ecumenical Church Councils, the Orthodox Church is the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church” proclaimed in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.

Russian Orthodoxy. The Russian Orthodox Church today has the largest number of adherents of the local Orthodox Churches, which include the Greek Orthodox, Serbian Orthodox, and many others. “Russian Orthodox” refers to a specific local historical tradition and hierarchical governance, not necessarily ethnicity (as “Roman Catholic” historically in the West did not mean adherents were necessarily Roman). Russian Orthodoxy traces back directly through Kievan-Rus’ to Byzantium to the Holy Land. Our Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia emerged from the post-Revolutionary diaspora of many faithful Russian Christians, is headquartered in America, and is under the Patriarchate of Moscow, which was founded with the blessing of ancient apostolic patriarchates.

Basic Pilgrim Gear. The best way to learn about Orthodoxy is to attend services and to start praying. The Orthodox Study Bible and the Jordanville Prayer Book (both widely available, at our parish and from online bookstores) are two basic books to start your own library and prayer life. Consult with our Priest Paul about starting an Orthodox prayer life for which a prayer rope, called a chotki or komboschini or lestovka, is also helpful.

Basic Readings/Viewings. The first six readings below are especially helpful for inquirers and catechumens. Additional resources follow below them. Please be in touch about attending services, our Orthodoxy Online class, and our in-person Bible Study as well. Visits to monasteries are helpful, such as Holy Protection Women’s Monastery in White Haven and the Russian Orthodox Monasteries in Jordanville, NY (Holy Trinity) and in West Virginia (Holy Cross).

* The Law of God *

by Priest-Martyr Daniel Sysoev, is an excellent guide to the Orthodox faith and goes into detail about an Orthodox understanding of scripture. It is available in hardback from Orthodox bookstores and Amazon.

* Orthodox Dogmatic Theology *

A classic in-depth textbook on Orthodox theology, long used at ROCOR’s Holy Trinity Seminary in Jordanville, NY, by former Holy Trinity Professor Fr. Michael Pomazansky, this is now available as an e-book or paperback in English, translated by the well-known ROCOR American convert and writer Fr. Seraphim Rose.

* The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church *

by Vladimir Lossky, A good addition to Fr. Michael Pomazansky’s work, in relation to the Orthodox teaching of theosis.

* The Orthodox Church *

edited by Bishop Alexander Mileant, gives a brief history of the Church and lists some points of Orthodox doctrine, teaching, and art.

* The Longer Catechism of the Orthodox Church *

by ROC Metropolitan St. Philaret of Moscow, essentially describes all the important doctrines of the Church. This is what our Mission currently uses in our Catechism class taught by our Rector.

*Ten Things I Love About You: The Orthodox Church as the Fullness of Christianity*

A short list of what makes Orthodoxy different and true, by St. John’s Priest Paul.

​+++

*Resources for Orthodox Christian Bible Study* A collection of resources compiled by St. John’s Priest Paul.

Journey to Orthodoxy Compiled by Priest John Peck, a collection of stories from real people who converted to Orthodoxy from a variety of backgrounds.

The Way Into the Kingdom of Heaven by Russian Metropolitan St. Innocent of Alaska, describes the goal and practices of Orthodox Christian life, our relation to the Creator, and the aim of the Orthodox Church.

The Orthodox Wiki A Wikipedia of Orthodoxy.

Video 1 | Video 2 | Video 3 for a visual introduction to the Orthodox Church, please see these three short videos.

A printable two-sided flyer version of this is downloadable here, with regular text further below.

In preparing a prison inmate for Orthodox Christian baptism, I a sinner reflected on main points that have made and do make Orthodox Christianity dearest, truest, and most worthwhile in my unworthy life as an American convert. I came up with 10. But more than any such points of course, it is faith, prayer, worship, and example that convince and convict. Still, perhaps this poor offering may help a bit in reflecting on how we may be ready with an answer for our hope, as the Apostle Peter taught. They hopefully are based in the Symbol of Faith or Creed of the Church, and above all in faith in Jesus Christ, summed up in the prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me.”

1) The complete and correct Creed. Orthodoxy preserves the original Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed as formed and proclaimed by the ancient Church. Others changed it. We say it at every Liturgy and at each Compline in original form and hold to it in our hearts and faith.

2) Coming from that first point: We preserve the deepest theology of Christian Trinitarianism. We don’t subordinate the Holy Spirit, which is a full member of the Trinity so to speak in the deepest sense in Orthodox teaching. Not so elsewhere. The Trinity is the ultimate mystery of love. 

3) Following all the true Ecumenical Councils, Orthodoxy most clearly upholds the true nature of Christ as fully God and fully man, one person with two natures. Christ is Truth. We don’t water this down by interfaith intellectualism into Deism or Unitarianism, as many of the old Puritans did, expressed in confusion in much of modern American heterodox Christianity.

4) Orthodoxy reads Holy Scripture as both literal and symbolic in light of Church Tradition. No confusion or ignoring or tweaking of the Bible; we don’t like Protestants leave out books of the historical canonical Bible, and we rely primarily on the Old Testament used by the Apostles. We look to the inspired early Church Fathers for guidance in interpretation in light of Tradition inspired by the Holy Spirit, rather than any pope or preacher.

5) We preserve that ancient and inspired and living understanding of the Church that, like the Holy Spirit (2), Grace is not objectified. Orthodoxy teaches and demonstrates how grace is uncreated, not created. Grace is divine. Grace is not the essence of God but the energy of God. Yet that energy is uncreated. It forms a whole different basis for natural law–not legalistic, or rationalistic and individualistic in the modern senses. It highlights how theosis, or oneness with the divine energies through Christ, is the purpose and salvation of man.

6) There is no pope or preacher in the way. Christ is the Way, and His “one holy catholic and apostolic Church” of the Creed, the Orthodox Church, does not center on any one individual mortal, whether one pope in Catholicism or the idea that everyone is a pope in Protestantism. The Church is the Body of Christ. The Orthodox Church is continuous from Pentecost and has kept true to the Holy Spirit’s inspired Tradition. The Church didn’t disappear and doesn’t change under the orders of any mortal; it is the fullness of biblical Israel (and also not the modern nation-state of Israel as some wrongly believe). “Orthodoxy” means simply right teaching and right glorifying both.

7) Orthodoxy emphasizes ascetic synergy in salvation, govenie in Slavonic. Salvation is the synergy of God’s uncreated grace and our free will and struggle. Ascesis or asceticism is our will with God’s grace to be sacrifice self to serve God and each other. That’s why fasting in all senses (including alms-giving and discipline of prayer and desiring) is so much more important, for example, in Orthodoxy as a whole than in Catholicism or Protestantism. Faith is not just “in our head” but involves our body, too.

8) The true teaching of iconography in Orthodoxy is upheld by the Seventh Council growing out of the work of the first six councils. It is part of our full-bodied approach to worship, reflecting the Incarnation of Christ as central to His Church as His Body.

9) Related to (8), the beauty of Orthodoxy. That’s why St. Vlaidmir the Great converted to Orthodoxy, and his people as well. They saw the beauty of Orthodox worship and knew not whether they were in heaven or on earth, they said. This beauty of worship is physical and embodied, just as our Incarnational Lord, a reminder that Logos means also “harmony.”

10) Finally, the biggest: Love. God is love, the Evangelist John tells us. Love is the greatest virtue or gift, writes the Apostle Paul. Jesus Christ showed us how to love. He gave us a New Commandment to love our neighbor as more than our self. The mysteries and discipline of the Orthodox Church encourage and guide us into this. 

Prepared by Priest Paul Siewers, Rector of St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, and Professor and Chaplain at Bucknell University. 

Find us at stjohnthewonderworker.com, or contact us at 570-863-9039, or priestpauls@pm.me

An homily from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, by Priest Paul Siewers.

Today we commemorate the Baptism of Rus’ in 988 AD and the First Six Ecumenical Councils that preceded it. The Baptism of Rus’ was the mass Christianization of Kievan-Rus’ the predecessor to Russia. The Six Councils of the Church during the first seven centuries of the Christian era helped defend and further articulate Church teachings and practices. 

What would it take to have a Baptism of America?

Understanding of the Ecumenical Councils, for one thing. The first Six Councils, inspired by the Holy Spirit, provide the antidote to the demonic-inspired delusions and heresies that still afflict us in new and combined forms today, with even greater force.

But each time we have a baptism here in our little country church in Appalachia, each time we renew our catechism, baptismal, and chrismation vows by participating in those of someone new joining our Church, we also participate in the Baptism of America. Sayga, sayga, step by step little by little, as our Greek brothers and sisters like to say.

Take the preparation for an Orthodox baptism at the Muncy State Women’s Prison as part of our prison ministry. In preparing the inmate for baptism, in catechism, I’ve had to consider further a basic question that it is good for all of us to think and pray about, and put forward in our lives, in our missionary work. That question is, what makes Orthodoxy different from the heterodox forms of Christianity familiar in America, namely Catholicism and Protestantism? The question was discussed in our parish Orthodoxy Online class yesterday as well. The Ecumenical Councils help us to prepare an answer to that question,  based in the Church Tradition that we experience in Church throughout the year, and in the lives and prayers of the Saints.

Here are 10 points that occurred to me in answer to the question, What makes Orhtodoxy truly different and worth by comparison to Protestantism, Catholicism, non-biblical faiths, neopaganism, occultism, and pseudo-scientific atheism combined? Here are my ten points, offered by me as the worst of sinners, for we should nor out of pride assume any superior righteousness, But we can and should consider how best ro witness to others for our Lord’s faith out of concern for their salvation too. Think about your “points” of witness, too, remembering that the Apostle Peter says, “sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.” The best answers of course lie in example, love, and prayer.

1) The complete and correct Creed. Orthodoxy preserves the original Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed as formed and proclaimed by the ancient Church. Others changed it. We say it at every Liturgy and at each Compline in original form and hold to it in our hearts and faith.

2) Comes from that first point. We preserve the deepest theology of Christian Trinitarianism. We don’t subordinate the Holy Spirit, which is a full member of the Trinity so to speak in the deepest sense in Orthodox teaching. Not so elsewhere.

3) We preserve that ancient and inspired and living understanding of the Church that Grace is not subordinate or objectified either. Orthodoxy teaches and demonstrates how grace is uncreated, not created. Grace is divine. Grace is not the essence of God but the energy of God, yet that energy is uncreated. It forms a whole different basis for natural law that is not legalistic, or rationalistic and individualistic in the modern senses. It highlights how theosis, or oneness with the divine energies through Christ, is the purpose and salvation of man.

4) The Ecclesiology of Orthodoxy as explained in the Creed, “one holy catholic and apostolic Church,” does not center on any one individual, whether one pope in Catholicism or the idea that everyone is a pope in Protestantism. The Church is the Body of Christ. Orthodoxy shows how it is the Church of the Apostles and has kept true to the Holy Spirit’s inspired Tradition. It doesn’t cop out by saying our Lord’s Church has somehow vanished, like many Protestants do, some of whom even try to replace the biblical Israel realize din the Church with the 1948 state of Israel. Orthodoxy doesn’t identify a human leader as the Tradition, as many other groups do. “Orthodoxy” means simply right teaching and right glorifying both.

5) Orthodoxy emphasizes ascetic synergy in salvation, govenie in Slavonic. Salvation is the synergy of God’s uncreated grace and our free will and struggle. Ascesis or asceticism is our will with God’s grace to be sacrifice self to serve God and each other. That’s why fasting in all senses (including alms-giving and discipline of prayer and desiring) is so much more important, for example, in Orthodoxy as a whole than in Catholicism or Protestantism. It’s not just “in our head” but involves our body, too.

6) Following all the true Ecumenical Councils, Orthodoxy most clearly upholds the true nature of Christ as fully God and fully man, one person with two natures. We don’t water this down by interfaith intellectualism, into Deism or Unitarianism, as many of the old Puritans did, expressed in confusion in the history of American Protestantism.

7) The true teaching of iconography in Orthodoxy is upheld by the Seventh Council growing out of the work of the first six councils, is part of our full-bodied approach to worship, reflecting the Incarnation of Christ as central to His Church as His Body.

8) Related to seven, the beauty of Orthodoxy. That’s why St. Vlaidmir the Great converted to Orthodoxy, and his people as well. They saw the beauty of Orthodox worship and knew not whether they were in heaven or on earth, they said. This beauty of worship is physical and embodied, just as our Incarnational Lord, and a reminder that Logos means also “harmony.”

9) Orthodoxy reads Holy Scripture as both literal and symbolic in light of Church Tradition. No confusion or ignoring or tweaking of the Bible; we don’t leave out books of the historical canonical Bible, and we rely primarily on the Old Testament used by the Apostles. We look to the inspired early Church Fathers for guidance in interpretation in light of Tradition inspired by the Holy Spirit, rather than individual whims of ourselves or any particular popular heterodox preacher.

10) Finally, the biggest: Love. God is love, the Evangelist John tells us. Love is the greatest virtue or gift, writes the Apostle Paul. Jesus Christ showed us how to love. He gave us a New Commandment to love our neighbor as more than our self. The mysteries and discipline of the Orthodox Church encourages and guides us into this. 

Those are ten things I, a sinner, could mention about how Orthodoxy is different for me and why I love Orthodoxy. Depending on whom I spoke with, one such point be more effective than others, but, with prayer, pull on any one and in Orthodoxy the thread will connect to many other aspects. There are as many such aspects of Orthodoxy as God is infinite.

What would be your response to the question of why is Orthodoxy different for you and worthwhile by contrast to heterodoxy and/or atheism or neopaganism or the occult or non-biblical religions?

We should, as Scripture says, be prepared to answer for our hope, and defend it. For this is how apologetics help us spread the faith. But most of all this starts in the spiritual dimension of example, practice, prayer, and love.

The Holy Fathers of the First Six Ecumenical Councils, and the Saints of the Baptism of Rus’ all stand with us. We ask them to pray for us in our mission work to the human heart today.

That’s another thing about Orthodoxy, how the saints, led by the Theotokos, are part of our Church family even in this humble little country mission. They are close as family and even closer in how they respond to us for their requests for prayers. There is no preacher or pope in the way. They are with us here in the Lord’s Church, the Body of Christ, the Orthodox Church. Amen.

(Above) Holy Cross Russian Orthodox Christian Monastery in West Virginia

An Open Letter in response to an article on my work, sent to George Washington University administrators and others involved nationally in opposing anti-religious bias in U.S, higher education. A slightly edited version is posted online by the Union of Orthodox Journalists, together with the original Illiberalism article link, at https://uoj.news/defending-faith/an-illiberal-attack-on-orthodox-christianity/ My unworthy work is not significant but hopefully this correction may help make such unfair bias less acceptable in American academia in future. Lord have mercy!

                                                                                                                              July 21, 2026

Dear Illiberalism Editors,

Eliza Fisher in a recent Illiberalism post reviewing my work provides a humorless and biased stereotype of my writing about Orthodox Christianity and culture in Appalachia, which demeans my faith culture through inaccurate polemics.

That this is done under the aegis of a supposedly university-related center (ironically the Illiberalism studies program at George Washington University), which widely promotes it on social media, raises questions about the editorial standards and biases of the larger project. The article seems “illiberal” itself in the oldest meaning of the term.

Fisher’s June 30, 2026, article uses an unexamined framework of “Reactive Orthodoxy” as a Procrustrean Bed for un-nuanced critique. But her work could be subject to counter-analysis under another label: “Reductionist Anti-Orthodox Christian Bias,” such as reducing my faith unfairly to “weaponization” in the headline.

“Reactive Orthodoxy” is a theoretical framework attributed to anthropologist Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, whose study of a traditionally minded Orthodox Christian community in West Virginia was controversial, and methodologically questioned for progressive political bias. There is no questioning of this framework by Fisher, however, who in effect uses it as a cudgel.

Tellingly, in terms of the quality of research of the article as a whole, Fisher, who holds an M.A. but with no listed peer-reviewed or professional journalism publications, identifies me from the start incorrectly as a Deacon in the Orthodox Church.

I am a Priest, as clearly listed online in many places, including sources she claimed to have studied in her research. In addition, my Church name as a Priest (and before that as a Deacon), used in my publications and in my university work in recent years, is Paul. Yet she ignores this and “dead names” me as Alfred Kentigern Siewers, an older name from earlier publications and a secular identity, so to speak.

This is from a writer who identifies herself as “investigative researcher” on her Linked-In account. She also seems concerned in the article with marginalized identities. But would she be so slipshod in misidentifying and misnaming, say, a trans person? In my experience in the past as a professional journalist, such glaring inaccuracies are often earmarks of emotional involvement, rather than measured objectivity. It is at least also a failure of basic fact-checking.

She also erroneously identifies my particular Orthodox Christian religious jurisdiction, for which I do not speak (as I do not speak for my university), as the most influential in the U.S., when it is one of the smallest. The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese is the largest and most often visible Orthodox entity in public contexts in the US, but there are other larger and more influential jurisdictions as well.

Most fundamentally, she engages in a mix of personal analysis and reductionist theoretical framing that lands somewhere between an opinion piece and a class research paper (perhaps the origin of the blogpost?). It offers an immature level of scholarship and undisciplined journalism either way.

In engaging in cross-disciplinary  commentary, she doesn’t appreciate literary and poetic analysis in her  attempted re-presentation of my views. Thus, she says that I wrote that “Trump is Aragorn,” when I was referring to a metaphoric similarity between a Tolkienian mythos of “the return of the king” and Trump’s 2024 re-election in the eyes of some, not a literal identification.

She inaccurately implies a view on my part of Unitarian-Universalism and Christian Science as involved in global conspiracy, when I clearly identify these denominational movements in U.S. history as examples of theological tendencies and influence, not conspiratorial root causes. The spiritual problem with the unitarianism of them both is broader, in my view. It wasn’t clear that she understood their shared unitarian theology. 

Similarly, she speculatively looks up online a source she says may have been the basis for my descriptions of early Irish Sea Christianity, which not only was not a source for my work, but ignores detailed primary, historical, and archaeological sources on that topic in my writings, such as in my book Strange Beauty. That is not perhaps readily discovered in Google or AI searching, however.

In all this, she engages in what she criticizes my work for doing: Fantasy world-building.

From a writing standpoint, she lacks a sense of humor. When I criticized faculty “settler culture” in writing for First Things, it was in a tongue-in-cheek style, not concealing my own position as a faculty member, as she implies with her very serious literal reading.

More seriously, she claims in error (among other things) that I advocate silencing the voices of people of color and queer people, when I am critiquing from a theological-anthropological standpoint a dominant Western view of identitarianism. Her apparent advocacy informs her inaccurate summary. I do not advocate such silencing.

In the process of all this, following her unexamined “Reactive Orthodox” framework, the article engages with a spirit of Orientalism that seems to view the Russian Orthodox Christian religious minority in the U.S. as a kind of sinister fifth column. It is as if the shadowy background hides a Fu Manchu-style exotic spy story. Such a spirit would rightly be unacceptable in scholarship on, say, alleged Muslim illiberalism in America, even with the U.S. openly at war with Muslim Iran currently.

Finally, given the article’s underlying polemical ethos, which includes use of my own personal backgrounds and worldview, it would be fair for the author to disclose her own personal backgrounds and worldview as a source of bias, as well as the ideological orientation of institutional support, including funding sources for the blog and program.

In the end, deciding whether to write an opinion piece (with more of a generous sense of humor), or an accurate scholarly analysis (considering for example the theoretical framework of ecosemiotics, which she glosses over in bringing up that aspect of my work) would be a good start for needed revision. Not to mention the need for further research to know that ideas of mine Fisher concluded are innovative, about an Orthodox Christian aspect to the background of American life, are not new. They have been advanced in the past by other better-known Orthodox thinkers, such as the late Metropolitan Anthony Bashir of the Antiochian American Archdiocese, and the prolific writer and prominent Russian priest-martyr Daniel Sysoev.

As published, the article ironically is an example of illiberalism in the deepest and most personal sense—a lack of thoughtful grounding in approaching another culture or another human being, and thus a lack of generosity of heart and failure of true liberalism.

Sincerely,

Rev. Dr. Paul Siewers

St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church is a modest country church amid the ridges and valleys of Northern Appalachia in central Pennsylvania. But we support a prison ministry.

Today I an unworthy sinner had a great blessing, to witness the first communion in many years for an inmate and fellow Orthodox Christian in the prison we serve.

St. Symeon the New Theologian used to require the monks in his community to shed tears when approaching the gifts in order to receive Communion. There was no need to speak such a rule this morning; the tears came spontaneously, with heartfelt repentance and gratitude.

As an unworthy witness offering the gifts, I could only marvel at the mystery and miracle of our Lord’s Body and Blood there with us and received.

We pray in Church for the captives and those imprisoned, as we all are by sin. He brings forgiveness and love in His offering of Himself, as we offer ourselves to Him.

Beyond words does the Word of God come to us in the Eucharist, of whose Body and Blood we partake. How meaningful it is, how not to be taken for granted. In witnessing this, I was convicted and challenged in my approach to the Chalice also, even as an unworthy Priest.

Glory to God for all things!

(Above, the medieval ruins of the old Kileavy churches, on the site of the older Orthodox convent founded by St. Monenna)

An homily for the seventh Sunday after Pentecost from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Christian Mission Church in Winfield, PA, by Priest Paul Siewers.

In early Orthodox Christian Ireland, archaelogists say there was a landscape of small country churches and then large monasteries with a cluster of laity living around them. Sound familiar? This is not unlike our own country Church in relation to the monastery at White Haven, which by the way is the largest Orthodox women’s monastery in the country according to one survey.

One especially beloved early Irish Orthodox saint was the Venerable Monenna, the Abbess of Killeavy, whom we commemorate today. Her life illustrates how we can think of Orthodoxy in its influence and presence as opening up a kind of spiritual landscape through communities that are “not of this world,” and that have both earthly and mystical layers to them.

Even here in our modest parish we have of course the Church where we worship, soon God willing to have an onion dome and Cross on the roof linking it symbolically on the exterior to the Russian Orthodox tradition. We have a cemetery, with an Orthodox graveyard inaugurated recently by our beloved departed brother John, with its connection to the afterlife, as well as a community cemetery. And the white Cross that was the first Orthodox structure placed on this land, in front of the Orthodox cemetery, is a link to an earlier history of Orthodox missionary work in the coal region, for it comes from the former St. John the Baptist Orthodox Church in Shepton, now no longer extant, where Patriarch Confessor Tikhon once served. And then we have our open fields where, God willing, in future we may build new structures and also garden and tend bees. Around us are farm fields and a quarry and ridges of this part of the Appalachian range, whose seasonal scenery is often reminiscent of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which end not too far south of us according to geologists (the origins of our river system in the central Susquehanna Valley have been placed by hydrologists at our Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville NY).

All this echoes on a small scale the spiritual network and landscape of the missionary work of the Venerable Monenna back in the 400s and early 500s in Ireland. She was born in County Down northern Ireland around 432 A.D. (This account follows that of Dmitry Lapa https://orthochristian.com/123323.html ) She was the daughter of a local king and of a local princess. The holy maiden founded and became the first abbess of Killeavy Convent in what is now County Armagh also in Northern Ireland. It became probably the largest monastery in early Christian Ireland. She is also known as St. Darerca.

At the start only eight maiden nuns and a widow with a baby were her companions, but by the end of her life she had gathered around 150 disciples. The nuns led an amazingly austere ascetic life, living in extreme poverty and at a bare subsistence level. They chose the Prophet Elias and St. John the Baptist as their heavenly patrons. St. Monenna lived mainly on a mountain and was nicknamed “Prophet Elias’ spiritual daughter.”

Once a wealthy man brought new clothing as a gift to the community because the old robes of the abbess and her nuns were tattered. But Monenna said that the Almighty provided them with all they needed. She sold the clothing and distributed the money to the poor. St. Monenna was renowned for her generosity and mercy; she cared for the poor, and illnesses were cured by her prayers. Once she healed a mute man. She brought up and educated the son of a widow and her fellow nun, who became a bishop named Luger.

Although the monastic community originally was in an area of pagans practicing cruel customs, little by little they embraced the gospel and came to the nuns for spiritual help. 

Traditions say St. Monnena personally knew well-known saints of Ireland from her time, such as Patrick and Brigit. St. Patrick may have baptized St. Monenna when she was an infant, and she may have lived with St. Brigid at her celebrated Kildare Monastery for some time. She and her community may have stayed at a monastic site near Begerin in County Wexford briefly and were trained by St. Ibar, which is in an area where my own ancestors lived. She and some of her nun-sisters also are said to have trained at St. Ninian’s monastery in Scotland. Toward the end of the saint’s life it is reported she was visited by angels. 

St. Monnena with God’s helped founded and shaped communities of believers, and with her holiness the uncreated light of God brightened and energized new landscapes of faith in early Ireland. These landscapes were networks of faithfulness, ascetisim, spiritual beauty, and mission work, much like the networks of Orthodoxy we see emerging here in Northern Appalachia. We may travel to Jordanville and to White Haven, we engage in confession, we connect with layers of history, and in our own lives and the lives of our families we practice an ascetic community that merges with our parish Church family. This is the spiritual ecology of Orthodoxy made manifest in our earthly lives. It helpssustain us with God’s grace. We see this in the life of St. Peter the Aleut that was highlighted in our parish film showing on Friday night, and how an ecology or landscape of Orthodoxy emerged in California in early times, out of Alaska. That legacy spread to our own mission’s neighborhood through the influence of St. John of San Francisco and his disciple the Blessed Seraphim of California.

Dear brothers and sisters, I would like to mention one more saint whom we commemorate today who contributes to this ecology or landscape of Orthodox faith. He is St. Andrei Rublev, the great iconographer, whom we commemorate today with the Synaxis of Saints of Radonezh, for he was part of the Orthodox network founded by St. Sergius of Radonezh long ago in a forest in Russia. In our modest country Church in Applaachia, here in Penns Woods, we have St. Andrei’s famous icon of the Holy Trinity depicted in our worship area, and also on the high place of our altar area. St. Andrei shaped landscapes of Orthodoxy in his iconography, in which we venerating the icons can enter wherever we are in place and time. His depiction of the mystery of the Trinity is symbolic and taken from the biblical account of the Hospitality of Abraham, where the Father of Nations gave hospitality to three men described as Angels, although one of them the Lord. This was a theophany of Christ and the Trinity to the Holy Father Abraham, around 2200 BC following Byzantine reckoning. In the icon we see the Oak of Mamre, where our Russian Church Abroad has to this day a Church and monastery in the Holy Land. A piece of the Oak of Mamre with a carving of this icon greets visitors to our monastery at Jordanville. It is a reminder of all the connections to the Holy Land spiritually in each Orthodox Church. Likewise the three figures represent to us the inter-relationality of the love of the Holy Trinity as a model for our Church and our lives in the world, on earth as it is in heaven. The Oak itself can be a symbol of the Tree of Life in Paradise, which St. John Damascene identified with Christ. The Mountain behind the figure associated with the Holy Spirit, representing Mount Moriah where Abraham brought Isaac for sacrifice, is also identified with the Temple Mount, so indicating the role of the Holy Spirit in the founding and sustaining of the Church.

We are so blessed, brothers and sisters, to live within the landscapes of Orthodox Christianity, within the ecosystem and ecology of our the Providence of our God, and Christ’s Body the Orthodox Church, which is the real biblical Israel. 

Let us find rest, support, and sustenance in this ecology and landscape of Orthodoxy, groundedness, balance, and connection, as did Saints Monnena and Andrei, asking for their prayers. Let us remember the response of St. Peter the Aleut in California repeatedly when being threatened to leave his faith for a heresy. He kept repeating simply “I am a Christian.” For Orthodoxy is the Church of Christ, and in Him as the Apostle Paul said, we live and move and have our being.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory Forever!

Eight years ago our mission marked the centennial of the killing of the Holy Royal Martyrs by the Christ-hating Communists in Russia. That service was held in Rooke Chapel at Bucknell. Today we have a Russian Orthodox Christian temple here, where year-round icons of the holy martyrs of Russia hang, including the royal martyrs, both in the worship area here, and in the altar area. Glory to God. Here is a revised version of the remarks I gave at the centennial at Bucknell in 2018, to which I have appended some remarks by our beloved patron St. John.

July 17 marks the centennial of the killing of the Russian royal family. On that day a hundred years ago, the last tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, his wife the Tsarina Alexandra, their five children, and four retainers were ushered into a basement in the city of Yekaterinburg in the early hours of the morning. Their execution would mark a turning point in history.

The family, by all accounts pious and loving and known for personal works of charity, had suffered months of humiliation at the hands of communists who had taken over the Russian government in the wake of the Tsar’s forced abdication in March 1917. Walls of their prison house, which they would have passed on the way to the room of their execution, were bedecked with obscenities, and guards had engaged in immoral acts in the basement where they were killed. Outside that night, trucks ran their engines to muffle the sound of gunshots. It took 20 minutes for the inept, alcohol-impaired shooters to kill the family, as the room filled with smoke from the guns and their cries of pain. The two youngest girls and the Tsarevich survived the fusillade — only to be brutally bayoneted. Meanwhile their maid, who was not initially hit, vainly tried to fight back.

When the children’s English tutor Charles Sydney Gibbes, who later became an Orthodox priest taking the name Nicholas after the Tzar, arrived soon after with White Army forces, he was told that the blood had to be swept away with brooms. A gruesomely torturous burial followed across two days, in which corpses were placed temporarily in a water-filled mineshaft, desecrated, and doused with acid and grenades. The bodies were scattered to hide the number in the group and prevent them from being recovered. Even a family dog was slain to stop its mournful barking. The killer displayed it on a bayonet outside after the murders. Historians recently concluded the killings of the family and their retainers occurred on direct orders from Lenin — the evil mastermind of modern totalitarianism, as has been documented by his biographer the historian Stéphane Courtois following the opening of the Soviet archives.

The carnage marked the end of centuries of Orthodox Christian imperial monarchy that traced its roots back to the Byzantine Empire, across some 1,500 years, and was the end of the last such major Christian monarchical empire in the world. In her introduction to her English translation of “The Romanovs Under House Arrest: From the 1917 Diary of a Palace Priest,” American historian Marilyn Pfeifer Swezy notes:

Nicholas’s own understanding of his role which was more religious than political. He understood that he had inherited a profound responsibility before God for the welfare of his people. In keeping with the concept of the Byzantine emperors and Old Testament kings inherited with Orthodoxy in the tenth century, the sovereign was more than a political ruler. He was the anointed of God. The power of the autocracy was defined as a “selfless burden of service” to the Russian people.

Many of the popular impressions of the Tsar and that regime in the West today remain heavily shaped by Marxist-Leninist propaganda that contributed to the revolution and subsequent historiography. At best, the autocratic Tsarist regime is often equated with communism, the latter being offered praise nonetheless for supposed high ideals of equity and social justice. Yet historical facts tell another story.

Tens of millions of people were killed under the communist regime, with a total of up to 100 million worldwide, including regimes inspired directly and helped by the Bolshevik regime that killed the tsar and his family, according to The Black Book of Communism, the work of a consortium of European scholars. As Nicholas Werth notes there, between 1825 and 1917, Tsarism carried out 6,321 political executions, most in the revolutionary period of 1905-1907. A good number of these were commuted to forced labor. By contrast, almost 20,000 government officials were assassinated by revolutionaries during the last 25 years of imperial rule in Russia alone; from the fall of 1905 to the fall of 1906, 3,611. In 1918, following the brutal execution of the Romanovs and an assassination attempt on Lenin from his “socialist right,” a surging campaign of Red Terror claimed 15,000 lives in two months alone.

Earlier, horrible anti-Semitic pogroms were used to justify hatred of the Tsarist regime, and such anti-Semitic violence was a major enduring sin of Russian culture. But Stanford historian Steven J. Zipperstein notes in his book Pogrom that the imperial government’s policy was to stop pogroms as endangering public order, not to engender them. Zipperstein notes that largest mass killings of Jews, an estimated 100,000 or more, came after the Bolshevik takeover and the breakdown of imperial order, during the Russian Civil War. The 1905-1906 revolutionary era’s peak pre-communist pogroms by contrast resulted in perhaps 800 deaths. Key pre-revolutionary Russian Church leaders in the early twentieth century, such as Father (later Saint) John of Kronstadt and Bishop Antony Khrapovitsky (later the leader of the anticommunist Russian Church in exile) did denounce the pogroms at the time, with even the Tsar discouraging circulation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, with its accusations of Jewish conspiracy. That is not to excuse the brutalities of Tsarist society, but it highlights the hugely greater evils unleashed under atheistic communism, which felt it had to strike first against the Christian emperor and his family.

Indeed, the communist gulag or system of labor camps became a model for Nazi concentration camps. By contrast, when Lenin was exiled to Siberia under the Tsarist regime, he was allowed a rifle for hunting and the companionship of his wife, could work on his writing, and enjoyed a daily allowance from the state equal to double the pay of the average peasant, from which he paid a housekeeper. Trotsky, even in the brutal anti-revolutionary crackdown of 1906, was allowed visits from his wife and wrote most of his history of the St. Petersburg Soviet while imprisoned.

Bard historian Sean McMeekin documents that the tsarist regime had not been the failure that it was portrayed in Marxist-Leninist propaganda, either: “Russia in the early twentieth century was a substantial net importer of both people and capital: a telling fact that, since the revolution, has never been true again.” His history, accessing old Soviet archives, notes that far more crucial to the Revolution were elite Russian conspiracies against the Tsar (including largely engineered scandal over Rasputin). To which other factors can be added, notably huge Russian casualties in World War I, German subsidies of Lenin’s party of more than $1 billion in today’s currency, and what Alexander Solzhenitsyn decried as a lack of decisive response to initial revolution. Nonetheless, McMeekin writes in his recent book The Russian Revolution that in 1917, “the tsar’s complacency … accorded better with Russia’s real military and strategic situation than did liberal and Allied hysteria. Morale in the Russian high command on the eve of spring campaigning was high, and for good reason.” S.S. Oldenburg, a respected Russian historian, who wrote an history of the last tsar’s reign in multi-volumes that appeared in the 1930s and 1940s from exile (The Last Tsar), also detailed the considerable successes and basic competence of the tsar’s regime.

But disloyal subversion in decadent high levels of Russian society leading to the tsar’s abdication, revolutionary networks feeding on legitimate grievances among sectors of the sprawling empire’s public, and ultimately a relatively small force of about 10,000 dedicated Red guards enabling the communist takeover of the capital Petrograd, all contributed to the collapse of the tsarist state across 1917. This resulted in the “red terror” of which the 1918 royal executions became the central historical marker.

 “Bloody Nicholas” (as the revolutionaries unjustly smeared Nicholas II), and his pious and loving family, later were declared “holy martyrs” and “passion-bearers” by Russian Orthodox Churches in exile and later in post-communist Russia, respectively, because of their own sacrifice of blood as martyrs. They became venerated for living their faith through suffering to death, as seen in the Tzar’s calls for forgiveness of their enemies amid those trials, and his expressed willingness to take on the sins of his country to his death. Our Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad first glorified them as holy martyrs, then later the Moscow Patriarchate as Holy Psssion Bearers. The latter means saints who met their deaths with outstanding faith. However ROCOR to this day fully recognizes them as martyrs for their lives of faith at large.

As Metropolitan Hilarion Kapral of blessed memory, the New York-based head of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad at the time of the centennial, wrote:  … the more the Church endured persecution, the brighter the lanterns of faith and piety shone in the Russian land. From the Tsar and the members of the Royal Family close to him in spirit, from archpastors and simple monastics, priests, and deacons to laypersons came forth a powerful spiritual army of the Church Militant … Thank God, today we see how the blood of many millions of the host of martyrs and confessors who turned the Russian land scarlet became the seeds of salvation for the spiritual rebirth of our people, in the Fatherland and in the Diaspora.

As churches and monasteries continue to reopen and sprout anew in a resurgent Christian culture in Russia, and Orthodox Christian missions open in the West,  including one in our small Pennsylvania town, candles glow in front of icons of the Holy Royal Martyrs this week at memorial services around the world. They are a reminder of the light of faith that the darkness of communism could not put out — and a warning to a West increasingly enamored with that darkness again today.

Let me end with our parish patron St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco’s words in 1957, before the collapse of the communist Soviet Union in Russia. He was especially instrumental in the ultimate glorification of the royal martyrs as saints in the Church Abraod. He wrote: 

Forty Years Ago, a single day saw the collapse of the greatness and glory of the Russian State, a bulwark of peace throughout the whole world. The signature of the Sovereign, the Emperor Nicholas II, on the act of abdication from the Throne, is a historical boundary separating Russia’s great and glorious past from her present dark and cruel circumstances.

The entire weight of the present regime’s evil and its reordering of life is aimed at honest, well-intentioned and devout people, and the whole nation lies in oppression and constant fear. People are afraid of their own thoughts, thoughts they have not expressed aloud; they are afraid that what they are thinking might be reflected in their facial expressions.

What happened that day, forty years ago?

Apostasy from God’s Anointed, apostasy from an authority submissive to God, apostasy from the oath of fidelity to the Anointed Sovereign, given before God, and the giving over of him to death.

He who had devoted all his strength in God’s name to the service of Russia was deprived of authority, and then also of freedom.

For decades the dark forces of evil carried on a struggle against God’s Anointed, against the ruling authority faithful to God. These same forces also killed the Emperor Alexander II, the Tsar-Liberator.

This crime sobered the people, it shook the entire country, and that moral upsurge gave Emperor Alexander III, the Peacemaker, the opportunity to rule Russia with a strong arm.

Russia enjoyed two decades of peaceful life and development. Then a new conspiracy arose for the overthrow of the Royal Throne.

It was a conspiracy of Russia’s enemies.

Within Russia itself there was a struggle against her very essence, and, having destroyed the Throne, Russia’s enemies even obliterated her name.

Now the whole world can see the close connection between the Royal authority, faithful to God, and Russia. When the Tsar ceased to be — Russia ceased to be.

The struggle against the Tsar and Russia was carried out by concealed godlessness, which later revealed itself openly.

Such was the essence of the struggle against the Tsar and Russia, against the foundation of her life and historical development.

Such are the meaning and aim of that struggle, which perhaps not everyone realized — those who were its accomplices.

Everything filthy and paltry and sinful which could be found in the human soul was summoned against the Tsar and Russia. All of this, with all its might, rose up in struggle against the Royal Crown, which was crowned by a cross, for Royal service is a bearing of the Cross.

People always rise up against the Cross by means of slander and falsehood, doing the devil’s work, for, according to the word of the Lord Jesus Christ, When he speaketh a He, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it (John 8:44).

Everything was roused up against the most meek, pure and abundantly-loving Tsar, so that at the terrible hour of the struggle against him he would remain alone. Filthy slanders were spread beforehand against the Tsar and his family, so that the people would grow cool towards him.

Faithless allies took part in the conspiracy. When the Sovereign was in need of moral support, his closest associates did not provide it and violated their oath. Some took part in the conspiracy; others, out of weakness, counseled abdication. The Tsar remained completely alone, surrounded by [what he called in his journal] “treachery, baseness and cowardice.”

From the day of the abdication, everything began to collapse. It could not have been otherwise. The one who united everything, who stood guard for the Truth, was overthrown. A sin was committed, and now sin had easy access. In vain do some wish to separate February from October; the one was a direct consequence of the other.

In those March days, Pskov became the Tsar’s Gethsemane, and Ekaterinburg — his Golgotha.

Tsar Nicholas died as a martyr, with unshakable faith and patience, having drunk the cup of suffering to the dregs.

The sin against him and against Russia was perpetrated by all who in one way or another acted against him, who did not oppose, or who merely by sympathizing participated in those events which took place forty years ago. That sin lies upon everyone until it is washed away by sincere repentance….

We must pray for the forgiveness of our sins and for mercy on our homeland, just as the Lord God freed Israel from the Babylonian captivity and restored the ruined city of Jerusalem.

Brothers and sisters, following our patron St. John’s example, let us remember the Holy Royal Martyrs. Let us take their faith, courage, and love as our model. Let us take their earthly destiny as a warning for what can happen in our own American land when the forces of anti-Christian atheism are unleashed.  And let us ask for their intercession for our lives and work as missionaries in America today. Holy Royal Martyrs pray to God for us!

Dearest to Christ,

The month of July is for us (beginning as it does on July 14 of the civil calendar) an interlude between the Apostles Fast and the Dormition Fast, yet like all relative “quiet times” in the Orthodox Church a time for deeper prayer and reflection and dedication to our faith and missionary work here in our country parish in Northern Appalachian America.

The beginning of the Church calendar in July includes the feast of the Holy Royal Martyrs of Russia on July 4/17, appropriately reminding us on our ancient calendar of “the Fourth” as a time for dedication to freedom in the deepest spiritual sense, of life in our Lord Jesus Christ, in this 250^th year of our country. Indeed our Fourth and the Feast of the Royal Martyrs coincide also with the feast of St. Andrew of Crete, the renowned author of our best known penitential canon, spanning as it does all Scripture. We will celebrate a special Akathist and Supplicatory Canon for the Holy Royal Martyrs on the eve of the feast, July 3/16 (details below).

Other special highlights for our parish this month will include the baptism of Baby Richard Sunday July 20/Aug. 2, and the planned installation finally of the “Onion Dome” Cupola and Cross on the roof of our temple, work for which is scheduled July 19/Aug. 1 and July 21/Aug. 3. The blessing of cars will also occur on that Sunday of the Holy Prophet Elias (July 20/August 2).

In addition, during this summer month we will hold the first free showing in our new Central Susquehanna Valley Orthodox Christian Film Series, on July 4/17 outdoors on the Church property, of “American Orthodox,” a 50-minute documentary on St. Peter the Aleut, the early Native Alaskan martyr. Four more film showings through November are planned in the community.

Of course the real highlight of all worship and activities in the Church is the Holy Eucharist. Details on services, regular programming, ministries (including our prison, university, and shut-in ministries), and other activities follow below.

Please remember that in accord with our Lord’s “Great Commission” to His Church, and with the urgency of the need of the evangelization of America, to invite neighbors, family members, friends, co-workers, and inquirers to services and events. Heartfelt thanks to all who contribute prayer, time, energy and resources to our Church in so many ways, including just with your presence at worship and at outreach activities.

Also, please keep Innocent in your prayers this Friday (July 4/17) as he has surgery, and also the friend of our mission Archpriest Mark of Holy Protection Monastery, who has surgery the same day. Also please keep Helen (Brook) in your prayers as she is scheduled for surgery on July 17/July 30.

May the Holy Royal Martyrs, the Holy Martyr Peter the Aleut, and our patron St. John and all the saints pray to God for our mission work and that of the Orthodox mission to America at large.

Glory to God for all things!

+++

Regular Services and Programs

Saturday Vigil, 4:30; Sunday Divine Liturgy 10 a.m. (Hours 9:30)
Weekly Akathist of Holy Protection 7 p.m. Wednesday
Orthodoxy Online Class, 10 to 11 a.m. Saturdays (contact Fr Paul for link)

Special Scheduling Notes

There will be no weekly Akathist on Wednesday July 29 due to vacation.
Vigil on Saturday Aug. 1 will be at another location, to be announced, due to work on the dome installation.

Calendar (dates are listed on the Church calendar/Civil calendar)

July 2/15  Akathist of Holy Protection, 7 p.m. (on the Feast of the Placing of the Robe of the Theotokos)

July 3/16 Akathist and Canon of Supplication for the Holy Royal Martyrs of Russia, 6 p.m.

July 4/17 Film showing, “American Orthodox,” 9 p.m. outdoors at St. John’s.

July 6/19 Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Feast of St. Sisoes

Other services as usual (check Church wall calendar and online calendar, and notes at the start above).

July 20/August 2 Baptism of Baby Richard Lenig

Brotherhood of St. Alfred the Great. The Brotherhood will be planning, God willing, some more presence for our mission at downtown street fairs as we move into the fall, and hopefully a monastery field trip.

Sisterhood of St. Olga of Alaska. The Sisterhood will be planning, God willing, some gardening/beautification at the front of the Church once the Dome is installed, and perhaps a field trip to the woman’s monastery in White Haven.

Prison Ministry. To volunteer, please contact Fr. Paul. We have regular visits to inmates at Muncy SCI Women’s Prison.

Ministry for the Sick and those in Nursing Home. To volunteer, please contact Fr. Paul. We have regular visits to members who are in nursing home or mainly confined to their homes for medical reasons. They always appreciate visitors and they pray for us as we should for them.

University Ministry. We have students from Bucknell and Susquehanna visiting our services during the academic year, and plan events and contacts with them on campus. Please contact Fr. Paul to get involved.

Beautification projects. As we hopefully wrap up the Dome and Cross installation finally, we will turn next God willing to plans for the new Iconostasis, as well as gardening around the front of the Church. Please keep our efforts in prayer. Many thanks also to Longinus for his landscaping work, and also to John for his help!

Please Pray for our Brothers and Sisters in Nursing Homes or Shut-In for Medical Reasons: Mary, Innocent, Nicholas

Please Pray for our Brothers and Sisters in Prison, including Tanya, Catechumen Rachel, Connie

Please Pray for Catechumens Laura, Charles, Corey, James, Ty, Wyatt, Aaron

Please Pray for our Parish University Students including Eleni, Maia, Kevin, Lizzie. For a more complete list, contact Fr Paul.

Reminders

—Five Things to Keep in Mind in Preparing for Communion. In the Orthodox Church, Communion is a joyous culmination of our faith, partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ. Proper preparation is part of the “joyful sorrow” of our struggle with God’s grace, as Christians to “take up the Cross” as our Lord calls us to do, in the spirit also of His Resurrection. Proper preparation also helps to ensure that we receive the most benefit spiritually from Communion, and that it is not to our detriment because of lack of proper respect, love, and preparation. Items to remember:

1. Please remember to read the preparation prayers linked to the services page of our website or from the blue Jordanville booklet (the section with the Canon for Preparation followed by Preparation for Communion) or Jordanville Prayer Book.

2. Please attend Vigil the night before, or read or listen to a Vesper service at home (a Reader Vespers text is available at https://www.saintjonah.org/services/vespers.htm). If unable to attend Vigil, plan to come a little early to Liturgy to receive a blessing from Father Paul to receive.

3. Please if planning to receive, prepare also by fasting the evening before from all food and drink from midnight onward (unless you have a medical need, in which case please contact Fr. Paul), and from marital intimacy that day before.

4. Follow regular fasting rules (check Church calendar) during the week.

5.  Have a recent confession or schedule a confession with Fr Paul, either by appointment, or during Vigil, or early before Communion. By tradition, confession should be made at least once in each of the four major fasting seasons during the year (Great Lent, Apostles Fast, Dormition Fast, Nativity Fast), but also more as needed, especially if any sin or concern would be an obstruction to communing in good spiritual health. Please consult with Fr Paul if you have any questions. Confession is one of the mysteries of the Church and a joyous spiritual “reset.”

—Appropriate Attire and Respectful Presence

Men should wear long pants and long-sleeved shirts or jackets. Women should wear long dresses or skirts with shoulders covered, and head coverings especially when coming up for Communion.

Please keep cell phones turned off inside the Church and do not text or check phones during worship and prayers.

Please do not talk during Post-Communion Prayers, especially if you have received, or during services, apart from responses or any necessary short low-voiced communication.

If you are a member at St. John’s and visiting another parish and plan to receive Communion there, please email or talk with Fr. Paul for a blessing, so you can communicate to the Priest at the parish you are visiting that you have a blessing from your home Priest and that you are prepared. Please also remember to emai or call the Priest at the parish where you are visiting in advance about receiving, or talk with him the evening before at Vigil.

Please keep in prayer for our parish community and our mission work, and remember when you can to donate prayers, time, help, and resources as possible.

Glory to God for all things!

(Thank you to Reader Nicholas for our newsletter “banner”!)