The Latin above is translated “pray and work.”

You have an opportunity to do just that on Monday, Labor Day.

We will be painting at the ArchAngel Institute and praying at 9, noon and 3. 

If you have something already planned on Labor Day then do that.  If you have no plans then consider dropping by to pray, to work, to chat us up while we work or to drop off some tasty treats for those working.

This is an impromptu invite, so it comes with no pressure at all.  Come as you are if you wanna, and if not  — do not!  (But do consider flashing this post around to friends within an hour of the Fort to let them know of this opportunity to spend some time working on the former abotion clinic.)

Downtown Fort Wayne, near the public library.  The address is 827 Webster Street.  The former abortion clinic is now the almost completed offices of the ArchAngel Institute! 

Alexander Solzhenitsyn has  waxed apocalyptic three times in the portion of his speech from 1978 that has been presented to date. 

What did he see on the horizon that so troubled him?

A review of those passages (in green and red) made hold clues:

How short a time ago, relatively, the small new European world was easily seizing colonies everywhere, not only without anticipating any real resistance, but also usually despising any possible values in the conquered peoples’ approach to life. … [But] … Relations with the former colonial world now have turned into their opposite and the Western world often goes to extremes of obsequiousness, but it is difficult yet to estimate the total size of the bill which former colonial countries will present to the West, and it is difficult to predict whether the surrender not only of its last colonies, but of everything it owns will be sufficient for the West to foot the bill.

The Western world has lost its civil courage… Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite … Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?

There are meaningful warnings that history gives a threatened or perishing society … [with] the social system quite unstable and unhealthy.

But the fight for our planet, physical and spiritual, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future; it has already started. The forces of Evil have begun their decisive offensive…

*** end of Solzhenitsyn excerpts

It would appear that Alexander feared, thirty years ago, that cultures formerly under the boots of the European West would rise against the West in a decisive, final offensive.   This rising up would be made possible by  a loss of courage in the West, a refusal of the leaders of the West to define and defend their very own cultural patrimony.

Was Alexander noting the rise of a self-destructive official secularism among Western governments?  Was he noticing the West’s mindless and soulless pursuit of temporal pleasures rather than eternal ends?  Or was he looking even past the present to view clouds of a cosmic final conflict forming in our common human horizon?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church addresses the latter in terms similar to Solzhenitsyn’s.  The Catechism follows in blue with relevant red highlights:

CHAPTER TWO
I BELIEVE IN JESUS CHRIST, THE ONLY SON OF GOD

ARTICLE 7
“FROM THENCE HE WILL COME AGAIN TO JUDGE THE LIVING AND THE DEAD”

I. HE WILL COME AGAIN IN GLORY

Christ already reigns through the Church. . .

668“Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.” Christ’s Ascension into heaven signifies his participation, in his humanity, in God’s power and authority. Jesus Christ is Lord: he possesses all power in heaven and on earth. He is “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion”, for the Father “has put all things under his feet.” Christ is Lord of the cosmos and of history. In him human history and indeed all creation are “set forth” and transcendently fulfilled.

669 As Lord, Christ is also head of the Church, which is his Body. Taken up to heaven and glorified after he had thus fully accomplished his mission, Christ dwells on earth in his Church. The redemption is the source of the authority that Christ, by virtue of the Holy Spirit, exercises over the Church. “The kingdom of Christ [is] already present in mystery”, “on earth, the seed and the beginning of the kingdom”.

670 Since the Ascension God’s plan has entered into its fulfillment. We are already at “the last hour”. “Already the final age of the world is with us, and the renewal of the world is irrevocably under way; it is even now anticipated in a certain real way, for the Church on earth is endowed already with a sanctity that is real but imperfect.”  Christ’s kingdom already manifests its presence through the miraculous signs that attend its proclamation by the Church.

. . .until all things are subjected to him

671 Though already present in his Church, Christ’s reign is nevertheless yet to be fulfilled “with power and great glory” by the King’s return to earth This reign is still under attack by the evil powers, even though they have been defeated definitively by Christ’s Passover. Until everything is subject to him, “until there be realized new heavens and a new earth in which justice dwells, the pilgrim Church, in her sacraments and institutions, which belong to this present age, carries the mark of this world which will pass, and she herself takes her place among the creatures which groan and travail yet and await the revelation of the sons of God.” That is why Christians pray, above all in the Eucharist, to hasten Christ’s return by saying to him: Marana tha! “Our Lord, come!”⁵⁶¹

672 Before his Ascension Christ affirmed that the hour had not yet come for the glorious establishment of the messianic kingdom awaited by Israel which, according to the prophets, was to bring all men the definitive order of justice, love and peace.  According to the Lord, the present time is the time of the Spirit and of witness, but also a time still marked by “distress” and the trial of evil which does not spare the Church and ushers in the struggles of the last days. It is a time of waiting and watching.

The glorious advent of Christ, the hope of Israel

673 Since the Ascension Christ’s coming in glory has been imminent, even though “it is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority.” This eschatological coming could be accomplished at any moment, even if both it and the final trial that will precede it are “delayed”.

674 The glorious Messiah’s coming is suspended at every moment of history until his recognition by “all Israel”, for “a hardening has come upon part of Israel” in their “unbelief” toward Jesus. St. Peter says to the Jews of Jerusalem after Pentecost: “Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for establishing all that God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old.” St. Paul echoes him: “For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?” The “full inclusion” of the Jews in the Messiah’s salvation, in the wake of “the full number of the Gentiles”, will enable the People of God to achieve “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ”, in which “God may be all in all”.

The Church’s ultimate trial

675Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.

676 The Antichrist’s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism,  especially the “intrinsically perverse” political form of a secular messianism.

677 The Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection. The kingdom will be fulfilled, then, not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God’s victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven. God’s triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgment after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world.

Read more from this exciting portion of the Catholic Catechism at http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/677.htm

As our friend and modern prophet Alexander stated thirty years ago , “But the fight for our planet, physical and spiritual, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future; it has already started. The forces of Evil have begun their decisive offensive…”

More from Solzhenitsyn in our next post as we continue broadcasting his historic Harvard address in its entirety, without edits or subtraction.

On August 25, 1989 hundreds of Christians gathered in the 800 block of Webster Street in Fort Wayne, Indiana to take a stand against the childkilling that had been taking place there since 1978.

More than two hundred risked arrest that day. The police did arrest 175.

It was the third rescue in 12 weeks during that summer of Christian resolve.

The three 1989 rescues (sit ins) in Fort Wayne were not as successful as hoped and they did draw down the full firepower of Susan Hill’s friends at the NOW and ACLU and other leftist public interest law firms …  legal crucifixions followed during Holy Week of 1990.

The sit-ins may not have resulted in a closed clinic, but they did model Christian resolve to stand for God’s law first and Christian resolve to stand as one, despite denominational disagreements going back more than 20 generations.

We at the Institute think that Alexander Solzhenitsyn would have approved.

August 25 is the 19th anniversary of what was probably the largest act of civil disobedience in the history of Indiana.

God, Family, Country. (Not the reverse, not ever.)

See the category “refuse, resist and/or rebel” for more on this subject.

Not a Model

But should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through intense suffering our country has now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive. Even those characteristics of your life which I have just mentioned are extremely saddening.

A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human beings in the West while in the East they are becoming firmer and stronger. Six decades for our people and three decades for the people of Eastern Europe; during that time we have been through a spiritual training far in advance of Western experience. Life’s complexity and mortal weight have produced stronger, deeper and more interesting characters than those produced by standardized Western well-being. Therefore if our society were to be transformed into yours, it would mean an improvement in certain aspects, but also a change for the worse on some particularly significant scores. It is true, no doubt, that a society cannot remain in an abyss of lawlessness, as is the case in our country. But it is also demeaning for it to elect such mechanical legalistic smoothness as you have. After the suffering of decades of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer and purer than those offered by today’s mass living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion of publicity, by TV stupor and by intolerable music.

All this is visible to observers from all the worlds of our planet. The Western way of life is less and less likely to become the leading model.

There are meaningful warnings that history gives a threatened or perishing society. Such are, for instance, the decadence of art, or a lack of great statesmen. There are open and evident warnings, too. The center of your democracy and of your culture is left without electric power for a few hours only, and all of a sudden crowds of American citizens start looting and creating havoc. The smooth surface film must be very thin, then, the social system quite unstable and unhealthy.

But the fight for our planet, physical and spiritual, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future; it has already started. The forces of Evil have begun their decisive offensive, you can feel their pressure, and yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses. What is the joy about?

**** end of today’s installment of Alexander

Wow, Alexander Solzhenitsyn is found waxing apocalyptic once again in this historic address at Harvard.   Rather than comment on his comments above I am going to ask the reader to read Alexander once again and pray for the Lord’s insight.  Solzhenitsyn seems to have sensed something bad coming our way.

Was he wrong or are we now 30 years closer to what he sensed?

Socialism

It is almost universally recognized that the West shows all the world a way to successful economic development, even though in the past years it has been strongly disturbed by chaotic inflation. However, many people living in the West are dissatisfied with their own society. They despise it or accuse it of not being up to the level of maturity attained by mankind. A number of such critics turn to socialism, which is a false and dangerous current.

I hope that no one present will suspect me of offering my personal criticism of the Western system to present socialism as an alternative. Having experienced applied socialism in a country where the alternative has been realized, I certainly will not speak for it. The well-known Soviet mathematician Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliant book under the title Socialism; it is a profound analysis showing that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death.Shafarevich’s book was published in France almost two years ago and so far no one has been found to refute it. It will shortly be published in English in the United States.

**** End of Solzenhitsyn tribute of the day

A very good question could be “just what is socialism?”  Americans used to be able to answer that question.  Most cannot today.

Socialism is the era of big government.  Cradle to grave government.  Government with all of the final answers, government that threatens to ursurp all other authority.  The era of the superstate, in which the goverment, through its institutions, seek to define and redefine the social order.  (Such as redefing when life is to be protected, redefining marriage, redefining the balance between church and state, etc and etc.)  The 20th century witnessed the birth of such supestate governments all over the globe.

Some thought they were on the wane as the 20th century drew to a close.

Unfortunately the 21st century is seeing more of the same.    Socialism is state sponsored secularization, and it this day and age is headed toward a unity in the West, the unity found in apostacy.

Pope John Paul II taught that socialism is incompatible with the very foundations of Christian thought. He wrote:

Source: Ioannes Paulus PP. II
Centesimus annus
To His Venerable Brothers
in the Episcopate
the Priests and Deacons
Families of Men and Women religious
all the Christian Faithful
and to all men and women
of good will
on the hundredth anniversary of
Rerum Novarum

A Fashion in Thinking

Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day. There is no open violence such as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequently prevent independent-minded people from giving their contribution to public life. There is a dangerous tendency to form a herd, shutting off successful development. I have received letters in America from highly intelligent persons, maybe a teacher in a faraway small college who could do much for the renewal and salvation of his country, but his country cannot hear him because the media are not interested in him. This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, blindness, which is most dangerous in our dynamic era. There is, for instance, a self-deluding interpretation of the contemporary world situation. It works as a sort of petrified armor around people’s minds. Human voices from 17 countries of Eastern Europe and Eastern Asia cannot pierce it. It will only be broken by the pitiless crowbar of events.

I have mentioned a few trends of Western life which surprise and shock a new arrival to this world. The purpose and scope of this speech will not allow me to continue such a review, to look into the influence of these Western characteristics on important aspects on [the] nation’s life, such as elementary education [and] advanced education.

**** end of tonight’s installment, more tomorrow

Our dear Alexander was presenting Harvard with its own biases, its own political correctness problem. Even back then, 30 years ago, few Harvard profs would identify with the Christian faith. Now it is anathema. The belief that this world was designed by an Infinite and Personal Deity made Western Civilization what it was. No more. Now all “thinking people” must reject such ideas, for they are, to quote Solzhenitsyn, out of fashion.

I (Bryan) was overjoyed when one of my undergrad professors (from India) at Indiana University opened a senior level sociology class with this admissions of bias: “I am a Christian, and so my point of view in this class shall project that position.”

He then went on to present an evolutionary concept of religion ala George Hegel as the truth of the matter.

I set an appointment with him and asked him this simple question: “If all people on planet Earth died tonight, would God exist tomorrow?”

He replied “No, He would not, for God is the collective consciousness of mankind.”

I then asked him to reconsider calling himself a Christian, for he certainly was not one by his own admission.

He became incensed, informing me that he attended a Christian Church and was raised in the faith by a father who had been a Muslim cleric before converting. He told me that he certainly was a Christian and that I had no right to judge his Christianity!

I merely quoted this line from the Creed back to him: “I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.” I then informed him that if such a God existed, then such a God existed apart from his creation, and then such a God would be unharmed if mankind died out.

I was not judging him, I countered, the central creed of the Christian church was revealing him to not be a Christian based upon his own confession, both in the office with me and in the classroom during lectures.

I merely suggested that he drop the class intro claiming to be a Christian, since that faith certainly was not affecting his teaching on the Personal Infinite.

He ordered me to leave his office and not return.

I got a B in the class.

He got an A for political correctness. His Christianity had completely conformed itself to that which was fashionable in academia.

He was in the middle of the herd. I was going against the flow.

I faced strong prejudices at IU. He faced none, at least due to his religion.

So goes Higher Education in America.

The Direction of the Press

The press too, of course, enjoys the widest freedom. (I shall be using the word press to include all media). But what sort of use does it make of this freedom?

Here again, the main concern is not to infringe the letter of the law. There is no moral responsibility for deformation or disproportion. What sort of responsibility does a journalist have to his readers, or to history? If they have misled public opinion or the government by inaccurate information or wrong conclusions, do we know of any cases of public recognition and rectification of such mistakes by the same journalist or the same newspaper? No, it does not happen, because it would damage sales. A nation may be the victim of such a mistake, but the journalist always gets away with it. One may safely assume that he will start writing the opposite with renewed self-assurance.

Because instant and credible information has to be given, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be rectified, they will stay on in the readers’ memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, without any verification.The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters, pertaining to one’s nation’s defense, publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: “everyone is entitled to know everything.” But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era: people also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information.

Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the 20th century and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press. It stops at sensational formulas.

Such as it is, however, the press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. One would then like to ask: by what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible? In the communist East a journalist is frankly appointed as a state official. But who has granted Western journalists their power, for how long a time and with what prerogatives?

There is yet another surprise for someone coming from the East where the press is rigorously unified: one gradually discovers a common trend of preferences within the Western press as a whole. It is a fashion; there are generally accepted patterns of judgment and there may be common corporate interests, the sum effect being not competition but unification. Enormous freedom exists for the press, but not for the readership because newspapers mostly give enough stress and emphasis to those opinions which do not too openly contradict their own and the general trend.

*** End of Solzhenitsyn installment, more tomorrow

Our late friend Alexander (may he rest in peace) spoke these words 30 years ago.  He foreshadowed the political correctness movement, which was then evident in academia and somewhat in the press, but which would become stifling in both and far beyond both — even in the Church! — in the decades to follow. 

What Alexander could not see coming, could not appreciate, was the rise of poor man’s media.  Talk radio, Christian radio, desktop publishing, the internet.  All have cut down on the strangehold effect of the mainstream media in American life. 

Pope John Paul II often encouraged the responsible use of such alternative media.  Indeed, that is one reason, the main reason, that the ArchAngel Institute is assembling a radio-quality recording studio in one of the former abortion procedure rooms.  We will speak out, as Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI encourage us to do. 

We think it no stretch to say that Alexander would approve.

We close with this reminder to those who are journalists by profession as to what their business is supposed to be:

“Our Republic and its press will rise and fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and the courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery.”
Joseph Pulitzer“The function of the free press is very high. It is almost holy. It ought to serve as a forum for the people, through which the people may know freely what is going on. To misstate or suppress the news is a breach of trust.
Justice Louis Brandeis of the Supreme Court of the United States

The Direction of Freedom

In today’s Western society, the inequality has been revealed of freedom for good deeds and freedom for evil deeds. A statesman who wants to achieve something important and highly constructive for his country has to move cautiously and even timidly; there are thousands of hasty and irresponsible critics around him, parliament and the press keep rebuffing him. As he moves ahead, he has to prove that every single step of his is well-founded and absolutely flawless. Actually an outstanding and particularly gifted person who has unusual and unexpected initiatives in mind hardly gets a chance to assert himself; from the very beginning, dozens of traps will be set out for him. Thus mediocrity triumphs with the excuse of restrictions imposed by democracy.

It is feasible and easy everywhere to undermine administrative power and, in fact, it has been drastically weakened in all Western countries. The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.

Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counter-balanced by the young people’s right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil.

And what shall we say about the dark realm of criminality as such? Legal frames (especially in the United States) are broad enough to encourage not only individual freedom but also certain individual crimes. The culprit can go unpunished or obtain undeserved leniency with the support of thousands of public defenders. When a government starts an earnest fight against terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorists’ civil rights. There are many such cases.

Such a tilt of freedom in the direction of evil has come about gradually but it was evidently born primarily out of a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which there is no evil inherent to human nature; the world belongs to mankind and all the defects of life are caused by wrong social systems which must be corrected. Strangely enough, though the best social conditions have been achieved in the West, there still is criminality and there even is considerably more of it than in the pauper and lawless Soviet society. (There is a huge number of prisoners in our camps which are termed criminals, but most of them never committed any crime; they merely tried to defend themselves against a lawless state resorting to means outside of a legal framework).

**** End of Solzhenitsyn installment, more to come

Imagine how this went over at Harvard, the bastion of this libertine, post modern, “we cannot tell right from wrong” ideology. America’s elites hated Alexander after this speech, and they continued to spew forth a morality that is the denial of the same, a freedom that leads only to bondage. Those elites are the cause of much of America’s problems.

Solzhenitsyn’s speech brings to mind the following from Pope John Paul II:

Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.
Pope John Paul II

The Institute is taking the time to honor this great dissident for he was a prophetic voice speaking to the very heart of the West’s problem.

It’s the Culture, Pilgrim.

One does not have to be Russian Orthodox to appreciate Solzhenitsyn. One does not have to be Orthodox at all. Or even liturgical.

Here is an Evangelical leader, a man greatly respected by the ArchAngel Institute, honoring the hero Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Chuck Colson wrote, in Christianity Today, the following:

Jeremiah at Harvard

Three decades after Solzhenitsyn’s speech, where do we find ourselves?

Charles Colson with Anne Morse | posted 8/05/2008 08:30AM

Thirty years ago this summer, a 59-year-old bearded dissident, whose writings helped expose and eventually bring down Soviet tyranny, stood facing rows of robed faculty and graduates at Harvard’s historic Yard for its 327th commencement. Expectations ran high. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was admired for his literary achievements and lionized by the faculty, if not for his outspoken views on Communism, at least for the fact that he was an oppressed intellectual.

Solzhenitsyn delivered each line in his high-pitched voice in Russian. The translation blunted the impact somewhat—in fact, there were even sporadic bursts of applause. But soon enough, outraged professors realized that Solzhenitsyn was charging them with complicity in the West’s surrender to liberal secularism, the abandonment of its Christian heritage, and with all the moral horrors that followed.

[snip]

For example, describing the Western worldview as “rationalistic humanism,” Solzhenitsyn decried the loss of “our concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility.” Man has become “the master of this world … who bears no evil within himself,” he announced. “So all the defects of life” are attributed to “wrong social systems.”

Solzhenitsyn also argued that this moral impoverishment had led to a debased definition of freedom that makes no distinction between “freedoms for good” and “freedoms for evil.” Our founders, he reminded us, would scarcely have countenanced “all this freedom with no purpose” but for the “satisfaction of one’s whims”; they demanded that freedom be granted conditionally upon the individual’s constant exercise of his religious responsibility.

Solzhenitsyn could hardly have imagined that just 14 years later, the U.S. Supreme Court would enshrine this radical definition of freedom: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.“

Solzhenitsyn also foresaw the rise of political correctness: “Fashionable trends of thoughts and ideas are fastidiously separated from those that are not fashionable.” He predicted this would lead to “strong mass prejudices” with people being “hemmed in by the idols of the prevailing fad.”

Could even Solzhenitsyn have imagined that sexual rights would eventually triumph over free expression, that academia would impose rigid speech codes, or that churches would be threatened with loss of their tax-exempt status for opposing homosexual marriage?

Perhaps the hardest for the crowd to accept was his charge that the West had lost its “civic courage … particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites.”

[snip]

Three decades after Solzhenitsyn’s speech, where do Americans find themselves? In the grip of a similar captivity: violent and pornographic “entertainment,” growing censorship of unfashionable ideas, and a spiritually exhausted citizenry.

Solzhenitsyn did not leave Harvard that warm, June day without offering a solution: a “spiritual blaze” was needed to recover our footing. Have we listened? Do we see signs of awakening?

*** end of Colson article found here

St. Paul on the resurrection of the dead …  I Corinthians 15:50 I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— 52in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. 54When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
55“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?” 56The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

58Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

This is the teaching of the ancient Orthodox Church on how this doctrine affected the woman who reversed Eve’s destructive choice and thus brought the Savior of all mankind to this fallen orb:

“Dormition of Mary” (August 15)
The feast of the Dormition or Falling-asleep of the Theotokos is celebrated on the 15th of August, preceded by a two-week fast. This feast, which is also sometimes called the Assumption, commemorates the death, resurrection and glorification of Christ’s mother. It proclaims that Mary has been “assumed” by God into the heavenly kingdom of Christ in the fullness of her spiritual and bodily existence. As with the nativity of the Virgin and the feast of her entrance to the temple, there are no biblical or historical sources for this feast. The Tradition of the Church is that Mary died as all people die, not “voluntarily” as her Son, but by the necessity of her mortal human nature which is indivisibly bound up with the corruption of this world. The Orthodox Church teaches that Mary is without personal sins. In the Gospel of the feast, however, in the liturgical services and in the Dormition icon, the Church proclaims as well that Mary truly needed to be saved by Christ as all human persons are saved from the trials, sufferings and death of this world; and that having truly died, she was raised up by her Son as the Mother of Life and participates already in the eternal life of paradise which is prepared and promised to all who “hear the word of God and keep it.” (Luke 11:27-28)

click here for more from the Orthodox Church on this subject

The first generation Reformers did not throw out all Marian dogma as some are led to believe.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  One researcher has noted that:

Protestant scholar Donald G. Bloesch [notes that]:

It is well to note that the notions of Mary’s immaculate conception, her assumption, her perpetual virginity and her spiritual motherhood were all present in varying degrees among the Protestant Reformers. Zwingli could refer to Mary as “the Mother of God, the perpetually pure and immaculate Virgin Mary.” The Reformed theologian Henry Bullinger seemed to support the assumption of Mary when he declared that “the most pure chamber of the Mother of God and the temple of the Holy Spirit, her most holy body, was taken up by the angels to heaven.”

(Jesus Christ: Savior & Lord, Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1997, 116-117)

In another book, Bloesch wrote:

[T]he Reformers did not jettison all Marian doctrine . . . Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor, held that Mary was taken up bodily into heaven.

(The Church: Sacraments, Worship, Ministry, Mission, Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2002, 67)

Is such a Marian doctrine biblically defensible?  Could a Christian who affirms the Bible as the very Word of God believe that God has taken Mary into Heaven?

Consider these scriptutes on a parallel question:

The death of Moses

Dueteronomy 34:5 So Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD. 6 And He buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth Peor; but no one knows his grave to this day.

The body of Moses

Jude 9: But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not dare to bring a slanderous accusation against him, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!”

The Transfiguration

2After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them. 3His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. 4And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus.

And do note that Jesus the Messiah would, of course, keep the Commandments to the Spirit of the Law without equal.  He did not abolish them, He fulfilled them to the utmost.

Including this one:

Exodus 20:12 “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.”

If Jesus were to honor his Mother over all others, what place would she enjoy in the  resurrection  that  St. Paul discussed in I Corinthians 15?  Last place?  Middle of the pack?  Third place (the bronze?)

Interested in learning more about this doctrine?   Then try the teaching of those who about 1500 years closer to the event than we are.

On the Dormition of Mary: Early Patristic Homilies

Since the time of the early Church, Orthodox Christians have honored Mary, the Mother of God, with special solemnity on August 15. From the sixth century on, that celebration has been explicitly associated with her death, as the culmination of a human life uniquely “full of grace,” uniquely involved in the Mystery of our salvation and transformation in Christ. This volume brings together the ealiest attempts by Greek theologians and preachers to interpret Mary’s Dormition, or “falling asleep” in the Lord, in the light of the whole Paschal Mystery. In addition to the sermon of Bishop John of Thessalonica, the earliest “official” retelling by an Orthodox bishop of the traditional narrative of Mary’s entry into heavenly glory, the collection includes eleven other homilies from the seventh and eighth centuries, as well as a metrical translations of St John of Damascus’ canon for the feast.

Some of the authors, like St John of Damascus, St Andrew of Crete and St Germanus of Constantinople, are well known – others less so.  Most of these works have never been translated into English before, and some are not available in any modern language. They offer Christian readers of all Churches an unparalleled new glimpse of Mary’s central importance in Christian faith and spirituality: as the one in whom God’s Word has become human, and in whom the community of Jesus’ disciples sees the first full realization of its own share in the risen life of Christ. In the event and the liturgical celebration of her Dormition, these ancient preachers offer to us a kind of icon of Christian hope for the transfiguration of our common humanity, both at the time of our own “falling asleep” and at the end of history.

On the Dormition of Mary is part of the POPULAR PATRISTIC SERIES.

The ArchAngel Institute heartily endorses the reading of the patristics.

As the Prophet Malachi preached:

Malachi 4

The Day of the LORD

1 “Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and that day that is coming will set them on fire,” says the LORD Almighty. “Not a root or a branch will be left to them. 2 But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall. 3 Then you will trample down the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I do these things,” says the LORD Almighty.

4 “Remember the law of my servant Moses, the decrees and laws I gave him at Horeb for all Israel.

5 “See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. 6 He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.”