Плоды экуменического древа. Экуменическое движение в экклезиологическом аспекте

As for the spirit of «love» which was implemented with the help of Crusades and still is by the heretic Catholics, St. Ignatius writes: «The most part of the Western Church zealots, proclaimed by it as greatest saints, who, on befalling from the Eastern Church and being deprived of the Holy Spirit, prayed and achieved certain visions, for sure false ones. Those sham saints were in an awful devilish delusion. Such delusion naturally appears on the basis of blasphemy which corrupted the dogmatic belief within the Catholics. The Latin hermits' behaviour has always been frenzied subject to unusual material and passionate excitement. The founder of Jesuitical Order Ignatius Loyola found himself in such a state. His imagination was so exited and sophisticated that, as he admitted himself, he only had to wish and attribute certain effort to have heaven or hell in his vision according to his desire»²².

The effect of the «spirit of love» one may find in the life-descriptions of Catholic «saints», such as Francisco, Theresa, Mehtilda, Hertrude, Angela... Thus, the latter, burning with love, she asks Christ to show her at least some part of his crucified body. «And then He displayed His neck to me...», — says the «saint», — He would not display anything to me except this neck, the sweetest and the most beautiful»²³. There is no sense in repeating those blasphemous passionate descriptions full of disgusting lechery origin. «Those are strong hallucinations on the basis of hysteria, in other words — delusion... — writes A. F. Losev, — This bedlam of erotomania, devilish pride and satanism one can do nothing but anathematize»

It's a pity, but The Most Reverend Anthony, being carried away by the Latin teaching, is far from anathematizing and warning; more to that he comes to a habitual for the Catholics conclusion: «...If we want to worship God in a prayer we should first of all learn how to feel joy from staying in front of Him in silence»²⁵. In order to expose this error, I would like to cite St. John's the Ladder words, who says: «With a humble hand reject the coining joy as unworthy of it so as not to be deluded by it and not to accept a wolf instead of a shepherd»²⁶. To begin praying with joy and silent staying in front of God is a heretic and destructive teaching. Exactly this trend was the one to which «the hermits of the Western Catholic Church have been sticking to along with the writers about asceticism starting with the time of its separation with the Eastern one and its befall in the destructive darkness of heresy, — St. Ignatius writes. — St. Benedict, St. Pope Gregory Dialogos are still in accordance with the ascetic elders of the East; but Bernard already differs abruptly from them; the later ones wander away even in a stronger digression. They seek for and make the readers be seeking for the heights unattainable for a novice, themselves, are misled and mislead the others. Exited, very often frenzied dreaming substitutes for everything spiritual, which they even have no idea of»²⁷.

Further on His Eminence teaches to pray this way: «We can keep repeating time after time: joy, oh, joy! We can utter any words, for words don't matter anything, they can only support our mood and express in a clumsy, mad way our love or our desperation»²⁸.

But if words don't matter in a prayer, than this is already not a prayer but an exorcism. Those are exorcisms (mantras), which have no essential meaning and consist of a mere verbiage. Such practice is obtained by the eastern occultism and has nothing in common with the orthodox teaching. Frequent repeating of senseless words switches off the inner attention of a man so that the demons can attain power over the man. Through exorcism many people would let the devil into their souls and ended up with the frenzy of mind.

According to the patristic teaching, a prayer is a short Symbol of Faith, a short Gospel, a confession. «Pronounce the word of the prayer slowly, — wrote St. Ignatius, pointing out the admonition of St. John the Ladder, — don't allow the mind to wander about, but imprison it in the words of the prayer²⁹. Narrow and grief this way is for the mind which is in the accustomed to float in the universe, but this way leads to attention» ³⁰. It’s a pity, but instead of the narrow way in «The School of Prayer» rather wide gates. His Eminence instructs that «a prayer takes its origin from two sources: either it is our rapturous admiration of God... or the feeling of tragedy, our own or other's»³¹.