Picture: The footstone of Malachi Martin in Gate of Heaven Cemetery

Also inspired by Three Things Challenge #M708

Searching for the Spiritual Life

I write here about Orthodoxy and other faiths. No, I do not practice any religion, if by that question is meant to follow, or belong to a church, as opposed to having a faith. I have always considered myself a christian, although strictly I am not, in the formal sense. This question begs many others: what is it to be a Christian? What is the spiritual life? Have we, in so-called Western countries, lost the meaning, the spirit, the will of Spirituality? Have we lost the shelter of Faith? Have we lost the will to protect our culture from raw materialism and selfish individualism?

Why no practice?

So, let’s try and be honest: why  don’t I practice any religion, if I claim to be searching for the Spiritual Life? To give justice to this question, to cover the subject enough to make sense to my readers, I need to start from the beginning: the Christian faith, and the main Christian churches. At the start was what is now described as the Orthodox Church, the original christian church, that did not associate itself with the administration of the Roman Empire, the Roman Church.

The latter should not be confused with the Catholic church, a European development, centred in post-imperial Rome and the Vatican. The Imperial Rome bishops, from Constantine onwards were the governors of the Roman provinces, through the late imperial period up to the collapse of the western empire, and the “schism” with Constantinople.  

Roman legacy

My understanding of the Roman legacy is best explained in fr. Malachi Martin’s books, in particular  “Windswept House” a novel (1996) that describes the evil plots in and around the Vatican, since the second Vatican Council (1962-1965). 

“I had not read any of Malachi Martin’s books prior to our first meeting, and must confess that to this day I have read only a handful. Of course, I did subsequently read what is perhaps his magnus opus, Windswept House, which impressed me greatly. What I knew about Malachi Martin from the start is that he championed doctrinal orthodoxy and the Tridentine Mass; and this in itself aroused my admiration and high esteem.” (Interview with Dr Wolfgang Smith)

This rich and complex work has attracted commentaries from both traditionalists and reformers in the Catholic faith. Interested readers may want to read the short monograph “Unmasking the Faces of Antichrist, Interview with Dr Wolfgang Smith” (Triumph Communications, 2017) as an example. This understanding made me suspicious of the direction taken by the Church of Rome, the fate of the Vatican, the enigma of the resignation of Benedict XVI, and the close relationship between the Vatican and the worst type of western capitalism.

The Reformation

I see the Reformation as the apposite of not the Church of Rome, but of Orthodoxy. Attitude, my own, toward the Reformation and its derivatives was shaped by historical readings on the Peasants revolt, that followed immediately the statements of Martin Luther (1517) and led to the merciless slaughter of the insurgents, and the ensuing, albeit a hundred years later, Thirty-Year War. A fictional account of these events is given in the novel Q.

Needless to say, the lasting impression created by that historical period made me afraid of the consequences: the counter-Reformation, the Inquisition, the religious wars in France, the martyr of the monastic orders under Henry VIII in England (and the destruction of marvels of gothic religious art), the abject intolerance shown, for example by Louis XIV of France (who revoked his grandfather Henri IV’s Edit de Nantes that ended the civil war), even after the end of the Thirty-Year War.

The complexity of these events, and their cultural significance to this day is well analysed in, for example, Peter Wilson’s “Europe’s Tragedy, a new History of the Thirty Years War”. German speakers may refer to Herfried Münkler’s “Der Dreissigjährige Krieg, Europäische Katastrophe, DeutchesTrauma, 1618-1648”.

Orthodoxy

These considerations have led to my present attraction to Eastern Christian Orthodoxy. In this influenced I am influenced by Russian literature, and the writings of spiritual leaders such as Ivan Ilyin, often quoted in these pages:

“… Thus true friendship, like love – or more specifically, spiritual love – creates the initial core of this unity; someday, these little cores of spiritual fire will form one great and unified flame of God, a bright and joyful tapestry of God’s Kingdom throughout the entire world…

This is why every spiritually active person seeks true friendship on this earth, and is happy if he manages to find and achieve this friendship. In this manner, he carries outage testament of his Maker and partakes in the fulfilment of His promise; he thus takes part in the renewal and transfiguration of this Divine world.” [Ivan Ilyin: “The Singing Heart”]

Readers interested in access to further texts in the Orthodox tradition may want to refer to the Orthodox Christian Translation Society.