Prostrations as a Remedy for Stiff-neckedness #

By V.V. Buzhinsky

“And there was given me a reed like unto a rod: and the angel stood, saying, Rise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein.” (Rev. 11:1)

“And though the Spirit is one, yet the gifts are not equal,
for the recipients of the Spirit are not equal;
Such is the grace of the Spirit—
it makes those of one mind equally worthy.”
— St. Gregory the Theologian

It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that the main questions raised by the Schism—and those associated with it—have already been answered. This is why people are returning to Orthodoxy (Old Rite Orthodoxy). Those who return are thinkers, capable of overcoming the thicket of stereotypes. Their decision comes precisely from the answers they find to questions they themselves have asked. Of course, for a seeker, the most important question is the one concerning eternal salvation. And those who consciously return to Orthodoxy have found an affirmative answer to this question of salvation.

Returning to Orthodoxy is a significant intellectual labor for any believer, regardless of whether they descend from Old Believers or not. For those whose proper glorification of God was interrupted for roughly 300 years, such a return demands no small mental effort. But if we recall history, for many—if not for the overwhelming majority—of today’s inhabitants of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, returning to Orthodoxy would mean spiritual reunion with ancestors who were Orthodox Christians for perhaps over 600 years. Does this mean a break with their Nikonian forebears? Not at all; on the contrary, such a choice may help even them attain salvation in eternity. Never has the striving for truth, the suffering for it, harmed either ancestors or descendants.

We must understand that all our contemporaries who, for one reason or another, have fallen away from Orthodoxy are all prodigal sons—and we know that for the Lord, it matters not when the last son returns home, nor how long he was away.

Our task is to help them return. Fulfilling this task requires great love and patience, and an understanding that dividing brothers and sisters in Christ into the elect and the neophytes is spiritually harmful, above all, to those who make the division. Moreover, many questions raised by the Schism were answered by the descendants of those who once accepted the innovations. A number of scholars have honestly and conscientiously studied the history of the Schism and made a significant contribution to the search for truth.

As for the Old Believers, despite lacking a system of higher theological education, their critiques of the Nikon-Alexian “reforms” have always been theologically sound. Old Believer catechists frequently confounded even seasoned Nikonian theologians. Today, many modern scholars are essentially reinventing the wheel. But God so arranged human memory that knowledge of history is not absorbed with a mother’s milk—memory must be refreshed. Old Believer theologians and historians have always taken and continue to take an active role in restoring memory.

Orthodoxy is triumphant because much is being restored. Znamenny chant is returning. The eight-pointed cross has been rehabilitated. There are Nikonian parishes that have adopted Orthodox worship. However, this is happening slowly and does not match the needs of our time. What is needed is a qualitative breakthrough—a transition to a new state, a state of awareness of oneself and one’s role in God’s Providence.

Therefore, any attempt to once again look into history, to shed light—if possible—on yet another facet of the well-known, to explore the topic of the Schism from a slightly different angle, may help someone arrive at a salvific resolution and return home. And even if nothing new can be added, turning to the topic of the Schism will still not be useless or irrelevant. For it is no secret that even many Old Believers have forgotten their history and no longer understand the tasks the Lord has set before them. The existence of two, or even three, hierarchies only confirms this. Not to mention priestlessness—a true affliction of Old Belief.

Priestlessness is difficult to comprehend, as is any great absurdity. We are speaking of organized, ideological priestlessness. Unorganized priestlessness is a sorrowful sight—it has no one to console it or warm it. Such priestlessness readily and with clear relief responds to a kind word. But there is no one to tend to it—there is a shortage of clergy. Ideological priestlessness, however, is a terrible attempt—with grave consequences—to oppose God Himself. For Jesus Christ said: “I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18).

The priestless claim, with great arrogance, that the gates of hell have already prevailed against Christ’s Church. They have clearly confused the operation of the “mystery of iniquity” with the end of the world. But, as is well known, “the mystery of iniquity” was already at work in the days of the Apostle Paul (2 Thess. 2:3–4, 6–7). Yet this did not hinder the existence of the Church established by Christ, nor the fulfillment of the holy mysteries—among which is the Holy Communion, rejected by the priestless—nor the continuation of apostolic succession and the proclamation of Orthodox divine worship.

The proclamation of Orthodox divine worship is just as good a work as the preaching of Holy Scripture, for the fullness of Christ’s Church is possible only on the basis of the threefold unity of Holy Scripture, Holy Tradition, and Sacred Worship, since all of these are the Word of God, preserved in true Orthodoxy¹. The unification of the Old Rite is an invaluable spiritual reserve, which could provide the necessary impetus for the rebirth of the Fatherland. The extraordinary importance of uniting Orthodoxy is substantiated in ². It is shown that there exists a certain critical ratio between grace and sin, beyond which irreversible consequences may arise for any society—meaning, it may cease to exist as a result of various upheavals: natural disasters, social turmoil, revolutions, civil wars, foreign invasions.

Grace proceeds, of course, from God; but because believing people, through participating in divine services, attain to greater or lesser degrees of union with Him, they seem to become, for a time, bearers of this grace—i.e., they preserve it. This position may be accepted as one of the principal interpretations of the “restrainer”:

“…the lamp does not shine with a light of its own, but with a light communicated and brought in from without. The same kind of illumination from Christ in the spirit may be seen in the saints, and this is why, reasoning and acting very prudently, they themselves confess with their own voices that ‘of His fullness have all we received’ (John 1:16). For the Light is by nature the Only-Begotten, as shining forth from the Light—that is, from the essence of the Father. But the creature partakes of Him, just as everything that possesses the capacity for reasoning and thought is, as it were, a vessel for being filled with the Divine Light…”(³, cited in ⁴].

Here is also the testimony of St. Gregory Palamas:

“The essence of God is everywhere, for it is written: ‘The Spirit filleth all things’ (Wis. 1:7), by His very essence; and everywhere also is deification, which is ineffably proper to this Essence and inseparable from it as its natural power. But just as fire is invisible unless there be some material or organ of perception that receives its luminous energy, so too deification is invisible unless there is matter capable of receiving the manifestation of the Godhead; and when it finds such matter—namely, every purified rational nature not burdened by the covering of manifold evil—then deification is both perceived as spiritual light and, more truly, makes those being deified themselves into spiritual light.”(⁵, cited in ⁴].

Or again:

“…when divine, spiritual delight and joy are imparted indivisibly to a person, even if he were able to contain all of it, yet this causes no harm to others; thus, each of us possesses Piety [Orthodoxy] wholly, and this does not diminish his neighbor, but on the contrary, helps him in many ways.”(⁶, cited in ⁴].

In recent times, many scientific and quasi-scientific works have appeared demonstrating the gracious influence on the environment of prayer, the sign of the cross, and, more generally, of kind words and deeds. But people knew this even earlier. It has been observed that in places where there are monasteries, where processions of the Cross are regularly held, there are fewer weather anomalies, better harvests, more game, more fish, and so on. We are capable of sensing the spiritual influence of a good or evil person’s presence. In the company of a good person, we feel at ease; we ourselves become kinder and better, more free. In the presence of an unkind or wicked person, we feel discomfort—we may not understand why this happens, but we instinctively try to avoid such a person or even sever all contact with him.

In the early 16th century, Muscovite Rus’ was an exceedingly abundant land, whose wealth astonished foreigners. All this was so because life without God was unimaginable. Upon seeing a cross, a rider would dismount and bow, blessing himself with the two-fingered sign of the cross. And in those days, crosses stood everywhere throughout Rus’.

Examples of such spatial action of the Holy Spirit are found in the Bible. When the responsibilities of Moses grew too great, the Lord promised to transfer part of them to seventy elders:

“I will come down and speak with thee there: and I will take of the spirit which is upon thee, and will put it upon them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with thee, that thou bear it not thyself alone.” (Num. 11:17)
This occurred near the tabernacle, and the elders “prophesied, and did not cease. But two of the men remained in the camp, the name of the one was Eldad, and the name of the other Medad: and the Spirit rested upon them… and they prophesied in the camp” (Num. 11:25–26).

In this way, the concept of the “restrainer,” spoken of by the Apostle Paul (2 Thess. 2:3–4, 6–7), is formed in a logical manner. It is natural that the restraining properties are manifested more strongly—and grace is retained longer by the bearer—when the divine service is truer (contains fewer heresies) and when the restrainer himself commits fewer sins.

St. Gregory the Theologian:

“And though the Spirit is one, the gifts are not equal, for the recipients of the Spirit are not equal.”(⁷, cited in ⁴).

After partaking of Communion, a true Orthodox Christian does not become a heretic. He rightly “utters the word of God’s patience” — he blesses himself with the two-finger sign of the cross¹. He confesses the Orthodox Symbol of Faith, and so on. At this point, we must draw attention to a strange circumstance. Namely, that at first glance, the Orthodox Creed appears not to confess the most central dogma of Christianity: the unity, indivisibility, and consubstantiality of the Holy Trinity. But we know that the true Church of Christ cannot possess an imperfect Creed. Therefore, this confession must be present in the Creed. And indeed, this dogma is confessed in the Orthodox Symbol of Faith — and, let us not shy away from saying it — this is done with divine simplicity, and therefore with astounding precision and persuasive power, precisely through the confession of the truth of each Hypostasis¹⁸. This shining example of the unity of God and of a man who was able to hear God confirms once more that the Orthodox Symbol of Faith is itself the Word of God, and thus every alteration to it is a heresy.

But from the Nikonian, grace departs — even if he received it through Communion. He crosses himself with a “pinch,” which is not the Orthodox form of crossing with the fingers; he confesses a distorted Creed, in which blasphemy is uttered against the Holy Ghost¹⁸, and which expresses — as we have seen — a denial of the consubstantiality and indivisibility of the Trinity; he has forgotten the proper name of God, and so forth.

“…The divine light cannot be used for evil — it instantly departs from him who leans toward evil, leaving deprived of God every person who has consented to evil” (⁵, cited in ⁴).

Therefore, the Nikonian Church — like any heretical church — possesses only a minimal power of restraint, a fact confirmed historically¹.

In ⁸, the thesis is put forward that one can and must boldly take up the task of proving the spiritual destructiveness of all the “innovations” adopted at the 1666–1667 council, because the Holy Ghost could not have been present at that fateful assembly where His truth was denied. According to the unalterable spiritual law that “a holy place is never empty,” we may discern who in fact was present at the gathering of heretics. As a result of the heresies established at that council, Nikonian theological science is now in a state of spiritual obscurity⁸.

Indeed — is this not a sign of that obscurity?

The restraining Orthodox divine worship has been dismantled, and all that is expressed is regret over the abruptness and haste of the introduction of new, supposedly “equally honorable” rites. The error is not seen in the decisions of the 1667 council themselves, but merely in the view that differences in ritual equate to differences in faith. As though this were a matter of ballet — a reinterpretation of the piece by another, more talented choreographer, whose modified pirouettes and spins do not alter the idea or narrative of the ballet as a whole.

But St. Gregory the Theologian declares that only those who are of one mind can be equal in honor:

“Such is the grace of the Spirit — it makes those of one mind equal in honor”(⁹, cited in ⁴).

So what unity of mind can there be between the Orthodox and the Nikonians? Let us cite yet another example that shows that such unity in principle is impossible.

One of the “innovations” of the reformers adopted at the 1667 council was the reversal of the direction of the processional Cross Walk. Previously, it proceeded clockwise, and this was explained by the fact that the faithful were walking in the path of the Sun — that is, in the path of Christ. The council decreed to adopt the direction used at the time by the Greeks — counterclockwise. Let us now look at how the sanctification of the city wall took place among the ancient Jews. After returning from the Babylonian captivity, the Jews rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, restored the gates, and assembled for a divine service, part of which was a processional walk.

Nehemiah tells us:

“And the other company of them that gave thanks went over against them, and I after them, and the half of the people upon the wall, from beyond the tower of the furnaces even unto the broad wall; and from above the gate of Ephraim, and above the old gate, and above the fish gate, and the tower of Hananeel, and the tower of Meah, even unto the sheep gate: and they stood still in the prison gate.” (Nehemiah 12:38–40)

In the illustration, arrows indicate the direction of the procession during the consecration of the newly rebuilt city wall of Jerusalem. Why did the Jews choose this particular direction? It is well known that their divine service, down to the smallest detail, was given to them by God Himself. It may be that some elements must be performed in a particular way simply because such is pleasing to God. This argument alone should suffice to restrain us from taking liberties.

Perhaps we will never understand the nature of the mystical manifestation of grace in divine worship, through which it acquires the ability to restrain. For this very reason, every detail, every smallest nuance must be treated with reverence and fear lest anything be disrupted. Orthodox Christians have never separated form from content, but have intuitively felt their inseparability and indivisibility—and so they have stood firm for every iota.

Nehemiah further relates:

“And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people; (for he was above all the people;) and when he opened it, all the people stood up: and Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God. And all the people answered, Amen, Amen, with lifting up their hands: and they bowed their heads, and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground.” (Nehemiah 8:5–6)

Do you think these are meaningless ritual gestures—and from the Old Covenant at that?

No, it is far more likely that what we are witnessing here is the very formation of the restraining Orthodox worship! It is precisely in the formation of divine service in Old Testament times that we see the unbroken continuity of God’s Providence, for the Idea of God is primordial, uninterrupted, and existed “before all ages.”

The time for signing oneself with the Cross had not yet come, and so the Jews lifted their hands upward toward the invisible God. Into the ancient Jewish worship were introduced full prostrations—“they worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground”—which are necessary to show humility, reverence, and veneration before God. These full prostrations, which passed into New Testament worship, were later abolished by the Nikonians.

A stiff neck. Or rather, a hardened neck? A cruelty toward oneself, toward one’s posterity, toward the Fatherland.

Stiff-neckedness…

This strange epithet was introduced by God to characterize the ancient Jews:

“Understand therefore, that the Lord thy God giveth thee not this good land to possess it for thy righteousness; for thou art a stiff-necked people. Remember, and forget not, how thou provokedst the Lord thy God to wrath in the wilderness: from the day that thou didst depart out of the land of Egypt, until ye came unto this place, ye have been rebellious against the Lord.” (Deuteronomy 9:6–7)

From this passage one may conclude that a stiff-necked person is one who resists God.

To overturn the God-established order—that restraining Orthodox divine worship—is to attempt to alter the course of history, to interrupt the divine economy. In this light, the change in direction of the Nikonian processional Cross Walk is highly symbolic.

But why is this so? Why do we behave so carelessly and superficially in matters of the Spirit? Has God Himself changed? Has He become indifferent to how people relate to Him, how they glorify Him? Has humanity so drawn near to God that it stands on equal footing, as it were, “on friendly terms”? If so, then why is the end of the world at hand? Why is love vanishing? Why is the stiff-neckedness of mankind rapidly increasing? Why does the clash of civilizations give birth to such rage, fury, and hatred? Anger begets anger, fury – counter-fury, hatred – death, first spiritual, then physical. No one will ever count how many people will be stricken with cancer after merely attending a single rally.

But since we have begun to speak of illnesses, we must say something about the wondrous healing power of Orthodox divine worship. We do not know for certain whether prostrations truly cure stiff-neckedness, but their inclusion in worship is by no means accidental:

“And Abram fell on his face: and God talked with him, saying, As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations” (Gen. 17:3–4).
Lot “bowed himself with his face toward the ground” before the two angels who came to him (Gen. 19:1).
Before sacrificing his son Isaac, Abraham said to the two servants who had come with them to the place of burnt offering: “Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship” (Gen. 22:5).
Abraham’s servant, having accomplished his mission with God’s help by arranging the betrothal of Rebekah to Isaac, “worshipped the Lord, bowing himself to the earth” (Gen. 24:52).
Jacob “bowed himself to the ground seven times, until he came near to his brother” Esau (Gen. 33:3).
“Joseph’s brethren came and bowed down themselves before him with their faces to the earth” (Gen. 42:6), and so on.

When a person bows—even with a mere waist bow—they show that they are not disposed to aggression toward the other, because a bow places the one bowing in a vulnerable state. Through a bow, a person shows trust in the one to whom they bow, or humbles themselves before them. Even among animals there are gestures reminiscent of bows: a young male, afraid of the dominant one, lowers its head to the ground. In animals, this expresses recognition of the leader’s physical strength and authority—but not, it seems, love. In time, a grown and strengthened male will challenge the leader, and then it will be the latter who must acknowledge the strength of the new one.

But the person who bows before God has a different aim. His goal is to draw near to God, to attain union with Him, or, as St. Gregory Palamas says, to become deified. To become spiritually stronger—that is, to gain true freedom: freedom from the passions. And such a state is reached only through humility before God. Almost every bow is accompanied by the sign of the Cross, made with the two-fingered sign of the fingers—meaning that with each bow, the “word of God’s patience” is “pronounced”¹. And this circumstance makes the bow all the more significant, for the believer is using the perfect spiritual protection—protection that God Himself commanded. With such protection, no witchcraft, no spells, no curses are to be feared.

But that’s still not all! The most important healing effect of Orthodox divine worship lies in the fact that, by overcoming and breaking through the crust of stiff-neckedness, new sprouts of virtues—new talents—begin to grow and push forth in the soul. And the natural talents, originally given by God, among which the most precious are love for God and for one’s neighbor, begin to shine with vibrant, pure, and radiant colors. The soul begins to be healed of its vices, and hope arises for eternal salvation. A person gradually relocates into a parallel world, begins to live in another dimension where the priorities are entirely different. He begins to notice things and phenomena he never noticed before, to hear sounds he never heard before, to understand what he never previously tried to comprehend—things he never thought about, as they had once seemed boring or unnecessary. And those things that once seemed so important—career, wealth, pleasures, passions—fade into the background.

THE SOUL BEGINS TO BE HEALED!

As one sheds all that was once necessary in one’s former life but has become secondary—or completely unnecessary—in the new, as yet unexplored one, the person draws closer to God, and thus gains freedom. Freedom from passions and from sin. He begins to perceive miracles—and more than that, he can even participate in the working of miracles, because everything that happens to him is itself a miracle. And when the believer begins to understand how many troubles and misfortunes God protects him and his loved ones from, he entrusts himself wholly to Him.

But even this is not the end!

Along with the comprehension of Orthodoxy comes a new worldview. Life gains additional meaning. For besides saving one’s own soul, the Orthodox believer must think about carrying the word of God, the name of God, the “word of God’s patience” to the very end of his days—that is, everything on which Orthodoxy stands, everything upon which the Philadelphian Church stands. One must think about how to prove that the fate of the Fatherland is not decided in parliaments and governments, but is decided in each one of us. How to find the words, the arguments, the vital emotional warmth needed to convince a neighbor, a friend, a chance fellow traveler to come and participate in divine worship—to help our Fatherland, which bears the exceedingly important mission of being “the one who restraineth.”

In Orthodox missionary work, the theme of healing bodily illnesses can play a significant role. In principle, by participating in Orthodox divine services, a person may be healed of any illness. But it must be stated clearly: all is given according to one’s faith, and only if the healing of the body will not interfere with the healing of the soul. This is not the place to list the many instances of miraculous healings—every parish will gladly share such wondrous stories with you.

But we would like to draw attention to the so-called “illnesses of the age,” connected with sedentary lifestyles—such as sciatica, osteochondrosis, and related conditions. Healing from these ailments may occur in almost anyone, even someone whose faith is still weak, but who has begun to participate in the divine services. The Morning and Evening Rules of prayer include over 130 bows, some of which are full prostrations. During Great Lent, the number of prostrations increases significantly: each Rule includes 108 full prostrations. Therefore, on every weekday of Great Lent (excluding Saturdays, Sundays, and feasts), a believer performs 216 full prostrations daily.

Particularly healing is the evening service dedicated to St. Mary of Egypt, held in the middle of Lent—“Mary’s Standing.” It includes roughly 1,000 full prostrations. In preparation for confession and Communion, the faithful are to complete seven Rules. One such Rule (ten lestovkas) includes 1,090 bows, 90 of which are full prostrations. Altogether, that’s 7,630 bows, of which 630 are full prostrations. During Great Lent, the total number of full prostrations comes to 2,660. If needed, prostrations can be substituted by reading the appropriate canons or combined with them.

We must also speak of the tremendous healing power of fasting: roughly half of the days of the year are fast days—on which no animal products are consumed. And during the weekdays of Great Lent, even vegetable oil is abstained from. Moreover, the season of Great Lent coincides with the time when the body naturally lacks vitamins, meaning those vitamins need not be spent digesting rich foods. This way of eating has been tested over millennia on people of all ages—from children to the elderly. Additionally, the prayers before and after meals also involve bows, which may well aid digestion.

Man is not accidentally made upright. A stiff-necked man will not bow before God—and thus inevitably dooms himself to illness. In this way, the secret to healing the ailments of the modern age is astonishingly simple. But one can only discover it by attempting to grasp the paradoxical nature of Christianity, which has been preserved most fully in Orthodoxy. We fall into the devil’s traps over the simplest of things—forgetting that all true genius is simple…

And yet, on the path toward such holistic healing—of both soul and body—there remains one nearly insurmountable spiritual barrier: one must be able to accept that there are prophets in one’s own country.

Our critics may object: spinal flexibility can be achieved through other exercises. And indeed, there are people who live healthy lifestyles and feel well their whole lives. Perhaps. But far more often it happens that, when something does “catch up with them,” as the saying goes, they are willing to try anything—to drink any vile concoction, eat any bizarre filth, bow before anyone, go to psychics, folk healers, witches; they’ll meditate, torment themselves with jogging or gymnastics. But to imagine that we, Russians, possess a sacred divine service that allows us to live the healthiest lifestyle in the world—that, forgive me, is simply unthinkable. Now yoga, or Bragg, or Shelton—that’s something!

The weakening of the restrainer—Russia—has, as we’ve seen, led to natural and social upheavals, and to wars. The global banditry of the United States, unleashed after the fall of the USSR, now acts with impunity. The spiritual environment in NATO countries is rapidly deteriorating. What forces remain that might restrain the cosmic rage stirred by this universal evil? Every year, dozens of typhoons and tornadoes strike the United States. All remember the destruction of New Orleans. There are frosts in places where there used to be heat—and heat where there used to be frost. And those who might still be capable of fulfilling the role of the one who restrains repeat only: “equal in honor”. Like a worn-out phonograph record, endlessly repeating the same word.

The very fact that multiple Old Believer hierarchies exist does not justify the assumption that the restraining power of believers within these groups is equivalent. Let us recall the words of St. Gregory the Theologian:

“Such is the grace of the Spirit — it makes those of one mind equal in honor”(⁹, cited in ⁴).

These hierarchies can be considered of one mind only if they are in prayerful communion with one another.

The fact is: truth is one. There cannot be two or three identical Philadelphian Churches, for such a situation would give rise to scandal. And scandal cannot come from God. In this case, the scandal arises from people who have failed to fully think things through.

“Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!” (Matt. 18:7)

In every group that, according to objective indicators (historical facts and divine signs), is not the Philadelphian Church, the scandal arises from the bishops, clergy, and theologians — from all those to whom God has granted the gift of seeking the truth¹. If they are unable to discern, or if they are deliberately deceitful, then through intellectual negligence or sabotage they are working to hasten the course of events — to weaken the restrainer, which is Russia, and bring nearer the end of the world.

Our natural desire should instead be a kind of intelligent labor, aimed at strengthening the Fatherland. This position follows from the fact that we do not know the appointed times. Only God knows them. And each of us must consider that there are things at stake greater than life itself. Every schism in Orthodoxy is against God. This applies even more so to the so-called “edinoveriye” (Old Rite parishes under the Nikonian Church). The situation is worsened by the fact that the Nikonian Church itself is in heresy — that is, in darkness:

“And what communion hath light with darkness?” (2 Cor. 6:14)

The Apostle Paul exhorts us:

“If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, fulfill ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.” (Phil. 2:1–3)

But such unity of mind can only exist in the Truth.

To become aware of ourselves means recognizing the urgent need to understand that the Schism was a Providential Necessity — appointed for the salvation of Christ’s Church, for the preservation of Holy Rus’, and for the maintenance of the restrainer². This understanding is necessary for everyone — for the Orthodox and for the Nikonians alike. It follows from the entire logic of the events that preceded the Schism and was caused by the “invasion of civilization.” When we accept this in our hearts, we will be able to overcome ourselves, humble ourselves before the Lord, and fulfill His will worthily.

And this will be the Triumph of Orthodoxy.

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