Beauty is objective. ☦️

As to the fatalism of those who believe that man must be a slave to the “spirit of the age,” it is disproved by the experience of every Christian worthy of the name, for the Christian life is nothing if it is not a struggle against the spirit of every age for the sake of eternity. Man’s freedom has been given him to choose between the true God and himself, between the true path to deification whereon the self is humbled and crucified in this life to be resurrected and exalted in God and eternity, and the false path of self-deification which promises exaltation in this life but ends in the Abyss. These are the only two choices, ultimately, open to the freedom of man; and upon them have been founded the two Kingdoms, the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Man, which may be discriminated only by the eye of faith in this life, but which shall be separated in the future life as Heaven and Hell. It is clear to which of them modern civilization belongs…The old commandment of “Thou shalt,” says [Nietzsche’s] Zarathustra, has become outmoded; the new commandment is “I will.” In the Christian life, the old self with its constant “I will” must be done away with and a new self, centered in Christ and His will, be born. Christian compromise in thought and word and negligence in deed have opened the way to the triumph of the forces of the absurd, of Satan, of Antichrist. The present age of absurdity is the just reward of Christians who have failed to be Christians. It is futile, in fact it is precisely absurd, to speak of reforming society, of changing the path of history, of emerging into an age beyond absurdity, if we have not Christ in our hearts; and if we do have Christ in our hearts, nothing else matters. ☦️Fr Seraphim Rose

Hypocrisy is the mother of lying, and often its occasion. For some define hypocrisy as none other than meditation on falsehood, and an inventor of falsehood which has a reprehensible oath intertwined with it. ☦️St. John Climacus

"This is only the beginning of sorrows. A fierce war will come, and after the war there must be thirty years of peace, after which the Antichrist will be crowned. But the war has already begun. We are already in a climate and biotronic war. Don’t you see how they can now cause earthquakes, floods, droughts, and fires? But the Good God will protect His chosen ones. Their intention is to incite conflict between nations, so that—God forbid—a world war may erupt, aiming to destroy the majority of mankind. What is interesting is that those who take part in this machinery of destruction never stop to ask themselves: how long will they actually live, if they destroy everything around them just to live as a single “chosen” nation? How far will they go, and how long do they think they will survive? For the pit you dig for another, you will fall into yourself." Elder Justin Parvu (From the Volumes “Father Justin Speaks to Us”)

Another banger from Buck and Fr. Peck:

Counterflow with Buck Johnson: Ep. 373 - Orthodox Masculinity, Orthodox Femininity, with Father John Peck

Fr. John Peck is back with us this week. We dive into a topic with a ton of low frequency noise in our current society. I wanted to get a more grou...

The Logos Podcast: Open Panel: Are Gnosticism and Ancient Heresies on the Rise? with Fr. Dcn. Dr. Ananias Starting from: 00:00:00 Episode webpage:

Spreaker

Open Panel: Are Gnosticism and Ancient Heresies on the Rise? with Fr. Dcn. Dr. Ananias

In this stream I host an open panel and joined by Fr. Dcn. Dr. Ananias and others to discuss the rise and popularity of gnosticism and ancient here...

Media file: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/67178939/podcast_open_panel_gnosticism.mp3#t=0

This goes HARD

The world hates Christians, so why give your love to it instead of following Christ, who loves you and has redeemed you? ☦️ St Cyprian

Substack has a lot of incredible material, overwhelming even. NOSTR seems so obvious from the inside looking out 😌

My next two reads. I got about a 1/3rd of the way through Berdyaev's book but nothing stuck, so round 2 it is. #bookstr