Whether we believe in God or not, let’s not be afraid of what’s coming. We probably deserve it; in fact we most likely deserve worse. But rather let’s peacefully resist for what is clearly right, good and beautiful because the Human spirit has been victorious ever since our Lord, God and Savior became man and took a human form, soul and spirit and overcame every evil! Let’s choose the New Heavens and New Earth not the New Normal or the New World Mordor. 

Since my first article for Brownstone Institute a few months ago, many people have asked me and written to me, “Why has the Church not spoken out about the vaccines, the lockdowns, and the censorship connected to the coronavirus?”
I, of course, have no definitive answer, but I do have spiritual fathers, experience and research to present an informed and prayerful opinion.
Firstly, I must humbly ask for forgiveness for my own sins and for those of the many Patriarchs, Metropolitans and Clergy who encouraged people to follow policy, obey the rules and take injections. These were in the majority position. There is no other reason that this took place than sin and deception. There was a lack of spiritual and moral discernment en masse. There was a lack of guarding our hearts from the spirits of this age.
But in their defense, unlike when Condoleezza Rice and George Bush Jr. said that no one could have ever imagined someone would use an airplane as a weapon, this pandemic, biological war, ponzi-scheme or democide – whatever it is – was so diabolical in its origins nearly all were deceived from the start.
This includes politicians, doctors, epidemiologists, the FDA, CDC, NIH, Germany, England, Russia, France, nearly all hospitals – essentially the entire world save about 30% of people who still reserved for themselves the right to think independently.
In this more recent attack, truly, who would have ever dreamed that the very medical establishment we all depended on and trusted in for caring for us, for healing us would be transformed at the “speed of science” into one of the most efficient means of subjecting entire nations under a medical dictatorship and subjugating the global population through medicine? Honestly, who had ever thought this could happen?
Nevertheless, there were a tremendous amount (and here I will only speak for the Orthodox Church since it is the one I know so affectionately and intimately) of Metropolitans, Bishops and Clergy that were very outspoken. But did you ever hear about them in the mainstream media? The censorship by this New World Mordor started quite some time before the plague and was only heightened in 2019 and 2020.
To give you some concrete examples, I am very proud of our Romanian Patriarch Daniel who subtly, but precisely presented the Romanian Orthodox Church’s position in a manner that only one who had lived through the brutal regime of communism could have envisioned. He skated through political assassination (or perhaps even real assassination – look at Haiti’s Jovenel Moise, Burundi’s Pierre Nkurunziza or Tanzania’s John Magufuli) and religious strife while clearly articulating for those with discernment the real key issues.
Would I have been more trenchant? Yes, I would have preferred a more dynamic response, but Patriarch Daniel had to help those who believed the lies and those that didn’t. He had to be a real father for 20 million people.
Here is what he stated through his spokesman; I’ll condense the first part then go to a direct quote:
The Orthodox Church believes in the medical technology of vaccines stipulating that vaccinations are a right not an obligation and that the medical establishment/government needs to follow these following ethical guidelines:
“consimţământul informat al persoanei, descrierea clară a beneficiilor şi a riscurilor, asumarea responsabilității concrete în cazul în care vaccinarea produce efecte adverse asupra sănătății persoanei vaccinate.”
“The informed consent of the person, a clear description of the benefits and risks, and [the medical/government institutions] assume concrete responsibility in case vaccination produces adverse effects in the vaccinated person [author’s translation].”
The question, “Why hasn’t the Church spoken out against what’s happening?” is in reality a loaded question. I’m not saying it was intentionally loaded, but there is an implicit presupposition in that question. The implicit presupposition is that they haven’t been speaking out. The Church has been speaking out, but for the most part it has been censored.
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Our secular culture purportedly values neighborliness, even as it kills it. Therefore, a vertical understanding of Christian vocation—one which sees it as a priestly task, the daily self-offering in and through Christ, by the power of the Spirit, to the Father—exists only among those who constantly fight upstream. Which is to say, it is incredibly difficult. It can be sustained only through a life of prayer.

Our current economic situation is one of ceaseless disorientation. Workers are separated not only from the means of production but also from the immediate fruits of production. Whereas past generations received tactile wages, such as a farmer and his crop, we are now at the point where even the once-tangible paycheck has been absorbed into the ether of digital technology via direct deposit. Such a situation contributes to the loss of a telos in our vocations, but it does not remove the search thereof. Naturally, the accumulation of possessions follows. We hunger for the meaning of our labor to be concretized, and since our physical labor has been translated into the realm of invisibility, one can be forgiven for wanting to see an object so as to prove that their efforts produced something. Materialism, then, is materialization, or at least the quest for it. It is the exportation of the otherwise-useless green paper, or worse yet, imperceptible paycheck into the realm of reality.
Christian efforts to redirect the objects of spending are surely laudable. Don’t pour your money into selfish pleasure-pursuits, we are told, and rightly so; rather, give the fruits of your labor to the poor, or to efforts of Christian mission. Much that is positive can be said about this. It acknowledges the longing for the materialization of labor and, recognizing the inherent selfishness in the human heart, redirects it toward Jesus Christ. If followed, it will surely provide the Christian with a deeper sense of purpose in his or her vocation, as the fruit of one’s labor now resides, via translation, in the kingdom of God. This much is good and must be carried on. But, as a means of providing orientation within vocation directly, it falls short. For it does not do anything to fix the telos of labor above the transitory payment, a digitized set of numbers in an online bank. It does not attend to the concrete dimensions of the very tasks and services we perform but locates the telos a few steps away from our action. The result: After we have completed our labor, which in and of itself remains basically meaningless, we can draw meaning from the tangible effects of the money we obtain. While surely better than unreflective materialism, this will not suffice in our quest for the guiding purpose of our labor, one that transcends the mere economic output and resides in the action of work itself.
A notion of work as Christian service accomplishes just this. Rather than positing the wages as the ultimate goal of all labor, whether spent on selfish pleasures or selfless donations, defining vocational meaning as Christian service fixes our eyes upon a higher, steadier telos. In short, one’s vocation is the domain in which he or she obeys the two greatest commandments: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself (Matt 23:37-39). Vocation itself is a calling (from the Latin vōcare, “to call, summon”). A job or career is not a mere economic appendage to a pre-existing Christian identity, as if Christians interacted with God somewhere other than the real world which they inhabit. On the contrary, one’s vocation is the stage upon which he or she enacts God’s direction. If these two great commandments from Christ are the compass for Christian pilgrims, our career vocations are the terrain we must travel in order to get there. The practical, daily demands of our vocational tasks are the thicket of woods we must traverse in order to move Northward.
Firstly, therefore, our work is service to our neighbors. If, as we have suggested, the purpose of our labor is not determined by our salary, then it follows that value-measurements must be derived from elsewhere. Contrary to the mindset we instinctually absorb, the dollar amount does not determine the worth of our work. Dollar amounts are transient, and in an economy as large as ours, surely do not represent the palpable concerns of the people who immediately surround us. This means that we must first examine the nature of our action itself, that is, what it is we do. The simple answer to this is that we are serving our neighbors.
Each job provides a service for someone who otherwise would not obtain it. A plumber performs a task that someone else is unable or unwilling to do. A lawyer provides a service that would be impossible if no lawyer existed. A computer programmer does something that non-computer programmers cannot do, for whatever reason. So what? What does this have to do with neighbors? Put simply, neighbors need help, and help comes from other neighbors. If someone is unable to cut down the trees in his backyard, someone who can comes over and does it. If someone is sick and cannot diagnose herself, she goes to someone who can. Neighbors need their neighbors to serve them. Each one’s vocational task offers something to the wider community that is valuable precisely because it is needed by neighbors.
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Aidan is however most famous for his missionary work. Aidan worked many miles every day, going from house to house and talking “to any whomsoever he saw, whether rich or poor, and call upon them, if infidels, to receive the mystery of the faith, or, if they were believers, strengthen them in the faith, and stir them up by words and actions to giving of alms and the performance of good works.”[7] Probably, walking allowed him more time with the people.

Thanks to the literary mastery of the Venerable Bede, the history of the Christianization of England is filled with memorable stories of valiant kings, praying queens, and wonder-working saints. But it’s also studded with lesser-known characters who simply persisted day after day in spreading the gospel. One of these is Aidan of Lindisfarne.
A Field White to Harvest
Christianity first arrived in England, as in other parts of the known world, through the personal testimony of Christian travelers, merchants, and soldiers. This work of personal evangelization was so effective that, in the second century, Tertullian could say that Christianity had reached even “the haunts of the Britons – inaccessible to the Romans, but subjugated to Christ.”[1]
Yet, as in other nations, Christianity in Britain spread slowly, often mixed with traditional religions and recent heresies. The main impetus for the establishment of missions in that region came from Pope Gregory the Great. According to Bede, Gregory was so struck by the looks of some Anglo-Saxon slave boys that he determined (with a famous play-on-words) that the Angles looked like angels, therefore fitting “to be coheirs with the angels m heaven.”[2]
Following the common practice of evangelizing rulers (who could mandate the observance of Christianity in their regions), in 596 Gregory sent a first team of missionaries, led by Augustine of Canterbury, to Kent, where King Ethelberg had already been primed by his Merovingian wife Bertha.[3]
Faced with the pope’s exhortation to accept Christianity, Ethelberg shared the same concerns of most kings of his day: Is the Christian God really the only true God? If so, will my people accept my conversion or rise against me for exchanging the security of our traditional religion for a gospel that, although good, is still news?
Many kings replied yes to the first question after some personal victories in battle. Ethelbert, instead, observed the missionaries until their message and example and the reception of his own people allowed him to answer affirmatively to both questions.
The conversion of other British kings followed. Ethelbert influenced King Edwin of Northumbria by giving him his daughter Ethelburga in marriage. Edwin accepted Christianity in 628 but, when he died in battle five years later, his kingdom reverted into paganism.
Aidan’s Calling
This is where Aidan came in. He was an Irish monk living in a monastery on the Scottish island of Iona – a man, according to Bede, “of singular gentleness, piety, and moderation.”[4] Founded in 563 by Columbanus, the monastery had been a lively center of Christianity. In the early days of Edwin’s rule, it had also become a refuge for the royal brothers Oswald and Oswiu, who did the safest thing for most noblemen in line for the throne – they fled from a king who might choose to eliminate competition.
During their twenty years at the monastery, the brothers were converted to Christianity. Then, after Edwin died, Oswald returned to Northumbria to take over the throne. Seeing how quickly the people were returning to their idols, Oswald asked the monastery in Iona to send him a missionary to bring back the gospel message.
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