The feast day we observe today commemorates the Russian saints, whose blessed ranks include mostly martyrs of the twentieth century, 20 million red martyrs. But as heinous as this mass slaughter was — patently a genocide of an Orthodox people — it was a by-product of a far broader and deeper menace, which is the advance of atheism. Atheism has gone by many names over the ages. It is best-known today as woke-ism — with re-imagining of any god we please and any ethics or morals that suit us.

The Hermitage Sisters and I are former lifelong Catholics. ¹ But we were forced out our accustomed prayers and lives by woke-ism. Today, I am a Russian Orthodox priest and monk. The Sisters of the Hermitage monastery — Schema-nun Mary Anne and Schema-nun Mary Martha — are tonsured Russian Orthodox nuns. In January (February N.S.) of 2019, Metropolitan Hilarion, First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (approved by the Holy Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate), received us wholecloth — monastery, vows, and all — into the Russian Orthodox Church. He ordained me on St. Xenia Day, January 24 (February 6 N.S.), 2019. Our Western readers may not be familiar with this much-beloved Russian Orthodox saint — a "fool-for-Christ" wandering the streets of St. Petersburg in abject poverty for forty-five years.

Her story (and the story, I suppose, of every Christian) is this same crossroads, singled out by no less a figure than the Son of God:

St. Xenia stood at this crossroads at age 26. She had lived in grand style in the city of the Empress Elizabeth's imperial court, St. Petersburg. She had been married to a splendidly turned-out colonel in the Imperial Army, attending glittering balls and parties. But soon she would be widowed at the hand of his reckless drinking. Here was her crossroads: to choose the road to the right, putting away the high life and following a life of voluntary lowliness, or choosing to dissipate her life as her husband had. She gave her material possessions to the poor and roamed the city's streets wearing his army uniform telling people that it was she, not her husband, who had died. So she followed the "Fool on the hill" (1 Cor 1:23,25,27) Who "had nowhere to lay His head" (Mt 8:20).

Do you see? The life she and her husband had led was so full of worldliness that it collapsed under its own unsteady weight .... not so much by Xenia's choice but rather like a powerful tide of culture and customs and trappings that few could resist. She did not plan any of this but rather was swept into a cosmic struggle, spanning eons, whose combatants are angels and saints ceaselessly opposing the forces of darkness. We are all always in it, whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not. We are combatants. The battlefield royal is our own persons. And our principal weapons are our consciences and God's guiding and help. We are all always in it, for the evil one never rests, and the armies of God do battle ceaselessly with the forces of darkness.

Do you not perceive this ponderous weight of worldliness upon your life: our culture soaked through with drugs and pornography, our minds bombarded everyday with filth, our most cherished traditions — including holy marriage and the formation of our precious children — trampled under foot. But the greatest catastrophe, and the cause for all the rest, is the toppling of the morality of God.

I am reminded of Thomas Huxley's interview with the press, who asked Huxley (known as "Darwin's bulldog") why the dry, scientific journal in which Darwin had published his obscure paper on "The Origin of Species" (1859) had sold out. It had never sold out before!

We are under the impression that Darwin was a giant and that everyone followed his every writing. But that is far from the truth. Darwin was obscure fellow who loved to spend time alone in his study with his grandchildren (his scientific books are marked with their scribblings). He was a kindly man who loved seclusion. And the origin of the human species was not on anyone's list of fashionable topics at parties of intelligentsia. The most popular topic discussed at parties during this period was non-Euclidean geometry, which promised to describe a fourth dimension of time. No one knew who Darwin was. Yet this dry journal publishing this now legendary paper had sold out. It had never sold out in its history. Why was this?

Huxley asked the journalists archly,

The implication was clear: if Darwin had "gotten rid of God," then it was "Anything goes!" The effect was electric. And it was true in its scientific way! For Darwin's thesis supported the idea that the success of an organism depended upon that organism's capacity to promote itself, to reproduce himself .... through as many women as possible. The streets of London had already become the scene of instincts run amok, and sex offered in alleys had become commonplace, not only with sailors on-leave, but also pursued by upper-class gentlemen. This was the reason a new kind of constabulary had to be established in 1829: Bobbies, named for Sir Robert Peel, the British Home Secretary and a devout Christian. And you can be sure that he was intensely lobbied by the wives of these gentlemen, for they were bringing home all manner of diseases .... incurable diseases.

Not long before the first Bobbies were walking the streets of London, chaotic crowds in Paris had stormed the Bastille, overthrowing the Ancien Régime, whose prime organizing principle was God. In 1793 a statue was erected to the "Goddess of Reason" in Notre Dame Cathedral, a symbolic manifesto to supplant the Sovereignty of God.

Throughout the West a philosophical and scientific revolution was taking hold ironically called the Enlightenment, whose foundation was being prepared by a proto-revolution called Empiricism. Its thesis was that all knowledge was valueless unless it could be verified by direct observation. In despair, the Very Rev. John Donne wrote,

wrote the Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral.

Meantime, a religious movement was gathering strength in England called Deism. It rejected the notion of a God Who can hear our prayers, much less answer them. Moreover, according to Deist doctrine, there was no Supreme Being Who kept watch over our lives, no angels, and no One to Whom we had to answer for our deeds and misdeeds. In a word, God-ordained morality, by the lights of Deism, was an illusion, the invention of nervous men, the invention of weak men, Friedrich Nietzche would argue a few years after Darwin's now famous paper, to stop the strong from taking what is their's by natural right.

Members of this "religion of intellectuals" included the principal Founding Fathers of the United States. Needless to say, they saw a necessity for religion if only to constrain the masses.

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I have prepared this précis so that we may view the endgame more clearly: on one side the Living God, Who gives His angels charge over us (Ps 91:11), Who numbers the hairs on our heads (Mt 10:30), Who protects our lives with His Commandments, and to Whom we must render an account in the end. On the other side is a world whose only mediator is human reason (and human rationalization) and whose conclusion is material decay and nothingness. These two great forces collided during the third decade of the twentieth century. And today we remember their sacrifice: 20 million Russian Orthodox Christians.

Now, let us scale this. Local persecutions under the Emperor Nero and others would have numbered in the hundreds. The so-called great age of martyrs under the Emperor Diocletian numbered between 3,000-to-3,500 victims. The Russian martyrs surpass these early Christian martyrs six-thousand-fold.

Precisely which power and authority committed this enormity, which stinks in the nostrils of God? The proximate answer is, the Bolshevik government which began its program of extermination immediately. During the first five years of their regime, they murdered twenty-eight bishops and sent 1,200 priests to the infamous Gulag Archipelago. At least 106,300 Russian Orthodox clergy were slaughtered from 1937 to 1941. By order of Joseph Stalin, one of the world's most magnificent cathedrals, the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, was razed to the ground on December 5, 1931. But this crime, more visible for its dramatic stature, eclipses the greater crime of roving bands of drunken Bolsheviks who destroyed tens of thousands of churches, monasteries, and cathedrals across the eleven timezones of the Soviet Union burning countless icons and murdering parish priests and their wives. Singling out these devout people as enemies of the State, their leaders had subscribed to the doctrines of scientific atheism holding, with Hegel, that "What is rational is real; and what is real is rational." Do you see, the same movement that began with Empiricism in the sixteenth century is that very movement that continues menace us today. They cannot abide Christianity.

In recent weeks in Canada, Bill C-9, passed in Parliament would pave the way toward criminalizing Christian Scripture. England has already enacted such laws designating public reading of certain passages of the New Testament as hate crimes. I read an article about a bookseller who played the Scriptures on audio-book in his stop .... who was dragged off to jail. Could they come through that door?! Well, if things had continued in the way they were going during the Biden Administration, that would certainly have been possible. I have no doubt that I am on somebody's watch list.

The European Union has long required member states to recognize same-sex marriage as a condition for membership. This was cause for great angst in Poland and Hungary, but, you see, they wanted a piece of the worldly pie.

Now, where are the Christian churches in this struggle? Most of them, as you know, vigorously support the woke agenda, and clergy in these churches are carried along, like St. Xenia, by a worldly tide. This is the back-story of the Hermitage. I was ordained into the Anglo-Catholic "party" of the Anglican Communion on the eve of the break-up of the Episcopal Church along these very fault lines. I was then received into the Roman Catholic Church, but, before long, warnings confided by senior clergy would soon become manifest: 60% of all U.S. Roman Catholic priests pursue the active homosexual lifestyle, ². By all reports their numbers have greatly expanded in the ensuing years. And their compulsive interest in minors has become a virtual industry of exposés and documentaries. Unwilling to become organically united to "this filth" (to borrow the words of Pope Benedict XVI), I continued to seek a faithful and decent Church home, not only for myself but for my religious community.

Another member of the Hermitage monastery, Sister Mary Anne, entered the Roman Catholic convent (Franciscan) at age seventeen in 1962. She served the poor in the hills of the Republic of China; embraced life joyfully in a leper colony in India (grieving when the Indian government deported her for such conspicuous virtue); and spent most of the remainder of her life in Jeremie, Haiti, where she, along with a handful of blessed others, developed a small outreach ministry into the largest NGO in Southwest Haiti — providing health care, nutritional assistance, education, books, clothing to almost a quarter-million, every year, of the poorest people on earth. She did this for twenty-five years. Sr. Mary Martha joined her in 2004 and I in 2010. We never thought to leave Haiti. For here was real vocation.

But then the unexpected occurred. We were informed that a founder-director of Planned Parenthood would be replacing Sr. Mary Anne as Administrator. Her close friend, our new CEO, spoke to me privately and said, "the biggest problem in Haiti is all these children."

We were told that we were not to think of ourselves any long as a religious apostolate: that our icons and crucifixes were to be removed and that our chapel was to be suppressed. Now, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Jeremie held the deeds to our two campuses. So we petitioned him, and we would have our answer instantly: he would be supporting the new regime.

Today, we continue to be surrounded by arrogant and aggressive atheists who slap down before us their imperatives, the non-negotiables:

But who will take a stand for God? Would Pope Francis? Will Pope Leo XIV? It is a fact that the Roman Catholic Church is presently trying to negotiate reunion with the Eastern Orthodox Church by holding discussions with the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew. The object of this reunion (as both sides know) is not real. But it will provide cover for their several woke agendas. That is, with this so-called reunion, the whole religious world will seem to be woke, granting permission to everyone everywhere to follow suit.

But, you see, Bartholomew's actual authority extends over a mere two or three thousand communicants (down from five thousand only ten years ago). I said two or three thousand .... you could seat them all in Carnegie Hall and have plenty of empty seats left over.

What is more, unlike His Holiness Leo, the Ecumenical Patriarch is a figurehead only. Negotiating a reunion with him is tantamount to negotiating a military alliance with King Charles III independent of the English Parliament. Again, they know this, but to secure the illusion of unity will be enough. Wikipedia, the minders of AI, and the mainstream press will do the rest. For the Churches in this conversation are "crypto-woke" — internally friendly to woke ideals and clergy but issuing the necessary public pronouncements to placate the "faithful."

A similar game-plan was implemented in 2019. Out of thin tissues of nothing, Bartholomew established an Orthodox Church in Ukraine (OCU) through his outdated powers to declare canonicity. His goal was to sow confusion among the people who had attended the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (est. 988), about a thousand years before the OCU .... ultimately to undermine the Russian Orthodox Church, whose birthplace is Kiev and who had counted the Ukrainian Orthodox Church among its faithful. Four years later, the Russian Federation invaded Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine. moving us a step closer to the unthinkable — the establishment of NATO at the very gates of Moscow.

You know, NATO had a counterpart during the Cold War. It was called the Warsaw Pact. Can you imagine the Warsaw Pact establishing itself along the Canadian border with the U.S. or along the Mexican border with the U.S.?

Wikipedia, AI, and the legacy media have already completed their revision of history promoting the idea that the OCU is the only legitimate Church in Ukraine and that the tenth-century UOC had been dissolved.

Meantime, of the 300 million members of the Eastern Orthodox Church, 170 million are Russian Orthodox and 119 million are Romanian Orthodox (that almost 300 million). These two colossuses oppose this fiction of reunion. They don't go along with this. Then who does go along with it among the Orthodox Churches? Permit me to call the roll. They are, by the way, statistical non-entities. the Patriarchate of Alexandria with its 300,000 members and the Orthodox Church of Cyprus with its 650,000 members. I have already mentioned the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which established the OCU, with its two or three thousand members. Oh yes, the once mighty Greek Orthodox Church with 4 million members supports it. But is this not the Orthodox Church of woke Hollywood?

Stated from another perspective, the atheistic beliefs of the European Union, which requires all member states to recognize same-sex marriage, and American foreign policy, which defines liberal democracy in terms of states protecting same-sex marriage, ³ lay down the challenge to the Russian Federation's policies protecting children from homosexual and transsexual propaganda. As Putin famously has said, "Leave the children out of this!" Certainly, this provides the background for Patriarch Kyrill's characterization of the Russo-Ukrainian War as a holy war.

What does this have to do with Catholic Christians living and praying thousands of miles away on a rock in the middle of the Pacific? We at the Hermitage regard the Russian Orthodox Church as "this island of freedom," ⁵ as Patriarch Kyrill has said. We have learned from first-hand experience that the Russian Orthodox Church stands alone among Christian Churches in its adamantine faithfulness. And, we believe, that when humanity makes its last stand against the forces of evil, which is chiefly atheism, that the Russian Orthodox Church will continue to be faithful unbowing and, finally, unbowed as it has been unbowed for a thousand years.

For these reasons we have humbly petitioned this ancient church to receive us among her children. And she has. (Glory to God!)

A few months ago, Roman Catholic Bishop Joseph Strickland (retired Diocesan of Tyler, Texas) wrote an open letter to the pope and bishops of the Roman Catholic Church. Here is an excerpt:

.... Roman Catholic bishop Joseph Tyler who composed it recently. His Excellency invokes the Gospels:

Do you hear the Master's tone? At the thought of corrupting children, our Lord and God reaches the breaking point. This is no "mercy moment," and judgment will surely follow, judgment for all of these bishops and the "faithful" who have followed them.

And so the Hermitage Sisters and I take our lowly places silently among the men and women and, yes, angels who fight in this holy cause. And because we are Russian Orthodox, we remember each year the tens of millions of Russian saints, whose heroic lives were lived in our century, who, at such a moment, did not run, did not dissemble, did not hesitate, but who confidently took up their crosses and followed the Lord Jesus Christ wherever He went.

For the past century, the Russian Orthodox Church has endured atheism's furious onslaught, which now shows signs of breaking out in full force in the West. But our leaders are clear-eyed, sober, and holy men. Their leadership faithfully follows the example of the Lord Jesus enduring oppression patiently and accepting persecution silently. In this, they are

Shall we now hide our faces (Isa 53:3)? It is at such times as these that faithful Christians must enter the sheepfold. It avails nothing to be scattered on a hillside going it alone lest we be defenseless against ravening wolves. And who are they? They are the hireling pastors (Jn 10:12-13). At least, that is how St. Augustine described such men. We must seek faithful shepherds! But how can we know who they are? They are the ones still following the Good Shepherd. They are the ones who still revere the Scriptures. They are the ones who have preserved the ancient faith. They are the ones who have protected God's morality. On that score, I was very encouraged, on the day of my ordination to the Orthodox priesthood, to hear that I could just as quickly be unordained. One strike, and you're out. I could not have received a more coveted gift!

Our bishops are the ones fragrant of Heavenly holiness. They do not slap you on the back and shake your hand. Thanks be to God that there exist, still, such shepherds! Else we are surely lost.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.   Amen.

¹   Father Columba was was baptized as Steven Lally (1953), confirmed (1967), and ordained as deacon and priest (2005) into the Episcopal Diocese of Quincy, a stronghold of historic Anglo-Catholicism until its demise. He received the Russian Orthodox Mysteries of Baptism and Chrismation (January 20/February 2), 2019; of Ordination as Deacon (January 20/February 2), 2019; and as Ordination as Priest (January 20/February 2), 2019.
²   Rev. Donald B. Cozzens, The Changing Face of the Priesthood. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000).
³   The New York Times, following the lead of U.S. embassies the world over flying the LGBTQ+ flag, has defined liberal democracy in the form of an acid test: whether or not a nation-state recognizes same-sex marriage.
⁴   His Holiness Kyrill, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Homily delivered in the Kiev Lavra of the Caves, 1025th Anniversary of the Baptism of Rus'.
⁵   Bp. Joseph Strickland, (Diocesan of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tyler, Texas, Rtd.) "A Rebuke to Pope Leo and the Bishops" published in several places online.