4th paragraph from the bottom: The whole essence of the different [indifferent?] attitude to the glorification
"different" is also in the Orthodox Word version. It does not make sense, unless there was some kind of "different attitude" that's assumed the reader knows of.
St. John of Kronstadt
Touchstone of True Orthodoxy
by Archbiship Averky of Jordanville
The Orthodox attitude to the would be "reformers" of our time is excellently expressed by the great Holy Father of our days, Archbishop Averky, who reposed in the Lord on March 31/April 13, 1976. The following article is the introduction to one of his numerous homilies on St. John (Collected Homilies and Talks, vol. 4, 1976, pp. 224-6).
[*Orthodox Word, St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, Platina, California, Vol. 12, no. 6 (71), November-December, pp. 179-181. ]
In our evil time, when the servants of the coming Antichrist are putting forth all their efforts so as to undermine and replace authentic Orthodoxy with a false "Orthodoxy," an Orthodoxy only in name, there have appeared not a few "pastors" also who bear only the name of Orthodoxy but deny the authentic power and spirit of true Orthodoxy. Precisely such false pastors filled up the ranks of the "Living Church" and the "Renovated Church" clergy in our Russia.
But the "Living Church" and "Renovationism" were not recognized by the believing Russian people, who felt in their hearts their whole falsity; and they brilliantly collapsed on the Russian soil, ceasing their official existence. However, the spirit of the "Living Church" and "Renovationism" has not died, but has continued and up until now continues to live among us also in the Russian homeland, which has been enslaved by the godless, and also abroad among all the Orthodox Local Churches that have become infected with this pestilential spirit, not without, of course, the most strenuous cooperation of those same servants of the coming Antichrist.
These pseudo-pastors, modernists and ecumentists, in place of true Orthodoxy, preach and insistently propagandize false Orthodoxy, flattering all the sinful passions and vices of fallen man, striving in everything to go in step with the times and to adapt the Christian to the "world which lies in evil," under all possible cunning, well-sounding pretexts. Everywhere now they are seizing the reigns of government in the contemporary Orthodox Local Churches. They are striving to play everywhere the leading guiding role and often they have success, for they skillfully and cunningly make themselves seem to be zealots of Orthodoxy.
But their actual aim is to undermine true Orthodoxy by a false "Orthodoxy." in order to make it come about, in the expression of Christ the Savior, that the salt has lost its savor (Matt. 5:13), that it might lose its saltiness, that it might lose its spirit and power. This is a special kind of battle against the Church.
Behold of what a frightful undertaking we are the living and immediate witnesses! By all means there is being conducted in the world a frightful battle against the faith of Christ, by a path of falsification and imitations.
And on the background of this truly most frightful and nightmarish phenomenon, something more frightful than open atheism and fighting against God, which threatens to destroy our holy Orthodoxy from the root, having corrupted it from within – against this background, especially brightly shine our true pastors of the Church of Christ who have not sold their souls to the enemies of our holy faith. And among them, of course, in the first rank, is the great all-Russian pastor, Holy Righteous John, Wonderworker of Kronstadt, the tenth anniversary of whose canonization we are celebrating (1974).
And how characteristic it is that only our Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia has glorified him. [*Archbishop Averky was one of the three Hierarchs who were at the canonization of St. John of Kronstadt on October 19, 1964.] This glorification has been recognized only by a few individuals in all the other Local Orthodox Churches! And let none of those who do not recognize this glorification as correct and lawful justify himself by some kind of purely formal excuses. The formal side here is totally beside the point. The whole essence of the different [indifferent?] attitude to the glorification of our great righteous one lies in the fact that the attitude towards him in our time has become, as it were, a touchstone of the relation to true Orthodoxy, the criterion of the "Orthodoxness" of one person or another.
He who does not love our all-Russian righteous one and does not desire to recognize his glorification in the choir of the saints of the Russian Orthodox Church, by his very fact shows that he does not love Orthodoxy; because the holy righteous John is an authentic Orthodox pastor. He is a living incarnation of Orthodoxy in its power and action.
And it is not for nothing, not at all in vain, that our great righteous one so loved to exclaim: "O wondrous, life-giving divine Orthodoxy! I behold your bright countenance!" After all, he bore in himself and constantly felt the holy incomparable powers and spiritual might of his wondrous, life-giving, divine Orthodoxy, authentic Orthodoxy, true Orthodoxy, in sharp distinction from all that cunning falsity which even in his days passed itself off for Orthodoxy, without being in actuality such at all.
And it is so in very fact. No matter how much those people who threw our unfortunate homeland into the bloody abyss of fierce atheism might have have blasphemed our great righteous one, and then, even when they came abroad, they did not yet become sober, – still his spiritual grandeur and his entirely deserved glory is indisputable and self-evident to any dispassionate and sensible man. But from what source is this grandeur and glory of our wondrous pastor who has acquired world-wide renown? From what source is it?
From holy Orthodoxy. [*Note: Archbishop Averky was one of the three hierarchs who was at the canonization of St. John of Kronstadt on October 19. 1964.]
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