Today so many individuals feel alienated from their own jurisdictions because they are marginalized. They are lost among the numerous to some of the oldest and most respected liturgies of the western church. Jurisdictions are scaling back on their parishes and closing so many that people are denied access to the sacraments. The once loving acceptance which was traditional before the reforms is not almost totally lost among the larger jurisdictions. Or faithful parishioners are increasingly being denied access to the faith which they must have in order to be saved. And it is denied them by their own organizational hiearchies, or they are barred from full participation for various reasons.
They forget that the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of Christ is NOT a democratic body but is truly the Mystical Body of all Faithful People. As such all people must be included in it to share in the benefits of saved people. Traditionally we leaned towards the west, but as the reforms deepened we felt that the eastern church held a more faithful application to faith and practice than all of the west does. This is because the west not only embraced near total eccumenism without the wisdom to decide who must be included in the eccumenical movement, but they strayed from the traditional apostolic constitutions and the faith of the early fathers of the church.
We offer an alternative to expensive and exclusivity. Therefore to keep overhead costs low, we offer the best of personal and communal worship in a small environment -- house church worship. We use the traditional and accepted liturgies before they were devastated by reform and modernization, and with a correction for Orthodoxy. Correction means that we eliminate the Filioque in the Creed because this was added in the west contrary to the Council of Nicea. And we include an Epiklesis to ask the Holy Spirit to change the elements of the offertory into the REAL Body and Blood of Christ. Both these things were lacking in the St. Gregory Mass (Tridentine) and in the Book of Common Prayer. St. Tikhon decided that these two things were the only ones which kept them from being acceptible to the Orthodox Church. And of course we do not believe that the Pope is the complete head of the Church, but Jesus Christ is the Head. All bishops are of equal rank and power under His Head. Titulary distinctions therefore are moot.
Our ordained clergy is ALL MALE -- both celibate and married -- and all function as working priests and bishops. This means that they have a profession by which they support themselves, their families, and their chosen outreach, mission or parish -- which has been pre-approved by our bishops. It is because of Our Lord's command that we practice compassionate acceptance of others that we keep the Two Great Commandments summed up by Jesus who commented on the Decalogue. He told us that it is summed up in two great commandments -- the First Commandment is to love God with our entire bodies, souls and minds and the Second Commandment is to love others as we love ourselves. The first is easy to do but loving others is much more difficult.
We do not know God fully becuse He is a mystery, but He is our Lord and Master and our Creator. We fear God greatly because He has the power of life and death, heaven and hell, all in His grasp. We cannot ignore Him or afford to be alienated from Him because from Him all our blessings flow. And it it unto Him that we owe gratitude for the free gift of salvation, when He offered up His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, as a substitute for us, even unto the death on the cross. If we have any difficulty with Him or we have sinned horribly in our lives, we must reconcile to Him, confess our sins before Him, and receive forgiveness of our sins through Christ's Act of Reparation, and then to try to live good lives ever after in His service.
