London, GB | Formerly of New York, Buenos Aires, Fife, and the Western Cape. | Saoránach d’Éirinn.

Return and Remembrance

Well, yours truly has dutifully returned to hallowed Andreanopolis in pursuit of his last Candlemas term ever, to be capped off (Deo gratia) by the awarding of Master of the Arts degree this June. George Ronald Valentine Hastings Irwin picked me up from the airport on Friday morning and expressed his shock that he was graduating on time in the alloted four years and his even greater shock that I too am on course to complete the very same task.

As we drove down the Guardbridge Road towards our ancient seat of learning, the turrets, towers, and spires of the Royal Burgh were completely shrouded in haugh, that peculiar Scottish form of fog that rolls off the North Sea. Returning to dear old Sallies I came upon Dawn and Lisa, the two cleaners responsible for our corridor, chatting in the hallways (as is their wont), welcoming my return while lamenting my longer-than-ordinary absence. Most of the day was spent unpacking my various posessions. Because St. Salvator’s Hall was used to host a conference over the break, all the inhabitants thereof had been forced to pack away their belongings in storage. Thus after picking up my key from the porter and turning the lock on my room, I was greeted not by the welcome signs of my inhabitation but instead by a room bare but for the rearranged furniture, a different lamp (which doesn’t work, unlike the previous one), and the usual New International Version of the Holy Bible in the desk drawer.

Much to my lamentation, I quickly discovered that the great majority of my cohortem had skipped off to Pluscarden Abbey for a few days. Nonetheless, the trusty Alexander O’Hara was amongst the remaining and we met for a pint at the Whey Pat, just outside the town’s remaining city gate, before repairing to the Cellar Bar for a better brew. The following morning I met up with Ishmael for breakfast at the Victoria Café. [TEXT REDACTED]

After breakfast, I fell asleep in the library reading La Vita Nuova (apologies to Mr. Aligheri, but I did finish it when I awoke). After a woefully disappointing luncheon in hall, followed by ever-so-slighly less disappointing but more filling microwave meal to fill my empty belly, I watched Passport to Pimlico, the splendid Ealing Comedy in which the bombed-out inhabitants of a street in Pimlico discover an ancient document revealing that their home turf is actually an independent territory of the Duke of Burgundy. (Upon the revelation, the local Police Constable Spiller exclaims “Blimey, I’m a foreigner!”). When Whitehall bureaucrats interfere with the tiny statelet’s new-found freedom from pub licensing hours and the post-war remnants of rationing, the people of the district unite to defend their liberties in the long tradition of the English peoples. Quoth one character: “We always were English and we always will be English and it’s just because we ARE English that we’re sticking up for our right to be Burgundians!”

After attending the Vigil Mass at St. James, I had dinner at Abigail’s, after which a gang of us drank a few bottles of red while watching Bright Young Things, Stephen Fry’s directorial debut, which would have been much better if it had ended in the same manner as Vile Bodies, the novel by Evelyn Waugh on which the film is based. After that, we started House of Cards, of which I watched an hour before deciding it was necessary to retire. Woke up rather later this morning, missing chapel, but in time to lunch in hall whereupon I was informed by various chapelgoers that the new hymnal, previously delayed by a strike at the Finnish printing works where it is produced, has been introduced. We mused that since it was printed in Finland and the Muslim hordes are going after anything Scandinavian these days, we’re surprised the hymnal’s not being burnt in the streets at the moment. (My, how all conversation turns to Muslims on this side of the pond!). We mulled torching the nearest consulate of an Islamic country, but we concluded that would make us no different from the wicked ochlos, and remembered they have recently suffered a terrible disaster. “No doubt,” one bejant noted, “were it mostly Christians on the ferry, it would be extolled throughout the Muslim world as God reaking vengeance for the Danish cartoons.” After luncheon, I decided to write this post informing you, dear readers, of the latest.

In the mean time, Ezra Pierce texted from Oxford, reminding me of the Feast of the Holy New Martyrs, Confessors, and Passion-Bearers of Russia. Here is an icon depicting the martyrs, who include one of my favorite saints, the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, a widower of the Royal Family who became a nun and a great servant of the poor founding hosptials, convents, and orphanages. After the murder of Tsar St. Nicholas II and his immediate family, the Grand Duchess Elizabeth with a few other members of the Royal Family and their loyal servants who refused to leave them, were hurled down a mineshaft in Alapaevsk by the Communist Secret Police. Despite the great fall, they did not die, and so the Cheka threw grenades down the mineshaft, all of which refused to explode. The victims below could do nothing but sing God’s praises, quite literally, as they began to sang hymns and continued as the Communists sealed the mineshaft. When the bodies were recovered they were shown to have died of starvation. The icon in question also depicts the martyrdom of Archbishop Joachim, whom the Communists crucified, upside-down like St. Peter, on the Royal Doors of the Cathedral of Sebastopol in 1920.

These are stories rarely told, let alone heard, in the West where for so long this evil terror was praised in the lecture halls and academic presses of our universities and elsewhere. It is telling that in our nation’s capital today there is an entire museum devoted to the Holocaust, and similarly Holocaust memorials are worthily to be found in most major cities, while the victims of Communism are virtually forgotten. Not to denigrate the 10 million souls of the Holocaust, but it was small in comparison to first Lenin and Stalin, then Mao, the greatest mass-murderer of all time, and the dozens of murderous regimes spawned by the Russian Revolution. And unlike Nazism, which has been almost totally defeated, Communism and the ideas behind it have saturated the Western world and, while most (not all) of its despotic regimes have fallen Marxism continues to have great influence today.

Yet, at the end of the day, all that is left for us is to continue to pray and fight Evil wherever it may be found. They can destroy every single thing we hold dear – and rest assured they will try – except for our souls which belong to God. And should we find ourselves as victims of Evil we still have nothing to do but sing God’s praises like saints and martyrs of yesterday, today, and eternity.

Published at 8:45 am on Sunday 5 February 2006. Categories: Journal St Andrews.
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