Artist: Gennady Maistrenko. Photo: pinterest.com
Our modernity thirsts for fun and is quite refined at coming up with ways to amuse ourselves. But having fun doesn’t mean having joy. Fun is often just the feverish fluttering of the wings of a soul stricken by despair. Joy lives by the invincible certainty that its object can never be forcibly taken away—not today, not tomorrow, never. Modernity has lost faith in the very possibility of such joy. Thus, we must remind it all the more insistently that such joy is possible in Christ.
The life of modern mankind has become shrouded in a barely penetrable sorrowful haze. Cold, free-thinking minds with their proud rejection of age-old ideas and the most cherished beliefs in matters of faith, life, spirit, in questions about the beginning, essence, and end of all existence—in the end, themselves don’t know where to go, what to replace the rejected values with, how to fill the resulting void. The confusion of concepts and convictions continues to grow. Everyone fights against everyone and everything, recognizing no one’s authority as absolute. Their construction increasingly resembles the construction of Babel and promises its builders achievements no finer than those of Babel.
What is the nature of modern teachings? They’re all private concepts, mutable ideas, and conclusions that don’t go beyond the narrow circle of a man’s transient visibility and temporary life.
But where is that which in the proper sense can and should be called truth; where are the ideas, knowledge, and conclusions that penetrate into the depth and essence of the world and life, especially the moral world and life, embracing the spirit and destinies of man and mankind, elevating the human spirit above all that’s external, perishable, transient? Where is the way out of the modern tangled, hopeless mess of mutually exclusive and mocking concepts, conclusions, and theories? Where can we find support for hope and confidence that truth, which constitutes mankind’s primordial object of desire, exists, that it’s accessible to mankind?
May the feast of the Nativity of Christ remind all those who thirst for truth, all those who seek it, that it’s given fully in Christ. At one time, the grizzled wisdom of pagan antiquity reverently bowed before it. It enlightened and uplifted new nations.
Christ is the complete incarnation of truth accessible to man. In Him are given, for both the heart and mind of man, clear and joy-inducing answers to all the decidedly torturous and vital questions and inquiries of the spirit. Even His enemies learned and learn from Him. He conquers and captivates the human mind as soon as it rises above the realm of temporality and sensible objects. He acts in the world by convicting hearts, against which all reasonings are powerless. He opens a special path of enlightenment, unusual for natural knowledge—the moral path, purifying and elevating a man’s reason through moral purification and elevation.
If lies and delusions run amok in the world, as they do now in places, they may be able to temporarily obscure the truth of Christ in places. Just as the sun shines a radiant, warm, and life-giving light on a gloomy day, although it can’t be seen behind the clouds, so the truth of Christ always works in the world, though in the struggle with the darkness of doubts, delusions, and lies. Natural knowledge itself, when properly formulated, should lead a man to a clear and complete awareness of Christ’s truth, and then, having revealed all its actual power and having conquered all falsehood, it will accomplish the salvation of the human mind.
To Christ they’ll come.
And evil and lies will fall.
The rich and the poor,
The simple and the wise—all will come.
From every corner, earthly roads
Will lead them all to Christ.
Human grief and suffering,
All the spirit’s thirsts and torments,
The wellsprings of burning tears,
Christ will receive all in His heart,
All will sink into this sea.
(Maikov)
I won’t describe modern morality. The malevolent spirit of the time doesn’t even think to conceal itself. It shamelessly exposes and reveals itself.
But what is there to say to a pure heart and an unclouded conscience; what is there to say to a soul that believes in God and His holy law at the sight of the terrible, apparently irreconcilable struggle of man’s sinful will with the holy will of God?
What is there to say to legislators, rulers, and pastors who have to watch the failure of their best measures aimed at the moral advancement of society? What is there to say to the very victims of modern licentiousness?
Don’t say there’s no salvation,
That you’ve grown faint in sorrow.
The darker the night, the brighter the stars,
The deeper the grief, the closer is God.
(Maikov)
The seeds of truth, goodness, peace, and love sown by Christ haven’t been sown in vain. But the love of God allows the wheat and tares to grow together. Uprooting the tares too harshly before the harvest could destroy the wheat as well, since their roots are so closely entangled together in the fields of this world.
In the moral world, as in the physical, we observe dark and ominous phenomena. Evil seems triumphant and the world seems mired in depravity.
Where then is God’s justice? Here it’s made manifest, the good justice of God. It lies precisely in not destroying the world, but saving it, in drawing forth whatever good is possible from evil itself, in kindling the spark of a new and better life even in the midst of decay and corruption.
The winds of malice sometimes stir up a wild tumult of raging waves in places on the boundless ocean of existence, but these storms and waves never possess even the entire surface of the ocean, and they don’t and never will possess its immeasurable depths—there, in that pure and untroubled element, is eternal peace and quiet. The ocean takes the fury of even the most violent waves endlessly into its depths, without ever disturbing the peace and stillness that reign there.
When Christ proclaims: Love your enemies, and when He prays for His enemies: Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do, this means that the eternally peaceful, unshakably calm, infinitely powerful element of Divine love, which forms the foundation of the entire ocean of existence and, in particular, of human existence, is always ready to receive and does receive into its depths the whole sum of turbulent, malicious waves from the troubled surface. In the depths of Divine love their malicious tumult subsides, they dissolve into the peaceful element, are rendered harmless, causing no damage either to its purity or to its peace. Can we even count how many turbulent waves it has already received into its depths and calmed, transforming their malicious foam into a pure and peaceful element?
Consider the power of the immeasurable depth of the eternally peaceful, eternally calm element of Divine love that Christ has revealed to us, and you’ll understand how insignificant are man’s rebellions against Divine goodness, truth, righteousness, and love. Since Christ was born, since this sun of righteousness arose, illuminating the entire world—and in particular, the human world—with unfading light, man has been given the unshakable possibility of rejoicing continually in unfading truth, in unshakable righteousness, in unconquerable love, and in redeemed humanity.
The rebellions of evil are powerless. Rejoice!
