"The Blast of Death's Incessant Motion"

"For Gregory [of Nyssa], the clock whose tick measured off most inexorably and most audibly the passing of tainted time was the clock of marriage. He saw human time as made up of so many consecutive attempts to block out the sight of the grave. Marriage, intercourse, and the raising of children were the most persistent, and the most highly valued of such expedients. It was precisely through the elemental power of the hopes inspired by marriage—and through the tearing grief associated with the dashing of those hopes through the deaths of spouses and children—that it was possible to take the full measure of the burden of anxiety that rested upon men and women, caught as they were in ‘the blast of death’s incessant motion’ (George Herbert).

"Hence the huge symbolic pressure that built up, in Gregory’s mind, around the issue of marriage and virginity. What was at stake, for him, in the virgin life, was not the repression of the sexual drive. That was only a means to a greater end—the withering away in the human heart of a sense of time placed there by the fear of death. This fear could be dissolved most effectively by dispensing with the one social institution that had been brought into existence expressly by the fear of death. Marriage conferred the validation of organized society on that fear. Married intercourse had been the ‘last outward stopping place’ of Adam and Eve in their sad exile from Paradise. It was by joining to have children that they had recognized, in themselves, the full extent of the terror of extinction. To abandon marriage was to face down death. It was to deliver no further hostages to death in the form of children. It was more than that: the abandonment of marriage implied that the soul had broken with the obsession with physical continuity that was the most distinctive trait of a humanity caught in ‘tainted’ time. In the heart of the continent person, the heavy tick of the clock of fallen time had fallen silent." – Peter Brown (The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, p.297-98)

Some saints wear blue jeans...

by Fr Haralampos Livyos Papadopoulos

Let's allow God to surprise us, let him overturn our sense of what is reasonable--drive us crazy. I've written many times and I've mentioned just as often in talks that in our days, modern Christians have a very limited conception of holiness. They've narrow what is so wide and spacious, open and loving toward man, the embrace of the presence of God. When you believe that the only saints are the ascetics, monks with unkempt beards and hair, you exclude from holiness so many souls that live and breathe the grace of God, then you destroy the most important thing in life--the sense of surprise and reversal.

No, saints aren't only those monks and priests with long beards, tattered robes and austere comportment. There are also saints who are crucified but full of joy, with hearts full of love for man and these saints live in our parishes, in our villages and our cities--there in the room next door in our apartment complex, the hospital, the jail or even the mental hospital.

There is no greater sin and simultaneously invalidation of life's beauty than to limit with your religious narrowmindedness the various and even strange ways of God. Paradise is an incredibly beautiful surprise but you want it to be a yawn that never ends.  God's presence is what we could have never expected but you prefer what you've been waiting for. But God won't do you the favor [of accomodating you]. God will remain unpredictable and stubborn before our logic.

Because God, however much we want to imprison Him in our ideas, doesn't shrink to fit our limited understanding, He isn't boxed in by the smallness of our hearts. Always and forever He eludes us. The moment we think we've found Him, He is lost and the second we think that we know Him He becomes unknown. When you say that He is "yours," He will become a stranger and when you think you've gained Him, He make Himself absent.

And I say all of these things because recently I met a clergyman  who didn't have a long beard or long hair. He wasn't slender and "ascetic" in appearance. But believe me, he had such a loving and merciful heart, such humility and love, such balance and harmony in a way I hadn't encountered in many years.

Yet again God had suprised me. His Grace had made it clear to me that it breathes and resides where it wishes and does not give reasons. I understood again that spiritual life, the experience of life in Christ is not lived by those who use it to build up their own reputation and profile, but by those who having stripped and broken themselves  to the point of death, allowed God to conquer them. Because the secret of the spiritual life will always remain the same--to allow God to conquer us with His love.

Let's open our eyes, let's broaden our souls, so that we can see that among us there are holy people, everyday, simple people with simple daily routines. Who live without causing any fuss, they exude the miracle of humanity, the joy and lovingkindness of God.

The saints of the future won't live only in monasteries, nor will they even be wearing cassocks. They will be simple souls that we would never expect, innocent and full of love who live in the apartment to ours in the middle of the city. They will live their damnation without losing hope of paradise. And it is those who will taste paradise and the Grace of God because not even once did they believe they were worthy of it. And remember, they may even wear blue jeans...

(Source)

A note from the translator: Father Haralampos Livyos Papadopoulos is a popular homilist and writer of books about the spiritual life from Crete. His work has the grace of being simultaneously deep while remaining approachable. Like the best of the current generation of Greek clergy and theologians, he is very concerned with shattering the hold of the Protestant moralism and pietism that gripped the Greek Church for much of the 20th century and in general shaking us "religious folk" from the self-satisfied complacency that we all tend toward. I hope this blogpost that I've translated here conveys what has gained him so many followers in the Greek speaking world. 

Ideology as Pathology of Soul

With the recent events in Virginia, we've all surely seen a lot of outrage. Many insist that the moral choice here is very simple: either you side with the Neo-Nazis and their allies or Antifa and those other counterprotesters. If we construe the situation this way, almost all of us would naturally want to be clear that we are against the the racism and the hatred that Neo-Nazism represents. But I must question if many on the left do not go to the other extreme and in doing so actually commit the same error as the racist. I've seen a number of postings on social media justifying violence against anyone who according to the categories of the poster could be construed as a Nazi or part of the "alt-right." I've even seen those who hold far right political views described as "sub-human."

And so the presence of the image of God is denied to a whole swath of human beings for whom Christ died. In short, this is the sickness of ideology, ideology as a kind of pathology of the soul. We become so obsessed with the rightness of our ideas and of the righteousness of our own cause that we blind ourselves to the presence of Christ in the other. Unfortunately, this is a problem shared by adherents of all ideology both from the left and the right. We place an idol of our own making on the throne of God in our hearts and God, as a jealous God, refuses to share His rightful place.

So long as the Holy Spirit does not reign over us and fill our very being, we will not see Christ in those who hate us or with whom we disagree. As St. Palamas insists over against Barlaam, the light of the Transfigured Christ is invisible to the senses and the mind and can only be seen in and through the Holy Spirit. As long as we view our neighbor through the lens of a worldly ideology we know that the Holy Spirit does not dwell in us. We know that we have made an idol out race or history (the right) or ideology and ideological purity (the left). We neglect the fight against the demonic powers at work within our own souls and remain unable to acknowledge the image of God and the beauty in each human being---whether he be communist, neonazi, immigrant, foreigner, Protestant, Roman Catholic, liberal, conservative--whatever group our pet ideology has taught us is no longer worthy of respect and love as persons of infinite worth willed into being by the Tripersonal God who loves all and calls all to communion with Him and in Him with each other.