Something to ponder as Thanksgiving approaches.

Luke 12:13-15, 22-31

13

Then one from the crowd said to Him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me."

14

But He said to him, "Man, who made Me a judge or an arbitrator over you?"

15

And He said to them, "Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses."

22

Then He said to His disciples, "Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; nor about the body, what you will put on.

23

Life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing.

24

Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap, which have neither storehouse nor barn; and God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds?

25

And which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?

26

If you then are not able to do the least, why are you anxious for the rest?

27

Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

28

If then God so clothes the grass, which today is in the field and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will He clothe you, O you of little faith?

29

And do not seek what you should eat or what you should drink, nor have an anxious mind.

30

For all these things the nations of the world seek after, and your Father knows that you need these things.

31

But seek the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added to you

Is Patriotism the same as Nationalism?

Source: Nicholas KotarNICHOLAS KOTAR | 17 NOVEMBER 2018📷

Recently, in a lamentable [unspecified amount] of time lost while scrolling my Facebook feed, I ran across a post from a person whom I have been avoiding for a while. The reason being that this person’s politics make me angry (perhaps you can relate). Now, I try not to get involved in political debate on social media. It’s pointless and most often bad for all concerned. But this person’s comment was inspired by an idea that unsettled me more than usual.

The point of his comment was this. Why is a Christian media organization promoting a priest’s lecture on patriotism? They should be ashamed of themselves, he implied, because there is no real difference between patriotism and nationalism. And that got me thinking. (And a little mad, but I went and hugged a baby, so that went away quickly).

Is patriotism the same as nationalism? No. It’s really not. But I now get the feeling that too many people think it is, without even realizing it. Patriotism is definitely not in vogue. Hasn’t been for ages, in fact. But to specifically equate it with nationalism (of the alt-right, proto-fascist variety): this is something new, I think.

The lack of patriotism in America, I would argue, is part of the systemic cultural disease afflicting nearly everyone, no matter what their political views. In fact, the lack of patriotism is part of what has led to a rise in political involvement of an almost religious flavor. Everyone is a fundamentalist, these days, it seems. Before you all start hooting about how I’m in league with the alt-right, I’ll try to explain what I mean, exactly. To back up my point, I’m going to quote someone who has been labeled a fascist himself by the New York Times: the Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin.

(All of these quotes are my own translation of an essay in his collection titled A Book of Hopes and Consolations. Yes, I know. Very fascist of him. Also, the paintings I’m using are Pavel Ryzhenko’s, because I think they exhibit a very good vision of Russian historical patriotism).

WHAT IS PATRIOTISM NOT?

📷

Ilyin himself begins with a paean (with a bit too much 19th century oomph for my tastes) to the true patriot. But I’m going with an apophatic approach (sorry, I’m a seminarian). Here’s what Ilyin says patriotism is not:

True Patriotism is in no way self-delusion. The true patriot avoids all illusions about his own country. On the contrary, he is called to realistically look at things, to assess them and then act according to that assessment. He looks at things realistically, sees them as they are. The patriot sees both the strong and weak aspects of his people. He also sees the triumphs and mistakes of other nations.

In other words, the true patriot is a student of history. But not merely a student of his own nation’s history, but a student of other nations’ histories as well. Not to find how bad they are and how great his own nation is. But to see clearly what the strengths and weaknesses of both are. Ilyin clarifies that a love of country is especially not blind:

Love cannot be blind. On the contrary, it must make the eye of the lover clear and piercing. There is no need to naively idealize one’s beloved people. After all, the patriot doesn’t need that! A true service to his people is found not in a demagogic glorification of the nation, nor in lies and nationalistic arrogance. The opposite is true. Love for country is a sober, objective assessment, especially a clear analysis of the nation’s mistakes and shortcomings.

The use of the word “demagogue” here is interesting, considering the obvious demagoguery of many people holding on to power in this country. (And in Russia, and in Ukraine, etc. etc.)

THE DEMAGOGUE

📷

The patriot is not a demagogue. Nor is the demagogue a patriot. This is vastly important to understand. There is no room, according to Ilyin (and I agree) for any sort of national arrogance in patriotism. That is the realm of the demagogue.

There is a line of demarcation between national demagoguery and national prophecy. The demagogue is a poisoner of wells. The prophet is a mentor. National arrogance begins at the moment when the people have become stuck in the level of primitive self-consciousness, where their vices, ideologies, and instructors are not capable of illumining it. This primitive self-consciousness is seen when a person is chained by his own self-perception and can see nothing else. His personal wants or needs take up all his attention and love. His “I” becomes a living and only center of his desires, his will, his efforts, and his joys. He has no doubt in his own reality… A psychologist might call it a kind of autism or even autoeroticism, while the philosopher calls it solipsism. The national arrogance of the demagogue comes from being drunk with oneself. Once it appears, it feeds on two otherwise healthy sources–the instinct of self-preservation and the instinct of vanity.

THE PROPHET-PATRIOT

📷

Ilyin argues that a true patriot seeks to become a prophet of his country’s future. Moreover, this sort of a prophet is like an Old Testament prophet. He doesn’t merely tell the future. He instructs his own countrymen in the proper spirit of patriotism.

If I love my people, I must know in detail their historical development, the uniqueness of their national character. I must learn the territorial, political, economic problems besetting my country. To study the structure of its spiritual “act.”  In short, all its national virtues and vices, its accomplishments and its backwardness, everything that is proper to it and that it lacks. I must know all this thoroughly and assess it fairly. I must hide nothing, nor must I aggrandize anything. The positives are good–they must grow and flourish. The negatives are evil–they must be overcome by a new education of my countrymen. Having come to know my people, I will not hide anything from them. I will justify the good, so that the people will know what is necessary to preserve. I will not remain silent about the evil. More than that, I will uncover it, I will describe it and indicate it. After examining its reasons and sources, I will call my people to wake up, to begin self-purification, to start on the path of overcoming the evil.

📷

WHEN A PATRIOT BECOMES A DEMAGOGUE…

But it’s not enough for the patriot to know about his own country. He must study others as well to widen his worldview. The patriot-prophet knows that it’s not only possible, but necessary to get “inside the skin” of another person, another culture. More than that, he has to be able to laugh at himself and his country.

If the spirit of national arrogance infects a patriot, the results are terrifying:

Then the arrogance turns into real hubris. If the people and its prophets don’t have enough of a sense of moderate and cleansing self-deprecating humor, then they’ll swagger right over a cliff. That’s the moment when you start to hear teachings about the historical exceptionalism of a nation and its mission in the world. And in comparison with this nation, all others are merely a series of obstacles to be plowed over.

To be honest, I’m hearing this sort of rhetoric in a lot of places. Not only in Putin’s Russia. I’m hearing it here. It’s being proclaimed over loudspeakers in Ukraine. The Balkans are seething with it, as is Western Europe. Not too many will disagree with me about that. But Ilyin didn’t see a better political system or a more tolerant world order as the solution to this.

No. The solution is in the self-assessment and self-purification of the individual patriot. Until we become real patriots-prophets, all of us, I think we can expect the same cycle of national arrogance to continue everywhere. That’s not patriotism. That’s nationalism. And no, it’s not the same thing.

What’s in stake on how we treat our neighbors.

Source: Eastern Christian InsightsPRIEST PHILIP LEMASTERS | 05 NOVEMBER 2018📷

Ephesians 2:4-10; Luke 16:19-31

A few days ago, seven Coptic Christians were killed in Egypt as they were going on a pilgrimage to a monastery.  A week ago, eleven Jews were killed as they worshiped in a synagogue in Pittsburgh.  Houses of worship of whatever kind are increasingly targets for violence and vandalism.  Many of the perpetrators of such terrible deeds are motivated by distorted religious beliefs that lead them to think that God wants them to hate, kill, and assault people of other faiths or ethnic identities.  Nothing, of course, could be more contrary to the way of Christ, for how we treat other people is how we treat Him.  Whether we are finding the healing of our souls through sharing in His life is shown by how we treat others, regardless of who they are or what they believe.   Each person we encounter bears His image.

Today’s gospel reading describes a man who found the meaning and purpose of life in rich food and expensive clothes.  He was so absorbed in gratifying his self-centered desires that he had become blind to the humanity of poor Lazarus, a miserable beggar who wanted only crumbs and whose only comfort was when dogs licked his open sores.  There could be no greater contrast than the difference in life circumstances between these two men.

After their deaths, their situations were reversed.  The rich man had spent his life rejecting the teachings of Moses and the prophets about the necessity of showing mercy to the poor.   As such, he had done his best to turn away from God and weaken himself spiritually.  In life, he had made himself unable to recognize even the basic humanity of Lazarus as one who bore God’s image.  Consequently, after his death he was blind to the glory of God and perceived the divine majesty as only a burning flame that tormented him. When the rich man asked Father Abraham to send Lazarus to his brothers to warn them of the consequences of living such a life, the great patriarch responded, “‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’”

It would be hard to overstate the importance of that response.  We all have the ability to make ourselves blind to the most obvious teachings about how we are to treat our neighbors.  Since every neighbor is an icon of God, how we treat them reveals our relationship to the Lord.  Christ taught that what we do “to the least of these,” to the most wretched people, we do to Him.  If we spend our lives hating and disregarding the people around us, we will become those who hate and disregard our Lord.  That way of life is so corrupt that it will make us blind to the good news of our salvation, to our Lord’s victory over the power of sin and death in His glorious resurrection on the third day.  It is a way of shutting ourselves out of the joy of the Kingdom.

If we want examples of where that path leads, just look at those who have become so spiritually blind that they think it is good to despise and kill others in the name of God.  They are not that different from the rich man in the parable, who stepped over starving, bleeding Lazarus every day as he served only his desires for pleasure and self-indulgence.  He had lost the ability to see Lazarus as a neighbor and lived accordingly.

Terrorists and murderers may seem very different from self-centered people who ignore the needs of others, but the roots of their spiritual problems are the same.  They lie in the passions, in our slavery to the distorted desire to find meaning, purpose, and fulfillment in anything other than God.  It is impossible for us to have spiritually healthy relationships with anything in creation if we make idols out of them.   Since we are all made in the divine image and likeness, we will never find peace or satisfaction when our lives revolve around pleasure, possessions, power, revenge, or anything else but the Lord.  The more we give our lives to them, the more we will be their slaves and the more we will justify doing anything to gratify them.  The resulting spiritual blindness leads only to more blindness, more corruption, and more depravity.  When we lose the ability to see any human person as an icon of God and a neighbor in whom we are called to serve Jesus Christ, we become just like the rich man in the parable.

St. Paul taught the Ephesians that the very ground of their life was “God, Who is rich in mercy…[and] even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ…”  They did not somehow earn God’s favor by doing enough good deeds by their own power, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of your own doing, it is the gift of God.”  The apostle also teaches that those who have received His grace are “created in Christ Jesus for good works…that we should walk in them.”

A life that displays the love of Christ in relation to our neighbors is not something that we achieve simply by trying to follow a rule.  Instead, it is a sign of being healed from slavery to our passions by the grace of God.  Healing comes to our corrupt souls through our Lord’s mercy, which we cannot earn and do not deserve.  The point of the Christian life is not simply to follow laws or develop virtues based on our own ability.  It is instead to be transformed personally by the gracious divine energies to the point that the boundless love of our Lord becomes characteristic of who we are as we live and breathe in this world.

If we know that we are being saved through the undeserved grace of God, despite our sins, we must manifest that same grace in relation to our neighbors, especially those we are inclined to hate, condemn, or disregard.  Jesus Christ modeled such a gracious life by ministering to the despised Samaritans and Gentiles, and even praising the faith of a Roman centurion as being superior to that of anyone in Israel.  (e.g., Lk 7:9)  When some of the disciples wanted to pray that fire would destroy a Samaritan village that had rejected them, the Lord refused and corrected them for having the wrong spirit. (Lk. 9:54-55)  He died for the salvation of those who crucified Him, and even prayed for their forgiveness from the cross.  Throughout His ministry, the Savior rejected the temptation to become the expected nationalistic ruler who would serve passions for revenge and domination against enemies and foreigners.  He refused to become a conventional worldly leader by hating and destroying people for being of a different faith and ethnicity.  He had nothing to do with the dark paths that continue to lead people to such spiritual blindness to this very day.

If we recognize the love and mercy that the Savior has extended to us, despite our past and present sins, we will understand that our lives must become icons of His love and mercy to our neighbors.  If we are not being transformed by the Lord’s grace in a fashion that leads us to serve Him in the Lazaruses of our lives, including our enemies, then we risk becoming ultimately like the rich man in the parable.  If we blind ourselves to His presence in the suffering and difficult people around us every day, then we will prefer slavery to the passions over the great victory that our Lord has achieved through His glorious resurrection on the third day.  How we treat others manifests whether we are finding the healing of our souls.   Since we have received grace, let us show grace to our neighbors, no matter who they are or what they believe.  Otherwise, we will reject the gracious Lord Who has made even “strangers and foreigners” like you and me into “fellow citizens of the saints and members of God’s household.”  (Eph. 2:19)