Mission San Luis Rey
living the mystery
Tomas C. Hernandez II
Named after the concluding chapter of, "Discerning the Mystery," by Andrew Louth, what I attempt here is nothing remotely "original" or "peculiar"; rather, my aim is simply to give various reflections on life as an Orthodox Christian through books, quotes, experiences, etc., with the intended purpose both of magnifying the beauty of God as revealed in Jesus Christ, Son of God, and as testified by the life-giving Spirit of God.
"For theology is not simply a matter of learning, though we risk losing much of the wealth of theological tradition if we despise learning: rather theology is the apprehension of the believing mind combined with the right state of the heart...It is tested and manifest in a life that lives close to the Mystery of God in Christ, that preserves for all men a testimony of that mystery which is the object of our faith, and, so far as it is discerned, awakens in the heart a sense of wondering awe which is the light in which we see light."
--Fr. Andrew Louth, "Discerning the Mystery," pp. 147.
Following
Now, perhaps someone will ask, “What is humility?” I will answer that not in my own words, but in the words of St. Isaac the Syrian, who says that humility is the garment of divinity, for it was with this that God clothed Himself when he deigned to come into the world and was clothed in our humble nature. If anyone should further ask what gives birth to humility, we find the answer in St. John of Climacus who tells us that it is born from obedience and putting off of one’s own will. If anyone further asks why humility is considered to be so important, then I reply that it is the only virtue that can kill the greatest sin, which is pride.
Deus creator omnium
A good article written by Father that is particularly relevant to the season at hand. It was published in this month’s WORD magazine.
“O come, ye faithful, and let us drink, not from a well of earthly water that perishes, but from the fountain of light, as we venerate the Cross of Christ: for His Cross is our glory”.
Let us now set out with joy upon the second week of the Fast; and like Elijah the Tishbite let us fashion for ourselves from day to day, O brethren, a fiery chariot from the four great virtues; let us exalt our minds through freedom from the passions; let us arm our flesh with purity and our hands with acts of compassion; let us make our feet beautiful with the preaching of the gospel; and let us put the enemy to flight and gain the victory.
But good is, while evil is not; by what is, then, I mean what is good, inasmuch as it has its pattern in who God is.
“Man is born free, but dies in chains.” There is nothing more false than this remarkable assertion.
Rousseau wanted to say that freedom is the natural, innate state of man, which he loses with civilization. In reality, the conditions of natural organic life provide no basis whatever for freedom.
Iron laws hold sway in the biological world: the laws of instincts, of the struggles of species and races, of the cyclic, repetitious nature of the processes of life. Where everything is ultimately determined by necessity, it is impossible to find a chink or crevice through which freedom can burst in. Where organic life acquires social character, it is totalitarian through and through. Bees have their communism, ants are in bondage, in the herd of wild beasts there is the absolute power of the lead buck.
In the eighteenth century nature was looked upon romantically—or, more precisely, theologically. The Church’s doctrine of the first-formed nature of man was shifted to nature itself and the lost paradise of the Bible was placed in Polynesia. It is no accident that biology is the basis of all modern ideologies of slavery. Racism has its roots in the biological world and, as an utterly bad philosophy of culture, it is closer to natural or animal reality than Rousseau’s thought.
Rousseau really wanted to say: Man must be free; or: Man is created to be free; and the eternal truth of Rousseau lies here.But this is not at all the same thing as saying that man is born free.
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My new icon.
St. Silouan the Athonite and Holy Elder Sophrony of Essex.
It’s an image of a fresco in the Vatopaedi Monastery on Mount Athos.
