V.
The Way of the Saints
The
foregoing are much better approaches to the creation and technology than those
of posthumanists and their fellow-travellers, but now we must speak of ‘a more
excellent way’ (I Cor. 12:31 KJV), the way of the Saints of the Church, those
great works of Christ (John 10:37-8) (St Nikolai Velimirovich, ‘A Hundred Points
of Ljubostinja’, Missionary Letters: Part
3, ch. 99, p. 187), who, having purified their souls and bodies of every
defilement of sin, bear within themselves the grace of the Holy Spirit in an
extraordinary measure, which manifests itself in sundry ways for the healing of
man and the world: curing illnesses, receiving
prophecies, casting out demons, restoring an harmonious bond with the animals,
and so on.
The
enemies of God try to overcome the effects of sin - disease, injury, death,
famine, earthquake, storm, and other catastrophes; and all the enmity between
the creation and man - through human and demonic knowledge and the technology
that comes of it. For the Orthodox
Church’s saints, these have already been overcome by the grace of God and by their
ascetic labors in cooperation with His grace, as we see in particular in some
of the lives of the English and Celtic saints, the Holy Fathers and Mothers of
the South in flesh and blood and in the faith.
We
see it in St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne’s (‘Holy Island’) miraculously harvesting
a great store of barley out of season (St Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, p. 258), in the
winds, sea, and storms obeying his words and prayers (St Bede, Life of Saint Cuthbert, pgs. 62-3, 72-3,
89-90), in his healings of the sick (e.g., Life,
pgs. 84-6), in the kindness rendered him by the otters who warmed him with
their breath and dried him with their fur after he spent the night praying in
the cold ocean (pgs. 57-8).
We
see it in the obedience of a flock of geese to St Werburga of Hanbury, and in
her ability to understand a complaint of theirs (Vladimir Moss, Saints of England’s Golden Age, pgs.
167-8). We see it in the staff of St
Etheldreda, which she had placed in the ground one night during a journey while
she slept, bearing leaves and growing into an ash tree (p. 160). In the help St Chad
of Lichfield received from an hart in
converting the Prince-Martyrs Wulfade and Rufine to the Christian Faith (pgs.
111-6). Likewise, St Cainnech (Kenneth)
of Aghaboe developed such a loving bond with a stag that he held his Bible in
his antlers while St Cainnech read from it (Dmitry Lapa, ‘St Kenneth, Abbot of
Aghaboe in Ireland’, Pravoslavie.ru).
We
see it furthermore in St Colman of Kilmacduagh’s close friendship with a
rooster, mouse, and fly (Lapa, ‘St Colman of Kilmacduagh in Ireland, Wonder
Worker’, Pravoslavie.ru). In St Columba of Iona, who foresaw future
events (St Adomnán, The Life of St
Columba, pgs. 112-52), whose prayers and blessings brought forth water from
rock, purified a cursed well, calmed a storm at sea (pgs. 161-3), brought a boy
back from the dead (pgs. 179-80), kept the wheels on a chariot despite the
linchpins being missing (p. 199), forbad the snakes on Iona to harm man and
cattle (pgs 177, 225), conversed with holy angels, and shone at times with the
brightness of the uncreated glory of God (pgs. 206-31).
Hundreds
of years ago, in the supposed ‘dark ages’ of mankind, Paradise was restored,
and Heaven joined the earth (to the extent that these are possible before the general
resurrection and our Lord’s coming again) in the lives of numerous saints in
the Irish and British Isles. This they did without much technology or the
proud mind of man, but rather through contrary ways: through almsgiving, humility, love, prayer
and fasting, making their abodes in forests, swamps, caves, and in simple stone
cells on harsh and forbidding islands, and constant remembrance of God - by
which they attained holiness, became pure temples of the Holy Spirit, angel-like
men who overcame the passions and surpassed their human nature, and tasted of
the life which is to come.
They
are the pinnacle of human achievement, and neither the occult dream of man
merged with machine nor any other such devilish monstrosity will be able to
surpass the saints in their greatness.
VI. ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’ (Matthew
5:3 KJV).
Some
measure of technology will always be present in the fallen world. A house, a shirt, a walking stick: These all come from the mind, will, and hands
of man. So long as we remember our
proper end, to seek the Kingdom
of Heaven through the
difficult labor imposed on us by God after the Fall, no harm will come of our
humble use of tools and skills and of the creation of which we are a part. But when Satanic pride enters our hearts,
when we cast aside God’s grace for deification on our own terms, then
technology becomes a devouring, destructive beast.
The
Orthodox Church calls all the creation to herself for healing, for union with
God:
The history of the world is a history of the Church
which is the mystical foundation of the world.
. . .
The world was created from nothing by the sole will
of God—this is its origin. It was
created in order to participate in the fullness of the divine life—this is its
vocation. It is called to make this
union a reality in liberty, in the free harmony of the created will with the
will of God—this is the mystery of the Church inherent in creation. Throughout all the vicissitudes which
followed upon the fall of humanity and the destruction of the first Church—the
Church of paradise—the creation preserved the idea of its vocation and with it
the idea of the Church, which was at length to be fully realized after Golgotha
and after Pentecost, as the Church properly so-called, the indestructible
Church of Christ. From that time on, the
created and contingent universe has borne within itself a new body, possessing
an uncreated and limitless plenitude which the world cannot contain. This new body is the Church; the plenitude
which it contains is grace, the profusion of the divine energies by which and
for which the world was created. Outside
of the Church they act as determining exterior causes, as the constant willing
of God by which all being is created and preserved. It is only in the Church, within the unity of
the body of Christ, that they are conferred, given to men by the Holy Spirit;
it is in the Church that the energies appear as the grace in which created
beings are called to union with God. The
entire universe is called to enter within the Church, to become the Church of Christ,
that it may be transformed after the consummation of the ages, into the eternal
Kingdom of God.
Created from nothing, the world finds its fulfilment in the Church,
where the creation acquires an unshakable foundation in the accomplishment of
its vocation (Lossky, Mystical Theology,
pgs. 111, 112-3).
If
we in the South will humble ourselves and enter into the life of the Orthodox
Church and begin the journey toward the ‘consummation of the ages’, we will
find that harmony with the creation that our agrarian spirit has expressed a
longing for in plantation farm, horse and rider, many a poem, story, and essay,
and other ways besides:
The Christ-like personality, led by Christ to the
mysteries of the world of God, sees the Logos and the logic of the universe and
every creation as coming from the head of the Creator. When it is mirrored in the mirror of the soul
of such a personality, the creation of sickness and of corruption rises into
responsible impeccability and beauty.
Within the Christ-like soul is revealed the final mystery of Creation
because it sympathizes with and loves Creation.
The loved always reveals his mystery to that one who loves. The Christ-like personality observes Creation
and nature not as wild predators which must cruelly subdue their prey but
instead as weak creatures upon which mercy, compassion, and love must be shown. For the Christ-like personality, Creation is
not matter without a soul to which we must behave with cruelty, audacity, and
exploitation, but as a priceless mystery of God upon which we must show
compassion and mercy through prayer and love.
“Love every creature of God”, says Dostoievski, “and all the creatures
together and every crumb. Love the
animals, love the plants, love every creature.
If you love every creature, you will understand once, then without
effort you will begin to understand more and more every day,” (Dostoievski, Brothers Karamazov) (St Justin Popovich,
Dostoievski, Belgrade, 1940, quoted
in Orthodox Faith and Life in Christ,
pgs. 206-7).
The
complete severing of the creation from God by Protestant and Roman Catholic
theologies, based as they are on the metaphysics of Aristotle, St Augustine,
and Thomas Aquinas, which reject the distinction in God between His energies and
His essence, will never bring forth the full fruits of the Southern agrarian
vision (see Philip Sherrard, ch. 2, ‘Christian Theology and the Eclipse of
Man’, The Rape of Man and Nature,
pgs. 42-62). These theologies will bring
either atheism (God is completely unknowable in his transcendent essence) or
pantheism (the creation is divine, for it partakes of God’s essence). Only life in the Orthodox Church, which alone
has kept safe the doctrine of God’s nearness and knowability in his uncreated energies
(grace) that fill all the creation, and his otherness and unknowability in his
essence (Jay Dyer, ‘How the West Became Atheist’, Soul of the East).
The
lives of our Holy Fathers and Mothers testify to this. As befits us as Southerners, let us be
obedient and pious children toward their priceless teachings and ensamples.
Works Cited
Saint Adomnán.
The Life of St Columba. Sharpe, Richard, trans. New
York, Ny.: Penguin Books, 1995.
Saint Bede. Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Sherley-Price, Leo, and R. E. Latham,
trans. New York, Ny.: Penguin Books, 1990 [1955].
--. Life of Saint Cuthbert in The Age of Bede. Farmer, D. H., and J. F. Webb, trans. Farmer, D. H., ed. New
York, Ny.: Penguin Books, 2004 [1965].
Dyer, Jay.
‘How the West Became Atheist’. Soul of the East. 13 Sept. 2014.
http://souloftheeast.org/2014/09/13/thomism-deism/ Accessed 9 Dec. 2014.
Lapa, Dmitry.
‘St Colman of Kilmacduagh in Ireland, Wonder Worker’. Pravoslavie.ru. 11 Nov. 2014.
http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/75046.htm Accessed 8 Dec. 2014.
--. ‘St
Kenneth, Abbot of Aghaboe in Ireland’. Pravoslavie.ru. 24 Oct. 2014.
http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/74549.htm Accessed 8 Dec. 2014.
Lossky, Vladimir.
The Mystical Theology of the
Eastern Church. Fellowship of St
Alban and St Sergius, trans. Crestwood,
Ny.: SVS Press, 1976 [1944].
Moss, Vladimir. Saints
of England’s Golden Age: A Collection of the Lives of Holy Men and Women Who
Flourished in Orthodox Christian Britain.
Etna, Ca.: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1997.
Popovich, Saint Justin. Orthodox
Faith and Life in Christ. 3rd
ed. Gerostergios, Asterious, et al.,
trans. Belmont, Ma.: Institute for
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 2005.
Sherrard, Philip.
The Rape of Man and Nature: An
Enquiry into the Origins and Consequences of Modern Science. Ipswich, Suffolk: Golgonooza Press, 1991 [1987].
Velimirovich, Saint Nikolai. ‘A Hundred Points of Ljubostinja’. Missionary
Letters of Saint Nikolai Velimirovich: Part 3, Letters 201 - 300. A
Treasury of Serbian Orthodox Spirituality: Vol. 8. Baltic, Hieromonk Serafim, ed. and
trans. Grayslake, Il.: New Gracanica
Monastery, 2011.
By
Walt Garlington
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