Salvation involves ridding ourselves of the effects
of the Fall, undoing the Fall within ourselves. This being so, the general culture of America -
pleasure-seeking, purely materialistic, etc. - presents a grave threat to those
who wish to save their souls and bodies.
Fr Zacharias said once in an address,
In
paradise man was in communion with God, and God was life and security for
him. Disobedience and the fall into sin
disrupted this life-giving unity with God, and death entered man’s life with
all its devastating consequences. Thus,
man lost the security and support he had from God, the Giver of life, and out
of fear and the struggle for survival, he conceived his own way of life, based
thenceforward on his natural, created, powers.
Previously, he had kept the commandments of God and enjoyed every good
thing, and lived in incorruption. After
the transgression, though, seeking protection from the threat of death, he took
refuge in the following three substitutes or pseudo-supports, which were to
alienate him from the life of God (cf.
Eph. 4:18). The first pseudo-support is
his self-will and the persuasiveness of his logical reasoning. The second is the pleasure (hedoné) of the senses and the desires
naturally associated with reproduction; and the third pseudo-support is the
possession of material goods. These are
the three substitutes that man turned to for survival, having lost the true
security and life of God.
By
relying on the persuasiveness of his own logical judgement and will, man
undergoes the first alienation and falls into the Luciferian delusion of self
deification, raising a wall between himself and God. In succumbing to the lure of progeny and the
pleasure of the senses, he puts on the “garments of skin” (Gen. 3:21), and
undergoes the second alienation. The
first alienation occurred through the arrogance of his mind, the second took
place by putting his trust in the pleasure of the senses, and in the desire for
progeny. His life is thus preserved, but
it is changed into a “living death”, that is, into a life of self-love combined
with spiritual death – a prolongation of life in death. Finally, so as to feel secure he makes
efforts to acquire “much goods for many years” (cf. Luke 12:19), as “the fool hath said in his heart” (Ps. 14:1),
and so he brings upon himself and the third alienation, which completely
darkens his intellect and hardens his heart.
He is now given over to the vanities of this world and the folly of
idolatry.
The
fall into the whirlpool of these three alienations disposes the conscience of
man negatively with regard to God, to his neighbour, and to the material
world. In his relationship with God, he
gives preference to himself; in his relationship with his neighbour, he is led
by the passionate desire to dominate – lust for power; in his relationship to
the material world, he is given over to the frenzy of acquisitiveness.
Monasticism
aims to remove these three alienations, and to restore man to a genuine hypostatic
form of existence. Aside: To the true
universality, which is the fulfilment of the purpose of man’s creation. End of
aside. The aim is realized by the
accomplishment of the three monastic vows:
obedience, virginity or chastity, and poverty or non-acquisitiveness. Obedience, however, is of particular
importance, because the other two vows draw their power from it, as a natural
corollary (‘On Monasticism II’, The
Enlargement of the Heart, ed. Veniamin, 2nd edition, Mount
Thabor Publishing, 2012, pgs. 222-4).
Sadly, in trying to live the so-called ‘American
Dream’, which glorifies each of the three alienations spoken of by Fr
Zacharias, many not just in the States but around the world have fallen away
from God. Fr Andrew Phillips spoke well
when he called America
and Western culture in general ‘an anti-St John the Baptist . . . preparing the
way for the coming of Antichrist’.
So then, ræther than saving the world and bettering
it, the American way of life is in a very real sense condemning it to a bitter
hell, though pride will often blind Americans to this truth.
The South’s kinship to the þree (three) alienations
is a bit more complex than the rest of the Union’s. Certainly there is a strong streak of
rationalism within her, holding as she does to a Calvinist form of
Christianity. But her life lived down
through the years so close to the soil has kept within her something of the
pre-modern mindset, as Dr Clark Carlton has said in one of his lectures: It has kept her from completely throwing away
all sense of reverence for mystery, Providence,
revelation, and other non-logical, paradoxical ideas.
Her life on the land has likewise taught her to be
content with fewer material things (though as we have seen before, this lesson has not been taken fully to heart). But
as she succumbs to the New England-Yankee (i.e., American) mode of living,
these Southern traits are fading away.
On the subject of marriage vs. monasticism in the
South we hope to say more soon.
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