Æforetime
we saw how the Southern tradition regarding the creation was in accord with the
Orthodox Church’s Holy Tradition. Now we
must look at how it differs.
While
the Fathers agree that there are boundaries as to what man ought to do with the
creation, they do not quite agree as to the place of man within the creation. The
Souðern Agrarians have seen him more often than not as a servant or steward
merely, not as one that has any right to rule over it. They have, as it were, lowered man too much
in the order of creation: It is too
often portrayed as a brooding, unknowable force before which man must bow as
before a god. The Fathers teach us,
ræther, that man, through much difficult self-denial, can see and know the
inner ghostly essences of created things, and, further, that man was made to be
the king, the ruler, over all the created world. Here is what St Gregory of Nyssa said of
man’s kingship in his On the Making of
Man (I:5, II:1,2):
Now all things were already arrived at their own
end: “the heaven and the earth,” as Moses says, “were finished,” and all things
that lie between them, and the particular things were adorned with their
appropriate beauty; the heaven with the rays of the stars, the sea and air with
the living creatures that swim and fly, and the earth with all varieties of
plants and animals, to all which, empowered by the Divine will, it gave birth
together; the earth was full, too, of her produce, bringing forth fruits at the
same time with flowers; the meadows were full of all that grows therein, and
all the mountain ridges, and summits, and every hillside, and slope, and
hollow, were crowned with young grass, and with the varied produce of the
trees, just risen from the ground, yet shot up at once into their perfect
beauty; and all the beasts that had come into life at God’s command were
rejoicing, we may suppose, and skipping about, running to and fro in the
thickets in herds according to their kind, while every sheltered and shady spot
was ringing with the chants of the songbirds. And at sea, we may suppose, the
sight to be seen was of the like kind, as it had just settled to quiet and calm
in the gathering together of its depths, where havens and harbours
spontaneously hollowed out on the coasts made the sea reconciled with the land;
and the gentle motion of the waves vied in beauty with the meadows, rippling
delicately with light and harmless breezes that skimmed the surface; and all
the wealth of creation by land and sea was ready, and none was there to share
it.
For not as yet had that great and precious thing,
man, come into the world of being; it was not to be looked for that the ruler
should appear before the subjects of his rule; but when his dominion was
prepared, the next step was that the king should be manifested. When, then, the
Maker of all had prepared beforehand, as it were, a royal lodging for the
future king (and this was the land, and islands, and sea, and the heaven
arching like a roof over them), and when all kinds of wealth had been stored in
this palace (and by wealth I mean the whole creation, all that is in plants and
trees, and all that has sense, and breath, and life; and—if we are to account
materials also as wealth—all that for their beauty are reckoned precious in the
eyes of men, as gold and silver, and the substances of your jewels which men
delight in—having concealed, I say, abundance of all these also in the bosom of
the earth as in a royal treasure-house), he thus manifests man in the world, to
be the beholder of some of the wonders therein, and the lord of others; that by
his enjoyment he might have knowledge of the Giver, and by the beauty and
majesty of the things he saw might trace out that power of the Maker which is
beyond speech and language.
For this reason man was brought into the world last
after the creation, not being rejected to the last as worthless, but as one
whom it behoved to be king over his subjects at his very birth.
Understand,
however, that by ‘king’ we do not mean a cruel tyrant after the usual image of
kings in the Western mind. Adam was to
serve creation as any real king serves his subjects during his reign, with kindness and love - with the
greatest kindness and love in fact, raising all the things of the earth to
participation in the divine life by uniting within himself all the created world
together with the uncreated Grace of God (See pgs. 136-7, Chapter 7, ‘The
Economy of the Son’, in Vladimir Lossky’s The
Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, Crestwood, Ny., St Vladimir’s
Seminary Press, 1976 [1944]).
But
Adam fell; and having fallen, he and all mankind lost the ability to carry out
this work given them by God. And yet
Jesus Christ, the Second Adam, the God-man, fulfilled what the first Adam
failed to do. Now, by being united to
Christ’s Divine-human body, the Church, through the work of the Holy Spirit,
man (Southern man included) may take up again this work of hallowing the
creation (ibid.).
This
calling, though, still haunts the enemies of God, who try to transform the
creation by other methods.
In contrast to common notions, the banking
sector is in no way left to “market forces,” but is completely gamed,
and the same plan is evident in the A.I. reconnaissance program known as the
“Internet” and “Facebook.” It becomes evident in flash trading and
wash trading, which is preparing us for a cashless global
currency. The alchemy of A.I. is the alchemy of finance, as both are
geared towards the reductionist quantification of all things. Humans are
thus natural resources being trans-mutated into data resources, just as currency is becoming a digital
“resource.”
But
the saints show us by their wonderful lives how God intends us to use His Grace
to bless and hallow the creation in sooð.
One ensample:
"A wonder-worker of the Monastery of the Caves
in Kiev, he was named the Orach-eater because the whole time he lived in the
monastery, he never tasted bread but fed himself on orach [a kind of wild
spinach] prepared according to his own particular method as a sort of bread.
When he gave someone some of this bread with his blessing, it was as sweet as honey,
but if someone stole some, it was as bitter as wormwood.
"At one time, when there was a dearth of salt
in Russia,
Prochorus distributed ashes to the people for salt. The ashes that he
distributed with his blessing became salt; ashes, however, that anyone took for
himself remained ordinary ashes. Prince Svyatopolk ordered that all the ashes
from Prochorus' cell be brought to the court without his permission, let alone
his blessing. When the ashes were brought there, it was obvious to everyone
that they were ashes and not salt. Then Prochorus told all the people who came
to him for salt to go to the prince's court, and, when the prince threw the
ashes away, to take them and use them as salt. This they did, and the ashes
again became salt. The prince himself, learning of this, was filled with a deep
respect and love for him and, when Prochorus died in 1107, placed him with his
own hands in a grave near the great Russian saints, Antony and Theodosius." (Prologue).
***
Þis
being St Patrick’s Feast Day we encourage everyone (especially Southrons, in
whom Irish blood makes up no small part) to honor him and pray to him for salvation
and help.
But
at the same time, ƿe (we) ought to show the same reverence for the
many, many other Irish saints, known and unknown,
that
we give to St Patrick. For they are
involved in our salvation and well-being just as that great missionary is.
Holy
St Patrick and all ye holy Saints of Ireland, pray for us sinners at the South!
