Ecclesiasticus I: Introducing Eastern Orthodoxy
Ecclesiasticus II: Orthodox Icons, Saints, Feasts and Prayer
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As
we recall the return of God’s holy icons to the churches in 843 A.D. by
the Empress Theodora, and as we proclaim the preservation and the triumph
of our Faith down through the centuries, we are doing so in a society,
in a world which is constantly warring against God and against His holy
Bride, the Church. Yet, for almost one hundred years now, we have been
impressed and thrilled with the great strides and the advancement of man
scientifically, technologically, medically, and in every other way. Even
in the face of so much inequity around us, the world today, materially
speaking, is much better off than ever before. The industrial revolution
from the past century has brought to us the steam engine, the cotton gin,
the sewing machine, the train, the automobile, the airplane, helicopters,
and now rockets and satellites which are even at this moment traveling
through space. We have the conveniences and the luxuries of telephones
and refrigerators, radios and record players, television and sound tapes,
microwave ovens and videos. All this and so much more in only one hundred
years! And we are only at the beginning stages of all this development.
Computers for work and for play, some as large as office buildings,
are in operation and still being modified and improved. Cellular telephones
and other products in communications are just beginning. Our eyes are
on the verge of seeing truly phenomenal things, things that will make
the word awesome to need replacing with another more descriptive
word. Probably some of us will be alive to see the start of travel with
no fuel, but only with the energy of the sun along the electromagnetic
lines which hold the universe together. Truly, the words of the Lord in
the Book of Daniel are now being fulfilled when the Lord tells Daniel
that in the last days many people will be educated and that knowledge
will greatly increase (Daniel 12:4).
As we think on these unparalleled accomplishments on the part of
our fellow man, accomplishments which all of us are enjoying, our hearts
become inflated with deserved pride, one might say. Just see how far we
have advanced. See how we have elevated man’s lot in the world!
People are living longer than ever before, when we compare today’s
lifespan with two and three hundred years ago. Prostheses of arms and
legs have become the norm for certain war casualties and victims of diseases
like diabetes. Bypass heart surgeries are everyday practices. Cataract
surgery is a twenty-minute lazer procedure. Heart transplants are increasing.
Even now a third recipient has been given a mechanical heart. So many
accomplishments have taken place only with man’s health and the prolonging
of human life, that our minds are boggled when we look in all the other
fields and see the same thing happening.
Yet, while all these wondrous things are going on with the intellectual
and material side of life, something else is taking place, something which
does not agree with these truly phenomenal advances; something which tells
us that man is not developing spiritually. Man is not only not growing
spiritually, but he is backsliding as far as the higher values of human
life are concerned.
Look around you and you will see an increase in fortune telling,
palm reading, tarot cards, handwriting analysis. All one has to do to
find their location is to look in the yellow pages of a telephone directory.
Virtually every newspaper in our country has an astrological forecast
on a daily basis. Thousands upon thousands of people cannot function
on a day-to-day basis, unless they read their horoscopes. Almost everyone
knows if he or she is a Libra or a Virgo or a Capricorn. Obviously, for
some people the horoscope has replaced prayer. Judaeo-Christian principles
of ethics and morality have been cast aside to be replaced by thousands
of cults, some of which worship Satan as their god.
As we continue to see Nazi movies and the concentration camp atrocities
replayed again and again on television, and as interest has increased
in the hunting down of former Nazis, we are totally oblivious to the fact
that our country is guilty of the murder of over fifteen million unborn
children — over twice the number of the six million Jews reportedly slaughtered
during the Second World War! The Nazis, we say, were barbaric. Yet they
will tell you it was a time of war. What kind of war is going on with
our august Supreme Court and helpless unborn humans?
Euthanasia is becoming more and more acceptable. If you walk into
any bookstore, you will find books on how to commit suicide in an honorable
and painless way. In a few words man has virtually arrived at that point
of his development at which he is so greatly impressed with his many accomplishments,
that he can now say who is to live and who is to die. Even the suicide,
in a warped way, feels that he is in control of his life, if nothing else.
There is no question, if we study human history, we would see that
man has always wanted to be in control of his destiny. One might say that
it is a natural human tendency. Even the Prodigal Son asked his Father
for his share of the inheritance because he wanted to be solely in charge
of his own life. If we return, for a moment, to our first parents in the
Garden of Eden, we can well understand why this is so. The chief enemy
of man, Satan, the Deceiver and Father of lies, went to our first parents
and convinced them that God wanted to keep them subjugated to Him. This
is why God forbade them to eat from the tree of the Knowledge of good
and evil. But they accepted the convincing big lie that came to their
ears, “No, do not listen to God; for if you eat from that tree, you will
be just like God”. Truly, humankind has inherited this tendency, this
inclination of fallen man to seek his destiny apart from God.
The irony of it all is that God created us to live forever and
to be co-regents with Him. He gave to our first parents a sign regarding
this, right there in front of them in the Garden of Eden. For besides
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the tree of Life. But they
were convinced to do it their own way, or the way in which Satan offered
to them. And they fell. They fell from God’s grace and from the union
they previously had with Him.
The story of the Tower of Babel is a repeat performance of the
garden story, but on a grandiose scale. For even after the world deluge
man was still contending against God. Rather than conforming to God’s
plan for his welfare, man continued to work against Him. Actually, man
wanted to prevail against God; and he still does! “Let us build up a tower,
so that God will not ever again be able to destroy us”. And they began
to build the Tower of Babel, the symbol of a high and an advanced civilization
in which all people spoke the same language, as English is spoken today.
They had an advanced civilization. But they were working against God and
what God represented.
Is the world any different today? Is man achieving so brilliantly
and so rapidly today for the sake of enhancing and glorifying God’s name
and His supreme creation, the human person? Is he doing it because he
believes that man is the image, the icon of God? Or is he building a tower
like those at Babel so that he can stand on the top of it one day and
cry out, “I can give life and I can take it away”.
Why was Baby Faye given the heart of a baboon? The doctors knew
that her tiny body would reject an animal’s heart. It is a fact that the
human body rejects other human hearts. Heart transplant recipients will
tell you that as long as they live, they have to take anti-rejection drugs
for the heart that is in them. Why, then, were those doctors abusing a
helpless human baby and using it as a guinea pig? Could it be that when
they were in junior high school and taking biology that they were convinced
that the theory of evolution was a fact and that man, God’s supreme creation,
evolved from the monkey?
Obviously, in today’s world, as always, true knowledge and false
knowledge have been living side by side. True science and false science
have been coexisting. The genuine and the counterfeit, many times, are
indistinguishable, one from the other.
Therefore, what do we see? In the one instance the medical scientist’s
hand tries to prolong human life or to create it in a test tube, while
in the next instance the same medical hand chokes the life out of a viable,
but premature and unwanted human being! It is as if within the numberless
volumes of true medical science in existence today, we also find copies
of Frankenstein and monster magazines. And we wonder if some of today’s
doctors when they were in their preteen and teenage years (just a few
years ago), if they were not permanently influenced by the monster and
Frankenstein comic books which they were collecting.
What is happening? Why these contradictions in man’s modern-day
growth and progress? Obviously, man is as he always was — a prodigal attempting
to become god even by unethical shortcuts. We cannot get rid of prostitution.
So we legalize it. We do not want to rid our society of drugs. So let
us legalize them, also. Once they are legalized, you see, people will
not be apt to call them immoral. Today’s society wants the freedom of
alternate lifestyles, especially in sex; but it does not desire the burden
of unwanted babies. It does not want the financial obligations that accompany
them. And it certainly does not want the guilt on its conscience. So let
abortion remain legal and no one will be the worse off for it — except,
of course, the icon of God, which is not allowed to come into the world
alive!
Someone may say, “You are being too hard on your fellow man. He
is really working to prolong man’s life on earth. Why look; he has even
begun the method of cryonics wherein a person whose sickness cannot be
healed today is put into a deep freeze compartment to be thawed out one
day in the future, when medical science will have a cure for that particular
sickness”. If one thinks about this for a few moments, he has to accept
that the ones who dreamed this thing up and have started putting it into
practice certainly do not accept the Christian belief in the resurrection
of the dead and the perfect, unending life which Christ the Lord promises.
Obviously, the world today is not conforming to God’s will, but
is working against it. Man still insists on building his Tower of Babel.
He still wants to get to its highest step and to cry out to God, “See,
I did it without you!” The lie of Satan continues on from one generation
to another.
This is why man will continue to be beguiled and will continue
to preserve his monster magazines among his books of learning. However,
mankind will never come to that point of totally removing God from the
hearts of all the people. It will succeed with many, as has been done
already. Many will continue to join themselves with atheism and many more
with the anti-Christ who is coming upon the world. But God’s faithful
people will continue to dwell on the earth awaiting the fulfillment of
God’s promises. Many will make foolish statements like the Russian astronaut
who a few years ago said that he did not find God, when he left the confines
of this planet in a satellite. Many will continue to deny God as the Psalmist
writes: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’. They are corrupt,
they do abominable deeds, there is none that does good. The Lord looks
down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there are any that
act wisely, that seek after God”. (14:1-2).
We will continue to witness
and to be a part of phenomenal progress. We might even live to see the
success of mental telepathy and may have no need of even the most advanced
cellular telephones. But whatever we see and experience must be related
to God and to His plan to determine if they are upright and moral and
in harmony with what God represents. Therefore, we can continue to applaud
the discoveries and the advances of all the sciences; but we should always
weigh them with the unchanging scale of Holy Scripture and the living
Tradition of the Church. Let us continue to support all endeavors in our
society and in our lives which strengthen the fact that man is the supreme
creation of Almighty God and not the afterbirth of evolution. Let us give
due honor to all humanitarian programs and projects which stress the divine
origin of man irrespective of his color or ethnicity or creed.
In doing this, we will preserve the meaning of this historic day
in Orthodoxy. For when we raise up the holy icons of the Church, we raise
one another up as sacred icons of our Heavenly Father! We remind ourselves
of our divine origin and our mission in this life. And as we celebrate
the preservation of our holy Faith, we are strengthened by the words of
our Lord that not even the gates of hell will ever be able to prevail
against His Church, let alone any power in this world. Let us, then, continue
as faithful sons and daughters of God our Father to live according to
His will with the sure hope of the coming, perfect, and everlasting Kingdom,
which Christ our Redeemer has promised to all of His faithful children.
Father
Isaiah is Chancellor of the Greek Orthodox Diocese of Chicago, Illinois.
From Word
Magazine
Publication of the Antiochian Orthodox
Christian Archdiocese of North America
March 1986
p. 5
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