Metropolitan
Georges uses the third person, “my friend”, and not the first person “I.” More
than a literary technique, “my friend” expresses a spiritual posture which
enables Metropolitan Georges to stand apart from himself which, paradoxically
allows for the intimacy needed to speak openly about himself and the world.
For a long time hope lived, but then came the time of disillusions.
It is not enough for men to realize that they are to repent. For knowing that
their passions lead to a disastrous fate, they do not cease to nurse them. They
fall again into the same sins [either] through weakness or delight. Truly, they
have very little interest in God. Moreover, many have no interest in him
whatsoever. And nothing indicates that the bearers of the message, i.e. “the
stewards of God’s mysteries” should be more profoundly anchored in divine
things.
Many examples convinced my
friend that having faith and professing a way of life that reaches out to
sanctity do not necessarily go together. Man is able to gargle holy words and
flaunt religious practices without so much as ceasing to be an atheist: faith
is not an affirmation but [rather] an adhesion - a union [with God]. “The just live
by faith.”(Rm1: 17). That God be in the air you breathe, that he fill you
with his presence, that he consciously is your only recourse, that you bring
all your thoughts to him, that you desire to re-join your will to his, that you
are convinced that there is only good within you if you seek after his glory;
these are the elements which define faith. Their absence within a man reveals
his unbelief. Being aware of this or that his unbelief is concealed by
religious folklore along with his attachment to confessional and sociological
aspects of the Church changes nothing.
My friend was sure of one
thing; if men of religion are numerous, then men of God are but a handful.
Being close to God excluded him from his own along with many of those who,
though they worked with him for the Gospel, turned out to be men of the world.
In a dramatic way he became conscious of this reality stressed by the Holy
Scriptures: the wheat and the tares grow together in the same field. It was as
if it was necessary for the historical Church to remain in the grip of evil
thus becoming the cross of humanity. Is the Church truly the place of
salvation?. Wouldn’t it be better for man to leave the visible Church [which
is] so miserable in order to be closer to the heart of Christ?. For what good
is it to exert energy on renewing the Church?. What good is it to try [re]
organizing the institution?. What good is time spent on forming study groups,
editing books, looking after all the intellectual, cultural or social aspects
that the religious institution presupposes/accepts if the number of those who
are truly pure remains so insignificant?. Does grasping onto hope justify such
efforts?.
Day after day one persists in trying to build and to establish
these factors knowing that these attempts risk being aborted and that the
Church is at times a source of dryness, of gimmickry and of disgraceful
behavior.
Nevertheless, my friend knew that it was not only in the Church
that man received so many wounds. In society [i.e. the world] man expects to be
bruised. But isn’t the Church better than society?. In fact, both suffer from
the same evils.
I do not think that the wounds sustained in the Church can never be
healed. It is
in the Church that we still receive the living Gospel; we can
properly read it in the company of all the saints who have meditated on it and
loved it. “Where will we go?. You alone, you have the words of eternal
life.”(Jn6: 68). We, therefore, have no other choice but to remain members
of the Church of sinners. Our choice entails accepting the others as they are.
We stay in the Church because it is only in it that the body and blood of our
Lord and Master are found. Without them there is no life in us. We must remain
in the Church made up of the wheat and the tares, for we are awaiting a miracle
which will transform us as it will [also] transform our brothers. We will learn
in drinking from the cup of salvation that which a book will never unveil for
us. We will lose our dreams and we will look after our wounds. The wounds
caused by the nails driven in by those who comprise the Church are often very
beneficial.
The Church of sinners, a mixture of those who repent and those who
are far from repenting, ceased to scandalize my friend when he became conscious
that we are all capable of the worst treachery. “All creatures are born
according to instinct.” Although brought to baptism by his parents, a man
rarely becomes fully Christian, for no one invites him to probe the depths of
his being. For many, baptism is limited to an immersion into water. So many
Christians, priests and bishops included, remain insensible to the breath of
the Spirit. Most Christians are not born. They are like the aborted.
The Church is always out of breath. Aware that she cannot abandon
the spiritually handicapped, she loses track of time granted to her and
[consequently] finds herself full of confusion because of the shame her
children bring upon her as she supports them.
[With] the aborted becoming the norm, my friend expected the worse
abominations on the part of the pastors and their flocks as being focused on
the most useless things. Disturbed by seeing the faintheartedness spread among
the leaders, he regarded the ascension to power of the most insignificant as
the fruit of a resolved will, of a diabolical manipulation. In other words the
devil, so it seemed, with cunning pleasure takes his revenge on the Church by
controlling it through its leaders, who he endows with a self satisfaction that
is impermeable to any criticism, this being [in itself] an immediate qualifier.
Paradoxically, my friend’s analysis of the sad reality of
ecclesiastical life reinforced his conviction that the Church is the place of
salvation and that Christ always finds within it a place to rest his head. For
it is only in her that death no longer has a hold on us [and] that the divine
consolations are abundantly poured out upon us.
My friend was never susceptible to the criticisms made against the
historical Church. They were found void of all meaning. The sins of the Church
are those of ordinary (mediocre) persons that we baptize. These persons,
through human rivalries and by means of the great of this world, are carried to
the command posts of the Church. These persons monopolize the history of the
Church. Without them there is no history. We record in writing the wickedness
of men, their unfolding in time. History is materialistic in the most appalling
sense of the term. The Lordship of God does not necessarily manifest itself in
history through the visible victories of piety or by a society made up of the
“pure.” God also discloses himself in calamities, in wars, in the “failure” of
the Churches and the destruction of the temple.
In a way, no society has ever tangibly reflected the presence of
God. God comes eternally. The whole resurrection is realized in the age to
come. But, in spite of everything, hope enjoins us to build our today,
replenishing it with the Spirit and creating a Christian culture and Christian
world.