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| Saint Sophrony in his youth. |
Question: You said that when man turns aside towards evil, he loses union with God - that's to say, a break takes place. But surely, this break is one-sided: doesn't man break with God, but not God with man?
Fr Sophrony: Yes. That's where the tragedy of the Fall lies - that
God came and showed that He does not want to be separated from us, but man
separates himself. What this means is that God does not coerce man.
So now we live through such dreadful events: war in Vietnam, war in Nigeria, war in the Near East, famine in the world striking dead thousands and thousands of people. Logically it's clear to me that if man would live according to a different principle, it would be possible to sustain everyone. The resources expended for war, even when there is no war, surpass the resources required for the needs of all those who are perishing. In this connexion - I asked a man in England, 'If you had absolute power, what would you do to the people who seem to you to be guilty of this evil?' His answer was: 'If I had such absolute power, I couldn't act: this power would paralyse me.'
And we see before us, paralysed like that, Christ our
God, Who said 'Resist not evil', that is, give your life even when it seems to
you that they are doing evil to you. So although God cannot associate Himself
with evil, His dissociation doesn't imply that He would' cast anybody into
prison, reject anybody, and so forth. His own words 'Love your enemies bear
witness to the fact that in God there is no such rejection.
There is a certain event, which took place outside
time: according to Biblical revelation, before man, Lucifer, son of the morning fell. That is why the Fall of man, which
was instigated by Lucifer, includes Luciferic elements. Yet until now you can
meet very many people in the world who think of man as self-deified: that
nobody or anything is higher, that man is the king of all being, that man will
become the absolute master of the world. But when we talk about sin, we do not
understand it ethically, morally, but ontologically - our conception
goes beyond the norms of ordinary life. Not because it is against the norms,
but because it goes infinitely further than the norms. Moral standards speak in
terms of punishment, but God says 'Love your enemies', and 'Fear not them
which kill you' But this is impossible to explain in words, or to understand
except through the heart, because as long as a man has within himself a feeling
of the presence of death, it is essential for him to defend himself against any
living being which encroaches upon this life, or even upon this life's comforts.
Until now there is war in the world because of this.
Christ said: 'One is your Father, and all ye are brethren'. So whichever war
you take, they always bear a fratricidal character. Cain slew Abel , and we can observe this Cain-like trait
continuously throughout history. Whenever we come across this tendency in
ourselves, the task lies before us of conquering it. For if we carry within us
this Luciferic momentum, the dynamic of the Fall prolongs its development. A
certain man said: 'Maybe it was forbidden to man to know good and evil because,
due to his imperfection and his tendency to fight against evil, he will destroy
all those who seem to be bringing evil, and that's how man's mutual destruction
begins."[ ... ] If people were like children." they would live without
this ceaseless fratricidal fighting. I think that it is not the material
conditions that are the cause of all wars and troubles, but the spiritual
state. And that at the basis of all historical events lie not material
causes, but spiritual.
When I remember how I was living in the desert on
Athos, I think that nobody could describe the poverty of that life. In spite of that a man in such freedom of
spirit would not change places with anyone. In comparison, those who are gathering their property" and
even killing their brothers so as to have yet more possessions, seem foolish,
unenlightened.
Until now people haven't accepted Christ. Even those
peoples who claim to be called Christian have disgraced themselves in history,
because until recent times the most dangerous nations were precisely those who
considered themselves Christian. Less enlightened peoples could not create such
means of destruction as have the nations who have been enlightened by the spirit
of Christ. But this is not because the author of evil, but, as we have been
saying, the great gift of freedom was actualized by these nations in its
negative aspect.
Reference:
Letters to his family. Archimandrite
Sophrony(Sakharov).2015.