Introduction:
The Orthodox pages, priests, and believers have drowned in a strange phenomenon concerning the defense of the faith, where they publish news about human behaviors and ethics widespread in the world, and see them as images of the forms of spiritual and moral death. At one time they publish about a phenomenon in Colombia, another in Toulouse, and in the Comoros, etc.; at one time a man in the form of a dog, another in a woman’s dress, and news about a false messiah and another liar, and a conspiracy here and another there. Or they rise up in indignation at a theatrical scene, as happened recently in France — sometimes under the pretext of warning, and at other times to defend the fragile Christian faith, believing that this style draws people to Christ or prevents people from abandoning Christ. This phenomenon I call literally “drowning in the sewers.” This means exactly that we have drowned in the sewers of the world: we no longer see except the worst of it and its ugliness, and we smell nothing but the stench, and we spread nothing but it, in order to warn people from smelling it.
I ask first: what do I care what happens in California in Duck Lane or in Mexico in Apple Street? What do we offer to Christ and to His evangelization? What do I care what happened? Did not the faithful Teacher say: “”You hypocrite, first remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye!” (Matt 7:5)? Have we removed the corruptions from our societies, purified ourselves, and brought about the kingdom of God among us, and become the best nation ever brought forth among people? Questions I leave to you. And we can look at the matter from several angles, but what concerns me is another matter, more severe upon us.
The reason for this phenomenon:
This phenomenon, unfortunately, has a very dangerous spiritual indication. It indicates the emptiness in our souls of the beauty of Jesus, and that we have not tasted the experience of the sweetness of the Holy Spirit. We have lost the love of the beauty that Jesus planted in our souls, and we have become an image of the world’s ugliness and its filth, despite the fact that we reject these images and behaviors, but we cannot help seeing them because we have not loved beauty more, and the world is still alive in us in its entirety. The law says that nature abhors a vacuum. Because we are empty of beauty, we have become full of the ugliness of the world and its images.
Whoever loves beauty cannot speak except of it. Whoever loves his beloved sees his image in everything, and his love becomes bound to his breath by night and by day, and it becomes his talk among his people and his companions, and he sees him in his sleep at night, and sings of him with music, and becomes an image of him. The lover is so enamored of his beloved, to the point of intoxication, that he speaks of nothing but him, of his goodness, beauty, splendor, and fragrance. Whoever loves Jesus is transfigured even in his gaze, and cannot but see the splendor in God’s creation in the world. When Saint Paisios was once asked about the nudist beach, he said: these are icons thrown away. The saint saw in them nothing but an icon, then he fell silent and returned to speaking about Jesus. When he glanced at them with his thought, he noticed in them nothing but beauty (icons). The believers today have come to know about the antichrist and what happens in America and France far more than what is in the Bible.
A question:
I wonder: how did Jesus attract the disciples? Did He tell them about the corruption of the Romans and the Pharisees, and did He describe to them the ugliness of the pagans and how they shed blood in their sacrifices, or did He speak to people about the devil and his ugliness? It was enough that they tasted the beauty in His word “Follow Me,” and they followed Him to death. It was enough for thousands of martyrs to taste the sweetness of Jesus to go to the mouths of lions rejoicing. It was enough that He passed before them and they were drawn by the fragrance of His goodness, and they shook off the ugliness of the sin in their own souls first, before their souls were repulsed by the ugliness of the world and its filth. What brought Mary of Egypt out of the ugliness of her conduct and out of a heart that loved its pleasures — was it not the beauty of the face of the crucified Jesus? Who brought out thousands of monks to live in fasting, toil, and suffering — was it not the love of the beauty that Jesus revealed? Or who transformed Saul into Paul — was it not the beauty that shone upon him at the gates of Damascus? Or the talk with the Samaritan woman, where He showed the beauty of what He had and the abundance of what was with Him, and drew her with her entire being?
It is not our role to tell people about the ugliness occurring in the world, for they experience it in their daily lives. People need someone to tell them what they do not taste, so that they long for it. Spread the love of Jesus and the experience of the Spirit. Whoever tastes the beauty of music rejects on his own its dissonance. Did not the splendor of music alone change Russia to Christianity? Whoever tastes the sweetness of honey refuses the sweetness of water with sugar (in the colloquial: to let people know that your perfume is sweet, there is no need to make them smell the stinking smell of garbage). But the one who has not tasted honey, how will he make people taste it?
As for the results of this phenomenon, they are harsh: it does not bring people back to Christ, nor does it make them repent, nor does it warn them; rather, it deepens the wound of human souls with the ugliness present in the world, contributes to their distortion, and increases disturbance, anxiety, and the absence of peace, and the spread of despair further, and the destruction of all hope. Instead of spreading the beautiful, we have come to contribute in ignorance to spreading those uglinesses and behaviors that, by our spreading them, spread among us. The example of Saint Paisios the Athonite about the fly and the bee applies to us: the bee heads to the flowers and gardens to gather nectar because its production is honey, while the fly heads to the garbage dump. We, unfortunately, do not head to the flowers, and our production is no longer of divine honey.
Conclusion
Nothing attracts the world except the beauty of the radiant Jesus and the sweetness of the Holy Spirit. Those who show the ugliness of the world in order to draw the world to the Church, let them remember that when people came to the Church, they found in it abominations like the world, and corruption and vices, and they returned and denied it. We must evangelize with the love of Jesus alone, and show His beauty, love, mercy, splendor, and goodness, and spread the sweet experiences of the Spirit and His sweetness. Then, whatever vices they see, they will remain clinging to Christ even unto death. One man who has tasted the love of Jesus and is transfigured by it is able to draw a thousand thousand sinners from the depths of the valley of vice. As for us, we are emptiness.