OSU Formation: Foundations: On our Reality
Ethan helps us understand how we are to engage with reality as Christians, including how to embrace the physical and spiritual realities of our world.
SPEAKER NOTES
A New Perspective: On Our Reality
Tasting the World as Eucharist
Introduction
My work: why not despair?
Today’s spiritual predicament: vacuum of meaning
public murder of the United CEO by Ivy League graduate; celebrated???
Nihilism and Despair
Escape: #1 example digital life
False re-enchantment: psychedelics, UFOs/aliens, AI, New Age mindfulness and yoga
What is the Christian response? Where does the truth and thus meaning live? Response is always, “A person, Christ as God and man,” but to be more specific, it is in the concrete experience of Christ in the world. Show and tell. Dostoevsky’s Brother’s Karamozov, where Alyosha tastes the world as eucharist:
Alyosha from Dostoevsky’s Brother’s Karamozov
Alyosha gazed for half a minute at the coffin, at the covered, motionless dead man that lay in the coffin, with the ikon on his breast and the peaked cap with the octangular cross on his head. He had only just been hearing his voice, and that voice was still ringing in his ears. He was listening, still expecting other words, but suddenly he turned sharply and went out of the cell.
He did not stop on the steps either, but went quickly down; his soul, overflowing with rapture, yearned for freedom, space, openness. The vault of heaven, full of soft, shining stars, stretched vast and fathomless above him. The Milky Way ran in two pale streams from the zenith to the horizon. The fresh, motionless, still night enfolded the earth. The white towers and golden domes of the cathedral gleamed out against the sapphire sky. The gorgeous autumn flowers, in the beds round the house, were slumbering till morning. The silence of earth seemed to melt into the silence of the heavens. The mystery of earth was one with the mystery of the stars....
Alyosha stood, gazed, and suddenly threw himself down on the earth. He did not know why he embraced it. He could not have told why he longed so irresistibly to kiss it, to kiss it all. But he kissed it weeping, sobbing, and watering it with his tears, and vowed passionately to love it, to love it for ever and ever. "Water the earth with the tears of your joy and love those tears," echoed in his soul.
What was he weeping over?
Oh! in his rapture he was weeping even over those stars, which were shining to him from the abyss of space, and "he was not ashamed of that ecstasy." There seemed to be threads from all those innumerable worlds of God, linking his soul to them, and it was trembling all over "in contact with other worlds." He longed to forgive everyone and for everything, and to beg forgiveness. Oh, not for himself, but for all men, for all and for everything. "And others are praying for me too," echoed again in his soul. But with every instant he felt clearly and, as it were, tangibly, that something firm and unshakable as that vault of heaven had entered into his soul. It was as though some idea had seized the sovereignty of his mind -- and it was for all his life and for ever and ever. He had fallen on the earth a weak boy, but he rose up a resolute champion, and he knew and felt it suddenly at the very moment of his ecstasy. And never, never, his life long, could Alyosha forget that minute.
"Someone visited my soul in that hour," he used to say afterwards, with implicit faith in his words.
Within three days he left the monastery in accordance with the words of his elder, who had bidden him "sojourn in the world."
So the question for us is what does it take to be like Alyosha?
Themes:
Alyosha used his purified bodily senses in direction from his Elder
He was contrite of heart through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
Alyosha discovered the Logos in the real material world
Not the digital, ideal, or merely spiritual. You could say he was not spiritual but was religious.
Alyosha was filled with joy moving him concretely to love and heal creation
He neither despaired nor escaped from the world.
How do we know God? How do we know creation?
Tasting, consuming, and communing with Christ in the Eucharist. Knowledge like Abraham knew Sarah: embodied and unitive
Byzantine Liturgy post-communion: We have seen the true light, we have received the heavenly Spirit, we have found the true faith, for the Trinity has saved us
We know and experience the truth through the material world (bodily senses) and teaching of the Apostles (the church, revelation).
Byzantine Liturgy pre-communion: Holy gifts for holy people
Knowledge of the truth is open to us in proportion to our purity.
1 John 1: That which was from the beginning [the eternal Logos], which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life – the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us – that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these things we write to you that your joy may be full…If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ the Son cleanses us from all sin.
St. Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns on Faith 3:5
Blessed is the person who has acquired a luminous eye
With which he will see how much the angels stand in awe of you, Lord
And how audacious is man.
All of nature is a book – St. Anthony
So to the extent that we purify ourselves of sin in the context of the Church’s practices, we acquire a luminous eye to read creation like a book, to see creation like Alyosha did.
What do we discover when we know God and creation?
John 1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it…the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
In creation, in the world, in reality we discover the Logos, meaning, Christ.
Colossians 1: He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.
Truth is the Logos who becomes flesh
In creation
In scripture
In a human body (continued in the Sacraments)
In our human bodies (holiness)
The Logos, the truth clothes itself in symbols, Christ is in disguise, hidden in all things, but we can perceive and experience Christ there.
St. Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns on Faith 81:1
One day, my brethren, I took a pearl into my hands;
In it I beheld symbols which told of the Kingdom,
Images and figures of God’s majesty.
It became a fountain from which I drank the mysteries of the Son.
All these things teach by their symbols:
They open by their sufferings the treasure of their riches,
And the suffering of the Son of the Gracious One is the key of His treasures. (Virginity 11:18-20)
St. Basil says the world is a work of art made by Christ so we would know Him who created it (Homily 1, 23). Just like scripture is the revelation of God, so is creation:
St. Basil the Great, Hexaemeron Homily 5: I want creation to penetrate you with so much admiration that everywhere, wherever you may be, the least plant may bring to you the clear remembrance of the Creator. If you see the grass of the fields, think of human nature, and remember the comparison of the wise Isaiah. ‘All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field.’
This is the same experience that Alyosha had. Again, notice there is not an ounce of nihilism, despair, or escape. Meaning and truth – the Logos – are discovered in reality, not the virtual world or our own heads.
The world is cosmic Eucharist
This is the Christian sacramental worldview. In the eucharist, bread gives us the Logos; in all the world, material things give us Christ the Logos.
What happens when we experience the truth of reality?
Like Alyosha, when we experience the Logos, we experience joy and love for all.
Christ the Logos in the world
Dining: communion through food with creation, with others, and with God
The image of God in mankind: adoration, attention, presence
Academics: all subjects have their origin and point toward the Logos; excellence for the sake of the Lord
It is not difficult to see though that creation is damaged
Christ the Logos is crucified in the world
Sin: see the effects of sin in family relationships when someone is sick
Suffering and death: we are not made for suffering and death
The devil: humanity is captive to death and patterns of sin
Colossians 1: He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.
Christ the Logos is resurrected in the world
“The problem of evil”: God’s response to evil becomes our response.
Christians love creation and are moved passionately to heal its brokenness with Christ.
Elder Zosima from Dostoevsky’s Brother’s Karamozov
Much on earth is concealed from us, but in place of it we have been granted a secret, mysterious sense of our living bond with the other world, with the higher heavenly world, and the roots of our thoughts and feelings are not here but in other worlds…God took seeds from different worlds and sowed them on this earth, and His garden grew, and everything came up that could come up, but all growing things live and are alive only through the feeling of their contact with other mysterious worlds. If that feeling grows weak or is destroyed in you, what has grown up in you will die. Then you will become indifferent to life and even grow to hate it. That’s what I think.
This is exactly what has happened to all who celebrated Luigi Mangione killing the United CEO, and we are not exempt.
So, the best way I can put the takeaway for us is negatively, things to avoid: we must not despair, we must not escape, we must not seek false re-enchantments. Instead we must enter into the real world, purifying ourselves in holiness, where we discover the Logos, and thus where we discover true joy, moving us to love the real world.
Questions:
Where do you see despair, indifference, or giving up on meaning in your life?
How do you escape reality? Digital/virtual reality, imagination, substances, anger, life of comfort?
What is one way you can resolve to re-enter reality?