UNDERSTANDING
THE ORTHODOX VIEW OF THE WORLD:
TOWARDS TRUE CIVILIZATION AND TRUE CULTURE
Quod petis, hic est: what you seek is here.
FOREWORD
Childhood gives place to youth, youth gives place to the middle years, and then the shadows begin to lengthen. But as we go through life, we are making more than one journey. While we are travelling in the visible, tangible world, we are also travelling within ourselves, in the realms of spirit and heart and mind, on a spiritual quest, seeking ultimate values: Goodness, Beauty and Truth. They give us our purpose -True Civilization. True Civilization is founded on these values of Goodness, Beauty and Truth, which also bear the names of Love, Divinity and the Spirit.
As the years go by, the seeker learns what his heart is set on, discovering his destiny. At first, caught in a web of duties and responsibilities, he may despair of ever gaining his heart’s desires. Then the net breaks and at last he is freed to go where he should be. And so he finds what he has always sought - the fragrant blossoms of Faith, Hope and Love. They give us our identity - True Culture. True Culture is founded on these values of Faith, Hope and Love, which also bear the names of Wisdom, Humanity and Life.
TRUE CIVILIZATION – THE CIVILIZATION OF LOVE
GOD IS GOODNESS
God is Goodness, God is Love. He is the Good Father, Who beheld all that He had made and saw that it was good. God is at the foundation of the world, from Him all things that are began. He appears through the world, like a light piercing through darkness and chasing away the murk. He is the Light of the world, cutting through evil with Goodness, that is Love.
CHRIST IS BEAUTY
In His Body, the Church, Christ is the radiant bearer of spiritual Beauty, Who is born of Goodness. In His purity of spirit, His very nature, He directly transfigures Humanity, raising It up to Divinity. He brings churches to guide the world and endows them with spiritual beauty, with golden icons shining in the black, and this Beauty gives moral significance. For, as it is written: ‘Beauty will save the world’.
THE HOLY SPIRIT IS TRUTH
The Holy Spirit is called by the seer ‘The Spirit of Truth, Who proceedeth from the Father’. Truth is constantly revealed to us and, taken altogether, forms the Tradition. Tradition began at the founding of the Church and continues to this day. Tradition is at the roots of the Old Europe, the Europe of Faith, the Europe of the First Thousand Years, not the new Europe and its ethos, where we are not at home.
TRUE CULTURE – THE CULTURE OF WISDOM
FAITH
Faith is the presence of Goodness. Faith is the quality and texture of human culture. It has humility and simplicity, it is rural and natural. It is in the rhythms of the seasons in mountains and forests, hills and lakes, in woods and fields and provincial market-towns. Faith is whispered in the wooden churches and monasteries, in the trees and in all the secret places. It gives continuity and identity, ever keeping the old ways new.
HOPE
Hope comes from Beauty and is found wherever there is Faith. It is the escape from ugliness, it is opposed to the culture of death of the cities, corrupted by power and riches. Our enemies in the cities persecute the land of Faith and Hope. Hope provides our identity, because of the purity and beauty of Christ our God, Who is the Hope that His enemies would destroy within us.
LOVE
The families in our parishes are shaped by Love, the fruit of the presence of the Spirit of Truth, Who proceeds from Faith. The fathers who labour and the mothers who toil, the children and the grandparents, they all live by Love. In their calendar and traditions, in their costumes and headscarves, in their folk song and dance, in their food and drink, in their overwhelming hospitality, they speak to us of Love.
AFTERWORD
True Civilization is the Civilization of Love, Divinity and the Spirit, the Civilization which seeks after Goodness, Beauty and Truth, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the One Threeness, the Threefold Oneness.
True Culture is the Culture of Wisdom Humanity and Life, the Culture which seeks after Faith, Hope and Love, the fruits of Goodness, Beauty and Truth, the fruits of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
True Humanity is the Humanity of Hope which seeks after the Beauty of Divinity. And the Humanity which no longer seeks after Divinity is no longer Humanity, but something infinitely lower, as history is now showing us.
Fr
Andrew
