Today is All Saints Day, a day of remembering the saints of the Church. At first the choice of the gospel, the Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitudes, might seem strange but, rather, it is illuminating. Christ's description of tho Good in the Beatitudes include meekness, the poor in spirit, those who mourn--they are not limited to the dramatic apostles, their dramatic lives and deaths.
In many respects these qualities are in the everyday.
Saint Irenaeus was a man of the Second Century, a man who campaigned against the Gnostics. He has a famous quote: “The glory of God is man fully alive.” This has been debated for years; does it imply the value of self fulfillment, without God? In fairness, he answers this himself in the next phrase: “The life of a man is the vision of God.” But it implies that spiritual fulfillment is possible for humans in the everyday.
The author Alan Furst gave an interview once on his writings, a collection of WWII spy stories that describes heroism of everyday men during the time before the war. He says that his readings of the period have led him to believe that evil, a true evil life, requires full time application. That it was simply too hard to be devoted to evil without eliminating all other elements of your life. (Or perhaps evil eventually fills the moral space?) So the caricatures of Evil are true.
Goodness, on the other hand, emerged as a by-product of living a normal thoughtful life inspired, as Irenaeus would say, by God.
Not at all tooth and claw. And achievable by all.
In many respects these qualities are in the everyday.
Saint Irenaeus was a man of the Second Century, a man who campaigned against the Gnostics. He has a famous quote: “The glory of God is man fully alive.” This has been debated for years; does it imply the value of self fulfillment, without God? In fairness, he answers this himself in the next phrase: “The life of a man is the vision of God.” But it implies that spiritual fulfillment is possible for humans in the everyday.
The author Alan Furst gave an interview once on his writings, a collection of WWII spy stories that describes heroism of everyday men during the time before the war. He says that his readings of the period have led him to believe that evil, a true evil life, requires full time application. That it was simply too hard to be devoted to evil without eliminating all other elements of your life. (Or perhaps evil eventually fills the moral space?) So the caricatures of Evil are true.
Goodness, on the other hand, emerged as a by-product of living a normal thoughtful life inspired, as Irenaeus would say, by God.
Not at all tooth and claw. And achievable by all.
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