Living The Little Mandate

by Catherine Doherty

I've been meditating on The Little Mandate. As I behold how many people are here and as I marvel at God's goodness to me and to all of us, this is how I see the Mandate, in my heart and soul.

Arise — go!

Have we arisen? Or are we just sitting or lying down or leaning against the wall? Simply staying where we are, without moving? This ‘arise and go’ is constant, challenging, profound; it is both heavy and light. It is the voice of God calling to us. We can plug our ears. We can plead sickness. We can plead ignorance. We can plead sinfulness, anything. Unlike Abraham, we're unconsciously afraid to arise and go without knowing where we're going. God doesn't say where to go, only “to the poor, “ but for that he might as well name the whole of the earth.

It demands of us a constant growth in faith, day by day, hour by hour. Once I have arisen and gone, following this voice that echoes in my heart, I can't stop and sit down. I may be tempted to, by any situation that is painful and difficult, in which I feel a failure or cannot face. But all the time God says, “Arise and go."

Sell all you possess.
Give it directly, personally to the poor.

What does that mean to us? It is deeply spiritual, though it has physical incarnations. Sell your desires that possess you, or that you possess: desire for comfort, privacy. that glass of beer, that better mattress. I'm speaking of the little things. That desire that your house always be in order, in the sense of having staff that are congenial to you, with whom you can relate, that make life easy for you.

All these desires must be sold in some kind of unknown market place, or perhaps just dropped, given up as a gift for someone. A desire is a precious thing to give away. It turns into a gem that you can give to God to put in a crown for somebody, somewhere.

The Mandate says “give personally,” so it must be done with great love. Our heart becomes a cup or chalice lifted and given to the poor and to each other. Strangely enough, as we give to each other we give to the whole world. Our heart is like two open hands in which are all our desires. When we give away those which are not in tune with God's desires, we give wealth to others.

Take up My cross (their cross) and follow Me.

My cross is the people I live with and I am their cross. I also have the broad work of taking up the cross of my brother, whoever he is. We all have our own cross, we are cross bearers. But especially in our context of today we must take up the cross of others.

We say to ourselves, “My own cross is heavy, why should I take Kathy's or Bob's cross? I've got enough of my own to carry.” But until we take up each other's cross, the turbulence in our family or community will increase. For besides our natural turbulence of emotion, human weakness and sinfulness, there will enter another: that of the evil one who is always turbulent. Then we really lose our way.

Going to the poor...

That's simple. Our calling is to the poor, both those materially poor and the poor rich, but the first poor that we should go to is one another in our own family. It's the poor serving the poor, in regard to ourselves.

Then comes the phrase that haunted me for years and still does. Intellectually I understand it, but spiritually it has always been a very difficult thing.

...being one with them, one with Me.

These two parts of one sentence are so big that I don't think ten lifetimes can probe them, for they have a million aspects. There is, for instance, the aspect of being physically poor like we are in some of our missions or were when we started: identifying physically with the poor among whom we live.

The poverty in other places is different: people may have running water and so forth. Yet there's a depth to our identifying with them, too. We must come to a total lack of fear of the other and to a total surrender to the other's way of doing things.

At first this nearly kills many people emotionally: eating a different kind of food, all the physical identification. How difficult it is for some, right in our midst, to identify with the other, in deep charity. At moments it's still difficult for me, 52 years later, to identify with the American and Canadian.

Identification is difficult but precious. It involves doing violence to yourself. Yet Scripture says that “heaven is taken by violence” to oneself. To identify oneself with the other is to love him beyond words, a total giving of oneself in truth.

I think it is in this total giving of self that our priesthood of the laity is confirmed. We are a priestly people, we lay people. This is where Christ lays his hands on us or anoints us with the oil of his love. In his extraordinary, mysterious way, he enters into us, the laity.

Once we have identified with each other through love and through emptying ourselves, then we can begin to say, “I live not, Christ lives in me.” Then the priesthood of the laity is confirmed. For when he lives in us in this manner, it is the High Priest who makes us priests. It is not symbolic, it is reality, a reality of faith.

But in order to do this identification, one must prepare. it's almost like a sacrament; and one prepares himself for the priesthood, or marriage, or even confession, the sacrament of the sick or baptism. There is always a time of preparation. To bring the priesthood of the laity to fruition, there is a novitiate of love that really empties us so that we can become one with Christ.

Little — be always little! Be simple, poor, childlike.

When I apply these words to our present situation, I find something that I cannot explain to myself, except of course in the eternal answer of our own inner poverty.

It is when we cease to be little that a given community or family ‘blows up.’ A little child, when something happens that frightens him, simply runs to his father or mother and holds their hand, and all is well. The bogey man disappears. The big dog, which is really about the size of a tiny Pekingese but frightens the child, ceases to frighten him.

I get irritated and miserable when I don't run to my Father nor remember that I'm little. It happens when I don't say Abba, Father God, but rather, “Now Katie, you are a pretty brilliant dame. You've known this Apostolate for 39 years. You can solve this problem by yourself.”

However if I run to my Father and take his hand and cry “Abba” and become very small, realizing that I can solve nothing, let alone the problem of a house or a person, then the big dog, the size of mountains in Switzerland, suddenly becomes the size of a Pekingese.

My Father solved the problem because I approached it with childlikeness instead of in the pride of my intellect, my knowledge of a given situation. People say, “You're an expert on community, on the lay apostolate. “ Am I? Or is God the Expert in me?

Being little, poor, childlike, will solve every problem. So you have a terrible problem in your house: remember you're poor. Don't be ashamed to be a failure. If the Son of God saved us by ‘a failure,’ can't we save our little worlds, yours and mine, by a failure too? I've been a failure so many times! I thank God for showing me that I am poor, as his Little Mandate tells us to be.

By permitting me to be irritated or whatever, God in his kindness has once more reminded me, “Now Katie, don't think you have all the answers, see how poor you are. Be childlike.” It's so simple. If we approached each other this way, our problems would be fewer and smaller.

Preach the Gospel with your life — without compromise!
Listen to the Spirit. He will lead you.

"Preach the Gospel” doesn't mean that we be great preachers of Sacred Scripture, or scholars. It simply means that we live it. Here is our greatest difficulty. I speak for myself. Christ said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who hurt you.”

There is absolutely nothing in this world that Christ has not touched simply by saying, “Love God, love your neighbour and each other.” Everything is subject to the immense Gospel of the love of God, who became one of us. Love did that. Out of the little country of Palestine, most of it arid and desert, came light and a solution to every problem from now until the parousia.

But we close our ears to the Gospel. Because, indeed, it calls us to empty ourselves until there is nothing left of ourselves. For us to walk around in the world for awhile feeling empty is devastating emotionally! It's only after a little while that we perceive that Christ is filling us. It's a sort of death. Those of us who in God's grace have experienced that for a moment, know that the price of preaching the Gospel is terribly high, intensely high.

Yet into these difficulties comes joy. They seem hard and they are. The cross of Christ was hard and so is our life. Yet suddenly, through the goodness of our Father, we're given the Spirit. He enters into our family with a song, with the words of the Father which come to us through his Son. The Holy Spirit has the capacity to crack those words open and to make pleasurable what seemed intolerable.

Suddenly the painful process of growing in faith, emptying oneself, carrying each other's crosses and identifying with the other is lifted up like a song. Into the ears of our soul come words of the Holy Spirit, that Word of Fire who illuminates and warms. The words of that Wind pick us up and bring us right to the mountaintop without touching the ground. Instead of angels, he himself carries us lest we fall or hurt our feet.

If we listen to the Spirit, then all things mentioned up to this point become an adventure and full of light. Strength is given us beyond our imagination, provided we are open to the Wind and the Fire.

Do little things exceedingly well for love of Me.

In the reality of daily living we do little things constantly. But how about the little things of the Spirit: that one step farther, that true smile that comes from the depth of your heart and not only from your lips? When you are numb with tiredness and your body wants only to sit, and suddenly in the crowd you see a sad person, how about that one little touch?

The inner power of the Spirit makes you get up and extend your hand to that person and say, “Good night, sleep well, I will really pray for you. I know without ‘knowing,’ that you are sad.” Suddenly the face of that other person lights up. Then when you get home, don't forget to “do little things well for love of Me.” Don't forget to pray, if only a little: “Lord, I don't know her name, but you know her name. Cheer her.” Then you can go to sleep.

That's very little, but it too has to be done well. This Mandate is not only physical; that is to say it's not only that I must arise. It's deeply spiritual, regarding the hidden life of the Spirit.

The Little Mandate is like a misty horizon that under the sun or the fire of the Spirit, extends in depth. Each one of those words calls you until the end of your life. Only when you are laid into the grave will you know the dimension of the road and the country you have travelled. It's much bigger than the distance between earth and moon, in fact it's infinite.

Love... love... love, never counting the cost.

I barely dare to touch that because, speaking for myself, I have counted the cost very often. As God knows, I have cried out, “Lord, that is impossible!” To love means to surrender to every situation, no matter how horrible and impossible. To love means to surrender to every person, no matter how terrible or obnoxious. It means to stand naked with the naked crucified Christ in the market place where people may spit at you or push you.

But doing this has the power to make the other surrender to God. Our love, when it is without counting the cost, leads the other toward God. Our love makes straight the paths of the Lord. I wouldn't think of it as a bulldozer because I don't like machines and I don't think it is as easy as manning a bulldozer!

It's making straight the paths of the Lord with our bare hands and bare feet, sometimes through brambles. Torn and broken, we still keep moving so that other people can follow this little path without being scratched. No matter what the price, we make a road to Christ for the other. It's life in the Spirit.

There can be no self-pity in the person who makes straight the way of the Lord. No matter how hard it is to love and love and love again, always the Fire and the Wind are there, so you resolutely enter the brambles. Then after you've made about six steps, or perhaps only three, a tremendous Wind comes like a tornado and — whoosh! there are no brambles, for they are torn from the path. All God asks is an act of faith made with love and he will do the rest.

When our heart is open to that Gospel we must preach, a shadow falls over us: Someone Else is walking beside us. Faith brings Christ right next to us. As we surrender to “Love without counting the cost,” immediately we see Golgotha. We hear, “I thirst!” and we understand what love is. Dimly, that is, for who can understand God?

Go into the marketplace and stay with Me. Pray, fast.

What is the marketplace? Is it the secular city? Is it the factual market place, that is to say the urban inner city? Is it suburbia where all the supermarkets are? No. The marketplace is simply the soul of man. It is the place where man trades his soul either to God or to the devil or to the ‘in between,’ with indifference, tepidity and complacency.

We must deal with the tepid in that supermarket of the spiritual world. We might be called to trade with offal, with leftovers from big restaurants of the devil, with any kind of refuse in that market place of souls. Perhaps I exaggerate, perhaps my Russian symbolism gets the best of me!

But when you get into the mire of this terrible tepidity, which is really like liquid refuse around you, you clean it up and, believe it or not, you can trade it in to the factory that makes fertilizer. It takes a little doing to carry such wastes from some place to the factory! That's the moment when you want to turn away, spiritually, psychologically and physically. You say, “Lord, this is impossible.”

He replies, “Now is the moment when you have to pray and fast.” For this calls for a revolution. It is truly impossible unless we are armed with the strength of the Lord which comes through prayer and fasting. I have no other remedy for tepidity, indifference, what we used to call the Sunday Catholic. Little ‘nitty-gritty’ sins and the absence of any kind of love or understanding, is what I call the offal.

source: http://www.madonnahouse.org/mandate/living.html

The Little Mandate

Arise — go! Sell all you possess. Give it directly, personally to the poor. Take up My cross (their cross) and follow Me, going to the poor, being poor, being one with them, one with Me.

Little — be always little! Be simple, poor, childlike.

Preach the Gospel with your life — without compromise! Listen to the Spirit. He will lead you.

Do little things exceedingly well for love of Me.

Love... love... love, never counting the cost.

Go into the marketplace and stay with Me. Pray, fast. Pray always, fast.

Be hidden. Be a light to your neighbour’s feet. Go without fear into the depth of men’s hearts. I shall be with you.

Pray always. I will be your rest.

source: http://www.madonnahouse.org/mandate/index.html

Peasant Commune in Russia

The institution of the peasant commune in prerevolutionary Russia is one of the world’s unique institutions; and also one that is almost unknown. As Americans continue to work long hours for comparatively less pay, continue to see unions disappear and see any kind of job security dissipate, maybe it is time to look at other models of economic organization.

It need not be said that the commune, for American historiography, is derided. This is largely for one important reason: the architects of liberalism and capitalism in Russia were the elite; the elite political and economic forces. For them, the commune was an irritant, a set of protections that permitted the average peasant a great deal of protection against exploitation. the destruction of the commune then, was absolutely necessary for the Russian neo-Jacobins to impose constitutional capitalism on Royal Russia.

In the commune, the church calendar was the primary medium for telling time. This meant that the work year was short, for the calendar of traditional Christianity saw four fast periods as well as dozens of major feasts, whether local, national or pan-Orthodox. One of the main reasons the liberal bourgeois in Russia hated the commune was that it sanctioned the traditional agrarian practice of only working about 2/3 of the year. The rest was made up in fasting, feasting and cultural pursuits. Therefore, the protections, immunities and traditions of communal life were absolutely incompatible with capitalism, “constitutionalism” and liberalism.

A powerful and seminal article by Boris Mironov, “The Russian Peasant Commune After the Reforms of the 1860s” (Slavic Review, Vol. 44, No. 3 [Fall 1985]), is extremely important for the understanding of the peasant commune. Its significance lies in the fact that it takes its data from the survey of 816 communes between 1878 and 1880, sponsored by the Russian Geographical Society and the Russian Free Economic Society. Its results were astounding, and largely supported the claims of the pro-agrarian and pro-monarchist elements in Russia, then and now. The average peasant had it better in Russia than likely anywhere else in Europe. This data proves it.

It is important to keep in mind the structure of the Imperial Russian state around the middle of the 19th century. The tsar’s power was limited to foreign policy and general taxation. He, of course, was the chief spokesman for the nation and the defender of the Orthodox Church. However, at the agrarian level, where 90 percent of the population lived, royal authority was virtually invisible. The peasant commune was the only relevant authority the peasant had to deal with. Therefore, it is accurate to say that Russia was not a single, unitary state, but rather a collection of thousands of independent agrarian republics, held together by rather weak cords to the central monarchy. Prof. Charles Sarolea, who visited Russia regularly, wrote in the 1925 issue of The English Review:

On closer examination we find the [Imperial] Russian state was a vast federation of 50,000 small peasant republics each busy with its own affairs, obedient to its own laws and even possessing its own tribunals of starotsas (elders). The Russian state was not undemocratic, on the contrary, if anything, there was too much democracy.

What makes the peasant commune such a unique institution is the power it had. Each commune was a completely selfcontained unit, answering to no other authority than its own body of elected elders. All police functions were discharged by the communal authorities. All legal matters were dealt with by the same. Any damage to property, any criminal offense whatsoever, was dealt with at the communal level. All public works were also within the jurisdiction of the commune. It maintained stores of grain during famines and assisted poorer members who suffered during the lean months of the spring. It controlled the cultural life of the people as well as all education. It even built its own parish churches and trained many of the rural clergy. The commune maintained all schools and hospitals. In short, it was absolute.

The state’s interest in this was clear. For the commune to be self governing, yet still loyal to the monarchy, it was necessary for it to be completely independent of the state. Mironov writes, “The government did not risk appointing its own people, who would have been independent of the peasant, to official positions in the commune; that would have been too expensive and ineffective at the same time.” (445)

However, to make sure any village executive (specifically its chief executive) was loyal, he could be removed by the royal-appointed district governor. This, however, rarely occurred, largely because irritating the peasants, the great bastion of loyalty in the country, would not be in the interests of the royal state. Mironov continues in this vein:

If, however, one analyzes how these officials actually functioned, it is clear that the government did not reach its goal: elected officials did not stand above the commune but operated under its authority, and all administrative and police measures in the commune were taken only with the consent of the village assembly. Only very rarely did elected officials become a hostile authority standing above the peasantry: they had to be periodically reelected, had no significant privileges, did not break their ties with the peasantry (elected officials were freed from taxes and other obligations, except those in kind, and continued to perform all forms of peasant labor), remained under the control of public opinion of the village (and in the event of malfeasance faced the threat of retribution), and shared the common interest of the peasants, not the interests of the state. As a rule the elected officials acted as the defenders of the commune, as petitioners and organizers. Frequently they emerged as leaders of peasant disorders despite the threat of harsh punishment. (445-6)

Many liberal Russia scholars might counter this by claiming that the elected village heads were required, after the 1860s, to faithfully carry out the will of the district authorities. However, though this is true, it was also true that no decree of the district authorities had validity in the commune unless it was approved by the village assembly.

According to the data collected by the Russian Geographic Society, the Russian peasant assembly consisted of all male heads of household. Decisions were not finalized until unanimity was reached, or, as Mironov has said, disagreement was brought to a level of silent sulking, which, at this level, was considered agreement. It is important to note, therefore, that each peasant had a specific stake in communal affairs as well as a corresponding voice. Any specific peasant, therefore, could not afford to be alienated from the community, as all decisions could be vetoed even by a relatively small group of disgruntled peasants.

In her “The Russian Peasant Family in the Second Half of the 19th Century” (Russian Studies in History, vol. 38, No. 2,[fall 1999]), Svetlana S. Kriukova sheds some more light on the structure of the family in the peasant commune. Though this article is not nearly as rigorous as Mironov’s (and is geographically limited to the black soil region), it is still very useful.

Because all legislation needed to pass the communal assembly, which was a function of direct democracy, the family became a far more important institution than the modern bourgeois understand. The structure of the peasant family was headed by the oldest male, though a woman would have that title if she was unmarried and her sons were also unmarried (39). The wife dealt with domestic affairs and supervised the female members of the house. The wife had substantial authority in ordering marriages and the timetables concerning various economic projects. The family acted as sort of a mini-commune. It was rational for the male to cast the deciding vote. However, a “mistress of the house,” that is, the mother of the wife, had relatively equal authority with the husband. Generally, disagreements within the family were solved by any elderly living within the neighborhood (41). But, regardless of who made the final decision, all functions of the household ultimately were under the scrutiny of the commune. Interestingly, the communal structure (at least in southern Russia) invented an innovation called “women’s weeks,” which were times during the year where the females of the household would be released from family or communal obligations in order to work purely for themselves. This was done both to raise more money and goods for dowries as well as provide the women in question with sufficient resources for old age or infirmity. (45)

This, in many respects, was to maintain domestic solvency, for the assignment of tax duties made it imperative that each household maintained a proper standard of living. If the head of household was a drunk, or was incapable of keeping the family money properly, he was publicly berated by the communal authorities, often beaten and, in many cases, deprived of his status as head of household. It is clear that those who developed bad reputations as head of household either reformed quickly or lost their status. Many wound up in the army, with the commune then resuming care for the family until the minor male children came of age.

Those members of the family incapable of working, such as the elderly, the mentally ill, crippled or sick, were guaranteed support. Whatever the family could not provide was provided by the commune. The communal courts rearranged debts and taxes, as well as the more important area of land allotment, for those families who dealt with sick or invalid members. No one was permitted to enter severe poverty.

If the state desperately needed the communes to pass certain forms of legislation, they were in no position to force the matter on them. Russian peasants are rebellious; they are fanatical traditionalists, the worst threat to any bureaucracy. The state, then, would resort to every sort of preaching and begging of the village males and elders in general to get things passed, largely in the realm of taxation. But even here, only the commune was capable of assessing tax burdens according to the ability to pay. The royal state, allegedly absolute, had no clue how much money each peasant was making or how wealthy any commune might be. All taxing decisions therefore, were made by elected elders and the assembly.

The commune, through its assembly and elected elders, decided on a periodic land redistribution, where peasant families with many children were granted more, while those with fewer were granted less. The point of work for the communal peasantry was to reach a balance, to maintain a standard of living that could provide all objective needs of the family itself. Profit was unknown, distrusted and, even until the revolution, scorned. Need was the key, and all forms of exploitation were condemned not only by law, but also by the common law of communal custom.

The communal system was based around basic subsistence agriculture as well as the periodic redistribution of land, tax duties and public works. All of this was done within the village assembly in respect to the state, the informal structure of older men in the village who exercised quite a bit of moral authority (men retired at 60 and all dues were forgiven at this time) and the elected executives. This constitutional structure permitted the wealthier peasants to pay the dues of the poorer, which was considered a moral obligation taken from Byzantine times. Poorer households were maintained in lean times largely due to the communal virtue of charity, a virtue maintained not necessarily by law, but by the strong hand of communal custom, which, if it might be said, was actually the basis of the constitution of any commune. In other words, if such ancient virtues were violated, it was not uncommon for severe punishments to me meted out by the people as a whole. Chronic violations were usually punished by banishment or, if the criminal was of the proper age, induction into the army.

As Mironov reports, one of the astonishing and revisionist aspects of communal life as the 19th century began to draw to a close was its amazing vitality. It is common in the Russian history literature in English to paint a picture of the oppressed peasants chafing at the commune (when they mention it at all), waiting to escape to take advantage of the money economy. This is nothing more than bourgeois, Whig history.

There is every reason to believe that the peasantry looked upon the bourgeois with disdain, as well as their competitive money economy. When the reforms of Petr Stolypin made it easier for peasants to remove themselves from the commune and enter the bourgeois economy, very few actually did. According to the data, by the end of the 19th century, almost 90 percent of peasants were functioning within the communal structure. By Stolypin’s reforms in 1905-06, “only an insignificant number of peasants found an alternative to the commune in trade, industry or in the sale of their labor. As in the past, the great majority placed their hopes for a better life in the commune and a new agrarian reform. . . .” (464) This shows, without question, that the peasantry had no use for the liberal capitalist parties, Westernizers or Western socialists. It was the commune that maintained the peasant’s loyalty to tradition and the tsar. It was only those at the extremes of the communal structure who actually left the community for the city. Those who became wealthy and sought even more wealth moved away, and those extremely poor who, for whatever reason, could not function were the two elements that left, but these never amounted to more than 4 or 5 percent. Those that were criminal, slow or just plain uncooperative were inducted into the army, where the famous harsh discipline in the pre-Bolshevik Russian infantry would solve those problems.

The peasant commune is likely one of the greatest supporters of family liberty devised. But its superiority to Western models exists not merely in the results of such organization, but also because it was not “devised.” It was perfected over 1,000 years of often hard experience. The communal structure, the tightly organized extended family and the traditional peasant love for communal and family liberty kept the state at bay right up until the revolution. The destruction of the communes, naturally, came immediately under Lenin’s rule.

The dishonest “radicals” saw the communes as a threat. Many Russian populists (narodniks), such as Alexander Herzen, believed the communal system to be the means whereby a native Russian socialism would challenge the Western, Marxist brand. However, for these liberals, the communal structure was to be completely denuded of traditional culture and became largely a dependency of the new state. All that the socialists said they wanted had already been part of peasant life for a millennium, but the socialists simply lied as to what they wanted.

They sought a non-Christian, secular state run by urban elites who treated communes as departments of state. Ultimately, this is largely the reason the Bolsheviks liquidated large segments of the peasantry. Comparisons of the peasant communal system and modern socialism are pedestrian. They have nothing in common. This is why the Russian New Men of the 20th century ultimately destroyed the commune while publicly professing devotion to it. The commune was a Christian anarchist collective, based around ethnic tradition, the church and the extended family, all interacting on the level of basic equality.

Anarchists sounded ridiculous to the peasantry largely because their secular ideas, to be imposed by force, already existed, and where the virtues of charity and mutual self-government not only existed, but were part of the traditional mindset of the peasantry. The catch was, however, that their new society was to be run by them, on secular and materialist principles with the state, of course, being all-powerful. Peasants then would be truly goyim, mere chattel, at the service of the New Men.

source: http://www.rusjournal.com/commune.html

Thoughts on Forming a Self Sufficient Orthodox Community

As I was going through some old correspondence I found this short
mission statement I wrote as an exploration of Orthodox Community.
The date I have for this places it in 1999, ten years ago! I think
there is a good point or two in there, but there are a few areas where
I could have been more clear or have now updated my opinion. Keep in
mind this is from the pen (keyboard) of a 21 year-old fresh convert to
Orthodoxy.

Thoughts on forming a Self Sufficient Orthodox Community

I hope to help establish a group of Eastern Orthodox families and
individuals who want to have more participation in the daily life of
the Church as well as living in harmony with the abundance of creation
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have given to mankind. To
this purpose, more concrete goals include having a cycle of daily
services, producing as many of our own resources as possible (while
also replenishing said sources) in the areas of food, construction
materials, etc., and to establish a system of economy where both
people who have outside means of income (writers, independently
affluent, telecommuter, etc) and people who want to their work to be
on the community in farming or cottage industries can be accomodated.

The inspiration for such a group comes from many diverse sources;
monastic communities in the Orthodox tradition, small rural villages
that were a norm for most people until the rise of the 20th century,
and Intentional (artificially created) Communities such as Co-housing
or the oft-easily dismissed communes. The focus of the group will be
to live in a community of Orthodox people who share their lives in a
way that is not seen very often in Western society outside of
relatively few villages and monasteries. In this, each participant
will be able to minimize or maximize their involvement as they see
fit, from a retired businessman who just wants a house in the country
near a parish and fellow Orthodox to occasionally communicate with, to
a young husband and wife that want to raise their children in a small
village where worship and morals are the norm, to high school
graduates who want to experience life on their own where they are in a
community of caring people to help develop talents and interests while
earning their keep on the farm or cottage industry.

This would not be a commune in its most popular definition, a group of
income sharing people who live in multi-family dwellings and are
encouraged to follow their own personal beliefs or "gods" as long as
they do not intefere with the good of the commune. Rather, except for
potentially a dormitory style residence for single young adults or
others who would prefer such a living space, the group would mostly
consist of houses spaced as close or as far apart as desired in order
to give each family or person their own private space with community
shared buildings(chapel, library, garage, etc). Make no mistake about
it, this is a type of lifestyle that can be most intrusive sometimes,
where being in such close proximity can sew as much division as
cooperation. But, any type of lifestyle whether urban, suburban,
rural, etc., has its own limitations and virtues.

Initially, such a group would start the bare essentials: a chapel,
dwellings, outbuildings, necessary plumbing, etc. Later, depending on
the size and intentions of the group, a part of the land could be
given to a group of monastics who would receive free land, their share
in the farm, and able hands in return for their spiritual guidance and
prayer, a school could be established for the children being raised on
the premises, a retreat center for families and individuals, or any
number of other ministries and activities could be accomplished.

In many attempts to form such groups in the secular community,
emphasis is put on living in a Utopian community patterned of such
ideas as in the B.F. Skinner novel Walden Two. While each of the
group's plans has merit, their goals are such that they must be self-
fulfilling, that is, paradise will be achieved by humans who
consciously group together knowledge, labor, finances, etc. to
collectively build a "heaven on Earth." Such a mentality is foreign to
the Orthodox mindset, and is to be avoided. We must realize that
everything we are and everything that is exists for the purpose of
glorifying God and being in communion with Him. There will be many
falls, not only physical or material problems, but also those
instances where pride can plant its lethal seeds, i.e., "Look at the
accomplishments that *I* have made, etc." One must be on guard for
such at all times, for the success of the group, yes, but more
importantly for the salvation of our souls.

source: http://groups.google.com/group/orthodoxcommune/browse_thread/thread/4c627a5acab51802/49cc7b0501257cab#49cc7b0501257cab

Angelrage - For the Least of My Brothers

UNOFFICIAL music video for Angelrage's song, For the Least of My Brothers, from our upcoming eponymous CD.
The haunting song is about an encounter with a homeless man who turns out to be Jesus Christ. The band wrote the track in honor of Pastor Bob Beeman in an effort to raise public awareness of the growing problem of homelessness in America, and across the globe. Please watch the video and visit the sites listed at the end to learn how you can help.

For the Least of My Brothers

As I was walking by a man on the street said to me
Please my brother could you spare me some change
He smelled of hard times and pain
On the street in the rain on I walked until he called me by name he said

Can you lend a hand
Dont turn away
Now Im talking to you
Dont you know but for the grace of God, youd walk there too

He was so grateful that it pierced me right through as I gave this wretched stranger all the little I had
I never felt so poor
Wished I could do something more and as I forced myself to look away again he said

Can you lend a hand
Dont turn away
Now Im talking to you
Dont you know but for the grace of God, youd walk there too

Why do my children lack
I gave the skin off my back
Do you not hear their cries
How can you leave them to die

I left there shaken and later that night
as I lay awake convicted there in my warm bed
I wondered how hed fare in the cold world out there and still I hear him calling my name he says

Can you lend a hand
Dont turn away
Now Im talking to you
Dont you know but for the grace of God, youd walk there too

For the least of my brothers could you show them some love
For the least of my brothers up in Heaven above
Sweet child, dont you understand everything that you do for them
You do for me

For the least of my brothers
For the least of my brothers
For the least of my brothers
I sent you

The Man

The MAN is one who sees other’s weakness, but has no sympathy for them.
The MAN is one who uses other’s weaknesses for their own benefit.
The MAN is one who abuses the trust granted by the weak.
The MAN is the destroyer of the hope of the hopeless.
The MAN is the creator of perpetual poverty.
The MAN is stingy with all of his resources.
The MAN sees poverty as a reason to blame the poor.
The MAN judges without mercy.

The Man will be destroyed by Jesus. Soon.

source: http://clicktherevolution.blogspot.com/2005/12/man.html

Prayer for peace

by Paulos Mar Geegorios

Dear Lord and Creator of Mankind,
forgive our foolish ways.
Drop your still dews of quietness
till all our striving ceases.
Take from our souls the stress and strain
and let us confess the beauty of your peace!
Breathe through the heats of our desire
your coolness and your balm!
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire
Speak through the earthquake, wind and fire,
O still small voice of calm!
Restore the peace of world
In the mercy let justice triumph!
Swords into ploughshares
Missiles into fertilizer
May wars terrorism cease
And the days of peace begin!
Blessed be the Lord our God
He has promised, he will fulfill
Strife shall cease, Peace will come
Justice shall reign, joy will overflow.
This terrorism, wars and battles between
ourselves first start precisely in the desires
fighting inside our own selves. We want
something we haven’t got it, so we are
prepared to kill. We have an ambition that
we cannot satisfy, so we fight to get our way
by force. Why do we not have what we want?
Because we don’t pray for it; when we pray
and don’t get it is because we have not prayed
properly, we have prayed for something in
order to indulge our own desires!
Into your hands, O! Lord of all, we commend
ourselves, take us, break us if need be, then
make us anew that in you we may be
healed restored and united! Reach us your
spirit that may guide our thoughts and direct
our wills! Grant us wisdom to know
what is right and power to do what is good!
Come, Holy Spirit, come
Come as the fire and burn
Come as the wind, and cleanse
Come as the rain, and soothe
Come as the light and reveal
Convict, convert, comfort
Consecrate us to do your will.
O! Thou that are manifest, be Thou manifest to us:
From the unreal lead us to Real,
From darkness lead us to Light,
From death lead us to Immortality!
And now committing ourselves along with the
whole of humanity into your loving hands, we would
sum up our aspirations in the prayer saying:
Thy Will Be Done!

source: http://paulosmargregorios.info/Prayers.htm

Christmas homily excerpts from Oscar Romero

by m

With Christ, God has injected himself into history. With the birth of Christ, God’s reign is now inaugurated in human time. On this night, as we Christians have done every year for twenty centuries, we recall that God’s reign is now in this world and that Christ has inaugurated the fullness of time. His birth attests that God is now marching with us in history, that we do not go alone, and that our aspiration for peace, for justice, for the reign of divine law, for something holy, is far from earth’s realities. We can hope for it, not because we humans are able to construct that realm of happiness which God’s holy words proclaim, but because the builder of a reign of justice, of love, and of peace is already in the midst of us. (December 25, 1977)

No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor. The self-sufficient, the proud, those who, because they have everything, look down on others, whose who have no need even of God—for them there will be no Christmas. Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone. That someone is God, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Without poverty of spirit there can be no abundance of God. (December 24, 1978)

We must not seek the child Jesus in the pretty figures of our Christmas cribs. We must seek him among the undernourished children who have gone to bed tonight without eating, among the poor newsboys who will sleep covered with newspapers in doorways. (December 24, 1979)

[From James Brockman, ed. The Church is All of You: Thoughts of Archbishop Oscar Romero (Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1984)]

source: http://catholicanarchy.org/?p=1353#more-1353

The good Christian and the poor

Once there was a good Christian man who was wealthy. He would read his Bible daily, praise God every Sunday and he treated his family well. Every day he would walk to his office from his house.

One day, as he was walking to his office, he saw a man in disheveled, dirty clothes, holding a sign which said, "Homeless—anything will help." The disheveled man looked, pleading with the Christian with his eyes. The Christian turned his head, saying to himself, "He needs to get a job instead of bothering good people on the street." The next day the Christian saw a filthy woman holding a sign which said, "Pregnant and homeless, please help." She asked him, "Could you spare a few dollars so I could get a motel room," he replied, "Isn’t there a shelter you could go to?" And he passed her by. The next day the Christian saw a man with brown skin sitting on the sidewalk with one leg missing. The man asked with a deep accent, "Could you please assist me in any way?" The Christian became upset with all of these interruptions of his pleasant morning meditation, and he yelled, "Can’t you people just leave me alone? Why don’t you just go back where you came from?"

As he walked into his office on that third day, the Christian had a heart attack and died. The angels picked him up and delivered him immediately (or so it seemed to him) to the Father for judgment. The Father looked down at him and said, "This week you have been tested. I sent you three of my angels, to see how you would respond to them. I have brought them here to witness to your action." The first angel, no longer disheveled, but wearing white robes said, "This Christian refused to help me." The second angel, no longer dirty, said, "He told me to find a shelter, but offered no help." The third angel, with his leg fully intact, said, "This Christian told me to go back where I came from. So I am here. He refused to help me." The Father looked at the man and judged: "You have done evil to your brothers and sisters. I gave you many blessings, and you refused to help those in need. You will be punished eternally."

As the enforcement officers came to take the Christian away, he called to the Father, "But Lord, Lord—what about my family? Shouldn’t they be given a chance? Please send one of these angels to them to explain to them their sin so they can repent." The Father replied, "Do they not read my Word daily? If they ignore the one who has been risen from the dead, they will not listen to an angel."

source: http://clicktherevolution.blogspot.com/2005/12/good-christian-and-poor.html

What is wrong with our culture?

by Paulos Mor Gregorios

At the close of the Millennium, one realises with remorse that Christians have not always managed to be the light of the World or the Salt of the Earth, as our Lord wanted us to be. Especially in the last two or three centuries, when Western Civilisation with a supposedly Judaeo-Christian heritage, became the major shaping influence in the life of the human race; human culture has not only not become more Christ-like, but has in fact become increasingly more demonic and anti-human.

War not only persists in spite of talk about living in a global village. Local wars become more numerous and in some cases most inhumanly technological. Nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, made possible by our dramatic advances in science-technology, mock us by refusing to go away, even after the so called Cold War is supposedly over. The horrendous arms trade which feeds wars and helps the oppressors of humanity to exploit them as well, becomes the backbone of many economies.

The baleful cry of the victims of global and national injustice reached a crescendo in the Seventies, only soon to be stifled by other legitimate cries for human rights, for women’s rights and for a healthy life-environment. In the midst of this clash of cries, there descended upon humanity that appalling shroud of a “Single Market Global Economy”, taking away all hope from the oppressed and the poor, gripping them in the vicious iron-vise of near-permanent exploitation by the technologically and militarily more powerful sub-sections of the human race.

Our civilisation has gone sour. It breeds morbid death and mindless violence in such frightening measures. It destroys basic human relations, undermines trust and faith among humans. The family, the ground and matrix of all good human relations, gets increasingly abused, despised and rejected. Gratification, money and power become the most sought after values. Empty talk about “Value Education” and refurbishing old values gets us nowhere.

And Yet, we remain blind to what has really gone wrong. What is at the root of our civilisation is a fundamental denial of the Transcendent as the central element in Culture. In the 18th and 19th centuries Europe decided to throw God out of all that matters -- from education, from healing, from civil governance and from the communication media. Human autonomy, with unaided Human Reason as its principal instrument, was enthroned in place of the Transcendent. And we are reaping the harvest.

Some aspects of this issue are raised in the papers about Gospel and Culture. We hope it starts a discussion.

source: http://paulosmargregorios.info/English%20Articles/Editorials/what_is_wrong_with_our_culture_editorial.htm

To serve and not to be served

PAULOS MAR GREGORIOS

“Then the mother of the Sons of Zebedee approached him along with her two sons, doing reverence to him and asking something from him. Jesus asked her: “What do you want? “She says to him: “Please say that these two sons of mine will be seated one on your right hand and the other on your left hand, in your kingdom.” Jesus responding said to them: “You do not realize what you are asking for. Are you capable of drinking the cup which I am about to drink?” They answer: “We are able.” Jesus says to them: “Of course you will drink my cup; but to be seated at my right and my left — that is not for me to grant; it is reserved for those for whom my Father has prepared those places.”
The ten other apostles were quite annoyed with the two brothers. So Jesus called all of them to him and said: “You know that the rulers of the nations like to lord it over the people and their leaders like to show off their power over other people. It should not be so with your people. But whoever wants to be great amongst you, let that person be a servant of the others. And if one wants to be the chief, let that person be your slave; just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but on the contrary to serve and to give his life as the price of redemption for many others.” Matt. 20:20-28 (free but faithful translation)

The context of the sons of Zebedee episode is in Matthew 20:17-19, and the parable which precedes is of the house-holder who paid the same wages to those who worked all day from sunrise to sunset, to others who came to work at 9.00 a.m., to yet others who were hired at noon, to some who started at 3 p.m. and even to those who worked only for one hour from 5 p.m. (Matt. 20:1-16). It ends with the curiously unjust principle that God can do with God’s kingdom what God likes. The implication is that God’s justice does not follow the principles we usually attribute to our concept of justice.

The parable of the kingdom ends with two statements difficult to exegete: Friend, I am not unjust to you. Our contract was for one denarius. Take what is yours by contract and go. But it is my will that I will give to these last ones the same one denarius I give you. Am I not free to give what I want to give out of my own? Are you jealous about my being good to these people? Thus the last will be first and the first will be last (20:13b-16).

It is important to remember this. God’s justice follows principles quite different from ours.

It is also important that after having narrated this parable, so offensive to our sense of justice, Jesus was about to “go up” to Jerusalem for the great act of diakonia — that of laying down his life for others. Jesus calls the Twelve aside by themselves and discloses to them: Look, we are going up to Jerusalem. There the Son of Man will he betrayed and handed over to the high priests and law professors; they will condemn him to death, and will again betray and hand him over lo the gentiles, to be mocked, to be whipped and finally to be crucified; on the third day he will be resurrected (Matt. 20:18-19),

Then comes the mother of John and James to plead for special privileges of power, authority and glory for her two sons. She has accepted the requirement that the way to the kingdom was through the cross, at least for the Son of Man, the Messiah. She believed that the Lord Jesus would rise from the dead to rule over Israel. She and her sons were prepared to pay the price, that of drinking the Messiah’s cup of suffering with him. She and they accept the Messiah as the crucified and risen Lord. And one of them, John, is the beloved disciple, a special favorite of our Lord’s. But she was being fair to her two sons, that both of them should have positions of special privilege, honor and power. She does not want to show any favoritism to one of her sons, as Jesus did. In fact Jesus did something quite special for that one son, the “disciple whom he loved”; Jesus at the cross practically took him away from his own mother and handed him over to Mary the mother of Jesus, and Mary in turn to John (John 19:25-27). John took Mary to his own house (19:27), where she must have lived with John’s mother. It was for this special son and his brother that their mother asked for special privileges. More or less legitimate, isn’t it? At least fairly reasonable. Now, the reaction of the ten other apostles also seems eminently reasonable: “We all know that this young man, John, is a special favorite of the Master. We wouldn’t quite be up to questioning the Master about it. Maybe he wants to groom John to be his successor! Who knows? Anyway they had no business dragging their mother into it; and asking for two special positions — that is too much. What do those guys think the rest of us are — mere suckers? We too have worked hard, faced much, suffered opposition, left our family mid friends to follow the Master, haven’t we?”

So went the discussion among the Ten. It is in this ambience of power-seeking, ambition and jealousy in which all the Twelve are caught up that Jesus drops the bomb: “The Son of Man came to serve, not to be served.”

We need to look at the leadership of the churches and the ecumenical movement to see whether we are really much better than the apostles. “We are all Christians (we say), committed and all that. We could all have made better careers if we had gone into secular jobs and vocations. We have made considerable sacrifice to come and serve the church or the ecumenical movement. We are not struggling for power, mind you. All we are asking for is a little recognition.”

Nothing has been so divisive of the churches as the ambitions, the jealousies, the power struggles among Christian workers and leaders. Quite unconsciously we fall a prey to that perennial temptation of humanity in the world, the desire for power and position, for worldly glory and honor. And so long as that is our basic orientation, the church cannot be united. There can be neither true unity nor genuine community so long as each thinks of his or her own power and position. Humble diakonia is in fact a central principle of the unity of the church.

Matthew 27:55 tells us that the mother of the sons of Zebedee was one of the people who used their own money to serve Jesus. See Luke 8:1-3, where we are told that these women were serving Jesus as well as the needy out of their own wealth.

The mother of Zebedee was thus already engaged in diakonia when she asked Jesus for the special favor of positions of power and glory. Is that temptation still not with us — that in our very serving we seek power and position?

The missionaries of a previous generation were in that situation. They served the people of the mission field sincerely, and in so far as they did that they had a social position, power and prestige which they would not have when they went back to their own people.

The new missionaries of the interchurch aid empire are in a worse situation. Some of them are stationed among the people whom they serve, but most are only periodic visitors. And they are welcomed so warmly and specially by the people who locally handle their hand-cuts. In return for their diakonia they get to sit on the right hand and on the left hand of the powers that be. And if they are not properly received and feted by project-holders, the projects may suffer. There is something radically wrong with that sort of diakonia.

Let me enumerate four necessary conditions of authentic diakonia. Later I hope to show how Jesus Christ is the true deacon, the server, the Son of Man who came to serve and not to be served. I hope the word study will make it clear that the model for Jesus’ messianic ministry itself was the four oracles in Second Isaiah about the Suffering Servant, the ‘ebed-Yahweh. The four necessary conditions of an authentic Christian diakonia are the following:

a) the willingness to suffer with those whom one serves and to give of oneself;

b) humility as opposed to superiority about oneself, and respect as opposed to condescension towards those to be served;

c) not using diakonia as an occasion for domination, privilege and rank;

d) willingness to identify with the served to the point of laying down one’s life for their sake.

a) Authentic diakonia should involve more than the giving of money or goods or services, more than the “sharing” of resources and personnel. It demands taking upon oneself the suffering of others. It demands laying aside the sense of self-sufficiency of the server, in order to feel and take on the sense of helplessness and need experienced by the served. The foreign missionaries of an earlier generation were better placed in this regard than the new interchurch aid and donor agency missionaries. The latter do not live among the people they serve, and only from a distance feel the pinch of the need of the poor. Their representatives in the field — those who handle “projects” and “programs” — are usually much better paid than routine church workers, serve out of their abundance and live lives far removed from that of the poor whom they are to serve.

We need a diaconic structure based in the people of the local church, rather than in the donor agencies or the project-holder networks they have created in their “field”. Only then will the church in the locality be able to exercise its diakonia function, hugely financed from the resources of the local church people, mill largely involving the local Christians themselves suffering with and serving the poor.

The present money-and-project based interchurch aid should thus become more marginal, in order to permit the local church lo exercise its diakonia of suffering with people and giving of oneself.

b) Attitudes are all-important in authentic diakonia. The server must respect the served. If diakonia comes out of attitudes of superiority it generates the most unpleasant and unhealthy reactions from the served. If service makes them feel inferior and dependent, such service cannot be regarded as Christian, for instead of mediating the healing love of Christ, it simply generates resentment and negative feelings of wounded pride. Christian service has no right to anticipate feelings of gratitude or ties of obligation and dependence. The present attitudes create resentment in other cultures, for they force them to sell their dignity for the sake of paltry sums of money that people desperately grab.

c) Diakonia is today often used as a means of domination by creating relations of dependence. Interchurch aid does not quite do what international aid does — namely use aid to capture markets and to exploit people in such a way that many times more than the aid flows back to the aid-giving economy through unjust trade relations. But interchurch aid is used in much the same way as international aid to create “spheres of influence” mid areas of economic, political and cultural domination and dependence. This is particularly true of bilateral interchurch aid, but ecumenical aid is not much different, in so far as it represents aid from a sector of the Western Consortium which dominates and exploits two-third world economies.

d) Willingness to lay down one’s life for the sake of those served seems to be an acid test of authentic Christian diakonia. Al present this seems an extremely remote possibility in the context of international interchurch diakonia. It makes much more sense in the context of the service of a local church to the people around or the people of that nation. Diakonia involves (he element of confronting the oppressors of the people whom one wants to serve. This can hardly be done by international interchurch aid, but can be done more effectively by the churches in a locality mutually supporting and reinforcing each other in the struggle against injustice. At this point outside aid can at times be very counter-productive. If Christ our Lord is the model for authentic diakonia, as we shall see later, then a diakonia which involves no cost to oneself, beyond “sharing money or personnel”, can hardly be authentic.

source: http://paulosmargregorios.info/English%20Articles/To%20Serve.htm

People Who Care: Chernobyl Children's Project International

This 7-minute video is an update on how volunteers are making a difference in the lives of children and families in Chernobyl affected regions of Ukraine and Belarus.

The First Lady Volunteers With Toys For Tots

There is still time to help US Marines make a difference in the life of a child. In this video the First Lady delivers toys from White House employees to the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve's Toys for Tots program in Stafford, VA where she speaks to and volunteers with military and community members. December 21, 2009

Bring Him Home Santa

My soldier, my sailor, and my marine are all home for Christmas, but I know they will be going back soon. This is a sad song, and a sad tail. It is time for this to all end. Too many will miss their fathers and mothers this Christmas. Birthdays, anniversaries, all those special days are being missed. Let us all pray that Santa does as this little girl sings...stop, puts them in his sleigh, and brings them home. And while we wait, let us also pray for peace in the world.

Christian faith and Global Peace

Can Christianity still be an agent of unity and peace in spite of its long history of internal divisions? It seems very unlikely. But a young priest of the Oriental Orthodox Church answers it affirmatively in his recent book, Christian faith and Global Peace.
In this book, which is his doctoral dissertation, published recently by CSS Books in India, Father Bijesh Philip evaluates the contribution of two towering theologians of the last century toward global peace—Hans Küng and Paulos Mar Gregorios. Bringing them together, Father Philip claims that in Hans Küng and Mar Gregorios, the western and eastern Christian traditions converge with the single purpose of bringing about peace in the world. Hans Küng and Mar Gregorios, who have been giants in the world of thought, have so much in common although they have come from the two diverse tributaries of Christianity. The common goal of peace and justice has made the differences between them insignificant.
What is the most authentic form of Christianity with which all the other forms of Christianity can be measured and evaluated? This is the point at which Hans Kung and Mar Gegorios apparently disagree. As the most authentic form of Christianity, Hans Küng views Jesus Christ and the New Testament church, whereas Mar Gregorios gives due importance to the Holy Tradition as a whole. If we compare the Holy Tradition of the church to a stream, its source is Christ and His gospel, and its record is the Holy Scriptures, with the writings of the fathers, creeds, and liturgy as its subsequent expressions. Even though both Hans Küng and Mar Gregorios take this into consideration, Hans Küng's focus is more on the source of this stream whereas Mar Gregorios takes the stream as a whole seriously.
By peace they both mean shalom-- all humanity existing together maintaining right relationship with the environment (nature) and with the transcendent. We do not have peace today because all these relationships are disrupted. We do not maintain a right relationship with God; in fact, we live our life based on a worldview that does not even have a God. Instead of taking a responsible role in relation to the nature, we keep on exploiting it. Instead of making peace with our fellow beings and living together as a family, we spend a good part of our resources to develop ways to annihilate each other.
The Godless worldview which originated in the European enlightenment and spread all over the world is seen by both as the primary reason behind the mess our world is in today. Although the European enlightenment helped us to see the world in a better way and helped develop the modern medicine, education, science, and technology, it blinded us from seeing the transcendent ground of everything. This Godless worldview is the root cause of the uncontrolled exploitation of nature and of mounting moral crisis leading to violence in global scale. The irresponsible misuse of authority by the Christian church in Europe is what originally led to such a development. The solution today is to adopt a worldview that affirms God’s existence. We need to turn to our rich God-affirming religious resources with an open mind, which can enrich our medicine, education, economics, science and technology, paving way to a much better and more meaningful way of life for mankind.
There can’t be peace without justice. How can there be peace and justice where there is slavery and exploitation? Global peace cannot be established or maintained without a conscious and united effort of the humanity to establish justice in the world. Religious people must have the willingness to join hands with the nonreligious people in this mass movement for justice and peace.
Although Hans Küng and Mar Gregorios are well-rooted in their own religious traditions, they extend their arms to hold the entire human race. Their religious faith does not prevent them from working for the wellbeing of all; on the contrary, their faith empowers them to do so. Thus from their own life, they set this as an example for all the religious people in the world. They advice all people to be well-rooted in their own religious traditions, but stretch their arms to include all the fellow beings without excluding any. Such an attitude and approach can root out fundamentalism and communalism.
Although they have unshaken faith in God, neither of them does the mistake of trying to contain God within their own religious community or tradition. They both believe in a God who transcends all limits and barriers. They see God’s presence wherever there is good, and they challenge their fellow Christians to see God in other religious communities and even among nonreligious people.
Father Philip begins this study with a biographical note of Hans Küng and Mar Gregorios. After presenting a detailed study of their commitment to the Christian faith and to global peace in several chapters, a comparison of their thought and work is made in the last part. Father Philip has made it readable for all by avoiding the theological jargon as much as possible and by providing appropriate explanation and translation wherever needed.
The work of father Philip is a contribution to ecumenism as well as to global peace. Hope and pray that this work will serve as a stepping stone to further studies on this topic.

source: http://johnkunnathu.blogspot.com/2009/12/christian-faith-and-global-peace.html

Communal harmony and the role of reglion

by Paulos Mar Gregorios

Is Religion Nonsense?

Some time ago the official journal of our Planning Commission, Yojana brought out a special number with the theme ‘Stop this Nonsense Now’.

The contributors were our distinguished intellectuals mostly from the academic community and also people like P. N. Haskar and M. G. K. Menon. The articles were sensible, though debatable, about combating communalism, and generally pointed out the negative role of religious fanaticism in spreading the communal views. But the theme and the editorial had a more simple approach. The argument seemed to go like this: Religion is nonsense; stop this nonsense now; ban religion from public life and confine it to the private domain and everything will be all right.

Unfortunately matters are not that simple. The privatization of religion cannot solve the problems of inter-religious conflict and communal riots. Technically, we privatized religion when we opted for a "secular state" as distinct from a Hindu or Islamic state such as our neighbour and twin brother, Pakistan, chose. But, in fact, we could not privatize religion.


Justice and Religious communities

We recognized, in framing our constitution soon after independence, that justice demand special state support for those communities which were socially and economically under-developed-– the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, as well as religious minorities. This was based on the principle that in a democracy, minority groups needed some protection against the will of the majority which can be imposed upon the minorities by sheer majority vote.

Where we failed to privatize religion was in grouping these minority communities by religious labels or religious adherences. It was possible to get special protection for minority institutions only if these institutions had minority label. One gets certain fee concessions only if one is a Hindu Harijan, not if one is a Christian Harijan or a Muslim Harijan. One gets reservations for jobs and electoral representation only if one has a religious label. Now, this clearly means that we have not privatized religion, nor have we separated religion and the state. Constitutionally we are not, strictly speaking, a secular state, though the preamble to the Constitution says so.


New Criteria for Backwardness

Let me make it clear that I am not arguing either for full privatisation of religion or a fuller seperation of state and religion. Those who believe in a secular state (I do not), if they are consistent, will have to amend the Constitution substantially in order to make backwardness measured by socio-economic rather than religious criteria. There are many in both Harijan and Girijan communities who are socially or economically backward. There are many others in both Harijan and Girijan communities who are socially and economically way ahead of the masses of India.

I do not want to enter into the controversy about reservations since this can have, as we have seen, rather unpleasant consequences. It is a fact that special concessions to certain groups are often at the expense of other groups. A competent Brahmin today finds himself or herself handicapped because of the community to which he/she belongs was regarded once as over-represented in the echelons of power. Is there not an injustice here? Is it not also true that to withdraw special privileges from scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and minority religious communities would also be unjust, since the vast majority of the members of these groups are underprivileged and unable to compete as equal partners in the struggle for scarce economic opportunities?

It is a solution to this problem that is urgently needed -- to deal with our problem of communal conflict. We probably made a mistake in framing our Constitution. It is the principle of justice (as distinct from equality) that the weak and the underprivileged should get special consideration and have some special privileges until they overcome their inherited weakness. But they are not underprivileged because they belong to a particular religion. In fact, we know that the late Babu Jagjivan Ram was exceptionally powerful at one time, in part at least, precisely because he was a Harijan and partly because of his own capacities, endowment and good luck.

Religious adherence does not make a person underprivileged. There is no justification, at least in a secular state, to measure backwardness by religious adherence. Recognized backwardness, as a basis for special privileges, should not be determined by religious adherence, but by socio - cultural and economic parameters.

I know some of the practical difficulties in implementing this principle. Nevertheless it will be good to recognize the principle and prepare the nation to work out a just solution when people are ready to face the issue rationally and not emotionally.


Secular vs. Pluralistic State

I said earlier that I am not for the idea of a secular state, though the Preamble lays it down as a qualifying adjective for our state in India. I should explain myself.

First of all, I do not believe that secularism is scientific. Neither do I believe that a religious view of life is scientific. I believe that it is beyond the purview of science to decide whether a secular view of reality is more true than a religious view of reality. I believe that religious views of reality can be questioned by rational arguments. It is quite legitimate to do so, since reason is a noble instrument at the disposal of human beings by which they can relate to reality and relate to other human beings. But the argument between a secular view of reality and a religious view of reality cannot be settled on the plane of formal logic. It is the same when it comes to a debate between the various religions. Ultimately there is no rational ground for choosing the Christian scriptures as more authoritative than Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, or other scriptures.

We should recognize the freedom of human beings to adhere to one religion or another or to none and be a secularist. But neither religion nor secularism should claim scientific sanctions. A government has no right to promote secularism as an ideology. The separation of state and religion must apply also to secularism, since it functions as a religion and is not based on any consensus in the scientific community.

The implication of this point is that the state has no right to demand from me a commitment to a so-called 'secular' state. Whether one holds a secular view or a religious view of reality is not for the state to decide.

In place of the so-called Secular State, I prefer to speak of a Pluralistic State, if we want to avoid the idea of a Hindu State, Islamic State, etc. A Pluralistic State is one in which people of religions and of no religion (secularists) can be commonly committed to a single nation and its national goals and purposes, as adumbrated in the Constitution and in democratic parliamentary decisions and enactments.

Communal harmony, respect for other religions or no religion and the willingness of all regional, linguistic or communal groups to subordinate their interests to the larger just interests of the nation, would form part of the commitment of every citizen in a Pluralistic State.


Common Personal Law

I would also like to see a common personal law for all citizens, irrespective of caste or religion or sex or race. This entails two principles:

a) It is not the responsibility of the state to control or implement religious law. They can lay only broad guidelines for national law, within which each religious group will have its own machinery to enforce its discipline, so long as it does not infringe upon the personal liberty of the citizen except by his consent.

b) The personal laws of the state should be so flexible as to cause as little conflict as possible with the known and approved laws of the eight religions of India. This means, for example, that if Catholic Christians want to enforce a more strict divorce law or monogamous law and Muslims wish to enforce a more flexible divorce and marriage law, the state should adopt a more flexible personal law. This would mean that if Christians or Hindus want to enforce stricter divorce and marriage laws, they cannot depend on the state to enforce it for them. They will have to find their own ecclesiastical disciplinary measures. But in formulating such flexible personal laws, the state will also have to make sure, for example, that women's rights to life and economic security are preserved, and that justice is not denied to human beings.

These are, of course, long-term perspectives within which the problems of communal disharmony are to be tackled. We should begin work on this now.


A Positive Role For Religion

The second part of my reflection on this subject relates to the positive role religious elements can play in promoting communal harmony. I am convinced that communal harmony will not come by fighting religion and calling it nonsense. Without the cooperation of the religious leadership of the eight recognized Indian religions (Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and Sikhism as major religions and Jainism, Buddhism, and Zoroastrianism as minor religions), we cannot really advance towards communal harmony and national integration.

The first thing to note is that every religion has an exclusivist-polemic dimension and an inclusivist-humanitarian dimension. Religious fundamentalism is usually exclusivistic and polemic in its temper. It believes that God is specially interested only in the adherents of that particular religion, or religious school, and would exclude others from the inner circle of the privileged. This means that religious fundamentalism is politically and economically conservative or reactionary, anti­-progress, anti-rational, anti-socialist. This is so in Christian, Islamic or Hindu fundamentalism. This fundamentalism then gets monetary and moral support from the privileged classes within that religion, but is opposed by the fundamentalists of other religions. Communal conflict is thus a strange amalgam of the conflict of fundamentalisms, and the conflict of vested interests within each religion.

Even this aspect of religion will not go away by calling it nonsense. The religious instinct becomes the buttress for economic interest. The religious instinct in human beings is just as powerful as, or sometimes even more powerful than, the instincts of sex or self-preservation. We cannot deal lightly with these instincts. The politicians also know the great power of this religious instinct and seek to recruit it in their own personal or group interests.

But there is another side to religion. This more compassionate, humanitarian aspect is expressed more by lay persons than by religious leaders. Only outstanding religious leaders, like the founders of religions and the great gurus in each religion (Mahatma Gandhi, Tagore etc.) manifest this openness and compassion to humanity as a whole and champion the cause of the poor and the weak, of the oppressed and the exploited.

It is this aspect in each religion, present in a limited number of religious leaders and in a large number of cultured believers that we need to promote, organize and mobilize in the service of communal harmony, as well as of national integration and international justice. Secular-minded people can join forces with such people, instead of condemning all religious forces as reactionary. Let our marches, demonstrations, seminars, Public meetings, etc. for communal harmony have a visible religious leadership component, and a large background support by lay people from all religions.

That would be a positive role for religion. It may even convert some of the fundamentalists.

source: http://paulosmargregorios.info/English%20Articles/communal_harmony.htm