On the paradox of being the living dead with uncircumcised hearts
On January 14, the Church celebrated the Circumcision of the Lord. What meaning does this day hold for an Orthodox believer?
The Circumcision of the Lord for a faithful person, familiar with the letters of the Apostle Paul, is associated with the circumcision of the heart. The images and traditions of the Old Testament visibly come to life in the new spiritual reality that entered our world with Christ's victory over death. Now, it is our turn for circumcision. The circumcision of our spiritual petrification, indifference and the deadness of emotionless rest. Circumcision involves the shedding of blood, suffering and struggle. But without it, we cannot become the New Man, capable of acquiring the citizenship of the New World.
I used to be surprised by people who hate God because He doesn't exist. If you don't believe in His existence, you don’t have to – it’s your right, but why hate those who do? Why lash out in fits of wild rage at the mere mention of God or the Church? But later, I realised that their fury lacks any rational, logical motive. This hatred is irrational and uncontrollable even to its bearers. In the twilight of their consciousness, there are entirely different motives at work, which surface as hatred, yearning, or malice. Not everything can be understood logically; there are other explanations.
The world around us is increasingly sinking into a pre-apocalyptic gloom. People’s emotions, feelings, and moods are increasingly demonised. What logic is there in the devil and demons fighting against God? Why fight against Someone you can never defeat? What is the point of this rebellion? Why condemn yourself to torment and suffering when there is the possibility to rejoice and live peacefully and happily? There are no answers to these questions. Just as there is no rational explanation for war. Why do people kill each other? To be the first to join the earth, which belongs neither to them nor to anyone else? To hold on to something for a brief moment, something they will have to leave forever? There is only one life, and it is already very short.
So, is there anything on this planet worth killing one another for?
Who are these people with uncircumcised hearts of stone? Observing them, I noticed that their inner psychological life flows without any moral or value-driven experiences. The personal existence of such people is a slow, hypostatic fading, a spiritually empty movement toward death. Having separated themselves from God, their souls rot, depriving themselves of the life-giving action of the Holy Spirit. Only the aging flesh remains, which eats, gives birth to children, suffers, rejoices and thinks about how to carry itself through life.
But where a living heart should be, where the human spirit is called to unite with God, there yawns a terrible black hole that cannot be filled by anything. Therefore, this dead soul tries to amuse itself more often with something, to live a superficial contrived cheerfulness, to imitate joy, to experience animal pleasures, to cover the emptiness of the soul with the same empty thoughts, feelings and desires. And in all this emptiness lives a huge self-confidence in the exclusive rightness and authenticity of one's life truth.
But as soon as it encounters different views on life, on the world and other experiences of self-consciousness that differ from its own worldview model, it immediately begins to feel a terrible hatred not only for the other content of life, but also for those who profess it. The basis for this hatred is not so much the incompatibility of worldviews, but rather a different quality of being, which is called faith. Then, the sense of self-importance and self-confidence are inflamed to rage, and anger boils up to extreme degrees. This is especially evident when it comes to the otherworldly Christ and His otherworldly followers.
But what is even more surprising is how this happens within the Church. Is there a single saint who was not persecuted by the clergy during a relatively peaceful period in the Church’s life? When the whole Church is subjected to persecution and is pursued by godless enemies, it is understandable that the saints suffer for the faith, enduring torments. But when there are no external persecutions, why is it that internal persecutions invariably arise? So, Saint Seraphim of Sarov, Saint John of Kronstadt, and the Optina Elders were persecuted. Of course, these episodes are absent from the official hagiographies, carefully cleaned by the hand of church censorship. But those who have studied the history of the Church more deeply and independently know full well about these moments.
Even Grand Duchess Elizabeth, a person very close to the royal family, did not escape this fate when organising the Martha-Mary Convent. The same thing is happening now. As soon as the books of Elder Simon (Bezkrоvny) appeared, literally written in the blood of spiritual experience, as soon as there was a person who began to teach not in theory but in practice how to attain divinisation in our difficult times, book theologians immediately began to pour tons of lies and slander upon him. They even went so far as to claim that Hieromonk Simon doesn’t exist at all. How should I, and those who know this elder personally, hear this?
Here, it is not just a psychological difference that is revealed, but a mutual rejection of two different worlds – the earthly and the heavenly. Their struggle is the icon of the prehistoric battle between the angelic and demonic worlds, the outcome of which was the expulsion of demons from the Spiritual Heaven. On Earth, the same perspective of the outcome of this struggle is unfolding. After the coming of Christ to Earth, after His Death and Resurrection, the devil has already been defeated. There is no alternative other than the triumph of Life over death.
Death cannot realise its victory; it has already been defeated by life. But it can still take with it into the underworld the prisoners over whom it has gained power in time.
To do this, death creates a mystification of life, using the mechanism of illusions, playing with words, creating flows of death-dealing states and seemingly living words. Death plays life and draws into this game more and more players who enjoy it. It cleverly invents false value systems, rules by which the people of this world should live, steals time, casting a net of vanity over fallen minds. Fashion, new technology, politics, public opinion, entertainment, gossip, prestige... Millions of such cold little lights flicker in the dark abyss of the lifeless void of death.
The toy-like, mortally transformed life is an inevitable necessity for this world, because it is all aimed at lulling people with invented false patterns directly opposed to gospel values.
Christ says: "Do not seek, do not worry... about what the people of this world seek, but seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness." The world teaches the opposite: "This is exactly what you should seek – how to eat more deliciously, how to dress more fashionably, what to drive, and how to look. Fantasising about the Kingdom of God is for the failures and losers who couldn’t ride the wave of fortune and 'make it'. Believing in God is for the weak who have failed in life."
The elements and traditions of death are exclusively directed towards the development of earthly contents, which are collectively called "vanity" in the Bible. In this word lies the entire meaning of the life of those with uncircumcised hearts, who are dead to eternity while still alive. Vanity, which dominates the world, is the opposite of the freedom given by God. It is anti-sacred, as it seeks to subjugate the true meaning of life to trivial worldly concerns rather than imparting spiritual meaning to them. To live in vanity, one need not think much. The work of the mind, directed at satisfying lower animal instincts, does not require deep reflection on their meaning. A person needs only a simple sensation.
The existence of a living person in the realm of the dead entails a feat or, better yet, martyrdom. He will be constrained on all sides, surrounded by minds that have broken their allegiance to truth and righteousness, entered into a sinful union with lies and become infected with hatred of God. But "he who endures to the end will be saved" (Matthew 24:13).
