The first task of the Church and of Christians is therefore to open up history to the eternity whither she is destined to ‘pass’ one day in a final Passover, whither she is already ‘passing’ by the prayers and the blessing of the liturgy and of liturgical people. To those who see with the ‘eye of the heart’, the reintegrating power of the sacraments holds the world in being, preserves history from decay and slowly permeates the life of the universe with eternity. The prayer and love of the poor, of the innocent, of the ‘fools for Christ’ multiply the effect of this Eucharistic blessing, and make a way for the divine energies to penetrate the world and act upon it; these radiate from personal Love, and it is only personal freedom that can open history to them, just as only the fiat of the Mother of God made possible the incarnation of the Word. That is why the secret masters of history, although they do not know it, are people of adoration.
The Church has always taught that Christians, by their active presence and their intercession, safeguard cosmic order and human society, and raise them to the status of offerings. The most ancient ‘apology’ for Christianity that we know, that of Aristides, composed at the time of the first persecutions, plainly states, ‘Of this there is no doubt, that it is because of the intercession of Christians that the world continues to exist’ (XVI.6). This notion has its roots in the Old Testament, where Abraham, by prodigious bargaining, secured the preservation of Sodom, provided there should be found in it only ten righteous men. Christians are called to supply the righteous who were lacking in Sodom. Thus, in the Acts of the Apostles (27.33-44), we see St Paul, on his way to Rome under guard, rescuing his fellow passengers from despair and death when their ship was wrecked. And he did it in an almost Eucharistic way: when all seemed lost, ‘he took bread, and giving thanks to God in the presence of all he broke it and began to eat’; then they all regained hope, and received from the food the strength they needed for swimming to land or clinging to the wreckage.
Not only Christianity but the other Semitic religions, Islam and Judaism, recognize this function of the ‘last of the righteous’. The Talmud says that the world is kept in existence by the intercession of thirty six righteous who are renewed from generation to generation and ‘receive the Presence daily’. In Christianity, from the 4th century onwards, this ministry of intercession tended to be concentrated in the prayer of the monks. An Egyptian bishop of the time wrote to the hermits: ‘The universe is saved by your prayers; thanks to your supplications, the rain descends on the earth, the earth is covered in green, the trees are laden with fruit’ (Serapion of Thmuis, Letter to the Monks, 3;PG,XL,928 D-929 A).
Intercession, the Church’s benediction, is an invisible pillar joining heaven to earth, which enables nature and history to bear fruit, and this pillar is the work of the saints. Those who are alive today go unrecognized. In appearance they may be unremarkable or alarming, but they are in the presence of the Risen Lord, united to him. On the beach you find shells disfigured by accretions of sand, seaweed, and marine worms. But when you turn them over, the purest mother-of-pearl appears, iridescent with the sky and resonant with the sea. So it is with the Church. When the Lamb breaks the seals of the book of the true history, we shall find that all the fruits of history have resulted from the unacknowledged reign of the saints. We shall discover that battles have been less important than the cry of the angry and distressed calling upon God, the plea of Job and so many like him, and the publican’s prayer of faith….
In the present crisis, which is a crisis of meaning, we must learn to see the Church once again as essentially the mystery of sanctification, abounding in paschal joy and the peace ‘which the world cannot give’, which ‘passes all understanding’. It is the chief task of the Church to nourish us with that peace and joy, renewing the Church in the parishes, making them real Eucharistic communities where people can learn to live in communion. In places like this we could take refuge from a life which is both frenzied and solitary, where all we are offered in compensation is anarchy and the chance to lose ourselves in instant sex or political extremism. Coming to these places without any ulterior motive, we could at last find beauty and tenderness, and the knowledge that death has been overcome, that there is no more need for scapegoats; being united in adoration, we could talk to each other freely.
The first Christian communities were each called an agape, divinely inspired love, and the word more specifically denoted the meal of fellowship which followed, or surrounded, the Eucharist. The Church urgently needs to restore these occasions of sharing and mutual help, around the Eucharist (otherwise the common meal would remain mortal food) where the presence of the sacrament makes our service of one another sacramental also, and our need of celebration is purified and fulfilled. On the mount of transfiguration Peter said, ‘It is good for us to be here’. If you have taken part in the paschal vigil in an Orthodox church, when we all embrace each other while proclaiming the truth of the resurrection, you will know what I mean. With the proliferation of these parishes, perhaps linked to monastic communities who understand how to balance withdrawal from society and engagement with it, there would be no need to work out how to change the world; it would inevitably change of its own accord.
The Romanesque and Byzantine civilizations, Chartres and Hagia Sophia, were born of the blood of the martyrs and the prayers of the monks. The saints of the Merovingian age, who are now almost forgotten, laid the invisible foundations of France. Francis of Assisi, made possible the first Italian renaissance, when earthly creatures were seen in the light of God’s joy; and the prayers of Athos, like the work of Dostoevsky five centuries later, fertilized the art of Mistra and Kariye Camii. Little did the future St Sergius know, as he went deep into the forest intent on his ‘work of silence’, that he carried within himself the victory of Kulikovo and the Trinity of Rublev. And who can tell the secret connection between the Russian martyrs, between the wars and the wise compassion, the ‘sorrowful joy’ of Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago or the work of Solzhenitsyn, which is the decisive cure for Western nihilism? Perhaps the prayers of the early Church and the Middle Ages stored up the energy which later sustained modern humanism; but the supply has now run out, so we must drill for more …
Only people who are drunk with God, who wish history to be swallowed up in eternity, can make civilization fruitful. History is renewed by those who transcend it: ‘Thy kingdom come!’
~Olivier Clement, On Human Being: A Spiritual Anthropology
