21 June 2009
My dear friend, Emily, called my attention to the book, Diary of a Russian Priest by Fr. Alexander Elchaninov. It is not a book of lengthy developed theses but rather a book of snippets of wisdom. A perfect book to keep in one's purse or backpack to pull out while waiting in the doctor's office or for a plane or for a few quiet minutes during lunch hour.
I found this assessment quite sobering.
How difficult is our approach to God, especially in the case of some of us when everything - even nature, heredity, and the entire composition of man - builds up a wall between him and God.
The kind of man we most often encounter presents a combination of three traits: (1) pride - faith in his own strength, delight in his own creations; (2) a passionate love of earthly life; and (3) the absence of any sense of sin. How can such men approach God? As they are now, they are hopelessly isolated from God; they do not even feel the need of Him. And this is precisely the kind of personality that is developed in the conditions of modern life, through education, literature and so on. The idea of God is erased from the soul. What catastrophes are required, before such a man can be reborn!- Fr. Alexander Elchaninov
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5 comments:
Thanks for posting this!
For some unknown crazy reason I wandered into an Amazon.com forum on religion... and yes... Fr. Alexander has neatly summed up the "God who needs all that?" attitude of many.
My imagination is not so limited as to believe this is a new attitude... what's new is the open support of the attitude... possibly. If you read much on the American West... it's familiar though... so maybe modern simply means post-Schism. :)
Oh, good! You found the book. I hope you like it as much as I did!
For some reason, I cannot get at the link to follow your blog. The box doesn't open all the way, so Blogger isn't an option! Aaargh! (I'm assuming it's my web browser, not your code.)
I stumbled upon this just now while looking for something else. I want to come back and read more!
How true. And even when some kind of disaster overtakes the man described by Father, how often that man may rebuild himself and once again pine for Egypt.
Theophilus...it was the code! Although I don't know why. I repositioned the "Subscribe To:" widget in the sidebar panel and now it seems to be working again. Check it out and thanks for letting me know!
Sophocles...that is exactly how I saw this as well...as I am a frequent Red Sea traveler.
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