last Sunday (for Catholics it was Easter, and Orthodox — palm Sunday) in the various news agencies and radio stations was shocking news: “Patriarch Kirill stated: “the Pandemic is a divine Providence that is aimed to destroy the ideals of the consumer society”.
Immediately there were angry comments: “the Patriarch said right that you will die half the people.” And “People are dying, and he says it’s divine Providence. Not subject whether his words under the criminal code, under the article on terrorism?”
In sum, many of the comments boiled down to the fact that a) the Patriarch’s something with the head; b) that he is infinitely cruel; in) is not for him to criticize “the ideals of the consumer society”, with such watches, such the residence, such vehicles; d) it has to be checked whether they are covered by his words under the heading of terrorism.
See a benefit in the current epidemic is impossible. Died (yet), tens of thousands, tens of millions lost their jobs, the economy collapses. But it’s one thing to see the good, and the other to recognize God’s will. The Patriarch may not, or rather should not think otherwise. The Bible tells about the time God sent the purifying fire had completely destroyed two cities: Sodom and Gomorrah. Tells about a cleansing flood that destroyed all mankind except one single family. In Russian language there is the expression “God has visited” — the words meaning is not good, and the fact that someone’s house burned to the ground.
the Patriarch, apparently attacked by the ignorant. You did not read the Holy Scriptures, or forgotten, or not understood, or considered a description of the (mythical, of course) of the events of ancient history, which do not concern us.
While the event is happening now. And the majority is perceived as everyday household trouble (even very difficult) and not as a phenomenon of world history.
“he would Not talk about greed, itself covered in gold.” So what? You don’t like the Patriarch — please. But if he says “twice two is four”, you spit in the multiplication table? However, if you foolishly spit, the multiplication table will remain the truth.
the Poet Nekrasov was very rich, the drunkard, the gambler, diamonds… to Throw out his poems about the unhappy people? Or read:
Give me a monastery
I’m such a angle not seen,
Where your sower and Keeper,
Where would the Russian peasant did not groan.
David was king; power, wealth, harem… Throw away his Psalter, which had already two thousand years praying Christians of all denominations?
to See in the event something more than a legal fact (the number of deaths, oil prices, inflation rate), is very difficult. When a person has a toothache, he did not what can not think. In Pontius Pilate (see “Master and Margarita”) is deadly headache. Before him stood a man in rags and said something. The Procurator in the head could not come that God is speaking to him. However, there are sensitive people, and in any incident they see, forgive, God’s Providence. When in 1991, early in the morning on the way to the village Church was murdered priest Alexander Men (murdered with an axe in the head), the reaction was understandable, the shock, the grief of loved ones, the criminal case. And the poet Semyon Lipkin (veteran, veteran of the great Patriotic war, order of the Patriotic war II degree, etc.) wrote a poem:
the Madness hanging over our
Already with axes went
On a strong, accurate numbers,
Hmeleya anger, zeros.
Today, from anger and turmoil
Melee, bastard, smerda
And tomorrow, the blood swollen
Will vznest zero leader.
…on the Friday when Jesus was executed, not a single person on the planet did not know and even could not think that He will rise again. Now believes that a third of the population of the planet. The other two-thirds either believe differently or do not believe at all. They can sympathize with. As once said a famous writer: “If the person is an atheist — I understand. If the person is happy that he is an atheist, I don’t understand.”
The amazing thing is that, the past in the news quotes from the Patriarch, not true. He spoke differently, he said. And it’s exactly like Bulgakov, where the hero of the novel tells the Procurator. “These good people do not understand… I Looked at his parchment and was horrified: there is nothing that is written there, I didn’t say”.
Here is what the Patriarch actually said:
We are experiencing a global tragedy that affects everyone regardless of whether, to what extent we are aware today of the danger.
it is no coincidence that the Lord takes us through trials. Now about the randomness, many already speak and write, each from his point of view. But most are inclined to think that the whole development of human civilization, particularly in the last decade, so refocused the minds of the people that center their lives have become uncontrollable desire to have more, desire more, consume more; and all the great ideals, the sublime and beautiful, including the beautiful ideal of faith in God for many has gone to the periphery of life.
Maybe these trials come upon us, and this ideal, and many others returned from the periphery to the center of our lives. So we think that not by bread alone that a person is suitable to such great, that he himself is not yet aware of, because the greatness of human destiny is determined by God.
Yes, it is no coincidence that the Lord has visited us all this grief, but what a tragedy if this tribulation we will leave a weak, crushed, disappointed! After all the tribulation and are given for ��wow to become the lessons of life; and this world attack is given to the fact that people steeped in consumer psychology — in rich societies and in those for whom the rich companies are the ideal, realized that above all and over all, God, and turned to the Lord with the mind and heart, asking Him to protect themselves, loved ones and the entire human race from this scourge.
Then, of course, we will emerge from this disaster even stronger and more viable, and maybe stronger and more viable out of these temptations, the temptations and the afflictions of all the human family, the whole human civilization.
Well, where’s the desire to “dead half of humanity”?
