How ‘fine’ are we, modern people? Selfishness as destroyer of Soul and Life

arhcim. Pavlos Papadopoulos

Modern man thinks he is peaceful because he has reduced his ‘peaceful condition’ with the feeling of a false completeness and individualist autonomy he experiences through his professional recognition, the satisfaction of his overconsumption, the realization of his passions (fervid desires), the achievement of his hedonistic relationship with the others. He feels peacful in his tide over. 

The peace we think we have sometimes is similar to the silence before bombardment.

It is not peace. It is a fear, a silent lament, a tightening, some cowardice, some silent scream, a rage that cannot be expressed for a moment.

And that is why our peace turns easily to war when we find the chance to retaliate. Dispute with the others and the whole world. All that matters is for us to win this time. We do not care about the cost; victory is all that counts. Our triumph, the exhaustion of the other person, his destruction, his subjugation, the recognition of ‘our right’.

We desire victory. A victory that we are going to prove through our value, our offering, our kindness, our superiority, our morality, our purity, our love…our virtues.

But, this is no victory; it is a dreadful defeat. It is our obsessive claim for a position in this world, in the books of this world, in the prizes and trophies of this world.

«We want to climb high not to see the world, but for the world to see us».

And, thus, we don’t have peace. We have war with each and every one that dares doubt us. We have war with everyone so audacious to criticize us. We even have war with ourselves, when ourself dares to doubt our greatness.

We don’t have peace, we have war. We want war even though we might preach for peace. We claim for peace with wrong ways, in wrong places.

Paradox? Certainly, yes. It is a paradox because we try to find peace with non-peaceful ways. And the greatest non-peaceful way is the way of our ‘ego‘.

Our ‘ego’ is the great warlike, it is the great winner that pushes us to the greatest defeat; self-vindication.

True peace means to find the courage to see your own insufficiency. And there, inside the depths of your heart, to place a tear. Not a tear of guilt, but a tear of repentance.

And your tear of repentance shall then become the place of divine presence and habitation through the Mystery; a throne of a wordly defeat may be, but one that brings peace and rest in your heart.

Peace; a great good, a great cross.

Hearts which are ready to lose in order to win, may they dress the armor of humiliation and ablution. Those are the ones that finally find peace ‘praying in every time’, captives of the freedom that only the experience of Truth offers, of Christ.

P.S. finally, to find peace you are called to surrender unconditionally to the vortex of Divine Providence…