2022

Among the multitude of the saints, that is the people who loved Christ ‘with all their heart’ and who expressed this love through denial of the self and acceptance of their cross, there are the so-called ‘fools for Christ’. Usually monastics, they presented themselves to the world as lunatics, acting contrary to common sense, saying and doing things which made them look insane and immoral. Their behavior, however, concealed their conquest of the passions, their faith, their gifts and their sanctity. This kind of spiritual struggle was a gift from God, not a personal choice. It was a particular gift granted to certain people in specific circumstances, in a specific society. Most often the society was one of secularized Christianity which ...

For a good number of years now there’s been a virus going round infecting societies. It’s the illusion that ignorance is as compelling as knowledge. This means that, in order for people take a stand in the public arena, they choose to be disgustingly rude and to exercise violence in order to get their point across. The strange thing is that this behavior gains viewers and admirers. This is particularly true in politics, though it has spread from there into society at large, through the mass media. The desire to be right, not because you have anything of value to say but by any means possible, inevitably leads to incivility and boorishness. This is the competition of personal survival, the ...