“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20)
“Why should men love the Church? Why should they love her laws?
She tells them of Life and Death, and of all that they would forget.
She is tender where they would be hard and hard where they like to be soft.
She tells them of Evil and Sin, and other unpleasant facts.
They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.”
(Choruses from The Rock, VI, T.S. Eliot)
This is what’s happening in our world at present, starting in our America blessed by God of which we so proudly sing, and passing like an invisible tsunami covering the entire world in a bath of economic disaster. The economic system “So perfect that no one will need to be good” made millions dream of an unending cornucopia of funds. People could assume that their portfolios would provide for their retirement not merely by tightening in their life styles, but rather to enjoy all the pleasures that money can make happen. We assumed that plutocracy replaced the vestiges of monarchy, and that democracy was not government of and for all the people, but for those who found a way to be wealthy. The system worked for them, and they needed nothing more. Not even to be good—for that would demonstrate a sign of weakness. In fact, to be good might be a hindrance, an impediment to the ultimate goal, which is to make as much money as fast as possible and to hold onto it as long as possible.
After the collapse of communism in what is once again the nation of Russia, a class arose. They are called “air people” [vozhdushnie l’udi], and they are despised by the average Russian. They do nothing, they create nothing, and they have become instant billionaires. Again, lucky to be living in a perfect (for them) system. Such a man lives lower than the animals, for animals intuit the sense that they need one another for survival.
Consider a man at the other end of the economic spectrum—a fictional character, nevertheless one who represents the same type—self-reliant, egocentric, and unconcerned for anyone or anything except himself. He was created by the Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis. Zorbas is his name and the title of the book that described his type, the selfish, and for many, loveable rogues. The phrase capturing his philosophy of life is the epitaph of the author: I want nothing, I need nothing, I am free. One Greek Orthodox man visiting the grave and disgusted by such a greedy attitude added: “Yes, and you are nothing.”
St. Luke’s gospel expresses a system based on true freedom: To be poor and to realize that you are alive because of a loving God is to be liberated from expectation that this world’s systems, be they capitalism, socialism, imperialism or any other human form of government, will always be incomplete without the entire population offering itself to the almighty Creator of heaven and earth. More, to the Holy Trinity, the One God Who loved the world so much that the Son of God was born into the world to lead all humans to a unity with the Divinity. And to understand that the only real philosophy comes from the cross of Christ. Again, the poem of Eliot, asking why human beings ought to love the Church. Not “only” Jesus Christ, but the Church founded in His holy Name. Why Church? Because the Church reminds believers of Life and Death, which they would prefer to forget, as is the case with the oligarchs of Russia, the capitalists of the United States of America, and the egotists like Zorbas. She tells them of evil and sin and other unpleasant facts, and the Church knows when to be hard and when to be soft.