To what then shall I liken our present condition? It may be compared, I think, to some naval battle which has arisen out of time old quarrels,
and is fought by men who cherish a deadly hate against one another, of long experience in naval warfare, and eager for the fight. Look, I beg you,
at the picture thus raised before your eyes. :knight2:
See the rival fleets rushing in dread array to the attack. With a burst of uncontrollable fury they engage and fight it out. Fancy, if you like, the ships
driven to and fro by a raging tempest, while thick darkness falls from the clouds and blackens all the scenes so that watchwords are
indistinguishable in the confusion, and all distinction between friend and foe is lost.
Of the combatants some are turning traitors; some are deserting in the very thick of the fight; some have at one and the same moment to urge on
their boats, all beaten by the gale, and to advance against their assailants.
The disorder and confusion is tremendous, for the extremity of misfortune, when life is despaired of, gives men license for every kind of wickedness.
Suppose, too, that the men are all smitten with the incurable plague of mad love of glory, so that they do not cease from their struggle each
to get the better of the other, while their ship is actually settling down into the deep.
So, since no human voice is strong enough to be heard in such a disturbance, I reckon silence more profitable than speech,
for if there is any truth in the words of the Preacher, “The words of wise men are heard in quiet, in the present condition of
things any discussion of them must be anything but becoming.
I am moreover restrained by the Prophet’s saying, “Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time, for it is an evil time,”
a time when some trip up their neighbours’ heels, some stamp on a man when he is down, and others
clap their hands with joy :clapping: , but there is not one to feel for the fallen and hold out a helping hand, although according to the ancient
law he is not uncondemned, who passes by even his enemy’s beast of burden fallen under his load.
This is not the state of things now. Why not? The love of many has waxed cold;brotherly concord is destroyed, the very name
of unity is ignored, brotherly admonitions are heard no more, nowhere is there Christian pity, nowhere falls the tear of sympathy.
Now there is no one to receive “the weak in faith,” but mutual hatred has blazed so high among fellow clansmen
that they are more delighted at a neighbour’s fall than at their own success. Just as in a plague, men of the most regular lives suffer from
the same sickness as the rest, because they catch the disease by communication with the infected, so nowadays by the evil rivalry which
possesses our souls we are carried away to an emulation in wickedness, and are all of us each as bad as the others.
Hence merciless and sour sit the judges of the erring; unfeeling and hostile are the critics of the well disposed. And to such a depth
is this evil rooted among us that we have become more brutish than the brutes; they do at least herd with their fellows, but our most
savage warfare is with our own people.
FROM:Letters of Saint Basil: Exposition of the present state of the Churches
**And with that I take me leave. My memory of CAF that I take with me?
"See how they love to hate one another and tear to pieces for the sheer joy of it.
The squander the Saving Word on words that kill and maim.
I do not every want to be know by the name Roman Catholic; I’ve tried-I’ve been here over a year. What’s scarry is I see some of the same contempt in my spouse’s eye’s since he converted to the Catholic Church.
Well, there is no lack of people on this board who would be glad to educate him in how to get an annulment. It would be a slam dunk. 30 years, and in 6 months he looks at me like I am a different species.
What makes you, who claim to have the fullness of God’s Grace so ugly inside?
I feel violated when I come here. I tried to converse here.
I’m done with the lot of you.
So tell CA they can put another notch on their belt.
One less Eastern Orthodox poster to worry about, so every one can get on with parrotting the same old soundbites, and pat each other on the back
Did you know they have wiped out about 20 of us in less than 2 months? Most for no reason.-I’m not allowed to mention that-so I guess they will ban me too.
And they won’t even put banned our names. It’s like we disappear into thin air-anybody notice people missing?
I used to wonder how things like the Holocaust or the Rowanda genocide could happen…I think I am beginning to understand a little bit what would make people hack a stranger to death, just because they are the ancient enemy.**
