At the present time many suicides are taking place, not only from disbelief, but also from lack of patience. They do not want to endure anything. If the Lord had not given men the natural desire to live, then almost all would kill themselves. – Elder Joseph of Optina
Two loves have built two cities: the City of God and the city of man. – St. Augustine
I like Kafka. His treatment of the world is that of reductio ad absurdum. I find a lot of people, with a sort of evangelical framework, can’t understand my feeling at home in such things. Kafka gives us the world in its injustice, but reduces it to its utter mindlessness, its senility, its deprivation of meaning. In that sense, he writes like the Saints. Where is the splendor of the world? Is it the Castle? Where is the justice of the world? Is it the Trial? Where is the meaning? In its industry, that metamorphoses a man into a creature at once of hive and of utter alienation from himself? Scorn. Derision. Ridicule. Contempt. This is our response to the world. So Kafka, and those like him, feel very much like home to me. Those at home in the world would call this depression. Even the religious people who are ever seeking a normalcy in that realm, rather than in the morbid lair of the Saints, the inner castle, the self trying of self, the willing alienation from the flesh. I don’t know what to say to them. Like Kafka’s bug, I’m afraid it just comes out as growling, and makes them want to close the door and pretend not to have heard.
“Beguiling and deceptive is the life of the world, fruitless its labor, perilous its delight, poor its riches, delusive its honors, inconstant, insignificant; and woe to those who hope in its seeming goods: because of this many die without repentance. Blessed and most blessed are those who depart from the world and its desires.” — Elder Nazarius
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“How should thy vessel then be able to comprehend the way of the Highest and, the world being now outwardly corrupted, to understand the corruption that is evident in my sight? . . . And we pass away out of the world as grasshoppers, and our life is astonishment and fear, and we are not worthy to obtain mercy.” – The Prophet Ezra
“I have written to you, fathers, because you have known Him Who is from the beginning. I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the Word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the wicked one. Love not the world, nor the things that are in the world. If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and its lust: but he that does the will of God abides forever.” – St. John the Apostle
Comment: Throughout all stages of our lives, we are called to continual warfare. With the Enemy and against his works, with the World and against its system, attitudes, and values, and with the Passions, because the greatest conquest is the conquest of self. – DD
Love not the world, nor the things that are in the world. If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it: but he that does the will of God abides forever.
— First Epistle of St. John
You adulterers, don’t you know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? So whoever becomes a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
— Epistle of St. James …
Suffering is the way of life in the world. The mystery is that we must both accept it for ourselves and defend others against it.
The world is not all right. The world is not the standard. The world is not good in a mechanized way, as though good by nature; any good is alive and derivative and is light from God – His energies – He Who will fold up the world like a cloth when it is done. The good in the world is the good of living lights of the one Light, who are in the world as though in a foreign country – not a home, and who are passing through the world, through suffering, on the way to their source. Passing through the portal of death.