By Fr Georgios Lekkas*
The words and deeds of Christ seek to overturn completely the order of things as established by our passions. In the world as God desires it, the first becomes the last, the master becomes the servant, and the greatest becomes the least. God Himself has revealed this in the person of Jesus Christ, who is the Last of all, the Servant of all, and the Least of all.
Contrary to the demonic spirit of domination, the Humble Holy Spirit embodies the Spirit of Service. The temptation that we Christians usually face – which Christ’s Apostles already faced when He still lived on earth – is to attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable, namely the spirit of domination with that of service. The result is that, even if we are ‘Christian’, we end up living in a way that is anti-Christian.
Moreover, when collective entities use faith as a tool of dominance over the ‘unbelievers’ and the ‘barbarians’, there are spiritual consequences of enormous significance, usually paid for with much blood. The temptation of power overcame the Jews, for which Rome made them pay with their own blood; it overcame the Byzantines, who paid for it with subjection to the Ottomans; it has overcome Western Christianity, which pays for it with the de-Christianization of Europe; and it is assailing Orthodox Russia today, which (if they do not soon come to repentance) will tomorrow be made to pay for it with their own blood by another superpower, such as China.
Collective and personal failures cannot, of course, frustrate the work of Salvation, but they make Salvation an increasingly painful process, at both the individual and collective level. As the demonic spirit spreads horizontally over the world, the salvific actions of the Holy Spirit descend into greater depths and call us from within and from the depths to overturn the horizontal order of the world. For example, in the de-Christianization of Europe, there is a heartfelt demand for authenticity, in order to release the Christian conscience from its impassioned bondage to any form of power mechanism that betrays the spirit of service, as Christ wished it to be.
The spirit of service brings peace to all those who serve it and deep knowledge of their selves and of the whole of Creation. On the contrary, whoever serves the spirit of domination feeds a false and artificial self and is never at peace. The spirit of service reconciles us because it connects us directly with the Lord. In order to become more and more the servants of others, we must continuously diminish ourselves, and Christ will correspondingly increase within us. Then the Light shines within us, and we knows ourselves as God intended.
The last opportunity we are given for self-diminishment is death. Though God did not desire the death of man, He permitted it as a last resort, so that, even in his final moments, man may have the opportunity to accept his death willingly. The spiritual diminishment which a man attains, when even in his last moment he consents to die in the likeness of Christ, will open wide the gates of Paradise to him. Henceforth he can live in the ecstasy of love in God and in the joy of a service without end.
20.4.24.
Rev. Dr Georgios Lekkas is a priest of the Holy Orthodox Metropolis of Belgium