Padawon’s Troubles

Posted on March 11th, 2005 by fatherneo.
Categories: Uncategorized.

Padawon,

You said:
Fr. Neo, your boy St. Isaac seems to be quite a guy. But if this young Padowan may be so bold, I think he’s somewhat misplaced. Exactly what is the point in weeping for “birds, animals, and every creature”? Were they made in God’s own image? Are their “souls” even comparable to ours? To whom exactly did God send His Son to rescue? Is God more concerned in a relationship with His children or Toto, too?

And as for having tears for demons, I have a hard time considering anything of the sort [see Rev. 18:20]. If the very essence of God is Love, and not just an attribute, then God’s very essence is also Truth, Righteousness, Holiness, and Justice (to name a few). These perfections are inseparable.

Ergo, in striving to be Christ-like, we must of course exhibit love and mercy, but should we not also remember that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, the powers, the world forces of this present darkness; against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places?
You are not a Jedi yet–too much of your father in you.

St. Isaac’s musings on animals were in the context of their suffering. Here’s what you need to do. Unlearn. You must unlearn. Transcend the categories that you are tempted live into. Consider the ‘butterfly effect’ that the ONE brought to our pathetic little planet. Don’t think of his death simply as a payment to the Father’s righteousness and holiness (attributes that the ONE also has), or his life simply a way to cancel the Law of Moses. Think of his birth, life, temptations, death and resurrection as a great reversal of everything we know of as disordered and evil– a reversal similar to what physicists would call the ‘butterfly effect.’ The eternal ONE invades the temporal world to bring a Kingdom in which love reigns. This is not some sissy ecological-hug a puppy-kind of love, this is love of an alien sort. This is the kind of love that encompasses all that is righteous and all that is holy. Even God’s retributive love is never meant to be vengeance. It is love that penetrates the darkness and invades the powers of hell. If we had a fraction of that kind of love, the kind that St. Isaac describes, we would weep for all things that are not in the circle of the THREE. Let me repeat, this is not some liberal fuzzy wuzzy was a bear love, it is, like Constantine said, God’s very essence.

2 comments.

  1. jholder

    Comment on March 11th, 2005.

    Padawan said:
    And as for having tears for demons, I have a hard time considering anything of the sort [see Rev. 18:20]. If the very essence of God is Love, and not just an attribute, then God’s very essence is also Truth, Righteousness, Holiness, and Justice (to name a few). These perfections are inseparable.

    The important thing to remember, Padawan, is that there is but one difference between a demon and an angel: One has fallen from God, is living in the separation of sin. We do not know much about the life of those creatures, but created they are, originally by God. And God loves what he has created, it is the perversions of that creation are abhorrant to Him. While we do not know God’s plan for the angels, fallen or not, as a creation of His with a free will to reject Him (or, for that matter choose Him). Until the Last Day comes (Revelation/Apocalypse), we can truly hope and pray for the parts of His creation that have rejected Him though their will and actions, man or angel (demon). It takes a great saint to sincerely weep for the fallen angels, in my opinion. I’m not sure I could and mean it.

    As the good Fr. Neo has said, the weeping for the animals is for their having to live on this earth as His creatures in the corrupt state that man has brought to this world through our sin.


  2. Constantine

    Comment on March 12th, 2005.

    “We must be fond of the world, even in order to change it.”
    G.K. Chesterton (Another smoker too.)


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