God's Good Order

Set before us today is one of the wonders of the world: the orderliness of the vast and intricate machine called the Roman Empire. In school we were taught that the Greeks gave us Literature (Homer); History (Herodotus), Scientific History (Thucydides); Philosophy (Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle); Mathematics (Archimedes and Euclid); Astronomy (Eudoxus); Medicine (Hippocrates). We continue to study their works today. Indeed, Aristotelian metaphysics continued to govern Roman Catholic theology through the twentieth century. (I mention as an aside that the primary reason for Vatican II was to break this hyper-rationalist stranglehold over the mind and soul of the Western Church .... a noble aspiration that was hi-jacked by bad men.)

The list is long and impressive. It is difficult even to comprehend: the gifts ancient Greece laid at the feet of humanity and what they would mean.

But what shall we say about the Romans? What gifts did they offer to humankind? Well, the Romans were the industrious students of the Greeks. If the Greeks were great theoreticians, then the Romans took on the yeoman-like task of applying their theories. If the Greeks were great research scientists, then the Romans were formidable engineers. Many centuries would pass after the fall of Rome before anyone could again build a dome like that over the Pantheon without it caving in and killing countless workers. Only in the past few decades have we deciphered the Roman recipe for concrete which could withstand the eroding effects and power of the sea .... for thousands of years.

But their greatest feat by far was an engineering marvel that continues to elude those who have imitate them: world governance. Which great power could yoke together so many disparate language groups and their very different cultures more effectively than the Romans? Even St. Paul was proud to surface his own coveted title when it suited him: "citizen of Rome." For everything and everyone proceeded from the hand of Caesar, and each of these threads could be traced back to him again.

These are the eyes through which we must understand our Gospel lesson this morning: a vast network of fair governance and good order:

As we have discussed many times from the Hermitage, Jesus does not object to this hierarchy of earthly governance. During the interview between the emperor of the world, Caesar (through his surrogate, Procurator Pontius Pilate) and the Emperor of the universe, it comes out that the Lord Jesus is not interested in the world. "My Kingdom," He said, "is not of this world" (Jn 18:36). And you will recall that He had declined formal rulership of the kingdoms of the world and the glory of the earth during His interview (Mt 4:8-9) with the spiritual ruler of this world (Jn 14:30). Later, He would teach His followers glibly,

Few precepts are more clearly enunciated in the Holy Gospels than this one:

To believe that Jesus has come to save the world in this sense is a symptom of the human disease of materialism. Shameless con men have even devised a so-called "prosperity Gospel" promising that a faithful Christian's reward will be material wealth .... if only they will give their hard-earned savings to the so-called "church." Herein many of have been fleeced — a ponzi scheme that would embarrass Bernie Madoff and in which no one is ever paid. As I say, a disease, an abomination before God.

What our lesson places before us is something entirely different. The faithful centurion, seeing the invincible Roman Empire fanning out in every direction and knowing of its awesome power and concrete reality, reverently draws near to the Emperor of all that moves and breathes, of all that exists. This is not Caesar, who has power over life and death. This is the Lord of all life and the Maker of all the Creation. And doing Him obeisance the centurion bows down humbly to ask a boon:

Everything is right about this picture: the perfection of a faithful man, of his humble character, of his sincere belief, and of his manifest charity, for he does not intercede for his peer but rather for his slave.

The Lord replies,

And then, in veiled language, He foresees a place in the Bosom of Abraham for the centurion at the time of judgment.

The centurion knows material empire well enough. And he has been part of a material chain of command throughout his career. But here is something else, something far above the material world. If only the vibration of the Logos, of the Creative Word, would issue from the lips of God, then the living air itself would become alive with Divine power. When He commanded the winds and seas, did we not witness precisely this? Here is revealed immaterial empire, a spiritual order, and its Empyreal King.

We have shared in past reflections that democracy and its economic adjunct, capitalism, is the meeting place (or should I say, collision point) where self-interests converge: grasping men and women clutching material advantage with all their might .... and the devil take the hindmost.

As I hear gasps among my readers, I invite any and all of us to drag its its carnage into the courts of our Lord and Emperor: the gross unfairness that permeates nearly every aspect of life, which no one in the helping professions can fail to see day-after-day; the heartless corruption that controls everything in nearly every soul; the inner and outer pollution that taints nearly everyone; general homelessness and starvation; and the disappearance of the Middle Class, once the haven of the American family and the stable heart of community.

Do I exaggerate? Nearly one billion people worldwide face chronic hunger and one-third that number, starvation (according to the United Nations). In a closely related calculus, the Middle Class of the United States has been erased. Today, the bottom half of all families hold two percent of the country's wealth while the top one percent of American families hold fully one-third of all that there is to hold. with the top ten percent holding about three-quarters of all American wealth.

This is no mathematical abstraction. We see it expressed across heartless America in the form of homelessness. Forty million Americans include 12 million children do not know where their next meal is coming from. According to the USDA, nearly 20% of all American children live under conditions of food insecurity, a new phrase for the post-Middle-Class era.

Democracy accommodates self-interest and self-promotion into a systematic way of life .... or should I say anti-life? Its driving wheel is the elevation of one vain ego over another in a general free-for-all which is dignified with the word freedom or the phrase free enterprise. But it is not fair enterprise. For, manifestly, the rich and the powerful, whose freedoms are more free than anyone elses, are protected by forces than no one dare oppose.

"Hell is a Democracy," St. John of Kronstadt famously wrote. "Heaven is a kingdom."

Am I proposing that we live under the totalitarian rule of a despot? Most certainly not! There is no good king on earth. There is no one who can be trusted. No, not one (Eccl 7:28). That great warrior for the cause of democracy, Sir Winston Churchill, said that "democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time" (November 11, 1947).

The contrast between the Kingdom of Heaven and self-rule on earth (which usually devolves into misrule or unruliness) is the point of the the War in Heaven. The fallen angels are the pattern for our world — dwelling in a perdition where self-interest and inflated pridefulness restlessly contend; where scams and con-games unfold through mazes without end: always the counterfeit and never the authentic, which is why its dark lord is known as the "deuce," for he is double and the father of lies (Jn 8:44).

The prince of this world is not elected. He promotes himself midst chaos and indifference. He does not issue commands. His program is fulfilled by our doing nothing. He is unseen in a world whose primary lens is a mirror, and he goes unnoticed by those who worship their own image.

Yet, in these shadowlands where we dwell angels descend and ascend to and from the Immaterial Empire. The light of Heaven dapples the green earth. And God is known. He is known in the beauty with which He has surrounded us — a true and free and fair beauty that alight upon all alike. His life-giving world was created for each and every one of us: its fresh springs, its verdant meadows, its clear pools, and seas teeming with life. The very air we breathe and the azure splendor of the heavens are unique in a universe otherwise filled with dead vacancy. And He made it for us, every boy and girl born into the world. "Be not anxious for material riches," the Lord teaches. "But behold the Providence of a loving God all round you" (Mt 6:29).

God is known to us personally and individually, for He is a calling God. He calls each and every one of us to Himself as His children. Who does not know His of Presence? Who does not look within herself or himself aware that God knows all .... and continues to love us? For we are His children, He calls us to conduct ourselves according to His Divine standard — serving each other, practicing kindness, and owning an imperative set out in Genesis: "Yes, we are to be our brothers' keeper."

Am I backtracking? Am I proposing a Christian world order on earth? No. We are strangers in a strange land (which is getting stranger every day). Here we are to behave as the children of God — offering the hospitality of our Father, the King, whose "Kingdom does not belong to this world" (Jn 18:36). We are to set out His banquet. We are to call everyone who will come. And we are to prepare them as we have prepared ourselves: to set their eyes and ours only on the Kingdom of Heaven.

"For you have the poor with you always," He said to those who would slight Him. "But Me you do not have always." For He belongs to those who love Him and whom He loves unfailingly. This is His Empire: "By this you will

Here is the anti-democracy: the world of self-sacrifice, of giving away self-advantage, of humility. Here is the Kingdom of love.

The young Mary participates in this perfection of God's good order with her famous words

We hear her words faintly echoing in the words of the faithful centurion,

And Jesus blesses this connection by saying,

Such noble company, the faithful centurion the Most Holy Mother of God, the Lord of all life .... Is this not the place where we long to be? Does not this tower above self-advantage and gratification of ego and unwholesome preoccupation?

Let us awaken from our many stupors! Let us be roused from our self-absorption and indifference to others! Let us take our place among the ranks of saints, of angels, and, yes, of Roman centurions who say, "Lord I am not worthy that Thou shouldst come under my roof but only speak the word ...."

Are families homeless? Then pick up a hammer at places like Habitat for Humanity. Are children starving? Then volunteer at your local food bank .... or found your own. My uncle would fill up the cellar of his home like a grocery store, buying in bulk on sale, and then look for opportunities to feed starving families in Newark and surrounding towns in New Jersey.

Our Father's world is one of goodly order. And everything else is chaos. An Orthodox saying I read many years ago declared, "Outside the life of prayer lies only madness." So let us pray. Let us hear God's call. Let us walk humbly on the earth asking boons of Him that will bring about His Kingdom. For His Kingdom lives in our hearts, and we shall find that He will do the rest. He will stretch out our hearts beyond all expectation until they grow more and more like His, pouring out His love on to an aching world and receiving His boundless love as we never thought possible.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.