This idea of complicity could be a contribution of our country at the world level, since the great powers do not seem to have discovered it yet. In addition, the warning often comes from small ones. But here's what concerns you even more directly, and what is even more important: you need to understand that the true life of a person is to forget about yourself. Only by forgetting about oneself and meeting in truth with another, a person will finally find himself. Until now, you have not recognized any other in the Lord. You have only seen the ugliness of the other. Of course, a person is weak, contradictory, no one is free from childishness, cunning and egocentrism. But the ugliness of the creature cannot erase the seal of the Creator from it. Every human person, by the very fact of his calling, the gifts he received from God, and his striving for distant horizons, is a partaker of Christ. Only in this light should you look at it. In this way you will help her to revive in herself the divine personality that she is to become. And most importantly: you must realize that you will no longer be anything, that you will even become alien to Christ, if you refuse to look at someone else in this way.

So why assert one's imaginary superiority and want it to be recognized by others at all costs? Only in love does Christ dwell with us, and if you are not filled with love, you will not make any contribution to the building of your country, you will not bring good to humanity. Only in love will you comprehend yourself and your life, and therefore love should become everything to you. Without it, you will approach non-existence, return to primitive barbarism. In essence, you are the seed that must die in order for others to live. You possess the true secret of life, for Someone taught you to accept death. All your advantage is in this self-abasement, in the unceasing impulse that impels you to open the boundaries of the Church to new horizons of your sacrificial witness. You can only affirm your identity if you never assert it. Your whole peculiarity is that you do not seek to point it out or force others to recognize it. You will be saved only if you do not seek protection for yourself. On the contrary, you should plunge into the fray, into the very heart of the problems of this world. You will not seek dominion, for "the princes of the nations rule over them, and the nobles rule over them" (Matt. 20:25). And you are not of this world. Whenever you feel any pride in being strong, according to the logic of this world, or honorable, by all accounts, the life-giving Spirit will depart from you. For "God has chosen the lowly things of the world, and the things that are despised, and the things that are nothing, to abolish the things that are" (1 Corinthians 1:28).

Do you believe in all these things?

Chapter 1. TO THE SOURCES OF ENGAGEMENT

The Greatness and Humility of God

For several years now, I have been shocked by the words of Jesus: "Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart" (Matt. 11:29). Why did the Lord, Who possesses all the qualities of the Godhead and all the virtues of a perfect man, choose only meekness and humility for self-characterization, as if all the others were mysteriously manifested in these qualities?

In all religions, man is shocked by the greatness of the Eternal. St. St. John Chrysostom says in his commentary on the 2nd chapter of the Epistle to the Philippians, which deals with kenosis: "Among the pagans there are great and minor deities. In the Scriptures only the great God is seen everywhere, and nowhere are there small ones."

Scripture constantly reminds us of Jehovah's greatness. The Psalmist addresses Him thus: "And to old age, and to gray hair, leave me not, O God, until I declare Thy power to this generation, and to all those who are to come, Thy might" (Psalm 70:18). God reveals His power to the nations: "Thou hast delivered Thy people with an arm" (Psalm 76:16). At the same time, He is God, "who smote the people in fury with blows that are unavoidable, who in wrath ruled over the nations with irrepressible persecution" (Isaiah 14:6).

We see here the attribute of God which is expressed in His great works throughout the history of Israel. Together with Israel, we move from the cosmos to the historical Manifestations of God. Here greatness becomes redemption. It is limitless, but it is inscribed in human time.

Regardless of the revelation given to the Jews, the greatness of God is connected with the stunned sensation that the creature feels before the infinity of the Creator. Creation feels that the Lord of the worlds is higher than the cosmos and contains it in Himself. Man is embraced by the existence of God, as if he were outside the universe. I think that apophatic or negative theology is inherent in man in this state of rapture, and is connected with the dizziness which overwhelms man in the presence of a hidden God. Negative theology transforms our intoxication before the Lord into the realization that God is always beyond what we claim about Him, that He is Hypertheos (super-God), and always in motion, always above all essence. He is the Unchangeable, for He is the Burning Bush. He walks ahead of His people, whom He made Israel, for they saw Him, which made acceptance and obedience possible. He is the One, for there is nothing like Him. It does not coincide with the number 1, just as it does not coincide with the number 3. Only by abandoning all attempt to reduce God to a numerical series do we know that He is the Immeasurable, that His greatness surpasses all. Incomparable to this greatness is the vastness of the cosmos, however unimaginable the extent of the universe in its full scope.

Since there is no common measure for the created and the uncreated, God reveals Himself unknowingly in nature and remains outside the boundaries of reason. By revealing Himself, He manifests Himself as the Other. He dwells in His own holiness, it is the place of His solitude, from which His speech is heard. We comprehend this speech only in the knowledge that exceeds our limits, which He, in His goodness, bestows upon us: "In Thy light we see light" (Psalm 35:10). Transformed by this light for eternal life, we will have the spiritual senses that will enable us to contemplate it. Then we will grow from glory to glory. Imbued with the Divine energies, we will be able to comprehend the splendor of God and perceive His unapproachable light. But we can never penetrate into His bottomless essence. His greatness is marked by this eternal antinomy between the attainable and the unattainable. God reveals Himself in that which hides Him. He alone cuts through the divine darkness that surrounds Him in order to offer us closeness face to face. Although God condescends to us and shows Himself to us, He nevertheless remains beyond even the Biblical word, which calls Him the God of hosts. He is not a commander and does not conquer any peoples. He does not secure any land for himself and does not transfer it to nomadic tribes. He does not divide the spoils among the victors, does not enthrone and overthrow kings, does not link His cause with victory, does not spread faith in Himself by the sword, does not support it with the help of officials, does not undertake or bless any crusades, does not establish Himself through worldly power. He does not burn heretics, does not violate anyone's conscience, does not run along worldly roads in search of supporters. He recognizes the right to error, the freedom of the sinner. He, however, overthrows the strong and sends the rich empty-handed. The flocks of the Jewish patriarchs, the fortunes of wise and dignified Christians, the thriving enterprises of technologically and informationally advanced societies—all these remain meaningless words in the language of the Kingdom, for they in no way reflect the greatness of God.

God does not authorize a prophet to kill people. For example, Elijah, after the massacre he committed on Carmel, goes to Horeb and there meets God: "And he said, 'Go out and stand on the mountain before the face of the Lord, and behold, the Lord will pass by, and a great and mighty wind rending the mountains and breaking the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord is not in the wind; after the wind there is an earthquake, but the Lord is not in the earthquake; after the earthquake there is fire, but the Lord is not on fire; after the fire a gentle wind blows, and there is the Lord" (3 Kings 19:11-13).

The word of the Lord should be taken very seriously: "My strength is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9), for neither wealth, nor power, nor any form of coercion reveals God. Alas, very often the saying is true: "All power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely." Unfortunately, there is still the temptation of union between the throne and the altar. The throne takes on different guises: it can be the word, and science, and rhetoric, and oratory. To pass from one kind of servility to another for the sake of the consolidation of the Church, to be courteous in secular offices, to please the tastes prevailing in this or that sphere of thought or art, means to assume a worldly appearance, to mix the Divine and the human, to enter into a seductive game, and this is the lot of demons. "We have one God the Father" (1 Cor. 8:6). This uniqueness of God excludes all imaginary gods. His glory excludes all other glory. How true is the words of the Apostle: "If any of you thinks to be wise in this world, let him be foolish, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the sight of God" (1 Corinthians 3:18-19).

Here arises the problem of the manifestation of God in creation, "for His invisible things, His eternal power and Divinity, are visible from the creation of the world through the contemplation of creatures" (Romans 1:20). Here I would like to call on exegetes for help. I do not think that Paul considered nature to be the epiphany of God, for it is impossible to infer God from nature, but it is possible to comprehend His manifestation by faith. It would be impossible to give praise to God without first having received an idea of Him as the only and personal. I think it is normal for a believer to start from the Logos in order to feel the logoi spermatikoi, the seeds of the Logos scattered in creation. The Logos found in faith will lead us to the logoi, to the "meanings of being" of things. By revealing Himself as Wisdom, He awakens in us many wisdoms of human culture. Without the help of the Spirit, Who instructs in all truth, man remains a prisoner of his own limitations. Any human possession, enclosed in itself, may or may not be opened to grace-filled fertilization. The greatness of God is incommensurable with what culture gives.