"Once, Fr. Thaddeus shared a meal at Vitovnica with a pious visitor from Belgrade. After the meal, the visitor noticed several bread crumbs in the elder's long beard. When they had both risen from the table, he gently told Fr. Thaddeus that he ought to shake the crumbs from his beard, so that the other visitors would not see them and wonder what kind of monk he was. However, the elder only smiled and said, 'It is a pity to throw these crumbs away, when the birds can feast on them!' Then he sat on a bench in the garden, leaned back in his seat, and called to a sparrow sitting on a nearby tree, 'Come, little sparrow, come and eat!' The visitor saw with his own eyes how the sparrow flew down and settled on Fr. Thaddeus' beard, pecking at it until it had eaten the last crumb.
Fr. Thaddeus spoke to the Vitovnica pilgrims in these words: 'Life is increasingly being destroyed and extinguished ... That's no mystery! Even some ten years ago when there used to be heavy snowfalls, you could see whole families of rabbits playing in the clearings among the trees at night in the moonlight. They would run around in circles, chasing one another and playing, hundreds of them, turning cartwheels in the snow, playing joyfully. This was joy, the joy of living! The animals have it. Man takes this joy away from them. They have joy of the living, while we have all kinds of material things, yet we are never happy, never satisfied. The animals do not worry about tomorrow, they do not gather wheat into granaries, yet the Lord feeds them all. They nibble on a root here, find a place to sleep there, and they are grateful to God. Not so we men ..."
"Oh, God, enlarge within us the sense of fellowship with all living things; with our brothers the animals to whom Thou gavest the earth as their home in common with us." - St. Basil
"The saints are exceedingly loving and gentle to mankind, and even to brute beasts ... Surely we ought to show them [animals] great kindness and gentleness for many reasons, but, above all, because they are of the same origin as ourselves." - St. John Chrysostom
"All that is of God is most beautiful and most wise. Everything created by God travels obediently along the path for which God has ordained it. The stars move, animals live and the atmospheric currents conform - all according to the order established by God. Only man, the most intelligent creature, frequently falls into ignorance and leaving the path of God, invents new paths according to his thinking. Because of that, it could happen that instead of the elders, children become leaders and instead of the husbands, wives begin to rule. When children rule oppression reigns and when women rule, disorder usually reigns. When this is permitted by God because this does not occur without the sin of a people and without the permission of God then the people find themselves under punishment for their sins, in the same way as when war comes and the enemy subdues the land, for all oppression is war and every disorder is a punishment for sin.
Just as oppression and disorder are able to reign in a nation so, in the same way, they are able to reign in the soul of man. Immature and impious thoughts represent children and physical sensual theorizing, represent women. When immature and impious thoughts prevail, then they oppress man and drag him from evil to evil as when children judge; and when physical theorizing prevails over the spiritual, masculine wisdom, which is from God, then they rule over man as an evil woman. Under "women", the prophet understands not only females, but also men with women's weaknesses.
So that children's ignorance and women's whims do not overtake man, or a nation, it is necessary to strictly adhere to the law of God, prescribed by God for men as all created things adhere to the law of God, prescribed for them by God.
O Lord, Creator and our Lawgiver, illumine us and strengthen us. Illumine us with the grace of the Spirit that we may always know Your law and strengthen us with the power of the Spirit to always adhere to Your law." - St. Nikolai Velimirovich's Homily on Isaiah 3:12, Prologue of Ohrid
Thank you for sharing, its one of my favorite passages from the book. We used the book last year as the theme of our church school year at St. Nicholas church.
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome. It is a humbling reality that the animals fulfill their purpose, while us men continue to fail to fulfill our purpose in the Present--union with God. May Christ our God grant your parish His great mercy!
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