Ukrainian Orthodoxy		Orthodoxie ukrainienne

To Enter the Uninviting Place!

Very Reverend Ihor Kutash kutash@unicorne.org

(Ninteenth Sunday after Pentecost)

In today`s Gospel (Luke 6:31-36) we are encouraged to enter into a part of our soul which is dark and uninviting. It is the place whence come the feelings of hatred, of the thirst for vengeance, for violence. Our Lord issues this invitation to us by telling us to love our enemies and to do good to them. It is a very hard thing He is asking us to do. It is hard enough to act in this way to those who have done us some personal wrongs. But it gets even harder.

There are actions committed by people that are so evil, so horrible that it seems to be impossible to forgive them. For example we can mention the famine perpetrated in Ukraine in 1932-33 by Joseph Stalin and his agents, in which millions of people died in the worse way imaginable. In the midst of this horror some people were pushed to do unspeakable things to survive or because their mind went off the rails. Ludmilla Bereshko writes about this in her newl-published book The Parcel from Chicken Street and Other Stories. Or we can think about the atrocities done by the Nazis or recently in Ruanda or Bosnia. How is it possible to love people who committed such beastly - no, worse than beastly things?!

To begin with we must say very firmly that it can never be a question of denying or minimizing the horror of acts done by human malice. For every action there are consequences. The atrocities perpetrated by people who yielded their wills to the murderous monsters in their own heads or at the helm of certain governments or political - or religious - groups, have as their consequence the fact that those victims who survived - or those who survived the victims - are forever marked by what they endured. As long as they live they may never stop thirsting for vengeance or justice.

It is simply impossible to pass quickly from a feeling of excruciating physical or emotional pain to the desire to forgive and to love. If one were to choose to do so - to try to follow the commandment of Christ in such a desperately difficult situation - it would not be instantaneous. It would be a gradual process of growing and healing. And it would be costly. One who can say quickly and easily that he or she loves everyone has certainly not reflected upon the matter very much, and most likely has not been unfortunate enough to be marked deeply by suffering.

Yet Jesus does invite us to enter into this process. He encourages us to not content ourselves with loving only those who love us. He calls us to enter into the darkness and shadows of our wonds and torments and to find a way to understand and acccept them. To find a new understanding of the evil that lurks in human hearts (in our hearts, too!), so that we can leave a past where atrocities were done and enter into a future that can be different from the past.

The process requires courage, hope and faith. We can find these things in Jesus, in a life close to Him through prayer and through imaginative attention to His teaching and the way they can be worked out in our lives and in the world around us. Accompanied by this resourceful and all-knowledgeable fellow voyager let us enter into the uninviting place in our souls where we can find healing.

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