"In calling to love our enemies, Christ had in mind personal
enemies of man, not God's enemies, and not blaspheming molesters, for them
drowning with a millstone around their neck was recommended. Urging to forgive
injuries, Christ was referring to personal insults to a person, not all
possible crimes; no one has the right to forgive the offenses suffered by others
or provide for the villains to offend the weak, corrupt children, desecrate
churches and destroy the Fatherland. So therefore a
Christian is called not only to forgive offenses, but to fight the enemies of
God's work on earth. The evangelical commandment of "non-resistance to
evil" teaches humility and generosity in personal matters, and not
limpness of will, not cowardice, not treachery and not obedience to
evildoers." - Ivan Ilyin
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Ivan Ilyin: The White Army
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Donetsk,
Russian priest blessing radical Orthodox, "Orthodox or Death" says on
the flag (2014)
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Russian Liberation Movement blog | June 17, 1925 | Ivan Ilyin
Posted on 6/23/2013,
12:55:22 AM by annalex
From a speech in Prague,
Berlin and Paris. First published in the Paris newspaper "Возрождение
(Vozrozhdenie, Revival)", № 15 dated June 17, 1925.
Today we turn our thoughts to the Russian national
hero Lavr (Laurel) Georgiyevich Kornilov.
While people are alive and as long as they believe
in God, so long out of their midst heroes will arise to lift and carry on
himself the burden of their lives. And as long as the nation is alive, which
gave birth to such a hero, as long as it is alive and bearing in its heart the
faith in God, it will turn its thought and its will to its heroes, loving them
and honoring them, reflecting on their feats in its mind and accepting them in
its will, so that to imitate them and continue their work.
In the works of a national hero the life of the nation
finds its concentrated and mature expression.
A hero is not a sinless or an infallible man; he is
a sinner, like all people; and in his life there may be unsuccessful steps and
errors. But his mistakes as well as his exploits are errors of his nation and
the exploits of his nation. In them -- he and his nation are one. And if he
makes a mistake with his nation, then he is the first to walk away from it,
reject it, looking for new ways, ways of salvation, and the first to take upon
his shoulders the burden of woes and the burden of redemption ...
And the nation understands it and follows after
him. And if it not all of it follow and not at once, but first in the person of
its best sons, then he whole nation goes on the path of its hero, recalling his
image, saying his name and glorifying his work.
The hero takes up the burden of his nation, the
burden of its misfortunes, of its struggle, of its quest, and having taken up
that burden, he wins - wins already by this alone, indicating to all the way to
salvation. And his victory becomes a prototype and a beacon, as achievement and
the call, the source of victory and the beginning of victory for everyone
connected with him into one whole by patriotic love. That's why he remains for
his people a living source of cheer and joy, and his very name sounds like
victory.
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Ivan
Ilyin, circa 1920
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A national monument has not been erected yet by the
Russian nation to Lavr Georgiyevich Kornilov. But it will stand next to the
monuments to Minin and Pozharsky. We have nowhere to build it from stone and
metal. But it is already built in our hearts ... And now, in a spiritual
monument we have gathered to focus our thoughts on his deed.
But not about the biography of Kornilov I want to
talk about today and not about his personal character, but rather about
something deeper, harder, more sacred: on the idea a bearer and incarnation of
which he was; about the best heritage of its heroic spirit, about that what he
carried in his heart and to what he called by his heroic struggle.
This idea is more than a single man, more than a
feat of one hero. This idea is great as Russia and the sacred as her religion.
This is the idea of the Orthodox sword. The idea is forgotten as an idea, lost
from the Russian consciousness, desecrated by the Russian intellect; but it is
preserved in the Russian heart and the Russian will. This idea inspired and
created the Russian White Army: it sparkled in White hearts, to the death it
lead our White heroes: and it will die only when Russia be gone from the face
of the earth.
On it I'd like to stop your attention today.
One of the reasons for the great misfortune that
has befallen our country is in the wrong structure of the Russian character and
Russian ideology. Especially so in the broad ranks of the Russian intelligentsia.
This error should be marked primarily as
sentimentality. Sentimentality is a spiritually blind compassionate
disposition, the predominance of feeling over the will and philistine
"mood" over religiousity. It is a pointless softening of the soul, that
knows how to indulge it its minute feelings but that cannot love the work of
God with the entirety of the soul; that cannot decide; cannot take
responsibility and lead a fight of the will. The sentimental soul does not
understand that God is greater than man, and that "humaneness" is not
the last word of human virtue and wisdom ...
And then, in a kind of combination of limp
sentimentality, spiritual nihilism and moral pedantry the pernicious doctrine
of Count Leo Tolstoy "of non-resistance to evil by force" emerged and
gained strength; the doctrine which had time to poison the hearts of more or
less several generations in Russia, and undetected spilled into their souls and
weakened them in the fight against the evildoers.
Giving yourself a seductive appearance of the only
true interpretation of Christ's revelation, the doctrine has long inspired and
quietly seduced too many, that love is humane compassion; that love excludes
sword; that all resistance to an evildoer by force is embittered and criminal violence;
that he who loves I not one who is struggling, but the one who runs away from
the fight; that living and patriotic desertion is a manifestation of holiness;
that it is possible and right to betray the work of God to one's moral
self-righteousness ...
Lured by this voice of sentimental morality, people
began to believe in the untouchabilty of evildoers, extricated their strengths
from the struggle against them, and presumed their valor to be in the timid
acquiescence to Satan and his hordes of men; did not believe in the reality of
evil, and buried themselves in the floor cracks in the hour of the death of our
fatherland. And they came around only when the breath of death enveloped their
lives from edge to edge.
Could it be that in the suffering the Russian
people did not grow wiser and will not grow wiser? Could it be that they cannot
tell where is the revelation, and where is the lure? And is not each one of us
called to seek this sagacity?
In search of my sagacity I undertook to write a
study on the resistance to evil by force, in order to try to find the right
source and resolution of the issue, once and for all to turn this
"Tolstoyan" page of the Russian nihilist morality and restore the
ancient Russian Orthodox doctrine of the sword, in all its power and glory...
Now my study is finished and in a few days will be published as a separate
book, which I dedicate to the "Russian White Army and its leaders"
...
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And so,
the first thing I had to establish in this study, is the true meaning of Christian
love, the meaning misunderstood and distorted by sentimental moralists.
Christianity teaches philanthropy. But calling to love man, it sees in him not
an animal that suffers, but a spiritual being, turned to God as its heavenly
Father. The gospel teaches above all and by all means to love God; and this is
the first, the greater commandment; the love of man appears only in second
place. And it's not just because God is greater than man, but also because only
in God and through God, man finds his "neighbor" of his brother by a
One Heavenly Father. To love one’s neighbor as oneself, can only one who found
and firmed within himself the sonship of God, and only through that he can
discern the son of God also in his neighbor. And having learned to love God, he
naturally and necessarily will love in others His sons and his brothers.
Gospel
teaches us not animal compassion, but God-loving philanthropy, it teaches love
spiritual. But spiritual love is something higher than usual compassionate
humanity, relaxing one who is sorry, and one who is the subject of being sorry.
Spiritual love is the power that informs and educates, that raises up. She
loves in a man his face turned to God, not his villainous motives and actions.
To love the evil, the evildoer, the Satan, to sympathize with them, help them,
join them - is unnatural, disgusting and lethal. On the contrary, the evildoer
is always in need of a firm "no", in the resistance that educates
him, compels him, and if need be, represses him.
In
calling to love our enemies, Christ had in mind personal enemies of man, not
God's enemies, and not blaspheming molesters, for them drowning with a
millstone around their neck was recommended. Urging to forgive injuries, Christ
was referring to personal insults to a person, not all possible crimes; no one
has the right to forgive the offenses suffered by others or provide for the
villains to offend the weak, corrupt children, desecrate churches and destroy
the Fatherland. So therefore a Christian is called not only to forgive
offenses, but to fight the enemies of God's work on earth. The evangelical
commandment of "non-resistance to evil" teaches humility and
generosity in personal matters, and not limpness of will, not cowardice, not
treachery and not obedience to evildoers.
In
dealing with the evildoers a Christian should exercise the denying face of
love: he is not called to love the evil in man or promote this evil. He is
called to desire for everyone a spiritual transformation and enlightenment; but
he does not have to extort from his soul a saccharine, mawkish feeling of
tenderness at the sight of heinous acts. It should be enough for him to
remember that great moment in history when God's love in the guise of anger and
whip expelled from the temple the blasphemingly vulgar crowd; and after that he
has to understand that all the prophets, the rulers, judges, teachers and
soldiers should have in front of their spiritual eyes that image of righteous
anger and not doubt the righteousness of their cause.
It is
pointless and ruinous to defend the freedom of the unimpeded villainy. On the
contrary, with the villains is it necessary to fight. But not out of personal
animosity toward them, but for the love of God, of the saints, of the
Fatherland and of others. Subject to condemnation is not the sword, but the
evil and self-interested feeling in the soul of a warrior. Love rejects not the
fighting with the villain, but only the wishing of evil in the fight. No one is
required, no one is called to maintain a union of positive love with the
evildoers; on the contrary, all are called to and must break away from sympathy
to them and all of complicity with them and oppose them in life and in death.
And woe to the nation that has lost the will and ability to fight this: it
either shall revive this will in itself or it will die, because the evildoers
will exterminate its best sons, and the rest they will turn into their
submissive slaves ...
May the will for this fight wake up in the Russian
hearts! May it motivate the faithful sons of Russia as it inspired and led, and
to this day is leading the Russian White Army! The flag of Kornilov is a banner
of the heroic love of the Fatherland, the love donating all the comforts of the
world for the national altars and planting before the eyes of a man the guiding
images of Archangel Michael and Saint George.
That is how the idea of love and the idea of sword
was understood was understood in the ancient Russian Orthodoxy, that spoke from
the mouth of St. Theodosius of the Caves: "Live in peace, not only with
friends but also with enemies: but only with your enemies, not with the enemies
of God." It is that love that was taught by our bishops and saints; this
is how the sword was carried by the Russian Orthodox kings and their faithful
nobles, this is how laid down their heads Orthodox soldiers.
In this ancient Orthodox spirit our Russian
national hero Lavr Georgievich Kornilov lived and fought.
Let us be faithful to this spirit also. In it - our
victory; our impending, certain victory ... For we win when our sword will be
the love and the prayer, and our prayer and our love will be the sword!
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State Power has its own limits
– Ivan Ilyin
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