From the back cover:

“In the future where the Church faces an unprecedented wave of persecution, Christians grapple with their very identity. Amidst this turmoil, four young Copts are called into Neo-Kemet, a virtual reality version of Egypt where past and present collide. As they navigate this vivid and immersive world, they uncover hidden secrets of the Coptic and broader Christian heritage, embarking on a thrilling journey of discovery and faith.

As readers progress through this captivating cyberpunk narrative, they are confronted with the profound implications of our evolving relationship with technology. Neo-Kemet becomes a beacon for Christians, guiding them through the uncharted territory of a tech-driven future. This gripping tale offers a timely exploration of faith, identity, and the essence of our shared humanity.”

I would like to thank the Priest of the Oriental Church for being an inspiration to contribute a literary creation to a uniquely Diasporan Coptic literature, and for our discussions on the meaning of a true literature, and how we write such, and the process of literary and poetic inspiration itself, and for the edification. He has paved the way showing us what a Coptic diasporan literature looks like.

I would like to thank the Coptic Inklings for their friendship and discussion and encouragement throughout all our literary endeavors, especially when we began brainstorming heavily in the Summer of 2023 about what types of genres would carry well Coptic identity in literature. Prepare for several literary works coming from them over the next few years. I especially want to shout out Jean-Paul Markos; his heart for service is rare in this generation; his heart for people, even rarer.

I would like to thank Samuel Khalil, Peter Ibrahim, Michael Ragheb, and Katie McBratney for reviewing the novel in full during the review phase and providing detailed, constructive feedback. I would also like to thank Vanessa Dotinga for her professional work in thoroughly editing and carefully reading my novel and giving constructive feedback. Any remaining errors are solely my own.

I would also like to thank St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press and Catholic University of America Press for granting me to use excerpts of patristic texts in my novel free of charge. Their only request was to send them a copy of my novel. I would also like to thank Paulist Press for granting me use of another patristic text.

And of course, I would like to thank Hany Takla and Saad Michael Saad, for their work in preserving and educating the masses about Coptic Orthodox Christianity and the Coptic language. The years that I have known both, they have made available resources and knowledge, and communicated the ethnic Coptic way of seeing, and more importantly, the Coptic Orthodox Christian way of believing, but more than all of this, they have lived it and given us all a model of such a life. This material is what was fermenting in my mind as I wrote this novel.

I recorded an episode on my podcast The Mind of the Early Church announcing the release of my novel with Joshua Williams and having a discussion about early Christian literature and the role of literature in our lives.

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After I began to seriously engage with classical education, I started to think that popular movie series like the Star Wars saga and the Marvel Cinematic Universe were little more than the human equivalent of lasers being shined to get the attention of a cat. (I’m sure you’ve all seen videos or have done so with cats yourselves). I had once enjoyed these films and would go to theaters on opening weekend in order to avoid hearing spoilers. I thought I would not like them much due to seeing the larger literary world through classical education. However, I began to change my mind regarding the Marvel Cinematic Universe after artificial intelligence came to the forefront due to the rise of ChatGPT.  I realized that Avengers: Age of Ultron is a serious exploration of the topic.  I also began to change my mind about Star Wars after watching the Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Why is that? I came to know an individual who was mostly driven to do things in life out of fear.  If you can’t understand how this can be, then let me explain further.  The normal person befriends others because he or she likes the others and finds some affinity with them.  They enjoy being around them and talking to them.  The normal person also seeks a job out of excitement and enthusiasm (if not for the work itself, at least for the money).  And when a normal person enters into a romantic relationship, it is out of love.

But I came to know a person for whom all of these were distorted. The fear-driven person befriends people out of fear of being alone; the fear-driven person seeks a job out of fear of poverty; the fear-driven person enters into a romantic relationship out of fear of being alone on an intimate level. This was odd to me, and I never quite knew a person like this before.

When I revisited the Star Wars saga with the series Obi-Wan Kenobi, it made me realize that there was something deep (and something very human) in the portrayal of Anakin Skywalker and his descent to become Darth Vader.  It was an extended exploration about how fear and love interact. His was a fear-driven life. Then I realized, this may not be that odd after all.  Cigna, one of the largest healthcare insurance companies, commissioned a study that was published at the end of 2021 on the state of loneliness in the United States and found that 58% of adults feel lonely, with nearly 80% of 18-24 year olds feeling lonely.  Mind you, this is the most connected generation with smartphones and social media.  Ironic, isn’t it?

It made me realize that when people like Anakin Skywalker do things out of fear, it is for multiple reasons. It could be due to feelings of inadequacy, codependence, envy, jealousy, low self-esteem, and hatred (either of oneself or others).

The Origin and Destination of Fear

From where and to where does fear lead? A life driven by fear leads the fearful person to lie regularly, keep secrets, misportray themselves and the way things are especially with their life story, become torn between the different worlds they’ve created for themselves (this is known as fragmentation), have self-contradictory behavior (this leads to loss of self), loss of rationality, and taking refuge in darkness and self-hate (including intense feelings of guilt and low-self esteem).

Such was the person I knew, and such is Darth Vader in the Star Wars saga.

Anakin has trauma from his childhood by being sold into slavery and having only one close relative (his mother). His trauma is added to when he is freed and leaves her to become a Jedi while she remains a slave. (There is something theological here in that he is freed in body but is still enslaved in mind). Something good happened to him, but apparently, he was not able to accept that good thing. Ten years later, he begins having dreams about his mother (whom he has not seen or spoken to since he was freed) and begins suffering anxiety (the type that is clinical) over her.  Now, for those unfamiliar with Star Wars, the Jedi are like monks: no attachments (property or personal), no relationships (familial or intimate), pure detachment [there is a virtue by the same name in Christianity mentioned in The Ladder of Divine Ascent as Step 2, but its origin and goal are different], inner peace and peacemaking in the community at large. But Anakin has personal and familiar attachments (and actively seeks to develop them). One would think ten years would have washed away attachment, but with him it is the opposite. He obsesses. It goes to show that time does not heal all things nor does it cause one to let go of things, only God can do that.

He is also reunited with someone from ten years prior, a young woman, and in a twist of fate, he is to be her bodyguard escorting her back to her home planet after several attempts on her life. He grows attached to her. After his mother dies, even more so. He marries her (something forbidden for the Jedi). Over the next three years, he engages in the Clone Wars where his heroics are put on full display, but he now keeps this secret from everyone else that he knows and so does she. His is a fragmented life.

When the war is nearing its close, the Chancellor (soon to be Emperor) orchestrates several temptations to cause Anakin to fall, so he can establish his rule on the galaxy.  He sets things up so that Anakin is to be placed on the Jedi Council, but he does not have the rank to allow him to do so. The Council accepts him, but they do not raise his rank. He becomes angry that he is not promoted in rank to Jedi Master. He is not wronged; it was not according to their principles that he was placed. And remember, he is not following the principles of the inner life of a Jedi anyway. He followed some, but not all, and not the most important aspects. He is a Jedi on his own terms.

Anakin also has dreams of the future where his wife will die in childbirth. When the Emperor tempts Anakin with the strongest temptation yet by saying that he can save his wife from the death Anakin has been seeing in his premonitions, it tears Anakin apart on the inside.  But, he has already been torn since he was a child, and the Emperor only took advantage of this fragmentation. When Anakin tries to save the Emperor from being killed by the Jedi, he cuts off the hand of Mace Windu (one of the leaders of the Jedi), and the Emperor takes advantage of this and kills Mace Windu.  Anakin experiences a moment of regret (even though he had not intended things to end this way), but then he immediately pledges himself to the Emperor and becomes Darth Vader.

When Darth Vader loses his battle with his master Obi-Wan Kenobi (whom he also regarded as a father), and burns, it is only superficial (no pun intended) because he is living his own hell on the inside. In the end, his wife dies anyway; he was unable to save her, but unbeknownst to him and the Emperor, her children are born. The Emperor also tells him that he was responsible for her death. Yet again, the Emperor drives him further into Darth Vader into his own inner hell by lying to him and telling him that he killed his wife (this is open to interpretation in the films, but whatever the case, she lived longer than he implied).

If you see, there is no point anymore in Darth Vader following the Emperor. All the reasons which he had for pledging himself to the Emperor no longer exist. But instead of leaving, Darth Vader descends further into his inner hell and makes his home on the volcanic planet full of rivers of magma (a river of fire, if you will) where he suffered his injuries.  He takes refuge in the darkness and self-hate, rather than to come back to himself.

For the person living a fear-driven life, the darkness and self-hate is familiar (and comfortable).

This might seem depressing at this point, but is there a path to a better life?

How Do We Drive Out Fear?

The answer is love.  While Anakin’s relationship with his wife was based on anxious and obsessive attachment, there was some shred of love there (although very difficult to see).  You see, the thing I discovered with those who have a fear-driven life is that they are not all bad; there is quite a bit of good in them but it is so disorganized and fragmented, that sometimes the good appears and stays there for a while and you think you know the person, but then the side of them that appears when fear takes control is extremely dark, cold, distant, and maximally uncaring. There is a vice that Christian monks have observed and written about since the 4th century called acedia. This darkness, coldness, distance, and lack of care is acedia.

Decades later, when Darth Vader realizes that the child his wife was carrying made it to childbirth, the good in him reawakened, but it is still fragmented as it had always been.  When his son escapes following their first battle, something changes in Darth Vader. He doesn’t kill anyone from his fleet; usually he kills a few following any loss.

Sometime later, when his son, named Luke, turns himself in to the empire with the hope of redeeming his father, he tells him that it’s not late for him to turn back.  Vader answers, “It is too late for me, son.”

Yet, ultimately, when the Emperor is about to kill Luke, Vader turns and kills the Emperor but is also mortally wounded in the process. In a dark way, this was the first time Darth Vader experienced love without anxiety or obsession, but in full freedom. This is his ultimate redemption, that his inner life has transformed and he finally was freed of his inner enslavement which went further back to before he was Darth Vader.

But he did not have any time left to live life.

Anakin Skywalker and Orthodox Christianity

The fact that we can still see Anakin as good after his storyline is interesting to me as an Orthodox Christian. This is because in Orthodox Christianity, we do not believe that the human being is totally depraved like in Protestant theology.  Rather, we believe that humans are fundamentally good, but sin is an infection (albeit widespread and deeply entrenched) and sometimes extremely severe such as in the case of Anakin with some aspects of his anxiety, fragmentation, and misdeeds. This is why we can see Anakin as having been good. 

When you watch Obi-Wan Kenobi, especially if you have seen all the films and quite a bit of The Clone Wars, you will feel an air of sadness throughout the series especially in the scene where it flashes back to Obi-Wan training with Anakin.  The human being (both in selfhood and personhood) is never quite finished developing, and in Orthodox Christianity, this process continues for eternity.

It is a feeling of sadness for what Anakin could have been based on who he was and the good that lived in him.  Yet we know how the story ends, but even with his redemption, it is tragic because life is not just about whether we make it to heaven, but whether we lived a good and meaningful life.

And maybe that’s what it was with my former friend: there was much good in that person, but it was fragmented.  The fear led to lying, keeping secrets, misportraying themselves and their life story, being torn between multiple worlds and a different persona for each world, and taking refuge in the darkness.  Sometimes we have to let it go like Obi-Wan let it go, and like I’ve let it go.  Maybe one day they will be redeemed from the fear-driven life in order to live a love-driven life, and unlike Darth Vader, hopefully with enough time to live a good and meaningful life.

There is always hope. And maybe the love that will finally cast out the fear, the anxiety, the coldness, and the distance from such a person’s heart, will lead to greater glory for God than if the person had experienced a “normal” life. God always brings out goodness even from what appears to be insufferable evil, as seen in the life of Christ and the martyrs. And as so eloquently stated in the words of Adam from John Milton’s Paradise Lost,

“O goodness infinite, goodness immense!

That all this good of evil shall produce,

And evil turn to good; more wonderful

Then that which by creation first brought forth

Light out of darkness! full of doubt I stand,

Whether I should repent me now of sin

By mee done and occasiond, or rejoyce

Much more, that much more good thereof shall spring,

To God more glory, more good will to Men

From God, and over wrauth grace shall abound” (Book XII, lines 469-478).

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This is an interview with Thilo Young about his book titled An American Flight to Egypt: A Western Evangelical Discovers the Ancient Faith that details his and his wife’s journey to Orthodoxy You can purchase the book by clicking this link: amzn.to/3H09Jkv

“God is still powerfully and gloriously at work in the Coptic Orthodox Christian Church. This is the account of God drawing a lost, hurt, and spiritually impoverished person to Himself. Deeply reflective. For those of you hurting and unable to let go of the past and to believe freely and fully, God’s work in this couple’s life shows that healing, love, freedom, and satisfaction is possible.

This book will make you laugh and will make you cry… from laughing. Believe me, I laughed out loud in many places. But it is deeply moving, eye-opening, and at moments will make you silent. Such reflectiveness by an individual is rare in this generation, but this type of reflectiveness is the way we become aware of God’s work in our lives.

Perhaps, unexpectedly, is that Thilo’s conversion story became interwoven with the Divine Liturgy. This is a deeper layer of the story, but I noticed it quickly, and his quotes at the beginning of each chapter help direct your attention as to how the things we pray in the liturgy indeed manifest themselves in our everyday lives. If this seems interesting, it is one of the reasons you should read this book.

Whether you are interested in a conversion account, or whether you want to see a pattern of reflectiveness that you can imitate and implement in your own spiritual lives, or whether you want to see how the liturgy can and is interwoven into our daily lives (only if we pay attention), then you should read this book.

This book shows that the faith of the Coptic Orthodox Christian Church throughout all its ages and wisdom and worship is still making true disciples of Christ to this day.”

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“How can we read the Bible with any type of confidence that we are understanding it correctly. This is a discussion on how to do so featuring Thilo Young.”

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“St. Athanasius most well known work On the Incarnation is a classic of early Christianity, but what is not well known is that On the Incarnation is actually Part II of a two part work. The first part is called Contra Gentes, or Against the Heathen, and it sets up who is Logos and how he relates to the world. Only after understanding this important first part can one fully appreciate On the Incarnation.”

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I reflected on this for a moment.  I wondered the same question “What is your favorite Bible verse?” came up in the context of a visit or a hangout, would the same people be able to answer what their favorite Bible verses are?

I became suspicious when people participated in the challenge that many of them did not even have an actual favorite Bible verse, but they participated in the challenge using the following steps:

1. Thinking of a Biblical topic
2. Googling “Bible verses on [insert topic]”
3. Finding something at that moment (maybe something they half-remembered)
4. Posting it as one’s favorite verse

The reality was hidden. The same person would likely be unable to answer this question of their favorite verse in real life because it would require true contemplation on their part.  Years later it hit me!  This is the algorithm of fakeness.

It made me realize, this generation is characterized by fakeness.

Why is this the case?  This is because the traits that people developed by truly existing in community with one another have disappeared because real community has disappeared.  These traits include vulnerability, immediacy, and dialogue.  These traits have disappeared because when someone hides behind a profile or does not answer a text in a reasonable amount of time, people have become isolated, and isolation does not allow for vulnerability, immediacy, and dialogue.  The result of this hiding is that everyone also tries to be something they are not.  The people of this generation have become skilled actors while pretending to be real.

Image by Fauxels

From Pexels

Trait # 1: Vulnerability

The first trait that this generation lost due to the breakdown of community and the rise of social media and technology is that there is no more vulnerability in conversation.  When people call us, many times we’ll screen the call.  Other times, if they text, we think about when to return the text after spending many hours (or days) thinking about an answer to a question that would otherwise have been answered immediately and with authenticity and vulnerability if we were face to face.  This could be for many reasons.

It could be that we try to hide behind our devices in order not to show how empty or how weak we are because it is tough to realize that we may need to invest in ourselves.  When we are vulnerable, we grow as persons and learn how to exist with others.  But when we hide behind our devices, we take refuge in ourselves even if there are undesirable traits in us, even if we know and do not like these traits in ourselves.  We become powerless to change because of the inability to exist in the community.

Vulnerability leads to many other traits in us such as trustworthiness, reliability, and attentiveness.  These cannot be developed easily (and possibly not at all) behind a device.

Trait # 2: Immediacy

But a second issue after vulnerability arises, which we are more familiar with: we lose immediacy and thus we are never fully present in any setting.  We avoid having to be present with anyone or in any event unless we have an emotional high or enough energy to present ourselves as something we are not.

This again could be for many reasons, but I will digress for a moment.

Every single year I have taught, and in every single class I have had, at least 10% of the students were diagnosed with ADHD.  This is in line with the percentage of children diagnosed with ADHD in the population.  This percentage has doubled in the past 17 years.  The interesting thing is that ADHD is not actually a disorder of the attention, but is a disorder of executive functioning meaning that a person who has this condition has difficulty determining what is the most important thing to do at the moment when faced with many things to do.  On the flip side, if someone who has ADHD is interested in something, then a condition called “hyperfocus” manifests itself.  In hyperfocus, the person who has ADHD exhibits executive attention [the attention required to complete a task] better than any of us by canceling everything else out.

How is ADHD related to anything about community and the fakest generation? It’s because the increasing isolation and lack of community in this generation has aggravated people’s susceptibility to ADHD and made it much more pronounced.  If we all valued beyond any doubt that time spent with our families around the dinner table as the most important community event of the day and church attendance as the most important community event of the week, then I suspect that people who have ADHD would have less severe manifestations of “inattentiveness” because their executive functioning would work better because they will know what is most important to do at the moment.

I think it is actually a symptom of society’s problems that people who have ADHD are struggling more so these days than during the past.  The breakdown of values (and the hierarchy of values) in society has made executive functioning more difficult for those with ADHD.  I mean how can they determine what is most important when their parents are not together, or don’t model love between spouses, or attention to one another or to their children, and everyone’s idea of a good nighttime meal is eating chips on the couch watching Netflix and scrolling endlessly on their phones afterward?!  It’s enough to make the best people in society stop functioning!

Even if we are not dealing with someone who has ADHD (there is a 90% chance we are not), we feel that everybody is distant even when they are sitting in front of us, especially if they are on their phones.  The irony of it all is that smartphones and social media were supposed to bring us closer together, but instead they have destroyed our ability to determine that whomever is sitting in front of us is the most important person at the moment.  We traded values (of love, assurance, and presentness) for connectedness.  And now we’re more likely to scroll than talk.

Trait # 3: Dialogue

The third and most consequential of community traits this generation has lost is the ability to dialogue.  This is highlighted best by the phenomenon of TikTok as the final celebration of self-absorption.  Everybody thinks they are a celebrity and treats others like they are their fans.  No more family, no more friends, no more acquaintances, only followers.  And perhaps the term “follower,” while yet not precise enough to describe what is going on on social media, is closer to the truth than the other terms that were formerly used on social media such as “friend.”

I remember teaching a lesson on connotation last year, and when I asked students to state what came to mind when they heard TikTok, among the answers they gave were: stupid videos, ‘sheesh’, ridiculous, toxic, dangerous, judging, bullies, not funny, cancel culture, drama, edgy teens incarnate, 90% trash, everyone gets offended, a waste of time scrolling for nothing, addicting, wastes sleep and you can lose track of time, problematic, distracting, ‘it’s the dark ages of the modern times,’ annoying, endless.  Again, these are secular teenagers’ opinions about TikTok.

They did note some positives, but with so many negatives pointed out, it made me realize that our generation is doing something that they know is harmful for their own well-being which can (and often does) take away their peace.

The problem with social media in general is that it makes everyone think they are a celebrity and everyone takes the stage to give a monologue and never takes the time to dialogue with others.  In the words of Andrew Kern of the CiRCE Institute, “there is no more dialogue, but parallel monologues.”

The definition of dialogue is “a discussion between two or more people or groups, especially one directed toward exploration of a particular subject or resolution of a problem.”

We no longer engage in exploration and connection because we believe we already know everything.  When someone goes on to social media and makes a video or post, it is because they believe they have something valuable to share, and depending on the person and their background, they very well could.  But oftentimes due to fear of missing out, it ends up becoming a big mess rather than having any benefit.

Yet, the “between” part of dialogue is how we build community.  I mean, how is it that a family grows close and loves one another?  It is through sitting with each other and exploring something about life together, and that could be after they have read a book, watched a movie, or shared an experience they have gone through.

This is one way we build community.  This is also how the Church developed its community.  They explored in dialogue the person of our Lord Jesus Christ and the scriptures. This is exactly what the Apostle Paul did with both Jews and Gentiles in the Book of Acts when he went to the synagogues week by week and reasoned from the Scriptures. In the case of the Gentiles, he reasoned from the order of the world.  The word “reasoned” in Greek is dialegomai from which we get the English word “dialogue.”  And this is what missionaries have done since the beginning of the Church.

We can’t build community, or develop as persons, or preach the Gospel without vulnerability, immediacy, and dialogue.

But the theatrical monologues that have taken the stage since social media has proliferated the world manifest fakeness.

The Algorithms of Fakeness

The fakeness has gone far beyond people acting like celebrities, but people no longer know their places or roles.  Celebrities do not dialogue; they only give monologues, and that is what people are doing using social media.  Celebrities also do not really have community beginning with home life, where they have much higher divorce rates and multiple re-marriages than the rest of the population. Here are some common examples monological fakeness that you all have definitely seen:

1. When a father or mother tries to be “cool” and to be their children’s best friends, but in reality, children have many friends, but only two parents (if they are lucky enough to have the two). Who will teach children right from wrong and how they should navigate and stand in this world? 
2. When schools no longer teach children how to think, imagine, and the breadth and depth of our civilization, but they only push currently popular opinions. In reality, school is supposed to teach you how to think fairly and reasonably, how to explore the world, and how to realize which points of discussion in society are well-supported and which are not.
3. When the people who are living paycheck to paycheck give financial advice to others, but in reality, they don’t know the principles of saving, investing, and living within their means, but they believe they can give what they never had and will never have.
4. When you have a couple post a nice picture on their wedding anniversary accompanied by a post of how much they love their spouse and how their spouse has restored their hope in life and love, but in reality, they do nothing but berate, belittle, and complain about each other every time you meet them.
5. When you have a young person act sweet, friendly, and well-put together so they can befriend many people, but in reality, they are afraid of being alone, so their solution is to act differently based on whichever “friends” they are with at the moment, so they can be accepted by those not worth being accepted by.
6. When you have children write an inspirational post on Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, but in reality, their own mother and father have not even heard from them that day, and are disregarded most of the time by them.
7. When you have priests who don’t read the Bible and don’t read the Church Fathers and talk about how hard it is to read.  (Yes, this is happening). In reality, they are ordained to be the guardians of the Apostolic tradition.  How can they do so if they never go to the fountain and streams of that tradition?
8. When you have the “faithful” spending all day arguing online in social media groups and branding anyone who disagrees with them as “heretics” and blocking them from the groups thus perpetuating the confirmation bias that the algorithm promotes.  In reality, the same internet armchair warriors do not go to church, or have a father confessor, or read the Bible or any book of spirituality nor are they active in a real-life community at all.  (Although, the people you are interacting with in these groups could very well be troll farms based on this internal report from Facebook).
9. When you have monastics with smart phones who are active on social media.  (Yes, this is happening). In reality, the monks and nuns withdrew to the desert or to the mountains in order to have solitude and to focus on inner spirituality.  If one cannot extend this understanding to preclude smart phones and social media because they connect us to the city again and take us out of the desert, then I don’t know whether we should laugh or cry at such actions from monastics.
10. When you have nuns asking a young woman about the man she is dating and how she should bring him to the monastery so they could meet him.  (Yes, this is happening).  In reality, such behavior is out of place and not fitting for the station of life of a nun much like how a 5 year old being serious and stressing about marriage and how they have to prepare now or like a 25 year old getting their affairs in order and preparing for their funeral and preparing their will even though they are fully healthy are out of place and not fitting for the station of life for a 5 year old and a 25 year old.

All this fakeness shows how things are out of place.  Community has collapsed.

As you can see from all of the above toxic patterns, people give monologues and are self-absorbed. These things have become commonplace due to the proliferation of social media. We can call this way of living and being “monological self-absorption.”

When we interact with such individuals, it can never be dialogue because dialogue is an exploration of something by discussion between two or more people.  All of the above examples are people announcing and declaring, not discussing.

Where is community?  How can we ever have vulnerability, immediacy, and dialogue when we are surrounded by such fakeness?  The only way to live in such a community is to be faker than those around us.  It becomes a competition of fakeness.

How Then Shall We Live?

On Netflix (ironically) one of the few series with some type of life messages is Mr. Iglesias.  Mr. Iglesias stars the comedian Gabriel Iglesias as a high school history teacher. The show was partially inspired by the positive impact Iglesias’s speech pathologist had on his life.  In one of the episodes, Mr. Iglesias orders his students to work without tablets and phones. The end result is that they learn how to better communicate with one another, listen to each other, build confidence, and community.

It’s that simple.  Nothing more, nothing less.  No research required.  No 500 page book written by an expert.

Social media and the media of electronics makes us present ourselves other than we really are.  We present an image of ourselves less real than the plastic and the glass that make up our phones and computers.

Let us learn how to sit with vulnerability, with immediacy, and in dialogue around the dinner table with our families, in our living room couches with our families, or at the lunch tables at school, or at tables at the restaurant, or at the table of the Lord on Sunday mornings.  In short, let us attend.

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When we shape our vision using these streams, then we have an idea of what humanity is.  It is at this point that we realize that the people who encountered Christ in the New Testament had a coming-to-reality moment with themselves.  Christ revealed to them who they were.

St. Ephrem the Syrian called Him the Mirror.  Christ was the Mirror showing us who we are.  Thus Christ reveals to us who we are.

Christ revealed to us the nature of humanity as it was meant to be and what it could become in Him.  This revelation began with what motherhood means.

Salus Populi Romani icon, 590 A.D.

housed in the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome

Christ’s Revealing Light into Motherhood

The light that the Incarnate Christ shined into the world began with the pregnancy and motherhood of St. Mary.

When He cried, she wiped His tears away.

When He was inconsolable, she was the one who held His hand and rocked Him.

She was the one who held His hands as He learned how to walk.

She was the one to whom He ran when He wanted safety and security.

She was the one from whom He picked up His speech.

She was the one who taught Him how to pray in his humanity.

She watched Him when He played so He wouldn’t wander.

She watched Him when He taught in the synagogues the words of God.

She was with Him when He slept in the manger.

She was with Him when He was laid in the tomb.

She was with John when he ran at the news of the empty tomb.

She did not run because she knew what happened.

If you can’t see anything in the relationship between St. Mary and Our Lord, then you are incapable of Christianity spirituality.  There’s just no way around it.  She is the closest person to our Lord Jesus Christ, and if you can’t learn anything from that closeness, what can you learn?

In the Gospel of Luke, after our Lord Jesus had taught those gathered how to pray and gave some teachings, “it happened, as He spoke these things, that a certain woman from the crowd raised her voice and said to Him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore You, and the breasts which nursed You!’

But He said, ‘More than that, blessed are those who heard the word of God and keep it!” (Luke 11:27-28).

What is not readily apparent to English readers is what our Lord Jesus is meaning here.  When the lady tells Him his mother is blessed, His answer is “Yes, indeed.”  The Greek word translated as “More than that” is menoun/menounge which is a word that affirms what one has said and amplifies it further by showing what else supports what she is saying.  So what our Lord Jesus is telling the lady is “She is indeed blessed but even more so because she hears God’s word and keeps it, and all who are like her are blessed.”

In his book Prayer, the patristic scholar and theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar further points out the specificity with which Christ was speaking: “Her ‘breasts’ are blessed only because she has heard the word of God and kept it (Lk 11:27 f), because she ‘kept all these things, pondering them in her heart’ (Lk 2:19, 51).  All contemplation must take its directions from Mary if it is to keep the twofold danger at bay: on the one hand that of seeing the word as something merely external, rather than the deepest mystery within it, that in which we live, move and have our being; and on the other hand the danger of holding the word to be something so interior that we confuse it with our own nature, with a natural wisdom given to us once and for all, to be used at will” (Balthasar, Prayer, 27-28).

And it is there that He reveals something more about motherhood.  A real mother is not just one who feeds you and provides your physical necessities, but also the one who teaches you by her example how to follow God.  The most important things we receive from our parents we do not receive by teaching through words, but by imitation of their life.  We receive their life directly from them, but of course, we have a choice as to which we go.  Some follow their parents’ way of life faithfully and wholly, for better or worse.  If the parents are good, then all good and well.  In the case of our Lord Jesus, His mother was an example of how to keep the word of God in her heart and let it grow and overflow.

Unfortunately, in this generation we have too many moms who treat their children as their friends, especially mothers who have daughters.  And as such, the children do not quite learn what motherhood is.  Maybe this is why so many women (and men) look down upon motherhood today.  They think something along the lines: “Why have a friend who birthed you?  Why birth people who will be your friends?  I get along just fine with my friends; why go through 9 months of discomfort and danger of disease and death, and through childbirth and its dangers, and raising and cleaning after a kid who defecates and urinates on himself or herself, just for a friend.  It seems like overkill.”  If this is all what motherhood was, it definitely is.

But it isn’t.  True motherhood passes down the pattern of life by simply living and being.  What a mother passes down cannot be passed down by simple talking.  A mother is not just a teacher.  A mother is a pattern for life.  She teaches by simply being.

St. Mary became a mother and she did these things by nature.

But humans before Christ shone His light on motherhood, were as it were half awake, or sleepwalking, not knowing what these things meant.  This was no different than slaves not knowing what they do, but they know that they have a task to do.

It was only when God became Man, that He revealed to us what it means to be human.

We saw the meaning.

Christ released us from servitude because true servitude is the inability to see further.

When humans have only been occupied with eating, drinking, and sleeping, they are servants to the cycles of life.  There is no ability to see further into what it means to be human.

But a free person dances with the cycles of life instead of serving them.

Christian motherhood, as exemplified in the relationship between St. Mary and our Lord Jesus Christ, is a stewardship.  Mothers receive their children (or lack of children for those called to other forms of service) from God as a stewardship.  They are to raise these children to become citizens in the Kingdom of God, necessarily learning that pattern of life from their mothers’ way of life more than anything else.  Then on the last day, when all of us stand before the judgment seat of Christ, we will be asked to account for what we did with this stewardship.

But this is not the totality of the relationship between mothers and their children.  It is also a gift.  It is a gift of love, the opportunity to love another human being from start to finish.  The opportunity to enjoy love, so that the relationship is not only good as stewardship but it is also good in itself.

We see both in St. Mary.  She received the stewardship based on the message through the Archangel Gabriel.  She openly consented to this stewardship “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).  We also see the love in her keeping everything she heard about Him in her heart and pondering them.  And we see how strong their relationship was when right before His first miracle, she didn’t even have to ask Him, but only told Him the fact “They have no wine” (John 2:3).  She could read His heart and He read hers.

And we all have a gift that we have received from them: we are invited to join them in this relationship since if we belong to Christ, and she is His mother, then she has become our mother.

May we ever grow in our relationship with Christ by contemplating the relationship between St. Mary and our Lord.

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Gratitude means “the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.”

However, oftentimes two vices, which represent opposite extremes, get in the way of us practicing gratitude.  These extremes are envy and guilt.

Envy is when you go to the extreme of deficiency with respect to thanksgiving by having zero gratitude.

By guilt, I mean feelings of unworthiness.  Feeling unworthy is the opposite extreme, the extreme of excess, where one feels they do not deserve the grace they were shown, so it results in a diminished gratitude that takes away our focus from the gift-giver and turns it inward onto us.  This is a type of egoism.

The ideas of grace and gratitude are inherently connected.  In most of the languages I have studied, both grace and thanks are based on the same word. In the English language, the word “gratitude” comes from the word “grace.” Even in Greek the word grace is charis and gratitude is eucharistia.  In Coptic grace is ehmot and gratitude is shepehmot

Grace, by its nature, cannot be reciprocated, but only responded to.  The one who gives a gift (that is a grace) gives to one who has the choice to receive it or not.  When you choose to receive it, the response is to give grace back in the sense of expressing the disposition of your heart.  Gift-giving causes two things: first, the relationship between the gift-giver and recipient to grow, and secondly, it causes you to see the world, the other, and yourself in a different way.  It reveals something about reality.

I have a friend of mine, from Nigeria, who shared a story with me about his education. When he was a student, he had a teacher throughout middle and high school who taught him so many subjects.  Later, my friend immigrated to the West.  Decades later, he went back to visit Nigeria with his wife, and he tracked down his former teacher.  When he found him, he knocked on his door, and when his teacher opened, he prostrated himself on the threshold of the door of his teacher.  I asked him why, and he reflected that what his teacher gave him, he could never repay his teacher.

And I realized that teaching is an analogue for grace.  The teacher speaks and all at once enriches those hearing him, and forms those hearing him, and gives them a foundation to stand upon.  The students can never reciprocate this act of formation for their teacher, but they can respond with gratitude.  They can also pass it down to others, but more on that at the end of this article.

It is the same with God, the Church, and us.  But two things can get in the way of gratitude; two extremes: envy and feeling unworthy of grace.

Envy as Ingratitude

Envy as a type of ingratitude is portrayed in the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard in Matthew 20 and how that envy destroys gratitude and its effects.  In the Parable, a landowner hires laborers to come work on His vineyard and agrees to give them a denarius for their work at the end of that day.  Then he hires other workers at the third, sixth, ninth, and eleventh hours of the day due to the magnitude of the work.  He tells these newly hired workers that he will give them “Whatever is right” (Matthew 20:4, 7).

The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard,

by Jacob Willemszoon de Wet

17th Century

When evening had come, that is the twelfth hour, the landowner summoned the hired laborers beginning with those whom he hired at the eleventh hour, and he gave them a denarius.  But when those hired at the first hour came, they thought they would receive more (because their eyes had turned to what their fellow laborers had received instead of what the landowner promised them), but they received a denarius like the others who came later.  They complained, but the landowner said,  ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what is yours and go your way. I wish to give to this last man the same as to you. Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things? Or is your eye evil because I am good?’ (Matthew 20:13-15).

And thus our Lord Jesus shows us something of gratitude.  The landowner, in his graciousness, gave to the workers who joined in the eleventh hour more than what they deserved out of his own goodness.  It was a totally free act on his part.  The workers of the eleventh hour did not show feelings of being unworthy but accepted their wages.

Feeling Unworthy as Diminishing Gratitude

The other vice that can affect our gratitude is feeling unworthy of the grace we were shown. In this case, it is a sort of guilt where one feels they have let the community down by receiving grace. This guilt diminishes our gratitude because we focus too much on ourselves and our current state, and it affects our relationship with the Gift-Giver and does not allow our vision to be transformed to see ourselves and the world in a different light due to grace.  It is a sort of feedback loop that causes stagnation in our spiritual and personal lives.

Feeling unworthy and or guilty is also a sort of inverted pride.  Instead of expressing itself externally in an explosive manner by some type of show of superiority, envy, or anger at seeing someone better than them, it instead expresses itself in an implosive manner, by doubting God’s grace.

An example of ingratitude due to guilt from the New Testament is Judas the former apostle.  When he betrayed Christ, he had his own selfish goal of getting rich in mind.  Did he know that if he delivered our Lord Jesus to the chief priests that they would kill Him?  Most likely so.  This is because the apostles knew for some time that the chief priests wanted to kill Him. What he probably did not know was that his conscience would wake up on him and convict him in the middle of our Lord Jesus’s trial.  So he regretted his actions, however he did not remember God’s grace.  Our Lord Jesus Christ taught that all sins are forgivable except one, which is to be interpreted as apostasy. Apostasy is continual standing away from the faith. How can one be forgiven, if they no longer believe or live in the faith on a continual basis? However, if they return, God will be waiting for them.

Our Lord Jesus had forewarned the disciples that they would all stumble this night, but that He would see them again. This indicates that He had already forgiven them ahead of their abandonment.  This is grace.  Judas wasn’t the only one at the trial.  We know that the apostles John and Peter were there.  The others were nowhere to be found, having already run as far away as possible. We know that Peter, even though he was courageous by following our Lord Jesus to the trial, eventually fell by denying knowing Him three times.  Judas could have chosen to join Peter and John and find some type of hope in that.  But he chose to go to the chief priests instead and give them their money back.  What good would that do?  This is the inverted pride.  He could not handle holding on to the money that betrayed our Lord Jesus, even though the damage was already done.  So he went instead and committed suicide.  His feeling unworthy, feeling guilty toward our Lord, toward the chief priests and Pharisees, and toward the apostles did not allow him to perceive the grace that was still available to him.  Feeling unworthy (as a sort of inverted pride) clouded all that.

I can’t help but see in this example an analogue in our current cultural and political environment in the West with the idea that one should feel guilty for the abundance they have.  But this kills gratitude and it toxifies the social environment.  I mean, most people today are not grateful; they are entitled, whether rich or poor.  This has led them to jumping to the extremes of feeling unworthy for the good they have (usually the rich) or envying those who have more than them (usually the poor, and oftentimes the rich).

What do I mean by abundance and entitlement?  In the West, both the “rich” and the “poor” have way more amenities available to them that have drastically improved the quality and length of life that were not even available to the richest people 100 years ago.  These include electricity, air conditioning, central heating, smart phones, and the abundance and ease of choices in shopping.

So what is the solution to the attitudes of envy and feeling unworthy?  The solution is learning to give cheerfully from what we have, and with conviction, and not just out of a sense of duty.

The Paradox of Gratitude

There is a paradox of gratitude.  Those who are thankful for what they have share abundantly what they have, whether it is money or a resource.  And this enriches those around them.  Abundance and gratitude do not go hand in hand.  Just because someone has any type of grace does not mean they see this as a gift.

An example from the Old Testament is Jonah the Prophet.  God commanded him to go east and preach repentance to the Ninveites to prevent their destruction.  The Ninevites were not Israelites; they were Gentiles.  Jonah did not like this, probably due to pride in being an Israelite, from the chosen people of God.  So he found a boat and went west, with Tarshish (modern day Spain) as his destination.  This was the farthest known country to the west.  What a level of disrespect!

So God sent a storm on the ship, and when each of the sailors prayed to his god to reveal who was being punished by this storm, the lot fell on Jonah and he confessed to them his sin.  He told them the storm would stop if he were thrown overboard, but the sailors tried their best to get to land, but when there was no hope, they did as he said, and threw him over.  He was then swallowed by a whale, and in the belly of the whale he repented and prayed a prayer to God.  Toward the end, he said,

“When my soul fainted within me,

I remembered the Lord;

And my prayer went up to You,

Into Your holy temple.

“Those who regard worthless idols

Forsake their own Mercy.

But I will sacrifice to You

With the voice of thanksgiving;

I will pay what I have vowed.

Salvation is of the Lord” (Jonah 2:7-9).

Here he finally responded to the Lord with gratitude, and showed the repentance that he himself was commanded to go preach to the Ninevites.  He was now able to give to them, because he himself acquired what he was to give.  At that point, the whale vomited him out and he went to Nineveh as the Lord commanded.  He preached to them and the people took his word to heart and began to repent.

Then, in a regression Jonah became angry that they heeded the words of God and repented.  “‘Ah, Lord, was not this what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore I fled previously to Tarshish; for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live!’” (Jonah 4:2-3)

So he sat on the east side of the city and made himself a makeshift shelter and watched to see whether God would destroy the city, meaning he hoped that the people had not heeded the words of God.  So God caused plant to grow over him and shade him, and Jonah was well pleased (that is grateful) for this.  But the next morning, the plant died due to a worm damaging the plant and the sun causing it to wither away.  Then God caused a wind to come from the east, strong and hot and it beat on Jonah.  So again, Jonah expressed ingratitude saying “It is better for me to die than to live.”

God asked him whether it was right for him to be angry about the plant and Jonah replied, “It is right for me to be angry, even to death!”

At that point God shows him that he did not work on this plant at all, but the city of Nineveh was huge and God was not going to overlook it which is why he sent him to preach repentance to them.

Just like in the VeggieTales episode on Jonah, they sang, “Jonah was a prophet who never really got it.”  What did Jonah not get?  He did not get that God can show grace to all.  And because his eyes were focused on himself and his nation, he shifted between the extremes of envy (of the Gentiles receiving grace) and guilt (for preaching to the Ninevites) and both led him to be ungrateful to God’s grace.

So what?

As I mentioned earlier, while people cannot reciprocate grace, they can also pass it down to others.  This is because God’s grace is intended to begin a genealogy of giving.  When God grants to us something (such as a resource, a job, a house, or money) or someone (such as a friend, a spouse, or a child), it ends up transforming us and we gain personally and spiritually.  This gain could be confidence in belief, ability to give, ability to share, or the patience, care, communication, love, and understanding that comes from receiving a person into your life.  These gains then equip us to show the same grace to others and share these abundances with them.  And when we do, they will share too, and God’s grace will multiply in the world and we shall become the city on the hill that our Lord Jesus described in the Sermon on the Mount and we shall “let [our] light so shine before men, that they may see [our] good work and glorify [our] Father who is in Heaven” (Matthew 5:16).

Otherwise, the world will become a lot worse than what it’s like now.  And it’s already not pleasant.

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