Journey Back to Eden.pdf - St Mark Coptic Orthodox Church Chicago

62 DECEMBERis by fasting, most of all, that we are able to train the tongue. Fastingfrom all kinds of food, in all kinds of ways, deprives the tongueof the prior right it would like to claim over our body.Abuna Sidrak said that fasting from words, fasting from a volumeof speech, being willing to humbly accept the yoke of silenceand quietude—this too deprives the tongue of the mastery of ourhearts and minds. The tongue is a very useful tool for the art oflove and for the art of prayer, but it is also the means by which weafflict others and even our own selves. So it must, more than anythingelse, be called into holy obedience to the Gospel. It must becomethe locus from which we allow the grace of the Gospel andthe merit of the Cross to win for us a liberation from evil.I find very much of what Abuna Sidrak said to be congenial,consistent with both what has been revealed in the spiritual classicsand with what is apparent in human nature. I wonder, always, whyso little is said about the province of evil in the modern world andin the modern Church. It strikes me that in earlier times no onedoubted the realms of good and evil: the one God and his omnipotentpower versus the darker realm of disobedience filled withfallen angels. In those days, there were abundant signs of such realities.But in our day, when so many people, at least ostensibly,doubt both realities, then God in his heaven seems to give fewersigns. God wishes us to live a life of faith, not a life of entertainmentfed by continual signs. As Jesus pointed out, “A wicked generationdemands signs” (cf. Matthew 12:39).The Evil One, likewise, for altogether different purposes,may hide his signs and obscure his art, for it is by far the mostcunning aspect of evil that he should deceive us with regard to hispurposes. Our not knowing what he intends or what he doesleaves the soul open for a greater conquest on his part. And, indeed,confusion and lies, deceptions as to what is real or what istrue have been his art from the beginning. So, if he can causefear, as so many people experience nowadays; if he can cause allkinds of temptations of the flesh, as so many people suffer nowadays;if he can cause confusion as to his own existence, then hedoes what he has always done. He does it perhaps better nowthan ever, because of our inability to recognize his agency. Thisseems to be consistent with the contemporary experience of theWestern Church.