Mysterium Monologue 02 — Friendship
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
126.96471
Summary
In this second episode of Mysterium Monologue, Fr. discusses the importance of friendship in the modern world, and the role of the Christian community in cultivating and maintaining a strong sense of community. He also discusses the relationship between men and women and the need for their friendship.
Transcript
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Good morning, brothers and sisters, and welcome to another episode of Mysterium Monologue.
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This is our second episode, which I think I'm going to entitle Friendship.
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And that's the topic that we're going to discuss today.
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There are many important things for us to discuss
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But Mysterium Fashies has a very difficult situation
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It suffers under a curse which prevents it from holding down co-hosts
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For very long at all before they're forced to go fight for Zog
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Or any number of very inconvenient life circumstances
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Which reduces their ability to evangelize and propagandize and so on
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And I think that this is a very important topic
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And one which we shall go into depth here in today
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A little bit of an extension, I think appropriately enough
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The Bright Resurrection of Christ and Social Cohesion
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As we've just come to the end of Pascha this week
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And celebrated the bright and glorious attention of our Lord
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And we shall get into what I mean in just a moment
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And so I think that before we get into the details
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Because what I see as part of the mass alienation
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The disintegration of, or lack thereof, of friendship
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The unwillingness to work together to pursue common interests
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Or even to treat one another with enough honesty
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To recognize and be clear about the differences
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And part and parcel of this particular disintegration
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I mean, infighting is just one manifestation of it
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So we're going to get into this a little bit on
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Man was created to be in a relationship with God
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That they were totally integrated into one another
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believe that we live in a fallen world and that our minds are fallen as well and that it requires
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illumination and so that the common good the logos the telos of uh life of human organization is
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christ in the mystery of the church and this is whereby we have the concept in um orthodox theology
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of symphonia where the political life of the church and its end that is to say christ is not
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separated and thus the political life may be sacralized because it's in service of the social
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cohesion which is christ which is the logos so at best but life is often far from this and so we have
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to live this reality as very best we can at the very minimum within ourselves and try to bring
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whatever part of that we have to the world without even if it is a babylonian world in fact a really
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good example of this is the prophet daniel the prophet daniel was an intensely political figure
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he was a political official in the court of uh babylon and despite the fact that he lived in a
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culture which was totally alien from his values uh there's a reason why it's an epithet he was able
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to serve god rightly in the context of his political situation now i think that the culture political
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culture of ancient babylon was far healthier than we enjoy today uh and unfortunately there are very
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limited positions in the actual governance apparatus where we can be authentic christians
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that express the fullness of our social teaching uh and our theology uh in in current times it's become
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so babylonian it's it's just it's demonic right i mean at least ancient babylon
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babylon was a monarchy um and so the um so back to the kind of the beginning of what i was discussing
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and so what all this really means is that for us the matter of our success is the friendship that we
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have with one another and the commitment that we have to our brothers and sisters and especially because
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we all of us listening to this program occupy in some sense the cultural political religious vanguard
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um we have a particular duty to be diligent and faithful to the friends who are both in these
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circles but beyond especially the members of our family our church and of our neighborhood this is
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the christ says to to be good neighbors and so this friendship this social integration this is the
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foundation of national struggle this is the foundation of the camaraderie of you know the manner bunda if
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you want to use that somewhat tired term these days it is the uh and this is like i mean plato says this
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clearly you know he was pretty convinced that only uh he thought that only men could enjoy um true philia
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because it was only men that could totally give themselves in um um martial self-sacrifice
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and um discipline to the good of the other and to the bad the bunda now as christians we teach that
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because women are made in the image and likeness of god uh they can participate in the divine energies
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of god so they can also actually have philia um but plato
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but uh what plato was getting at is that it is a particularly important and um keen reality
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in organizations of men ideological or military or otherwise and so this this comradeship and this
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is above you know whether we personally like someone i mean we can actually uh dislike someone
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quite a good a good deal and still be their comrade and still consent to suffer and to die
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and to bleed for them to back them in a fight i mean this is what the essence of friendship is for men
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will you back your friend in a fight if you will they are they are your friend and if they won't
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they're not your friend that's all that that's all that that's what that means pretty much good
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litmus test um and so uh this is the difficult i mean if we look at you know our civilization today
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what are the who who backs each other in fights where where are these bonds and ties they are few
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and far between on purpose right mostly the purchase of the willingness to fight it's a mercenary endeavor
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it comes from the exchange of you know just currency right i mean payment or you know some other um
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and so for us we must build up a culture of selfless friendship of self-giving friendship
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to each other in dedication to each other in the light of christ
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this is the mechanism by which we will have both the hearts but the dispensation and the inclination
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to do great deeds of heroism for the salvation of our people
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there's no other way that we can temper and train our hearts and come up with with uh the grit and
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willingness to to do what needs to be done and sacrifice what needs to be sacrificed in order to
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ensure that we live you know because what is there to live for if there's no friendship and social
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integrity it's just a necromantic babylonian as the example i've used before
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and so um thus friendship is critical it is our task is to become good friends and to organize ourselves
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into a body of comrades that is willing and able to do what is necessary
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friendship is also founded upon honesty this is a particularly strange quality of friendship
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and i find only the christian i mean maybe i could be wrong perhaps some of my non-christian
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listeners have a explanation but i find only the christian explanation to be satisfactory whereas
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friendship is founded upon honesty i find and it's strikes me as continually strange
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that we can in my experience anyway oftentimes i find myself able to be friends with people who
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are totally dissonant with myself uh even sometimes close to enemies as long as they are honest in their
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conduct and unconcealing in their actions and i personally suspect that this is a reflection of the
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relationship that god has with us that that's why we must have repentance because it's a re-establishment
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of the honesty with god if we look at the fall from grace that after adam sinned god did not
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immediately expel him from the garden he was merciful to him and indeed he came unto him as a friend
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he walked in the garden and asked adam to come and walk with him as a friend in
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you know hand in hand face to face in full honesty a call to repentance but adam denied this he hid within
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himself and tried to hide himself and the shame and the alienation which he had already begun to
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experience from god he did not want to break out of the entropy that he had created by the misdirection
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of his love and the blindness to the loveliness and excellence and necessity of god's friendship
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that friendship and respect which is rooted in respect the desire not to conceal or to manipulate
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one another or conceal oneself from one another or manipulate one another or
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uh utilize another as an instrument for our own gain or as a species of political mechanism but
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rather devalue each other as a an integrated unit of a transcendental whole
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and to approach one another in honesty even if we all suffer from intense in various degrees of
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personal corruption now that same honesty demands of course uh
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uh the uh self-improvement and uh honesty with friend with oneself to a friend demands that we are
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honest with them about their qualities you know we uh if we are good friends to one another christ
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you know tells us we we have to you know be diligent especially as men in applying the law of god but of
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course we do so with mercy uh we never lose sight of what christ and what the perfective object reality
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that we're pursuing after is but we have to realize and we have to be ameliorative because of our corrupt
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nature and that we share with one another and that we are constantly entering into sin despite ourselves
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and so we have to take the absolute um transcendental reality that we strive to to cultivate
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and we have to apply that with love and with stewardly care to ourselves and to one another
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um and it's by this means and this and then this doesn't necessarily mean being soft i mean if you
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read the the prophets are very merciful but if you read through them they have some very hard words to
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say oftentimes telling someone the truth that honesty that is the greatest mercy that you can give them
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and our difficulty is that oftentimes when we tell each other the truth
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we lose communication there is no interest in hearing one another we become like talking dogs
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now if you are speaking the truth and the other man does not want to hear it there's nothing you can do
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when you can no longer speak to him and there's no longer any communication
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when there's no longer any point of honesty or reference there's only desire and forces and
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interests which come into conflict with one another and need to be backed up through the defense and use
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of force spiritual primarily a bit physical as an extension of that
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the reality of our afflicted life the disease upon which we all must bear
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the great irony of this i think again we could we come at a kind of subtle theological point
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is that the church fathers teach that language itself in terms of spoken enumerated word is a
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consequence of the fall then in the garden they had subtle language that there was a that they
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didn't need to speak to each other because the level of the fineness of their integration of their
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souls into god was so intense and so perfect and so pure that they had a spiritual communication
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they were directly in contact with the fullness of the real world and they could express themselves
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in relationship to that and others with perfect communicative clarity not limited by the syllables
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of lexicon or our own internal semantic integrity but there was a universal vision of language in
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christ that's who we were speaking of and the medium by which we spoke and then even it's still
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with a corrupted degree the medium by which we speak today but the necessity and the limitation of words
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which very enigmatically is the very capacity which marks us as rational creatures and makes us human
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has been damaged by the fall and that language the linguistic capacity is itself the first fruits and
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products of ethnicity of the extended family because the family is the context of man's existence
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and the communication with them communion with them is the purpose and development of language and that's why ethnic
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groups are linguistic are linguically based that the language the communion and then the fruit of that
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communion especially between men and women the offspring blood race these are intimately bound up concepts
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so thus if we desire for the greater intercommunity of our people ourselves our own national
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theological salvation we must strive to be good friends we must strive to have clear and honest language with one
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another conducted in mercy but in truth primarily and without consolation to the wickedness of the temptation to be dishonest with one another
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for reasons of bourgeois sentimentality or the domination of the passions as tempting as those prospects may be
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so brothers and sisters i hope for all of your friendship and i give you my love
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we sing des geiers schwarzer haufe hi ja oh oh oh and voll mit tyrannen raufen hi ja oh oh oh
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By Weinsberg setzt es Brand und Schank, hei, ja, oh, gar mancher über die Klinge schrank, hei, ja, oh, spießt voran.
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Rauf und ran, setzt aufs Losterdach den roten Ahn.
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Spießt voran, rauf und ran, setzt aufs Losterdach den roten Ahn.
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Geschlagen ziehen wir nach Haus, hei, ja, oh, unsere Enkel fechten's besser aus, hei, ja, oh, spießt voran.
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Rauf und ran, setzt aufs Losterdach den roten Ahn.
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Spießt voran, rauf und ran, setzt aufs Losterdach den roten Ahn.
00:48:23.800
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