Mary: The Blessing of All Generations

Ancient Faith Ministries ^ | August 7, 2019 | Fr. Stephen Freeman

[Carpe Cerevisi]

In my childhood, it was not unusual to hear someone ask, “Who are your people?” It was a semi-polite, Southernism designed to elicit essential information about a person’s social background. The assumption was that you, at best, could only be an example of your “people.” It ignored the common individualism of the wider culture, preferring the more family or clan-centered existence of an older time. It was possible to be “good people” who had fallen on hard times, just as it was possible to be “bad people” who were flourishing. Good people were always to be preferred.

I am aware of the darker elements of this Southern instinct so foreign to today’s mainstream culture. I am also aware that within it, there is an inescapable part of reality: human beings never enter this world without baggage. The baggage is an inheritance, both cultural and biological that shapes the ground we walk on and the challenges we will inevitably confront. Fr. Alexander Schmemann is reported to have said that the spiritual life consists in “how we deal with what we’ve been dealt.” In some families, it seems that no matter how many times the deck is shuffled, the same hand (or close to it) appears.

[Carpe Cerevisi]

Another nice post from Fr. Stephen Freeman.

[Jamestown1630]

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[sparklite2]

It was possible to be “good people” who had fallen on hard times, just as it was possible to be “bad people” who were flourishing.

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I’ve always said that God balances the scales.
While bad things happen to good people,
He makes sure good things happen to bad people.

[Jamestown1630]

I think God leaves us all to create our own conditions. I don’t think God ‘visits’ anything upon us, except to the extent that He has created Laws, and they function.

Sometimes, we can’t spare ourselves from the consequences of some natural laws; but we can save ourselves a lot of grief by using our God-given free will to follow/align ourselves with God’s law as we understand it.