Main news for 17 March 2004

Today we read again about how precious to God are the human person and the world He created. And when a person, turning away from the sinful path, returns to the Lord, then the whole world, as in paradise, belongs to that person. And a person lacks nothing; nothing troubles or sows doubt when the Lord is near.

Pure gold has no impurities. In the righteous person, everything sinful, every impurity, is smelted out through repentance and prayer. And the righteous path is the path of fire in which, by God's mercy, like the burning bush, we burn and are not consumed, awaiting the Kingdom of God and becoming Christ's workers.

On the pages of the Bible, Babylon appears not simply as one of the pagan civilizations, but also as a stronghold and symbol of paganism ruling on earth. And now it is to fall, collapsing under the weight of its sins, which were the consequence of the demonic foundations of its spiritual life. It is no accident that precisely in relation to Babylon the prophet speaks the words that the Son of Man will repeat when speaking of the fallen angel, calling him the morning star, son of the dawn.

It is striking that the prophecy that Babylon would never be inhabited again was fulfilled not only figuratively, but in the most direct sense. While many ancient cities were rebuilt again and again after countless wars, the ruins of Babylon today belong to archaeologists. The Bible speaks to us in parables about many things, but as we see, many of its words should be understood quite directly and literally.

The prophecy was also fulfilled concerning the land of the Philistines, which later generations know only from the Bible. Many pagan civilizations have disappeared, but the heritage of the brightest among them, Egypt or Greece, for example, is alive even today. But what is left of the Philistines except the almost vanished memory of their military successes? Their heroes and commanders are forgotten, and in the same way any bare swagger will leave no good memory of itself.

Pagan and godless power seemed strong, but now it has collapsed. What wanted to get by not simply without God, but in defiance of Him, could not help but collapse.

The infinite value and uniqueness of human life, of which the Lord speaks through the prophet Isaiah, has today become an almost obvious, though constantly violated, principle. But it is useful to remember that this was not always so. At the time when the Lord spoke these words, things were entirely different: people were bought and sold, and life was worth almost nothing. Moreover, a clan, tribe, or other "historical community" of people was considered far more important than an individual person. Even the concept of the person was absent.

The issue, however, is not even ancient and half-forgotten realities. Less than a century ago, relatively civilized countries offered up countless human sacrifices for the sake of social and political ideas. Today we are witnesses to wars in which people have to give their lives for things that are, to put it mildly, unconvincing. But God's will has not changed, and the word of the Lord that human life is more precious than everything else in this world remains relevant.

Of course, it is pleasant to realize that since the eighth century B.C., when Isaiah wrote down these words, humanity has come noticeably closer to putting them into practice. It is unpleasant, but far more useful, to realize how far we still are from doing so.