The history of Ukraine is riven with the tragedy of human suffering and it is hard to watch what is occurring there without reflecting on how the bitter memory of the cruelty of its past suffering feeds into a recursive staging of the horrors of history.
The ordinary people of the Ukraine hauled themselves out of a state of slavery (serfdom was abolished in 1861) and through diligence and work had gathered a small amount of independence and wealth by the opening of the third decade of the last century. Over 6 million of these peasants across the south of the USSR, from Ukraine to Kazakstan, were deliberately starved to death in 1932-3.
A decade later, the same people suffered a similarly depraved assault when the Vermacht came rolling through and commenced a systematic purging of vast swathes of the population. 80% of the people who survived Stalin’s famine sided with the Russians in the defence of their homeland against the Nazis. Others welcomed the Germans and worked with them against the Russians. The grandchildren of the people who suffered (and who implemented) these great purges are now faced with violence and the reopening of old wounds and allegiances.
The story of human suffering is a complex history. It is heartbreaking to see the iterative cycle tear open wounds again.
The Russian chronicler Alexander Solzhenitsyn said that to understand evil and suffering we need to search for the answers in our own heart. His words were that “the line between good and evil cuts through every human heart”. He was trying to answer the oldest and most important question for all humanity.
Half a century earlier, the great Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky, saw the foreshadow of the acts of the 20th century in the ideas taking hold of the Russian mind. In his novel, ‘Demons’, he evaluated the consequence of these ideas that reject the complexity of the human soul in favour of the will to power.
The validity of both these authors struck me many years ago as I pondered the bitter sectarian history of Ireland and in particular the ongoing situation in the Northern counties. Yes, history should be acknowledged, but does it always help to keep score on who has suffered and who has to pay for this suffering in retribution? That way can lead to bloodshed, but what is the alternative?
A number of years ago, there was a movement to validate a unionist tradition in Ireland. Not a bad motivation, but one of the ways this was pursued was to accentuate differences that did not really exist. In the traditional music world, for example, people started talking about tunes from the protestant tradition. I asked a musician friend from Armagh about this and he reacted in frustration saying that these were not Protestant and Catholic traditional tunes, they were just tunes we played together. This struck me as very wise because segregating people does not encourage understanding, and it increases the sentiment of a Manichean dichotomy of communities.
When I think of the words of Solzhenitsyn, I also think of the words of another famed man of Armagh, Patrick, who said “I am Patrick the sinner”. In doing so he recognised what Solzhenitsyn noted, that we have the propensity for evil in our hearts and also the desire to emulate the greatest good. If we let evil triumph, we let it triumph in our own hearts.
As we approach Easter, I read the parable of the Prodigal Son again and noted for the first time that this story speaks of this struggle at a deep and profound level. The first impression is that the prodigal son is deeply selfish and ungrateful, while his brother is diligent and unfairly treated.
The younger brother demands “the share of the estate that’s coming to me” as if the fathers only purpose is to provide resources for the son’s selfish excess.
But something else comes apparent upon deeper reading. Both sons are possessive and selfish.
The prodigal son’s error is revealed very quickly. For the gift he received from his father, in being hoarded, stops being a gift that increases with good management. He goes into the “cora macra”- the open space – the great emptiness, and squanders his wealth. He is disconnected from the spiritual abundance and is lost in a wasteland of sin – the great emptiness.
In a spiritual sense he does the opposite of the divine command. When he takes this wealth to himself as his own possession, he loses it. In contrast, with love and divine life, you keep it by giving it away.
When the son returns to his father’s farm, we don’t find the father has been reduced, but we find him thriving and ready to give more to his son who has returned.
The elder son addresses the father saying “I have slaved away for you and have never disobeyed any of your orders, yet you never gave me so much as a kid goat to celebrate with my friends”
So even though this son has worked diligently and dutifully, there is something of a broken spiritual relationship between him and the father. He views it as an exchange –an economic relationship of accounting.
What both sons represent is a worldly view that wealth is gathered in and consumed. And that the enrichment of the person is in accumulation. The father has a different view. He gives of himself and his wealth because his blessings is only increased as he gives it away. The father represents love which is only increased with its giving. This is what my friend from Armagh knew when he talked about “music that we play.” The more I go in this life the more I am moved by this feeling. Life in Dosteovsky’s novels is tragic, but it also has a sublime beauty. The son in the parable realised this and had to summon the courage to come back to the father.
The prodigal son learns this, but it is a lesson that has still to find a home in his brother’s heart.
In the story of the elder brother we see a reflection of Cain. Cain had murder in his heart because he believed that despite his efforts he was not getting his rightful portion. He railed against the injustice of life which did not reward his efforts, and sought vengeance against his brother.
The prodigal son is lost in the wilderness, a wilderness which is reflective of the spiritual wilderness of sin, and is saved by the father’s love.
In the fathers love we get a precursor to the greatest story in the bible, the resurrection; an act of supreme giving which enriches and renews the world.
In his confession when Patrick says “I am Patrick the sinner” he is not bent under with the weight of his sin. He is acknowledging that the line between good and evil runs through his own heart and that like the prodigal son, his hope for salvation lies in the resurrection. God’s gifts do not deplete with the giving, but only increase.
Lorcán Mac Mathúna