Transcription
So with that in mind, it seemed like a really good time to get a little grounding on what Christians should be thinking right now as the president of the United States is weighing in on theological matters and the world seems to be moving towards some great unknown and everybody feels within him the weight of this period in history. Everyone feels it.
Father Josiah Trenum is an Orthodox priest and a pastor in Southern California who we've spoken to before who though we're not Orthodox seems like a really clear voice on matters of Christian faith and what the gospels actually say. And so we're really happy to have him back. Father, thank you very much for joining us.
>> So, you know, I'm a I'm a puddle on the ground having listened to you for the last 45 minutes. I just am a puddle on the ground. I have behind me, an icon that I keep. It's an icon of Jesus, our savior, after the resurrection from the dead. And he's gathered his disciples. It's called the great commission icon. This is when he gathered his disciples and gave them the charge to go into all the world and to preach the good news to the whole creation, baptizing everyone in the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit and promising to be with them, teaching, asking the disciples to teach the whole world his sacred commandments and promising his presence.
I think anyone listening to you right now is going to be massively uh tempted to great discouragement by the truth that you the many truths you just articulated. I'm just saying this. It's Easter right now. Christ is risen.
>> Yes.
>> We we celebrate this uh and the conquering of death. Jesus uh is not just a great teacher. Jesus is the son of God who became a man in order to face our greatest enemies, sin, death, Satan, and to defeat them. Not just a little bit, literally to crush them and to offer us a life without fear. a life rooted in his presence now and with a great hope that we say in the creed we're looking for we're looking for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. This is uh why we can be happy uh even in a complete mess national mess that we're in is that Christ is with us. Christ is calling us. He's awakening so many people across our land. I've been a priest for 33 years. I've never seen what's going on right now in America. The number of people sincerely engaging Jesus and his teaching and his life and choosing to make radical alterations in their life and to put God where he bel where he belongs in their life which is number one number one not loyalty to the nation. Loyalty to the nation is a Christian virtue in its proper place. But the loyalty that Christ asks is loyalty to the kingdom of God. To seek that first above everything else and to receive our life from him. He's alive now at the right hand of God the father governing the whole world and all his enemies. All the demons are made a foottool for his feet and then the end will come. St. Paul says, "So, attaching yourself to him by faith, becoming his, making his kingdom your chief ambition. This is the way to peace. This is the way not to be destroyed when you see a country that you love in such chaos as we have now. uh we can we can look at what's going on honestly and even though it's so sorrowful, we can still be confident in his presence and try to serve him and do good through our land uh and to benefit our land. And we don't know the future. Who knows what's going to happen? We've had three years of unbelievable renewal, Christian renewal in this land that has blown away every other movement of uh faith in my lifetime. I was born in 1967, I think about three or four years before you. I've never seen anything like this. So, I'm just I want to lob a bomb a bomb of hope, a hope bomb after listening to uh your powerful but very very discouraging words. Sorry, it's my dark Scandinavian soul raising its ugly head once again. I am prone to that and I I love your response to it.
So, can you just um can you give me an outline? You say this is in 33 years of ministry, this is the most powerful moment for God among people you've seen. This is it seems like a revival. How what are you seeing that leads you to that?
It has always been I've always as a priest been very interested in people who are outside my parish in my local community. We priests and pastors are always trying to build connections in our where we are in the dirt that God gave us to make his and the normal year to have maybe 25 people who were signing up for a year-long catechism program to prepare themselves for baptism. That was a good year for much of my priesthood. Um, this year I catechized 350 people. Wow. And I just uh it's it's actually such a fantastic problem because uh our our parish is large. We have maybe about 1300 active parishioners and I can't fit them all in the church. We we have uh we've had to really suck in and uh I just baptized 115 people. Orthodox Easter was this last Sunday. Uh and I'm used to baptizing, you know, 20 25 something like that. So, we're talking a fivefold increase uh in those that I received uh by baptism this year. And the numbers that are lining up for next year are more than double that. And you know I can't project that everywhere and say that's happening everywhere but I've been looking at stats you know the I've been looking at stats coming not just from America but even from Western Europe which I previous to this had pretty much completely written off uh Western Europe is just been dying spiritually dying for a long time. I'm a fourth generation Southern Californian but my family's heritage is England. I was educated there and I've gone back to England every year for the last 30 years. Uh and always it's been well religiously discouraging, spiritually discouraging. Uh but these last few years even in places in Western Europe that um were not doing well and have not been doing well for decades really post World War II and on there are massive numbers, massive numbers of people being baptized and entering into catechism. It's uh it can't be denied.
>> That's that's just wonderful to hear and really the only answer. So you must get people who come to you as a priest and say I'm looking at everything around me and I see the beginning of the end of history and the return of Jesus the end times.
>> And as noted I mean those famous verses from Daniel and second letter to the Thessalonians etc et it's you could certainly fit events into those structures.
>> What do you think of that?
>> Generations have for the last 20 centuries? So if you read the church fathers uh we we have been trying to read our history through that esqueological lens for a very long time. That should give us some u measure of discretion >> not to uh make a onetoone too too too closely too intimately.
>> You know Tucker the New Testament the apostles are very clear that the end of the world happened already. Uh the end times started as soon as Jesus dethroned the devil. Yep.
>> As soon as soon as he uh conquered death and plundered hell and opened he gutted he was crucified on holy Friday atoning for the sins of the whole world. He descended into hell on holy Saturday and when he went there he had already really shaken hell uh because just you know a week or so previously he had raised his good friend Lazarus from the dead. Lazarus had been dead for 4 days. His sister said he already smelled. And Jesus intentionally took his time to come back to Bethany and then to gather the Mary and Martha and the large community there around Lazarus's tomb. And then he spoke and he said, "Lazarus, come forth." And his words went through his mouth through the earth into the heart of hell. and empowered Lazarus and crushed Satan and the devils. They couldn't hold his soul anymore. And his soul came back into his body. He was vivified and the Lord asked him to come out. The Lord didn't run in there and undo his grave clothes himself. He wanted it to be seen by everyone. So he said, "Lazarus, come out." And Lazarus came walking out. And everyone recognized right then the ultimate power change, the ultimate structural revolution had taken place. Death no longer was in in charge. Before that, every single person, no matter how great they were, Moses, Abraham, the Buddha, Confucious, everyone that got into the ring with death was KO'ed. Every single one. Didn't matter how much they how wise they were, how righteous they were. Everyone was slaughtered. when Jesus came and started raising the dead and especially when he did Lazarus, no one had ever raised a man four days dead. And then when he himself voluntarily submitted to death and he was clear that death had no power over him, he said, "I have power to lay my life down and I have power to take my life up again." He went knowingly into death, offered himself. Our lurggical hymns in the Orthodox church for for Holy Friday say that death and Satan ate Christ because they thought that they had in their jaws a man and they found themselves face to face with God. You called him the man God, right? That is the actual theological terms that we use in the church. In Greek, it's called theanthropos. Theos meaning God, anthropos meaning man. The church fathers put those together to describe Christ. He is the God man. He became what he was not, a human being without ceasing to be what he was, the co-eternal son of God. And he exists since then and forever as the God man. And when they when death ate Christ, Christ ate death and he crushed it and he rose again on the third day. And he asked that that message be proclaimed by his disciples uh all over the world and people who are being responding to this good news and are coming into the church. Uh this is the ultimate solution uh for their their terror. It's a legitimate terror. When you look around and you see so much darkness and killing violence, it's it's terrifying. People are terrified. and to have Christ uh offer to come and be with you to live in you and you to live in him and to share his life uh which is sustained in Christian people by receiving holy communion. This is what receiving holy communion is. It's participating in the divine life, Christ's very body and blood sustaining us in his life until our own resurrection from the dead. Uh this is a tremendous solution for the sorrows and terrors of our time.
>> What do you make of self-described Christian leaders glorifying the violence around us, endorsing the violence, saying that God wants this violence? How should we feel about that?
>> You were very articulate, brother. You were very articulate. But let me give it a little larger theological context.
>> Thank you.
>> When violence began not on earth, it began in the heavens amongst the angelic orders. The first act of violence and rebellion was Satan's himself. And he was cast out together with all those angels that were in league with him. And they became what we know as demons. And then they took their uh scheme of rebellion to the first human beings. Right? This is described in the early chapters of Genesis in our patriarchal histories. They uh this the Satan the great Satan approached Adam and Eve and tempted them uh viciously and they fell and they immediately became estranged not just from God but from each other. the seeds of uh violence erupted and they began to blame one another. Well, the woman you gave me, Adam says. Then they have their children, Cain and Abel, and the first act of fratricside takes place. Cain uh is shamed by his brother's devotion to God and his beautiful sacrifice. Cain's sacrifice to God is very cheap. The Lord tried to correct Cain. Cain was hard-hearted and uncorrectable and killed his brother. This is the first act of violence. And the scripture says that God approached Cain graciously trying to help Cain to repent and asked him what he did. And God said, "Your brother's blood is crying out to heaven." Talk, that's one innocent person's blood. Can you imagine what tens of thousands of innocent blood, what kind of thunderous noise that makes in paradise? The scriptures then go and describe the development of Cain's line. Cain's line uh produces all the the leaders of earthly technologies. Abel's dead. They have another child. Adam and Eve have another child, Seth. And Seth, Seth's line is also described by Moses. And Seth's line is all about virtue and uh spiritual technology. I would describe how to have a relationship with God in the world. That's correct. And the line of Cain is all about power. So for instance, one of Cain's descendants, Tubal Kane is his name. He was a great master of all u metal work and metallurgy. from which come all of the weapons and earthly technology especially for the development of weapons has driven technology throughout the entire history of the human race. Look at our budget. President Trump uh wants a larger and larger budget so that we can develop more and more vicious weapons to dominate our enemies. We've done this with nuclear weaponry. in in in the world wars, we were developing more and more dangerous gases to kill the largest amount of people possible. Uh this is technology. This is that kind of technology. And then the next thing that Moses describes in Genesis is the flood. God just can't take it anymore. It's enough. And he decides that he's going to start over. And he makes Noah, a righteous man of faith, into a new Adam. And the thing that he said to Adam at the very beginning, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, rule it and subdue it. He said the exact same thing to Noah after the flood to make him the beginning of the human race. And Moses Moses in writing this says there's one reason God flooded the earth. I often have asked people this if they could guess what was the one the singular sin mentioned by Moses that caused the Lord to literally flood the earth and to restart the human race.
>> I know murder.
>> Violence. Violence it's unique amongst evils. So, how could a Christian pastor glorify it? You know, uh, Dr. uh, that there are many, uh, who say one thing and do another, right? This is a disease that we all have. Yes. Is a terrible disease.
>> And I always tell people, look, never never say that you don't want to go to church because you don't there's a lot of hypocrites there. I said, that's true, though. It's absolutely true.
>> I mean, if there are if there are people there, then you have hypocrites.
>> And forgive me, every single one of us is.
>> Yeah.
>> Every sing the only the only division is not between the hypocrites and the non-hypocrites. The division is between those who know they're hypocrites and that it's a terrible sin and disease and they go to church to work against their hypocrisy so that they can become people of integrity and live before the face of God and other people in love. And then there are people who have no hope and are just resigned to it and are very happy to talk about other people's sins but don't want to look at themselves. That's a very dangerous place to be. So hypocrisy is certainly uh a chief cause uh to in answer to your question. So is false teaching. So is false teaching. There is a lot of madeup theology began in the middle of the 19th century. it got really going uh in the beginning of the 20th century particularly in America that has created this very strange um theology of uh what unbelieving Jewish people are non-Christian Jewish people uh and their special relationship with God. It's very strange. Uh, it's uh uh Zionism is has no history uh in the Christian faith. It's not as though that there are it's just a matter of denominational preference. No, you will see or in vain for 18 and a half centuries to ever hear of such things. It doesn't exist. The church is very conscious of being the fulfillment of everything that took place in the Old Testament. The church is the people of God. Paul calls the church directly the new Israel. That's who we are. We are God's people. And we're made up both of Jewish people and Gentile people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. It's not about ethnicity at all. We don't care. If you came to my parish on a typical Sunday morning, I mean, you would need a big piece of paper just to write the number of ethnicities that are there. I always tell I've always told our people, look, our goal should be that the ethnic distribution of our county. We are in Riverside County, about 3 million people. I said the ethnic diversity there should be exactly represented in our parish if the church is for everyone and we want everyone which means in my county that's 57% Hispanic 11% African-American about 30% Anglo. I said that's what it should be uh if if a church has been there and has been successful in uh preaching the gospel and helping people to love God. That's what it should look like. This is normal. This is our our way of looking at at things. We don't think that uh somehow the Old Testament is continuing uh and never came to fruition and that somehow a temple has to be rebuilt or the Old Testament sacrifices have to begin again which is impossible or the ironic priests have to come back or we're going to start slaying animals. Um all of that was a picture of Jesus himself. He says it himself. He told the Pharisees, "You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have life. It's these that bear witness to me. Everything in the Old Testament is a type of Christ. It's all about him. And if you don't see that, if you think it's a standalone thing, then you're still living in types and shadows instead of fulfillment.
How does the Well, I'll just say one of the most challenging themes in the Gospels for me as an American um are Jesus's prescriptions against greed because I I think that's that's the one thing American Christians never face like like money is not inherently bad, but the love of it is bad. Famously, the root of all evil. What does the gospel tell us about greed? And how does that how is that reflected in the preaching you hear uh from the pulpit?
>> You know, one of the most beautiful things that uh Jesus accomplished when he conquered death was that he replanted uh on the earth the original relationship of man and woman to God. Uh that had disappeared at the fall. And that that was a a life of complete consecration where uh the happiness of Adam and Eve was to be called God's friend. That was their greatest honor. The church fathers say is to be called God's friend. And I I just note that Jesus said that to his disciples at the end of his ministry. He said, "I no longer call you my disciples. You're my friends." That was an incredible honor. Abraham, the great patriarch, was called the friend of God. In the in the New Testament, as soon as Jesus sent the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, remember he was crucified, he plundered hell, he rose again on the third day, he spent 40 days teaching us how to uh live in the new resurrection life and how to love people and evangelize the world. And then he ascended to heaven, right, from the Mount of Olives. I've stood on the spot uh in the holy land and in front of his eyes, the eyes of his disciples and he sat down at the right hand of God. And then as an coronation gift of his enthronement, he sent forth the Holy Spirit 10 days later on the day of Pentecost and the whole community of Christians 120 at that time in the upper room were became spirit bearers something that in the Old Testament only and kings were. Now, this is the common patrimony of all believers is to be able to be indwelt by uh the third person of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit. To have the spirit of God guiding you such that we don't as Christians look for God out there. We experience God in here. He takes up his residence in baptism in the deep heart. St. Paul even says that the Holy Spirit is in us following baptism and that he helps us to pray to God from the inside with groans that surpass words trying to help us really relate to God uh as a father. This is this is our life. Uh and it was only seen uh in the Old Testament in in little glimpses. This was so radical for for people that some people gave and not not a few by the way. Some people decided that their chief ambition was going to be to serve God 100%. Not not not on not not on Sundays only right but completely. St. Paul describes this in his uh epistle to the first to Corinthians 1 Corinthians chapter 7. He says that there's two kinds of life. He says, "I wish everyone was even as I myself am unmarried and completely devoted to God." He said, "Nevertheless, every person has his own calling from God. One in this matter and another in that." And then he goes on to describe marriage and monastic life. These are the two ways of life for Christians since Jesus conquered our enemies and gave us the Holy Spirit. That life of complete consecration for monks and nuns was so popular in the early centuries. But by the time of St. Athanasius the great this is 350 or so right this is one of the greatest theologians in the history of the church his life is just uh absolutely you read it and and weep for its beauty he said at that time he was the spiritual son of the father of the desert St. Anthony the Great and he said that at his time he was also the patriarch of Alexandria. He said at his time half of all Christians lived in the deserts and so that they could pray eight hours a day serve people host people who are coming to see the people would constantly leave the cities and go see the monks and the nuns for spiritual encouragement for prayer uh etc. That's how powerful uh that life is. And that life, the church fathers say, that life of complete consecration, which of course is just an exact imitation of Jesus's life. This is how our Lord Jesus lived, right? He didn't get married physically. He got married spiritually to the church. He's the bridegroom of the church. And we're all his beloved. And we live in that union, right? And especially guides Christian marriage, right? The husband tries to love his wife as Christ loves the church. The wife tries to respect her husband as the church respects Christ, etc. But you see this this enthroned at the heart of the church a certain contempt for earthly wealth. If the models are if the models are completely dispossessed for the sake of the kingdom of God which is a wealth that can't be taken away modeled by the Lord Jesus himself who owned nothing at the time of his crucifixion except his garment. That's it. And the monks and nuns have have imitated him to this day. Where I live in Southern California, we have a a number of monasteries around us and our people go constantly. They go in groups. They they visit just for like a what can I say? A little boost. A little boost. And they there's a beautiful symbiosis between the Christian family uh that are represented in the parishes all over the world and churches all over the world and then our monks and nuns who have given themselves sometimes in the cities. I mean all the great cities of the Roman Empire for the first thousand years were packed with monasteries. Sometimes people think monasteries and they think, "Oh, only in the desert." Well, I mean there are a lot of monasteries in the desert. And I was just quoting St. Athanasius about the Egyptian desert which was kind of a spiritual guide for the whole Christian world in the 4th century. But there are also lots of monasteries uh in cities to this day. If you go to any traditionally Christian city in Europe, you're going to find maybe they aren't occupied anymore, especially in the west, but in central Europe and in Eastern Europe still packed with monks and nuns. This tells you our attitude towards money. Greed is a tremendous temptation. The model for us is dispossession. St. John, one of the great church fathers says, "For married people, possessions are justified by use." He says if you want to be a good Christian with regards to money and greed then make sure that you're using your money in a in a beneficial way such that it's not uh he says if you own a home make it fit your life like a good shoe and you don't want your shoe to be too tight too small less it crush your toes or too big so that you're always tripping on it and falling down. Right? Possessions are justified by use. Now forgive me that's not much of an uh uh popular message uh in America. You know we have been uh famous uh we have been famous for at least since the middle of the 19th century when Alexis Dtoqueville came here and he said he had never seen a people in the history of his travels so obsessed with money as Americans. There are of course some virtues to that. if we use our money to advance the cause of beauty and to help people who are in need. But money not justified by usage will be a testimony against us on the day of judgment.
I agree with that. I agree with that completely. Um, just a quick sidebar because I can't uh control myself. St. John Chrysimum if I'm pronouncing that correctly.
>> It's Christom in Greek is Chrissosmos. Cry means gold and stoma means mouth. So it's actually not his surname. People think that that's his surname, but it's it just it it was a appellation that was given to him by Pope Vigilius in 553. Chrysum died in 407. Patriarch of Constantinople driven into exile by conflict by conflict with the emperor.
>> You know, here it is again, right? Religious conflict. And I hope in a second that we could talk a little bit about the important connection between prophets and political power because those two in the scriptures always have to go together if you're going to succeed and we terribly need that right now. Uh, but go ahead with with your question.
>> Well, just my I just read someone sent me a collection of his sermons and I know nothing about orthodoxy. I knew nothing about him and I was just so shocked uh by how good they were and how resonant to the modern ear they I mean, I just could hardly believe it. What can you, for anyone who's made it this far, can you recommend a collection of his sermons or an introduction to him? Because what a talented preacher.
>> Yes. Uh he's not just a talented preacher, he's the most famous preacher in the history of the church, 2,000 years. No one is more famous than him. His collection of sermons in the Greek language is the largest in Christian history, comparable only to St. Augustine in Latin. So these are the predominant influences east and west. I in fact did my PhD on St. John Chrissum at the University of Durham in Northern England. I finished it in 2003 and I did my my work and published a text called marriage and virginity according to St. John Chrisum. That was my focus. There are many excellent books in almost all of his works are translated into English. for someone who's just uh approaching him. I would say to read his most famous book which is called on the priesthood and it's basically his description of what Christian worship is, what a priest is, what a pastor is. It's uh absolutely magnificent. He wrote it uh when he was a young man trying to escape ordination. He didn't want to be ordained because he had such respect for being ordained. And he's like, he literally duped one of his good friends named Basil uh who was also being courted by the local bishop to be ordained. So he said, "No, you're totally worthy and I'll do it after you, but you go first." So his friend got ordained and then John disappeared. Literally disappeared. He ended up going, he lived in ancient Antioch, right? Which is the primary uh city of the Roman Empire in the east. all the emperors would launch their campaigns against the Persians from there. That's kind of relevant today, isn't it? Um, and he out just outside of the city. I visited it in 2010. It's in Turkey, southern Turkey now.
>> Yep.
>> Uh, it was destroyed that the city was very damaged by the terrible earthquake 3 years ago. Just horrible. Uh, but there was a mountain. There's a mountain uh about a mile outside of town, very walkable for people like John who lived in the city. And it's called Mount Silios. And during his lifetime about 300 monks lived in holes and caves on that mountain. And that's where he did after he escaped ordination he went and lived there for 6 years. And he spent he describes later in his famous book on the priesthood that how he spent his time there. He said when the sun was out he studied the scriptures and he memorized them. There's something like 11,000 direct quotations in his sermons from the New Testament and something like 6,000 from the Old Testament. All from memory. He didn't preach with notes. And his sermons were usually between 30 minutes and an hour, which is very long traditionally for for a priest of the church to be preaching. Uh and when he would conclude, the people would boo. And yeah, please don't stop. Please don't stop. That's how that's how great a preacher uh he was. But he spent the days studying scripture and memorizing it and he kept vigilant night. He never laid down for six years. He tied a rope around his waist to a hook in the wall and so that he could try to keep praying at night and take the the minimum sleep he need he needed. Well, you know sometimes youthful enthusiasm goes a little too far. He broke his stomach basically and his buddy who would come once a week and leave bread and water at his door up on the mountain, found him completely ill, picked him up, took him back to the city in Antioch and the bishop grabbed him and never let him go, ordained him. He ended up becoming the cathedral preacher for 12 years in Antioch and then they kidnapped him and went to the capital of the Roman Empire in 397 and made him patriarch of Constantinople. And he engaged in the most incredible revival there. He he converted the the Easter in which he was sent into exile. He was uh preparing 3,000 people for baptism. Yeah. So that makes my 350, you know, that's nothing. It's nothing.
>> compared to what he was doing.
>> He So he he is uh you can read his >> you can hear his life. Uh his life we know in great detail. He's been a cherished saint of the church for a very long time. Uh we have an app. It's called the Petristic Nectar app. It's on the app store and in there are the lives of the saints and you can go there and listen for free to about an hour recording of his life. Uh you'll just be absolutely amazed by this man.
>> Thank you for telling me that. So what what is the connection? You said you wanted to explain the connection between prophets and political figures. You know, in in the scriptures, God would send the prophets to the kings, and the king's futures, the success of a reign depended upon whether the king would listen to the prophets or not. David had his Nathan. Uh my patron saint, the great king Josiah of Israel, uh had the prophet Jeremiah and the prophet Holda. And they would consult. Good kings would consult. So there was a a shackling of power which we know is exceedingly dangerous. Power is exceedingly dangerous. I feel very sympathetic listening to you describe these these trials that our nation is facing and our leaders including our president is suffering so badly and we're also suffering so badly. Power is extremely dangerous and Christians learn from the prophetic influence to use it but kind of like this. You got one hand on power, but you're being very careful. Uh because it can do terrible things to you. Uh if you don't have someone helping remind you who you are to keep your feet on the ground, that you're humble when everybody around you is saying, "Yes, sir. Yes, sir. What do you want to do, sir? You're the greatest thing that's ever happened to America." That's poison of the highest level. In our tradition, uh priests and bishops who are who are praised by the people, we consider it hatred. Good for you. I love that.
>> We consider it hated. That doesn't mean we always succeed in hating it. And the people mean well most of the time they mean well. But we don't accept it as something nice. We consider it a temptation. It's a temptation. No one is great. Everyone is a sinner. Only Christ is our salvation. The best of people only live by grace and by the love of God and forgiveness. That's it. So to start thinking ideas because you're really successful or because you have six million followers or I have a big church. Come on. Come on. We're
>> Yeah,
>> we're nothing. We're nothing. So to have a prophet in your life is exceedingly important. And to obey that prophet. You know, I was very hopeful uh when when President Trump established he took the department of faith, which I think used to be under the vice president's office and it had a relatively small budget and then he made it an executive office, right? He put it on directly under him and I think he increased the the budget massively. And uh I I have a few friends who work on different committees for him uh like Archbishop Salvador Cordelion who's the Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco and is a dear friend of mine and an incredible person who I deeply respect. I I've been I've taken heart from that. I'm hoping that that paradigm can serve our country and that that department of faith can't not just be a genesis for ideas, but our our presidents and our vice presidents and forgive me our Congress, they need their pastors in their life. They need their pastors in their life. I mean, we have a chaplain of the Senate, right? We have a chaplain, but that's that's not sufficient. I mean, he can't take care of everybody. You you need someone who can tell you the truth. And your priest is the one who's going to tell you the truth. You need a priest. This is my prayer really. I make my cross asking God to please help our president and our vice president and all of those in power to recognize what a dangerous position they're in to have so much power. You know, America used to be very humble about our influence. And our founding fathers considered virtue to be absolutely essential to political leadership. And we got this of course from George Washington who was such an exceedingly excellent example of this himself. The idea though that we are now the empire of the world and we police people and we engage in conflicts all over the world and we have 200 military bases. Forgive me Tucker. This is so pompous.
>> Yes.
>> This is so pompous and it's so unfortunate and there's every excuse in the world to to justify it, but there's nothing humble and to to I'm I'm often called an isolationist because I say this opinion. I'm an American and our founding fathers believed this. This is how they looked at the world. They did not think America was responsible for the world. That is so arrogant. I can't tell you. How is arrogance treated in the Bible and what's the result of it?
>> You know this lesson uh the lesson for political leaders to to learn this. It's very hard for them. It's something else for me to learn. It's something else for you to learn it. But for these people who are in this kind of position uh to learn it, this is much harder. Let me let me give you some examples. We have a certain type of saint in the history of the church that are called righteous kings. Righteous kings and queens. So they're they're saintly political rulers. Now, let me say just out out of the gate that almost all of the political rulers in the history of Christianity were awful.
>> I'm sorry. I just.
>> No, I I believe you.
>> Almost all were awful. Um, and so when I say when I'm going to list I'll list some saints now. Uh, and then let me qualify it. So, Emperor Constantine is a saint of the church. Uh, Emperor Theodosius the Great, this is 379 or so. He actually formally Constantine legalized Christianity. Theodosius made Christianity the official religion of the empire. He's called the great, he was a spiritual son uh of St. Ambrose of Milan. the famous story where power met priesthood uh when he had ordered the slaughter of 7,000 citizens in anger uh in Thessaloni Greece and Ambrose put him out of communion and he was angry and he went to the church and Ambrose met him at the door and wouldn't let him in the church. That was a definitive moment in Christian history because up to that time no priest could do that to an emperor. He was considered all powerful and but he didn't he actually did penance. He accepted not entering the church being put out of communion and he did penance and that established a new relationship between the clergy in Christian history and the the power structure and the politicians that is a very important power structure. The the clergy govern eternal life. Right? This is a matter of the sacraments and we don't give sacraments to people who are disrespectful of and and doing great sins. It would be a terrible thing to do. And St. Ambrose stop them. Uh, there's St. the incredible Justinian the Great. This is he ruled from 527 to 565. An incredible man, incredibly talented. He actually wrote parts of the Eastern liturgy, parts of the Orthodox liturgy which we still sing come from his pen. St. Boris of Bulgaria. This is 8 800s, early 800s. St. Vladimir uh of the Slavic lands. St. Steven of Hungary. St. Alfred the Great, who forgive me as an English man, he's the best. He is absolutely the best. You know, Winston Churchill was once asked was called he he was called the greatest Englishman. And Churchill stopped him. He said, "No, no, no. Alfred is the greatest Englishman who has ever lived." And I say 100% yes. Um St. Edward the Confessor, right? This is he died in 1066. These are all incredible saints who were in positions of power and there's a commonality between them all. All of them submitted their agendas, their policies to their spiritual fathers. They they respected the guidance of the church. They respected the word of God. And the priests and the bishops are responsible for preaching the word of God. And it's very important to believe to believe that that is your safety net when you're exercising power. You need that blessing to be able not be destroyed by it.
>> Yes.
>> As mo as most people were. And and so to have that kind of relationship uh is important. And I would say if I could just move it from the power that the executive holds to the power of the military because those two are very combined right now in our country uh and are the are each other's biggest fans. Um, we have also in the history of the church a type of saint that are called military saints. These are men who were the church is not pacifist. The church has never been pacifist. We set standards for the proper use of force. It has to be a moral use of force. And we had we have incredible saints like St. George, St. Theodore. These are incredible warriors. We have whole lists of them. I mean, there's hundreds of military saints. What they have in common is that they conducted themselves in a military capacity, not just with skill, uh, but with morality, with virtue. And that kind of uh example is very very important for America both in the executive in the role of president or king and in the role of exerciser of power which is what our military is. And wow do we need it more than ever right now.
Can you just uh end by you often hear the the phrase just just war doctrine uh without and I without getting in maybe the specifics of that but in more broadly what does it mean to act as a Christian in war?
This is a very important subject and the church has articulated we did this within the first five centuries in a very complex way uh standards uh for blessing. This means if the military does not pursue their objectives in a way that's respectable to the eyes of the church, respectable in Jesus's eyes, uh they don't get blessed. uh and this has become what we call the justifiable war dogma. So we we have important precedences. One, it can't be an offensive war. It has to be a matter of defense. Number two, it can't uh involve civilians. You cannot fail to make a distinction. I find this extremely relevant today. You cannot make a distin You cannot fail to make a distinction between combatants and civilians. Now we know this and the whole decimation of Gaza uh which has completely violated these norms by the way top to bottom completely violated them but but always they try to find a way the justifiers of that slaughter try to find a way to say somehow that it wasn't a violation of the principles of justifiable warfare because they were mil they were really militants after all. They're they're giving shelter uh to the militants to the terrorists. I mean certainly some were giving uh shelter to terrorists no doubt but that does not justify the raising of Gaza to the ground and treating everyone as though they are a combatant. That's is completely unheard of in the history of Christianity. Now you know there's an incredible book and I'd love to recommend it to you. It's by one of the greatest saints of the 20th century. a man who lived through both World War I and World War II actually got sent to Dao. His name is St. Nikolai Velamirovich. He was a Serbian bishop, monk, and an incredible scholar. He had two PhDs, an Oxford PhD, a PhD from burn. He preached uh in World War I and then again in between the wars at peace conferences and then through World War II. he preached in all of the cathedrals of Europe and America. He was uh very well known, one of the most famous clerics alive. He spent his last 10 years, unfortunately because of the creation of Yugoslavia post World War II and the communists, he couldn't return to his home country. So we, as we often do in America, welcomed here and he loved us. And he spent his last 10 years in Pennsylvania traveling around preaching. He preached in Harlem. He preached St. John Cathedral in New York. He preached everywhere in America. He's an unbelievable person. He wrote a book called War and the Bible. I find it particularly excellent, not just because he's an incredible, incredibly saintly man and an incredible scholar, but he also is a person who lived through World War I and two and is able to speak. He basically said that the 20th century was the triumph of Satan in the Christian West and that Jesus was asked by us to leave by our behavior and that he did. And I think a lot of what we can see since 195 the late 1950s is the manifestation of that departure. I think he's right. Uh, I'm hoping what's going on right now is our asking Jesus to come back. I want him to come back and I want him to forgive us uh for what we've done. Christians killing Christians. World War I and two, the 20th century was the greatest slaughter of people in the history of the human race. And it was done mostly by Christians on other Christians. And I think the Lord left and I think St. Nikolai's right. and he will come back cuz he loves all men and he's trying to redeem and save every one of us. But let's ask him to come back. Let's ask him to come back and ask for some rebuilding. We have to dig the wells like Abraham did in the past. He dug all these incredible wells and then they got taken over by enemies and filled up and then his sons had to go back and redig them. And we need to redig the wells of a more glorious history in the United States of America where we were more humble, more reasonable, and more Christian.
You know, listening to your your monologue earlier about the inescapability of religion uh in any culture. Our our nation was very comfortable, Tucker, for the first 150 years of our our nationhood calling oursel a Christian nation. official people, presidents, Supreme Court justices, we referenced the New Testament in our Supreme Court documents for a very long time. So this idea that somehow this secular monster that has eaten us alive and has decimated our children through the horror of abortion, destroyed our families by no fault divorce, and has left our people addicted to technology and sad and grieved that somehow this is America. I don't accept that at all.
>> I agree.
>> I I want the Lord to come back. I want us to hold on, to love each other again, and to become a more humble, traditional America.
>> Amen. Well, that is definitely my most fervent prayer at this point. Father Tren, thank you so much for spending all this time and for your wisdom. Appreciate it.
>> God be with you, brother.
>> Amen. Hallelujah.