One more word, one more name, unknown to most, known perhaps……. only to residents of the French capital, haunts our fears, it reveals the horrible contradictions of our time, it uncovers the nightmarish face of violence and preys on our insecurities: Bataclan! As until now we called Twin Towers..
This is the concert center of Paris, in which dozens of young people lost their lives, suddenly, unexpectedly, in the time of joy and youthful drunkenness….
Countless reasons why, the interpretations about the motives and causes of the massacre are numerous and in quantity and variety, heavy the cloud of terror and suspicion, which weighs on European capitals and people's souls!
Suddenly, we feel vulnerable and powerless to protect the sacred and inalienable right to life… We find how precarious our reality is, how ephemeral our "permanence" is, how near the end of our life may be, even when we are at the beginning of it…
Terrorist attacks at an unsuspected time and place have a catalytic effect on the thinking of modern man, who, "drunk" by the possibilities, the comforts and the "superman" promises of today's era, he has lost all measure of his humanity, he has banished death and decay, he has banished everything spiritual from his life and lives under the illusion of omnipotence, why not also of eternity….
The modern European Adam… who thinks that by tasting the "apple" of science, of technology and power can become a god… Until an unexpected development occurs, a new disease, a war, a terrorist attack, which will prove the extent of his weakness…
Ever since, sure, life faced dangers… Always diseases, wars and conflicts took away, without discrimination, human lives, to a greater extent, maybe, and in a more horrible way….. There are few blank pages in the book of world history, most of them red with blood!
That which differentiates, Nevertheless, in our time the impression is that all this belongs to the past… We live in a "new era", time of peace, development, cooperation, freedom and democracy…. And it would be good to forget them…And let's move forward, breaking down every border, that divides people…And that's why, neither as history should we teach our children wars and massacres!
The Paris tragedy proved how flawed our estimates are, how precarious our certainties, how unarmed is our optimism, how deep our ignorance and illiteracy…
Otherwise, we would have "heard" Thucydides say with bitterness but also realism: "The conflicts brought great and countless calamities to the states, disasters that happen and will always happen, as long as the nature of man does not change, calamities which may be heavier or lighter and take a different form according to the circumstances"…
As long as the nature of man does not change…. In the centuries that have passed since these were written, a lot has changed, to an unimaginable extent, intensity and degree!
A lot has changed, except the nature of man, which still governs it, as then, the philanthropy, greed and ambition, combined with the lack of any moral barrier!
At the same time, that people probe the mysteries of life and penetrate the secrets of the microcosm and the macrocosm instead of getting better they get worse… they go wild… they become wolves for their fellow man… they turn their lives into hell, after, of course, first they took care to banish God from their existence!
And suddenly, we witness scenes, which in other cases would be characterized as medieval, religious people, anachronistic!
We see political leaders and anonymous crowds light candles and pray in front of the Bataclan for souls, that were lost!
A thousand sermons could not more vividly present the value and importance of prayer for man, which reconnects him with his Creator and offers him so much security and strength, as much as a small child can be assured that his father always listens and protects him.
As we stand at the edge of history, new realities are conceived in European becoming and fear shadows our souls, now is the time to bring Christ back into our lives and admit that prayer is not the air we only remember in the moments when we can't breathe, but oxygen, that helps us live!
† Dorotheos II of Syros and Mykonos
("DEMOKRATIA" newspaper, Saturday, 28 November 2015)