In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Because this morning we are observing the Feast of our Lady’s Presentation, one day late, we have an expanded gospel this morning. It’s given me a chance to make a contrast. The contrast I’d like to make this morning is that between the rich man, who’s got a lot more than he needs, and he was about to expand his business; and the Mother of the Lord, whose feast we celebrate. Let me talk this morning about three points on two types of souls; two types.

In the first, the first point, let’s make the essential distinction between quantity and quality, a very, very ancient distinction. As soon as quality is denigrated to a quantitative thing, we’ve lost something essential in the human experience. This distinction is found in the contrast that the Lord makes at the end of the parable once again. “This is he who gathers treasure for himself but is not rich toward God.”

Now did you notice this morning how many times the word “treasure” appeared, both in Matins and during the Divine Liturgy? In the entrance hymn this morning, it spoke about the treasure. You see, this rich man’s life has been devoted to accumulation. He regards success in life as an accumulative thing.

I remember—it used to be a joke—that the one—who was the successful person? He’s the one who dies with the most stuff. It used to be a joke! Who’s going to get all this stuff, Jesus says to the rich man. Who’s going to get all this stuff? Because it’s not going to be yours any more. Who’s going to get it? See, this man has lived a quantitative life. He’s a big man because he’s made lots of stuff, as though the purpose of human existence is to accumulate things.

Now I don’t believe in any crass, gross, material sense that anybody here is actually guilty of that; I really do not believe that is the case. I don’t. I’ve been here for 17 years, and honestly I haven’t seen a sign of it yet. I saw a lot of it back when I belonged to some other church, but I haven’t seen a sign of it here—not that there aren’t Orthodox parishes where that wouldn’t be the case, but in this parish I haven’t seen that.

So what am I talking about? You see, there’s more than one kind of riches. What about spiritual things? The objects of culture. For example, more music, more art, more status, more education. But you see, as long as we are only accumulating things, it’s still the same problem, the identical problem. We’re just accumulating. I don’t have any money; I’ve never been interested in accumulating money. I’ve got lots of books… [Laughter] I wasn’t looking at you; I was looking at her. [Laughter]

You see, but as long as it’s just accumulation, it’s the same problem. More ideas, have read more authors, familiar with more things—as long as it’s an accumulation, it’s still the same problem. As long as we are only accumulating things, we forget what Jesus says this morning about only one thing is necessary—only one thing is necessary. You see, it’s possible to accumulate many spiritual things, even religious experiences. This incredible quest for religious experiences, which seems to me an entirely modern preoccupation!

There’s a marvelous short story that quickly became a play, and at least two of us this morning have read it, called “Brother Petroc’s Return,” where Brother Petroc comes back—read the story, by the way; or else ask Sarah what it’s all about, this story, “Brother Petroc’s Return.” I remember we put that on as a play when I was in high school. That was our class play, “Brother Petroc’s Return.” Brother Petroc comes back; he’s an ancient monk. He comes back and he finds there’s still a monastery there, but everybody’s simply striving for religious experiences. That has nothing to do with monasteries, to go there to strive for religious experiences! If you accumulate religious experiences, you’re just accumulating things!

The purpose of a monastery is the purpose of society itself, and that’s the perfection of the soul, and that is not quantitative. That’s changing the nature or the quality of the soul. It’s possible to accumulate many spiritual things, cultural benefits and blessings, and still fail to cultivate a God-ward soul.

Now in the ninth ode that we sing every Sunday, which was the prokeimenon for today’s service, we begin: “My soul, my soul, magnifies the Lord!” Now contrast that with the rich man this morning. He accumulates all these things; he says, “Soul, you’ve got a lot of stuff, so what are you going to do?” And what does he say? “Get more!” [Laughter] So he tears down his warehouses and builds bigger ones—bigger and better! Bigger and better! Growth! Quantity! The philosophy of the cancer cell, that more is better. If a nose is good, a really long nose is vastly superior! [Laughter]

My soul magnifies—what? Makes great—what? The Lord! And she goes on to describe that Lord that her soul magnifies. “He puts down the mighty and exalts the humble. He fills the hungry with good things, and sends away empty the rich. Sends away empty the rich. Our rich man today is what is called the self-made man. And whatever we may say about the blessed Virgin Mary, she is not a self-made woman. Everything about her magnifies the Lord. Hers is a simple and modest life. It is a life of devotion to God. Here is this simple peasant woman. She never read and wrote; didn’t know how. She couldn’t read and write. She had never been to school. Here she is, simple, plain life, yet here’s the woman that the two largest religions in the world—Christianity and Islam—venerate above all other women. It says something about God! You see, God is the one who makes her. God shapes her soul. No on is less self-made than the blessed Virgin Mary, which brings me to point two.

When I think of the soul of Mary, as manifested in the ninth ode, the Magnificat, the word that comes into my mind—but it could just be subjective, but the word that comes to my mind is the word “horizon.” You know, one of the worst features of the modern soul is the loss of horizon. What does “horizon” mean? It means the expanded edges of the mind. We’re surrounded by horizon: the expanded edges of the mind. The horizon is by definition just beyond our ability to attain, therefore it cannot be made into an institution like other ideals; it cannot be made into an institution. No one ever arrives at the horizon. It is always that vast but evasive region, suggesting more beyond our vision. The horizon is the place where heaven and earth meet.

Sometimes it’s hard to say where the one stops and the other starts. There were times when I’ve—at least when I’ve been in places that have a lot of snow, like Switzerland, I wasn’t sure if I was seeing clouds or mountains. The horizon’s a place where heaven and earth meet, and that is where we’re surrounded: the place where heaven and earth meet.

The abiding sense of a horizon pertains to the quality of the soul. The horizon is that which widens and expands human experience. There’s nothing quantitative about the horizon. You can’t get more of it. It’s only 360°; you can’t get any more. There’s nothing quantitative about the horizon, and because it is circular, you can’t angle it; there’s no angles. It rolls off into infinity. Perhaps the most neglected word of the ninth ode is the last expression: eis ton aiona, forever, forever.

The horizon is what makes human thought really human. Beloved, it is important—it is essential to grasp what is true. You see, all of the logical and [rational] processes of the human mind—all of them; all the logical and rational processes of the human mind—can be duplicated, can be replicated, in a machine. Every single logical and mathematical operation can be programmed into a computer, all of them.

Jackie Fenton was telling us a couple weeks ago—she has, one of her jobs is she transcribes speeches that are given: types them out. Listens to them, types them out. She was talking about this one speech she recently has typed out. It was a speech given by a robot. It was a real robot! She talked about how weird that was. She was typing out what the robot says! See, you can do that; you can do that. And the robot was bragging about how robots are going to take over the world. And of course, there’s all sorts of artistic representations of that. I suppose A Space Odyssey was one of them. Remember HAL, the robot on the spaceship? But there’s others as well. War Games was one of them, that movie, War Games. But you see, that’s all possible. The robot would never think, I think, to take over the universe unless somebody programmed it to do that, and now that can be done. That really can be done, because we’ve got a lot of demonic people working on computers. I know, present company not included.

Every single mathematical and logical operation can be programmed into a machine. So much is this the case that many people today imagine that the human mind is a kind of computer. And if they are correct, then there is no essential difference between a man and a machine, and a lot of people today believe that! Whole industries believe that. In this case, man no more has a soul than a machine has a soul. It’s very easy to make that next step, that man does not have a soul. It’s very easy to make that logical step. In fact, the computer would certainly make it, that man has no soul.

Many people today believe that the soul does not exist, that it’s an outdated concept, no longer useful. The soul does not really contribute to the gross national product, which is the essential thing in life, isn’t it? We’re all told that. Beloved, the surest way to lose one’s soul is to deny or doubt its existence. I believe the great struggle right now in this world is for the human soul. I see that fight going on politically between the Democrats and Republicans. I’m not sure either one of them really believes in the soul, I must tell you; I’m not confident that either side believes in the soul. This theme of the loss of the soul is the subject of a very important recent book by George Makari. It’s entitled Soul Machine: The Invention of the Modern Mind.

Now is there some experience of the human mind that cannot be replicated in the computer? Of course there is, and that is the soul’s response to the horizon. It has absolutely nothing to do with any rational or logical process, but it’s the deepest thing in the structure of the mind, is the sense of horizon, the sense of beyond. It’s the deepest part of our minds. In fact, it’s the very recovery of this which the Fathers call the goal of life, the recovery of what they call the nous, that which identifies us. It’s not the logical process; it’s not a rational process, but it’s the deepest part of the mind: the soul’s response to the horizon, the sense of the beyond, the abiding tug that the soul feels toward what is past the limits of its own existence.

Now it is quite possible for a person to lose this sense of the horizon. Indeed, Jesus warns us sternly against this loss. “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?” The gain of the whole world is something quantitative, isn’t it? The loss of the soul is qualitative. The tragedy of today’s gospel is that the rich man has lost his soul. You know, he’s the only person in the gospels that Jesus calls a fool: aphron, fool. What does he say? “Fool! This night they will require your soul of you.” Who are these “they”? “They will require your soul of you”? Who are these? It’s all the forces that really want you to lose your soul, and our fight is not against flesh and blood. Perhaps also those who would lay claim to the wretched man’s soul refers to his accumulated wealth. His wealth has robbed him of one thing he must not lose: his very being, the one thing necessary.

In ancient times, men sometimes speculated whether the world had a border, an edge. They wondered if you might sail too far and drop off the end of the earth into an abyss. In fact, they were right; you can. [Laughter] Today’s story has the rich man who moved out too far. At the end of his life, he drops off into an abyss. There’s nothing left of him. His existence is tossed on a great big junk heap made up of outdated computers. It was all for nothing. He lived a wasted life.

Let’s get practical. Point three. Let’s talk about the deliberate and intentional cultivation of modesty. The deliberate and intentional cultivation of modesty: by this I mean a disciplined attention to limits. This is essential, first of all, for our private lives, our personal lives. When is enough enough? [Laughter] When is enough enough? When do we finally say, “No, I have a large enough factory,” “No, I don’t see the point in building my business any more,” “No, I don’t think I really want to have another branch store,” “No, my bank account is adequate”? I have to tell you, I haven’t reached that stage! [Laughter]

If I try to accumulate more, I may lose something, and what I’ll lose is my sense of the horizon. I may become something less than human. I may be putting my soul in peril. This is true for all of us. It is likewise true for society as a whole. It’s essential to the structures of society that we know when to stop, because if we don’t know when to stop growing, it’s called the philosophy of the cancer cell. I see cities where that is obvious. Every time I drove south on 31W, Dixie Highway, down from Louisville down to Fort Knox, all I could think was, “This is a massive cancer problem! Nobody thought that one through!”

This is true for all structures of society, but probably most of all for the structures of government. I’ve spoken before of Tertullian’s three kinds of idolatry—philosophical idolatry, cultural idolatry, and political idolatry, that the worst of these is political, because government carries the sword: this one is lethal. Political idolatry comes when the government considers itself as ultimate and stands under no further judgment. We call that totalitarian, which means that the government is in charge of every last aspect of your life. That’s totalitarianism, when the government is in charge of every last aspect of your life, down to the label on your mattress! That is idolatry, that the government answers to no one except perhaps to its later history.

This is the form of idolatry most dangerous. Government is well past its competence when it attempts to do what God has refused to do. Even God doesn’t govern you that way! He leaves you with a certain amount of leeway. At that point, the government becomes dangerous. It has forgotten its own limits. It assumes an authority it does not have.

If we would be persuaded of this, let us turn to the writings of the prophets. Let us review what Isaiah said to Assyria. Let us once again examine Jeremiah’s warnings to Babylon. Let us ponder deeply Daniel’s assessment of Persia. But you see, not one of these empires ever attempted to do—ever—what our own government is currently doing. No government of antiquity, none of the idolatrous governments of the ancient world ever attempted what our own government is attempting to do: to go way beyond its competence, to assume the place of God, to define when a human life begins, to define what marriage is—no government ever, until our government—and by that I mean all of these governments—go beyond its own competence.

You see, beloved, ours is a generation slated for judgment, and I am not at all convinced that the current problem, political problems of our country, are at all capable of having a political solution. I’m not. I wish I were confident of that; I’m not. We just may have to wait things out until God’s judgment is visited upon us. But meanwhile, what shall we do? Take care of our souls. Take care of our souls—not each one of us taking care of our own soul, no. I don’t mean just that. Take care of one another’s souls. We owe that to one another. The stewardship of the spiritual resources of each one of us: that’s the most important thing in life; it’s the one thing necessary. Amen.