The pervasiveness of the Christian idea
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Quote for the day from the diary of Fr. Alexander Yelchaninov, who was a married parish priest and schoolteacher who died in exile in Paris in 1934:
We can already ascertain that the power exercised over humanity by Christian ideas is without precedent. This is acknowledged by the enemies of Christianity themselves. Nietzsche declares that the whole of humanity is “corrupted” by Christianity, that human psychology and morality are entirely permeated by Christian “decadence.” Rozanov affirms with awe and melancholy that men are incurably infected by that “sweet poison,” himself among them. We cannot say that after Christ all history became Christian; we know how far we are from it, today in particular; but we can assert that under the influence of Christian ideas, history became qualitatively different. Dough rises under the influence of yeast, yet does not become identical to yeast; wood burns under the action of fire, but the residue of ashes and cinders has nothing in common with fire. The same can be said of ideas, of their action on humanity. And such, too, was the transfiguring action of the Christian religion on humanity.
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