We are strongly incited, in these years, to reflect on the way humankind will – or may not -survive in shaken, if not devastated ecological environments. Survive? The word itself trembles. Things do not collapse only in sudden catastrophes; they evolve through slow, almost imperceptible processes that suddenly reveal their abruptness. We speak of the depletion of agricultural resources, of the disappearance of natural products over millennia. Animals are endangered, forests recede, ice melts, deserts expand, coastlines shift, and entire regions become uninhabitable. The earth itself seems to breathe with difficulty.

Yet these transformations are not only ecological. They reveal something deeper: a parallel erosion of human interiority. The question is not only whether the world can sustain us—but whether we are still capable of sustaining a world.

We say: we have problems. But problems presuppose questions, and questions presuppose a capacity to listen. Today, we rather throw propositions into the air, as if words themselves could solve what they no longer truly address. Difficulties persist, not because solutions are absent, but because the depth of the questions is avoided.

Life unfolds in cycles, yet these cycles are not merely repetitive. They risk becoming monotonous when they are emptied of meaning. The Great Lenten traditions of fasting, restraint, and prayer border on other imposed rhythms: economic pressures, chronic anxieties, social fragmentation, and a diffuse moral fatigue. What once oriented life toward transformation risks becoming another routine among others.

True penitence, true conversion, however, does not belong to routine. It is not a moral decoration. It is closer to a risk, almost a wager – personal and collective. God calls to life, sustains life, and maintains creation in life, even when systems of destruction and eradication seem to dominate the visible order of things. This tension between life and its denial defines our present condition.

The Byzantine Vesperal prayers constantly return to the first Psalm:

“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,nor stands in the way of sinners,nor sits in the seat of the scornful” (Psalm 1:1).

The Hebrew text is not rigid. It opens into a spectrum of meanings, because its roots and letters interact dynamically. The Psalms resist ossification. They refuse to become fixed formulas. This resistance is essential, because calcification is one of the gravest dangers—not only for religious practice, but for human consciousness itself.

We cannot bathe twice in the same time. Memory fades, images dissolve, recordings lose their clarity. Faith, we say, cannot fade – but the question remains: how do we live as if this were true?

The Psalm delineates three progressive states:

the רשעים (resha’im) — the ungodly, those who distort the orientation of life;

the פושעים (posh’im) — those who transgress, who cross limits knowingly;

the לצים (letsim) — the scornful, the mockers.

This last category, the lets, demands particular attention today.

The lets is not merely someone who jokes or laughs. He is the one who mocks in order to diminish, who ridicules in order to wound, who distorts in order to escape his own inner fracture. He cannot bear the truth of his own condition, and so he projects it outward, accusing, humiliating, dismantling. His weapon is language, emptied of responsibility.

What was once an individual defect risks becoming a collective climate. Mockery becomes a form of communication, then a norm, and finally a mode of governance. The “seat of the scornful” is no longer only a moral image – it becomes visible in public life.

And yet, these figures do not emerge in a vacuum. They reflect something more troubling: they are mirrors. They reveal a society that has grown accustomed to distortion, to irony without depth, to speech without accountability. The rulers are not only leaders—they are symptoms.

Thus, the question is not: who are the fools who govern?The question is: what within us has made their emergence possible?

Great Lent begins precisely at this point of rupture. It is not a withdrawal from the world, but an exposure to truth. The prayer of Saint Ephrem the Syrian articulates this with striking clarity:

“O Lord and Master of my life,take from me the spirit of sloth, meddling, love of power, and idle talk…”

“O Lord and Master of my life,take from me the spirit of sloth, meddling, love of power, and idle talk…”

Idle talk – empty speech – is not innocent. It is the soil in which mockery grows.

The prayer continues:

“…but give me a spirit of sobriety, humility, patience, and love.”

“…but give me a spirit of sobriety, humility, patience, and love.”

“Grant me to see my own faults and not to judge my brother.”

“Grant me to see my own faults and not to judge my brother.”

We often speak of forgiveness, yet our societies are marked by an increasing inability to forgive. Repentance is not merely emotional; it implies speech, relationship, and change. The principle “כל ישראל ערבין זה בזה – all Israel are responsible for one another” reminds us that responsibility is never isolated (Shevuot 39a & Deuteronome 57).

This is where the image of Lazarus becomes decisive. Again, more precisely the question continues: what within us has made their emergence possible?

When Jesus approaches the tomb, Martha warns Him: “Lord, he stinks; he has been dead four days.” The Aramaic term (ܣܪܝ, sry) is blunt: he is decayed, corrupted. Corruption is not abstract. It has a smell.

And yet, at this point of decomposition, the call resounds:

“Lazarus, come forward! – ܠܒܪ ܬܐ / tha l’bar, come outside – Λάζαρε, δεῦρο ἔξω!” (John 11: 43)

We live in an age that proclaims itself new, yet often hardens into something older than memory – a kind of petrified present. It has even become new and common, in the language of power, to threaten entire peoples with being sent “back to the Stone Age,” while Albert Einstein once warned, with dark irony, that the wars to come might leave humanity fighting again with stones.

Yet this “Stone New Age” is not only the result of wars or destruction; it unfolds wherever extreme violence – bombs, violated bodies, murders, rapes, the spread of intoxications of all kinds – coexists with a shrinking of thought, speech, and responsibility. In this sense, we stand before a decisive tension: are we entering an age of petrification, where stone hardens into stiffness and closure – as in the Germanic Stein – or an age where stones might again build, as the Hebrew even (אבן) resonates with ben (בן), banim / banot (בנים-בנות), livnot (לבנות), to build and rebuild? The same stone can seal a tomb or become the foundation of a dwelling; it can imprison life or participate in its transmission.

And still, in such a landscape, something resists. Not as a system, not as a collective certainty, but as something that appears only in fragments: a word spoken without mockery, a gesture that restores dignity, a truth admitted without disguise, a presence that refuses to abandon the other. These fragments do not erase the smell of the fourth day. Yet they indicate that it is not final.

Lazarus emerges, still bound. Others must untie him. Resurrection is not isolation; it is relational.

Saint Maria of Egypt embodies this passage. Her fall, her barrier, her return, her communion—these mark the path from disintegration to life.

The Eucharist itself bears this paradox: what may appear altered carries incorruptible presence.

We remember, we witness, we fear. Yet the call remains: “Come out!”

The “Stone New Age” is not imposed solely from above. It emerges wherever hardness replaces responsiveness, wherever mockery replaces speech, wherever responsibility dissolves.

But the stone is not immovable. The voice still calls. It is our time to hear it.

And, perhaps, to begin to move.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)