The Idol of Autonomy vs. The Temple of Submission

A Reflection on the Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Beloved in Christ:

We are now deep in the Nativity Fast. The world around us is already in a frenzy of commerce and noise, drowning out the very reality it claims to celebrate. But the Church, in her wisdom, lowers her voice. She pulls us away from the marketplace and points us toward the sanctuary.

This Sunday falls immediately after the Feast of the Entrance of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple. And when we consider the glory and lesson of that Feast in comparison with our Lord’s parable today of the rich fool, we see that the Church gives us a solid opportunity for reflection.

Here, the Church sets before us two opposing visions of human existence. On the one side, we have the rich fool – the very icon of the modern, secular man. On the other, we have the Child Mary – the very icon of the Christian soul.

The chasm between these two is not just a difference in lifestyle; it is a war between two rival religions, irreconcilable in their nature.

1. The Rich Fool: The Delusion of the Modern West

Let us look first at this “Rich Fool.” In the eyes of our current society, this man is not a fool. He is a success story. He is prudent. He is an “industry leader.” He has maximized his assets. He has secured his future. If he lived today, he would be celebrated on the covers of magazines. He would be giving TED Talks on “Optimization and Security.”

But God looks at him – this man who has achieved everything the American Dream promises – and says: “Thou Fool.”

Why? Not because he was rich. Abraham was rich; David was rich. He is a fool because he is an atheist in practice. He does not necessarily deny God with his lips, but he denies Him with his life. Listen to his monologue: “I will pull down my barns… I will build greater… I will say to my soul…” “I… I… I…”

He lives in a universe of One. He has succumbed to the great modern heresy of Autonomy – the belief that I am the master of my fate, that I define my own reality, that I am the source of my own security. He believes the lie that is drummed into our heads by every advertisement, every university, and every ideologue today: that the goal of life is “Self-Actualization,” comfort, and safety.

He has no neighbors. He has no God. He has only his barns. This is the spirit of the age! A society that builds bigger economies, bigger armies, and bigger egos, while the soul within it shrivels and dies. We have filled our barns with technology and entertainment, but our civilization is spiritually bankrupt. We have “goods laid up for many years,” but we have lost the ability to know who we are.

2. The Entrance: The Scandal of Submission

And against this arrogance, the Church presents a three-year-old girl. The Entrance of the Theotokos is a devastating critique of modern pride. The Rich Fool wants to expand his dominion; the Virgin Mary seeks only to belong to God.

The world today tells young women that “empowerment” means autonomy. It tells them to delay family, to reject humility, to seize imagined power, to be boorish, to “break glass ceilings.” The world tells them that submission is weakness. But look at the Theotokos! She ascends the steps of the Temple not to “find herself,” but to lose herself in God. She enters into silence. She enters into obedience.

And because of this – because she is beheld the Handmaid of the Lord – she thus is truly “More Spacious than the Heavens.” The Rich Fool’s soul was so small it couldn’t fit anything but his own ego. The Virgin’s soul was so vast it could contain the Creator of the Universe.

Here is the paradox the world cannot understand: The man who sought to save his life lost it. The child who gave her life away became the Mother of Life.

3. The Empty Barns of a Childless Age

There is a terrifying detail in the parable. The man says: “Soul, thou has much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease.” He is planning for a future that will not happen. Is this not the picture of the modern West? We see a generation that has chosen the “barns” of career and comfort over the “temple” of family and sacrifice. We see a demographic winter, a refusal to bring children into the world because children interfere with our “ease,” our “travel,” our “plans.” Like the Rich Fool, we are building a civilization of elderly consumers with no heirs to inherit the faith.

The Virgin Mary, even as a child, is the answer to this barrenness. She prepares her body and soul to be fruit-bearing. She prepares to give flesh to the Word of God. The Fool creates a vacuum. The Virgin creates a home for God.

4. Preparing the Room

So, as we stand in this Nativity Fast, the question is forced upon us: Which religion do you practice? Do you practice the religion of the Rich Fool – the religion of anxiety, accumulation, and the obsession with the Self? Or do you practice the religion of the Theotokos – the religion of loving surrender?

Some of us may feel the pressure of the world to “build bigger barns” – to prioritize our career over our prayer, or our bank account over our children’s spiritual formation. Do not be deceived. That road ends in the grave. “This night thy soul shall be required of thee.” Death is the great destroyer of the illusion of autonomy. When death comes, your barns will not save you. Your politics will not save you. Your “identity” will not save you.

Only that which is of Christ will survive.

5. Our Call to the Temple

Brothers and sisters: We are sending our children into a world that wants to turn them into Rich Fools. The schools, the screens, the culture – they are all catechizing your children to worship themselves. We must do what Joachim and Anna did. We must bring them to the Temple. And we must bring ourselves to the Temple.

Let us stop building monuments to our own vanity. Let us tear down the barns of our ego. Let us enter the silence of the sanctuary, with the humility of a child, and say to the Lord: “I am not my own. I am Thine.”

Let the world have its full barns and its empty hearts. We will take the small, narrow road of the Virgin – the road of submission, which leads to the only true Greatness.

To Him be glory unto the ages of ages. Amen.

7 December 2025