Gregory Nazianzen: Let Us Go Within the Cloud; Give Me the Tables of Your Heart Sunday, Jun 3 2012

Let us go within the cloud.  Give me the tables of your heart; I will be your Moses, though this be a bold thing to say; I will write on them with the finger of God a new Decalogue. I will write on them a shorter method of salvation.

[...] I will baptize you and make you a disciple in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost; and These Three have One common name, the Godhead.

[...] Believe that all that is in the world, both all that is seen and all that is unseen, was made out of nothing by God, and is governed by the Providence of its Creator, and will receive a change to a better state.

Believe that evil has no substance or kingdom, either unoriginate or self-existent or created by God; but that it is our work, and the evil one’s, and came upon us through our heedlessness, but not from our Creator.

Believe that the Son of God, the Eternal Word, Who was begotten of the Father before all time and without body, was in these latter days for your sake made also Son of Man, born of the Virgin Mary ineffably and stainlessly….

Believe that in His own Person He was made at once entire Man and perfect God, for the sake of the entire sufferer, that He may bestow salvation on your whole being, having destroyed the whole condemnation of your sins.

Believe that He was impassible in His Godhead, passible in that which He assumed; as much Man for your sake as you are made God for His.

Believe that for us sinners He was led to death; was crucified and buried, so far as to taste of death; and that He rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven, that He might take you with Him who were lying low.

Believe that He will come again with His glorious Presence to judge the quick and the dead; no longer flesh, nor yet without a body, according to the laws which He alone knows of a more godlike body, that He may be seen by those who pierced Him, and on the other hand may remain as God without carnality.

Receive besides this the Resurrection, the Judgment and the Reward according to the righteous scales of God; and believe that this will be Light to those whose mind is purified (that is, God—seen and known) proportionate to their degree of purity, which we call the Kingdom of heaven.

Gregory Nazianzen (c.330-390): Oration 40, 45.

Leave a Response »

 

Gregory Nazianzen: Hold Fast to the Confession of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit Saturday, Jun 18 2011

Before all else, I beg you…hold fast to the confession of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

[...] I give you to share, and to defend all your life, the one Godhead and power, found in the Three in unity, and comprising the Three separately, not unequal in substance or nature, neither increased nor diminished by superiorities or inferiorities; in every respect equal, in every respect the same.

[...] This is the infinite conjunction of three infinite Ones, each is God when considered in Himself; as the Father, so the Son; as the Son, so the Holy Spirit.

No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendour of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the One.

When I think of any One of the Three I think of him as the Whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking of escapes me.

I cannot grasp the greatness of that One so as to attribute a greater greatness to the Rest.

When I contemplate the Three together, I see but one torch, and cannot divide or measure out the Undivided Light.

I should like to call the Father the greater, because from him flows both the equality and the being of the equals, but I am afraid to use the word ‘origin’, lest I should make him the origin of inferiors and thus insult him by creating a precedence of honour.

For to put down those who are from him gives no glory to him as the source.

I fear you should take hold of this word ‘greater’, and divide the nature, using the word greater in all senses, although in reality it does not apply to the nature but only to origination.

For in the consubstantial Persons there is nothing greater or less in terms of substance.

Are you afraid of being reproached with Tritheism? Just accept this one good thing, the unity in the Three, and leave me to fight the battle.

[...] What need have I any more of speech? It is the time for teaching, not for controversy. I protest before God and the elect angels: be baptized in this faith.

If there is any other writing on your heart than that which my teaching demands, come and have the writing changed; I am no unskilled calligrapher of these truths.

I write that which is written upon my own heart; I teach that which I have been taught, and I have kept it from the beginning even up to the time of these grey hairs.

Gregory Nazianzen (c.330-390): Oration 40, 41-44;  from the Monastic Office of Vigils, Trinity Sunday, Year 2.

Leave a Response »

 

Gregory Nazianzen: We Needed God to Take Our Flesh and Die so that We might Live Tuesday, Nov 30 2010

The very Son of God, older than the ages,

the invisible, the incomprehensible, the incorporeal,

the beginning of beginning, the light of light,

the fountain of life and immortality,

the image of the archetype, the immovable seal,

the perfect likeness, the definition and word of the Father:

He it is who comes to his own image and takes our nature for the good of our nature, and unites himself to an intelligent soul for the good of my soul, to purify like by like.

He takes to himself all that is human, except for sin.

He was conceived by the Virgin Mary, who had been first prepared in soul and body by the Spirit.

Hs coming to birth had to be treated with honor, virginity had to receive new honor.

He comes forth as God, in the human nature he has taken, one being, made of two contrary elements, flesh and spirit.

Spirit gave divinity, flesh received it.

He who makes rich is made poor; he takes on the poverty of my flesh, that I may gain the riches of his divinity.

He who is full is made empty; he is emptied for a brief space of his glory, that I may share in his fullness.

What is this wealth of goodness? What is this mystery that surrounds me?

I received the likeness of God, but failed to keep it. He takes on my flesh, to bring salvation to the image, immortality to the flesh.

He enters into a second union with us, a union far more wonderful than the first.

Holiness had to be brought to man by the humanity assumed by one who was God, so that God might overcome the tyrant by force and so deliver us and lead us back to himself through the mediation of his Son.

The Son arranged this for the honor of the Father, to whom the Son is clearly obedient in all things.

The Good Shepherd, who lays down his life for the sheep, came in search of the straying sheep to the mountains and hills on which you used to offer sacrifice.

When he found it, he took it on the shoulders that bore the wood of the cross, and led it back to the life of heaven.

[...] We needed God to take our flesh and die, that we might live.

We have died with him, that we may be purified.

We have risen again with him, because we have died with him.

We have been glorified with him, because we have risen again with him.

Gregory Nazianzen (c.330-390): Oration 45, 9, 22.26.28; from the Office of Readings for Tuesday of the First Week of Advent @ Crossroads Initiative.

Leave a Response »

 

Gregory Nazianzen: Running to Lay Hold on God, I Drew Aside the Curtain of the Cloud Sunday, Oct 17 2010

When I go up eagerly into the Mount (Exodus 24:1)…to enter within the Cloud, and hold converse with God, for so God commands.

If any be an Aaron, let him go up with me, and let him stand near, being ready, if it must be so, to remain outside the Cloud.

[...] But if any be of the multitude, who are unworthy of this height of contemplation, if he be altogether impure let him not approach at all (Exodus 29:14), for it would be dangerous to him.

But if he be at least temporarily purified, let him remain below and listen to the Voice alone, and the trumpet (Exodus 9:16-18) – the bare words of piety – and let him see the Mountain smoking and lightening, a terror at once and a marvel to those who cannot get up.

[...] I was running to lay hold on God, and thus I went up into the Mount, and drew aside the curtain of the Cloud, and entered away from matter and material things, and as far as I could I withdrew within myself.

And then when I looked up, I scarce saw the back parts of God (Exodus 33:23), although I was sheltered by the Rock, the Word that was made flesh for us.

And when I looked a little closer, I saw, not the First and unmingled Nature, known to Itself – to the Trinity, I mean; not That which abideth within the first veil (cf. Exodus 26:31), and is hidden by the Cherubim; but only that Nature, which at last even reaches to us.

And that is, as far as I can learn, the Majesty, or as holy David calls it, the Glory (Psalm 8:1) which is manifested among the creatures, which It has produced and governs.

For these are the “back parts of God”, which He leaves behind Him, as tokens of Himself   like the shadows and reflection of the sun in the water, which shew the sun to our weak eyes, because we cannot look at the sun himself, for by his unmixed light he is too strong for our power of perception.

In this way then shalt thou discourse of God; even wert thou a Moses and a god to Pharaoh (Exodus 4:2); even wert thou caught up like Paul to the Third Heaven (2 Corinthians 12:2),  and hadst heard unspeakable words; even wert thou raised above them both, and exalted to Angelic or Archangelic place and dignity.

For though a thing be all heavenly, or above heaven, and far higher in nature and nearer to God than we, yet it is farther distant from God, and from the complete comprehension of His Nature, than it is lifted above our complex and lowly and earthward sinking composition.

Gregory Nazianzen (c.330-390): Oration 28, 2-3.

Leave a Response »

 

Gregory Nazianzen: We Needed an Incarnate God, a God Put to Death, that We Might Live Wednesday, Oct 13 2010

We were created that we might be made happy.

We were made happy when we were created.

We were entrusted with Paradise that we might enjoy life.

We received a commandment that we might obtain a good repute by keeping it.

…Not that God did not know what would take place, but because He had laid down the law of free will.

We were deceived because we were the objects of envy.

We were cast out because we transgressed.

We fasted because we refused to fast, being overpowered by the Tree of Knowledge.

For the commandment was ancient, coeval with ourselves, and was a kind of education of our souls and curb of luxury, to which we were reasonably made subject, in order that we might recover by keeping it that which we had lost by not keeping it.

We needed an Incarnate God, a God put to death, that we might live.

We were put to death together with Him, that we might be cleansed.

We rose again with Him because we were put to death with Him.

We were glorified with Him, because we rose again with Him.

Many indeed are the miracles of that time:  God crucified.

The sun was darkened and again rekindled, for it was fitting that the creatures should suffer with their Creator.

The veil was rent. The Blood and Water were shed from His Side – the one as from a man, the other as above man.

The rocks were rent for the Rock’s sake.

The dead were raised for a pledge of the final Resurrection of all men.

The signs at the Sepulchre and after the Sepulchre, which none can worthily celebrate – none of these was equal to the miracle of my salvation.

A few drops of Blood recreate the whole world, and become to all men what rennet is to milk, drawing us together and compressing us into unity.

But, O Pascha, great and holy and purifier of all the world—for I will speak to thee as to a living person!

O Word of God and Light and Life and Wisdom and Might!

O Offspring and Expression and Signet of the Great Mind!

O Word conceived and Man contemplated, Who bearest all things, binding them by the Word of Thy power!

Receive Thou this discourse: a thanksgiving, and at the same time a supplication!

And, if we are to be released, in accordance with our desire, and be received into the Heavenly Tabernacle, there too it may be we shall offer Thee acceptable Sacrifices upon Thine Altar, to Father and Word and Holy Ghost.

For to Thee belongeth all glory and honour and might, world without end.

Gregory Nazianzen (c.330-390): Oration 45, 28-30.

Leave a Response »