Origen Adamantius: The Crossing of the River Jordan is Experienced in the Present Wednesday, Jun 12 2013

The ark of the covenant led the people of God across the Jordan.

The priests and the Levites halted, and the waters, as though out of reverence to the ministers of God, stopped flowing. They piled up in a single mass, thus allowing the people of God to cross in safety.

[...] The divine Word promises much greater and more lofty things to you who have passed through Jordan’s stream by the sacrament of baptism: he promises you a passage even through the sky.

Listen to what Paul says concerning the just: We shall be caught up in the clouds to meet Christ in heaven, and so we shall always be with the Lord.

There is absolutely nothing for the just man to fear; the whole of creation serves him.

Listen to another promise that God makes him through the prophet: If you pass through fire, the flame shall not burn you, for I am the Lord your God. The just man is everywhere welcome, and everything renders him due service.

So you must not think that these events belong only to the past, and that you who now hear the account of them do not experience anything of the kind. It is in you that they all find their spiritual fulfilment.

You have recently abandoned the darkness of idolatry, and you now desire to come and hear the divine law. This is your departure from Egypt.

When you became a catechumen and began to obey the laws of the Church, you passed through the Red Sea; now at the various stops in the desert, you give time every day to hear the law of God and to see the face of Moses unveiled by the glory of God.

But once you come to the baptismal font and, in the presence of the priests and deacons, are initiated into those sacred and august mysteries which only those know who should, then, through the ministry of the priests, you will cross the Jordan and enter the promised land.

There Moses will hand you over to Jesus, and He himself will be your guide on your new journey.

Mindful, then, of all the mighty works of God, remembering that he divided the sea for you and held back the waters of the river, you will turn to them and say: Why was it, sea, that you fled? Jordan, why did you turn back? Mountains, why did you skip like rams, and you hills, like young sheep?

And the word of the Lord will reply: The earth is shaken at the face of the Lord, at the face of the God of Jacob, who turns stones into a pool and rock into springs of water.

Origen Adamantius (c.185-254): Homilies on Joshua (Hom 4, 1: PG 12, 842-843), from the Office of Readings, Wednesday of the 10th Week of Ordinary Time @ Crossroads Initiative.

Leave a Response »

 

Benedict XVI: “He is the Image of the Invisible God” Friday, Apr 26 2013

(On Colossians 1:15-20)

The Greek term eikon, “icon”, is dear to the Apostle: in his Letters he uses it nine times, applying it both to Christ, the perfect icon of God (cf. II Cor 4:4), and to man, the image and glory of God (cf. I Cor 11:7).

However, by sin, men and women “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images representing mortal man” (Rom 1: 23), choosing to worship idols and become like them.

We must therefore continuously model our being and life on the image of that of the Son of God (cf. II Cor 3:18), so that we may be “delivered…from the dominion of darkness” and “transferred… to the Kingdom of his beloved Son” (Col 1: 13).

This is a first imperative in this hymn: to model our life on the image of the Son of God, entering into his sentiments, his will and his thoughts.

Christ is then proclaimed the “firstborn” of “all creation” (v. 15). Christ is before all things (cf. v. 17) because he has been begotten since eternity, for “all things were created through him and for him” (v. 16). The ancient Jewish tradition also says that “the whole world was created in view of the Messiah” (Sanhedrin, 98b).

For the Apostle, Christ is the principle of coherence (“in him all things hold together”), the mediator (“through him”) and the final destination toward which the whole of creation converges.

He is the “firstborn of many brothers” (Rom 8: 29), that is, the Son par excellence in the great family of God’s children, into which we are incorporated by Baptism.

At this point, our gaze turns from the world of creation to that of history. Christ is “the Head of the Body, the Church” (Col 1: 18); he already became this through his Incarnation.

Indeed, he entered the human community to support it and make it into a “body”, that is, in harmonious and fruitful unity. Christ is the root, the vital pivot and “the beginning” of the coherence and growth of humanity.

Precisely with this primacy Christ can become the principle of the resurrection of all, the “firstborn from the dead”, so that “in Christ all will come to life again”: first Christ, the first fruits; then, at his coming, all those who belong to Christ (cf. I Cor 15:22-23).

The Canticle draws to a close celebrating the “fullness”, in Greek pleroma, which Christ possesses in himself as a gift of love of the Father. It is the fullness of divinity that shines out, both in the universe and in humanity, becoming a source of peace, unity and perfect harmony (Col 1: 19-20).

[...] By pouring out his Blood and giving himself, Christ has spread peace, which in biblical language is a synthesis of the Messianic goods and saving fullness extended to the whole of created reality.

Benedict XVI (b. 1927): Commentary on the Psalms and Canticles of Vespers (General Audience, 7th September 2005).

Leave a Response »

 

Anselm of Canterbury: With an Unwearying Love Thou Shouldst be Mindful of God Monday, Apr 22 2013

Awake, my soul, awake! show thy spirit, arouse thy senses, shake off the sluggishness of that deadly heaviness that is upon thee, begin to take care for thy salvation.

Let the idleness of vain imaginations be put to flight, let go of sloth, hold fast to diligence.

Be instant in holy meditations, cleave to the good things which are of God: leaving that which is temporal, give heed to that which is eternal.

Now in this godly employment of thy mind, to what canst thou turn thy thoughts more wholesomely and profitably than to the sweet contemplations of thy Creator’s immeasurable benefits toward thee.

Consider therefore the greatness and dignity that He bestowed upon thee at the beginning of thy creation; and judge for thyself with what love and reverence He ought to be worshipped.

For when, as He was creating and ordering the whole world of things visible and invisible, He had determined to create the nature of man, He took high counsel concerning the dignity of thy condition, forasmuch as He determined to honour thee more highly than all other creatures that are in the world.

Behold therefore to what greatness thou wast created, and again consider what manner of love thou oughtest to render therefore.

Let Us make man, saith God, in Our image, after Our likeness.

If thou art not aroused by this word of thy Creator, if thou art not at so unspeakable a goodness of condescension in Him towards thee, set all on fire of love towards Him, if thy whole heart is not inflamed with longing after Him, what shall I say? Shall I count thee asleep, or rather dead?

[...] God if, considering that He is good, we study to be good; if, knowing that He is righteous, we endeavour to be righteous; if, beholding His mercy, we give ourselves to mercy.

But how can we be in His image. Hearken. God is mindful of Himself, understandeth Himself, loveth Himself.

And thou too, if thou after thy measure art mindful of God, understandest God, lovest God, then wilt thou be in His image; for thou wilt be striving to do that which God ever doth.

Man ought to make this the end of all his life, to be mindful of the Chief Good, to understand it and to love it; to this should every thought, every motion of the heart be bent, be whetted, be conformed:

that with an unwearying love thou shouldst be mindful of God, understand God, love God, and so for thy health set forth the dignity of thy creation, wherein thou wast created after the image of God.

Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109): Meditations, 1,1. 

Leave a Response »

 

Dorotheus of Gaza: The Sickness of Sin and the Healing of God Friday, Feb 15 2013

In the beginning when God created man he set him in paradise (the divine holy scripture says [Gen. 2:20]) adorned with every virtue, and gave him a command not to eat of the tree in the middle of paradise.

He was provided for in paradise, in prayer and contemplation in the midst of honor and glory; healthy in his emotions and sense perceptions, and perfect in his nature, as he was created.

For, in the likeness of God did God make man, that is, immortal, having the power to act freely, and adorned with all the virtues.

When he disobeyed the command and ate of the tree that God commanded him not to eat, he was thrown out of paradise (Gen. 3) and fell from a state in accord with his nature to a state contrary to nature, i.e. a prey to sin, to ambition, to love of the pleasures of this life and the other passions; and he was mastered by them, and became a slave to them through his transgression.

Then, little by little evil increased and death reigned. There was no more piety, and everywhere was ignorance of God.

[...] The good God then gave the law as a help—for their conversion, for putting right what was evil, but they did not reform. He sent the prophets, but they were unable to do anything.

For evil prevailed as said Isaiah, no injury, no bruise, no wound was cauterized; no chance of soothing dressings; no oil, no bandaging of wounds (Isaiah 1:6), as much as to say that the evil was not in one member, or in one place, but in the whole body. It encompassed the whole soul and all its powers.

Everything was a slave to sin; everything was under the control of sin. As Jeremiah said, We would heal Babylon, but she would not be healed (Jer. 51:9).

All the same she is not healed; she has not been converted, she has not feared, she has not turned from her wickedness. In another place he says, they have not submitted to discipline (Jer. 2:30), that is, to correction and instruction. And in the psalm it says, All food did their soul abhor, and they drew nigh even unto the gates of death (Ps. 106:18).

Then finally the most good and man-loving God sent His Only Begotten Son; for God alone could heal such a disease.

Dorotheos of Gaza (505-565 or 620):  Conference on Renunciation @ Pravoslavie.

Leave a Response »

 

Gregory of Nyssa: Uncovering the Buried Beauty of the Soul Saturday, Dec 15 2012

Continued from here…

There is no such thing in the world as evil irrespective of a will, and discoverable in a substance apart from that.

Every creature of God is good, and nothing of His “to be rejected”; all that God made was “very good.”

But the habit of sinning entered as we have described, and with fatal quickness, into the life of man; and from that small beginning spread into this infinitude of evil.

Then that godly beauty of the soul which was an imitation of the Archetypal Beauty, like fine steel blackened with the vicious rust, preserved no longer the glory of its familiar essence, but was disfigured with the ugliness of sin.

This thing so great and precious, as the Scripture calls him, this being man, has fallen from his proud birthright.

As those who have slipped and fallen heavily into mud, and have all their features so besmeared with it, that their nearest friends do not recognize them, so this creature has fallen into the mire of sin and lost the blessing of being an image of the imperishable Deity.

He has clothed himself instead with a perishable and foul resemblance to something else; and this Reason counsels him to put away again by washing it off in the cleansing water of this calling.

The earthly envelopment once removed, the soul’s beauty will again appear. Now the putting off of a strange accretion is equivalent to the return to that which is familiar and natural.

Yet such a return cannot be but by again becoming that which in the beginning we were created. In fact this likeness to the divine is not our work at all; it is not the achievement of any faculty of man.

It is the great gift of God bestowed upon our nature at the very moment of our birth; human efforts can only go so far as to clear away the filth of sin, and so cause the buried beauty of the soul to shine forth again.

This truth is, I think, taught in the Gospel, when our Lord says, to those who can hear what Wisdom speaks beneath a mystery, that “the Kingdom of God is within you.”

That word points out the fact that the Divine good is not something apart from our nature, and is not removed far away from those who have the will to seek it.

It is in fact within each of us, ignored indeed, and unnoticed while it is stifled beneath the cares and pleasures of life, but found again whenever we can turn our power of conscious thinking towards it.

Gregory of Nyssa (c 335 – after 394): On Virginity, 12.

Leave a Response »

 

Anselm of Canterbury: Through Mary All Creation is Blessed and the Creator is Blessed by Creation Saturday, Dec 8 2012

Blessed Lady, sky and stars, earth and rivers, day and night – everything that is subject to the power or use of man – rejoice that through you they are in some sense restored to their lost beauty and are endowed with inexpressible new grace.

All creatures were dead, as it were, useless for men or for the praise of God, who made them. The world, contrary to its true destiny, was corrupted and tainted by the acts of men who served idols.

Now all creation has been restored to life and rejoices that it is controlled and given splendor by men who believe in God.

The universe rejoices with new and indefinable loveliness. Not only does it feel the unseen presence of God himself, its Creator, it sees him openly, working and making it holy. These great blessings spring from the blessed fruit of Mary’s womb.

Through the fullness of the grace that was given you, dead things rejoice in their freedom, and those in heaven are glad to be made new.

Through the Son who was the glorious fruit of your virgin womb, just souls who died before his life-giving death rejoice as they are freed from captivity, and the angels are glad at the restoration of their shattered domain.

Lady, full and overflowing with grace, all creation receives new life from your abundance. Virgin, blessed above all creatures, through your blessing all creation is blessed, not only creation from its Creator, but the Creator himself has been blessed by creation.

To Mary God gave his only-begotten Son, whom he loved as himself. Through Mary God made himself a Son, not different but the same, by nature Son of God and Son of Mary.

The whole universe was created by God, and God was born of Mary. God created all things, and Mary gave birth to God.

The God who made all things gave himself form through Mary, and thus he made his own creation. He who could create all things from nothing would not remake his ruined creation without Mary.

God, then, is the Father of the created world and Mary the mother of the re-created world. God is the Father by whom all things were given life, and Mary the mother through whom all things were given new life.

For God begot the Son, through whom all things were made, and Mary gave birth to him as the Savior of the world. Without God’s Son, nothing could exist; without Mary’s Son, nothing could be redeemed.

Truly the Lord is with you, to whom the Lord granted that all nature should owe as much to you as to himself.

Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109): Oratio 52(PL 158, 955-956), from the Office of Readings for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, December 8 @ Crossroads Initiative.

Leave a Response »

 

Gregory Nazianzen: The Word Partakes of My Flesh to Save the Image and to Make the Flesh Immortal (3) Thursday, Dec 6 2012

Continued from here…

Man was first chastened by many means, because his sins were many, and their root of evil sprang up through divers causes and at sundry times.

He was chastened by word, by law, by prophets, by benefits, by threats, by plagues, by waters, by fires, by wars, by victories, by defeats, by signs in heaven and signs in the air and in the earth and in the sea.

He was chastened by unexpected changes of men, of cities, of nations – the object of which was the destruction of wickedness.

Finally, he needed a stronger remedy, for his diseases were growing worse – mutual slaughters, adulteries, perjuries, unnatural crimes, and that first and last of all evils, idolatry and the transfer of worship from the Creator to the Creatures.

As these required a greater aid, so also they obtained a greater.  And that was that the Word of God Himself.

He is before all worlds, the Invisible, the Incomprehensible, the Bodiless, Beginning of Beginning, the Light of Light, the Source of Life and Immortality.

He is the Image of the Archetypal Beauty, the immovable Seal, the unchangeable Image, the Father’s Definition and Word.

He came to His own Image, and took on Him flesh for the sake of our flesh, and mingled Himself with an intelligent soul for my soul’s sake, purifying like by like; and in all points except sin was made man.

He was conceived by the Virgin, who first in body and soul was purified by the Holy Ghost – for it was needful both that Childbearing should be honoured, and that Virginity should receive a higher honour.

He came forth then as God with that which He had assumed, One Person in two Natures, Flesh and Spirit, of which the latter deified the former.

O new commingling! O strange conjunction! The Self-Existent comes into being. The Uncreate is created.

That which cannot be contained is contained, by the intervention of an intellectual soul, mediating between the Deity and the corporeity of the flesh.

And He Who gives riches becomes poor, for He assumes the poverty of my flesh, that I may assume the richness of His Godhead.

He that is full empties Himself, for He empties Himself of His glory for a short while, that I may have a share in His Fulness.

What is the riches of His Goodness?  What is this mystery that is around me?

I had a share in the image; I did not keep it; He partakes of my flesh that He may both save the image and make the flesh immortal.

He communicates a second Communion far more marvellous than the first, inasmuch as then He imparted the better Nature, whereas now Himself partakes of the worse.

This is more godlike than the former action, this is loftier in the eyes of all men of understanding.

Gregory Nazianzen (c.330-390): Oration 38, 13.

Leave a Response »

 

Gregory Nazianzen: The Word Partakes of My Flesh to Save the Image and to Make the Flesh Immortal (1) Thursday, Dec 6 2012

This movement of self-contemplation alone could not satisfy Goodness.

Good must be poured out and go forth beyond Itself to multiply the objects of Its beneficence, for this was essential to the highest Goodness.

So He first conceived the Heavenly and Angelic Powers.  And this conception was a work fulfilled by His Word, and perfected by His Spirit.

[...] Thus…He gave being to the world of thought…. Then, when His first creation was in good order, He conceives a second world, material and visible.

[...] This was to show that He could call into being, not only a Nature akin to Himself, but also one altogether alien to Himself.

[...] Mind, then, and sense, thus distinguished from each other, had remained within their own boundaries, and bore in themselves the magnificence of the Creator-Word, silent praisers and thrilling heralds of His mighty work.

Not yet was there any mingling of both, nor any mixtures of these opposites, tokens of a greater Wisdom and Generosity in the creation of natures; nor as yet were the whole riches of Goodness made known.

Now the Creator-Word, determining…to produce a single living being out of both – the visible and the invisible creations, I mean – fashions Man.

Taking a body from already existing matter, He places in it a Breath taken from Himself which the Word knew to be an intelligent soul and the image of God, as a sort of second world.

He placed him, great in littleness on the earth; a new Angel, a mingled worshipper, fully initiated into the visible creation, but only partially into the intellectual.

Man was king of all upon earth, but subject to the King above; earthly and heavenly; temporal and yet immortal; visible and yet intellectual; half-way between greatness and lowliness.

In one person he combined spirit and flesh; spirit, because of the favour bestowed on him; flesh, because of the height to which he had been raised;

the one that he might continue to live and praise his Benefactor, the other that he might suffer, and by suffering be put in remembrance, and corrected if he became proud of his greatness:

a living creature trained here, and then moved elsewhere; and, to complete the mystery, deified by its inclination to God.

For to this, I think, tends that Light of Truth which we here possess but in measure, that we should both see and experience the Splendour of God, which is worthy of Him Who made us, and will remake us again after a loftier fashion.

Gregory Nazianzen (c.330-390): Oration 38, 9-11.

One Response »

 

Benedict XVI: St John Damascene – “The Great Sea of Love that God Bears Towards Man” Tuesday, Dec 4 2012

John Damascene was able serenely to deduce: “God, who is good…created him [man] envisaging him and creating him as a being capable of thought, enriched with the word, and orientated towards the spirit”.

And to clarify this thought further, he adds: “We must allow ourselves to be filled with wonder at all the works of Providence, to accept and praise them all, overcoming any temptation to identify in them aspects which to many may seem unjust or iniquitous, and admitting instead that the project of God goes beyond man’s capacity to know or to understand, while on the contrary only he may know our thoughts, our actions, and even our future”.

Plato had in fact already said that all philosophy begins with wonder. Our faith, too, begins with wonder at the very fact of the Creation, and at the beauty of God who makes himself visible.

The optimism of the contemplation of nature, of seeing in the visible creation the good, the beautiful, the true, this Christian optimism, is not ingenuous: it takes account of the wound inflicted on human nature by the freedom of choice desired by God and misused by man, with all the consequences of widespread discord which have derived from it.

From this derives the need, clearly perceived by John Damascene, that nature, in which the goodness and beauty of God are reflected, wounded by our fault, “should be strengthened and renewed” by the descent of the Son of God in the flesh, after God had tried in many ways and on many occasions, to show that he had created man so that he might exist not only in “being”, but also in “well-being”.

With passionate eagerness John explains: “It was necessary for nature to be strengthened and renewed, and for the path of virtue to be indicated and effectively taught, the path that leads away from corruption and towards eternal life…. So there appeared on the horizon of history the great sea of love that God bears towards man (philanthropias pelagos)”….

It is a fine expression. We see on one side the beauty of Creation, and on the other the destruction wrought by the fault of man. But we see in the Son of God, who descends to renew nature, the sea of love that God has for man.

John Damascene continues: “he himself, the Creator and the Lord, fought for his Creation, transmitting to it his teaching by example…. And so the Son of God, while still remaining in the form of God, lowered the skies and descended… to his servants… achieving the newest thing of all, the only thing really new under the sun, through which he manifested the infinite power of God”.

Benedict XVI (b. 1927): On St John Damascene [c.675-749] (General Audience, 6 May 2009).

Leave a Response »

 

Isaac the Syrian: By the Death of His Only-Begotten Son He Made Us Near to Himself Thursday, Nov 22 2012

God the Lord surrendered His own Son to death on the Cross for the fervent love of creation…

This was not, however, because He could not redeem us in another way, but so that His surpassing love, manifested hereby, might be a teacher unto us.

And by the death of His Only-begotten Son He made us near to Himself.

Yea, if He had had anything more precious, He would have given it to us, so that by it our race might be His own.

Because of His great love for us it was not His pleasure to do violence to our freedom, although He is able to do so, but He chose that we should draw near to Him by the love of our understanding.

For the sake of His love for us and obedience to His Father, Christ joyfully took upon Himself insult and sorrow…

In like manner, when the saints become perfect, they all attain to this perfection, and by the superabundant outpouring of their love and compassion upon all men they resemble God.

[...] Creation could not look upon Him unless He took part of it to Himself and thus conversed with it, and neither could it hear the words of His mouth face to face.

The sons of Israel were not even able to hear His voice when He spoke with them from the cloud…

The sons of Israel made ready and prepared themselves, keeping themselves chaste for three days according to the command of Moses, that they might be made worthy of hearing the voice of God, and of the vision of His revelation.

And when the time was come, they could not receive the vision of His light and the fierceness of the voice of His thunder.

But now, when He poured out His grace upon the world through His own coming, He has descended not in an earthquake, not in a fire, not in a terrible and mighty sound, but “as the rain upon a fleece, and rain-drops that fall upon the earth” softly, and He was seen conversing with us after another fashion.

This came to pass when, as though in a treasury, He concealed His majesty with the veil of His flesh, and among us spoke with us in that body which His own bidding wrought for Him out of the womb of the Virgin.

Isaac the Syrian (c. 630-c. 700): Quoted in Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev: The Incarnation of the Word and the deification of man according to St Isaac of Nineveh.

Leave a Response »