Gregory Palamas: Mystery of the Transfiguration Sunday, Mar 20 2011

The Evangelist Luke says: “And as He prayed, His countenance was altered” (Lk 9:29); and from the Evangelist Matthew we read: “And His face shone as the sun” (Mt 17:2).

The Evangelist said this…to show that Christ-God, for those living and contemplating by the Spirit, is the same as the sun is for those living in the flesh and contemplating by the senses.

Therefore, some other Light for the knowing the Divinity is not necessary for those who are enriched by Divine gifts.

That same Inscrutable Light shone and was mysteriously manifest to the Apostles and the foremost of the Prophets at that moment, when the Lord was praying.

This shows that what brought forth this blessed sight was prayer, and that the radiance occurred and was manifest by uniting the mind with God.

And it shows that it is granted to all who, with constant exercise in efforts of virtue and prayer, strive with their mind towards God.

True beauty, essentially, can be contemplated only with a purified mind.

To gaze upon its luminance assumes a sort of participation in it, as though some bright ray etches itself upon the face.

Even the face of Moses was illumined by his association with God. Do you not know that Moses was transfigured when he went up the mountain, and there beheld the Glory of God?

Moses did not effect this, but rather he underwent a transfiguration. However, our Lord Jesus Christ possessed that Light Himself….

Christ did not need prayer for His flesh to radiate with the Divine Light; it was but to show from whence that Light descends upon the saints of God, and how to contemplate it.

For it is written that even the saints “will shine forth like the sun” (Mt 13:43), which is to say, entirely permeated by Divine Light as they gaze upon Christ, divinely and inexpressibly shining forth His Radiance, issuing from His Divine Nature.

[...] This Light was the Light of the Divine Nature, and as such, it was Uncreated and Divine.

So also, in the teachings of the Fathers, Jesus Christ was transfigured on the Mount, not taking upon Himself something new nor being changed into something new, nor something which formerly He did not possess.

[...] This Light is not a light of the senses, and those contemplating it do not simply see with sensual eyes, but rather they are changed by the power of the Divine Spirit.

They were transformed, and only in this way did they see the transformation taking place amidst the very assumption of our perishability, with deification through union with the Word of God in place of this.

Gregory Palamas (1296-1359): extracted from Homilly on the Transfiguration (from the translation at Pravoslavie.ru).

One 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 »

 

Catherine of Siena: You Gave Yourself to Man in the Fire of Your Love Thursday, Apr 29 2010

Eternal God, eternal Trinity, you have made the blood of Christ so precious through his sharing in your divine nature.

You are a mystery as deep as the sea; the more I search, the more I find, and the more I find the more I search for you.

But I can never be satisfied; what I receive will ever leave me desiring more.

When you fill my soul I have an even greater hunger, and I grow more famished for your light.

I desire above all to see you, the true light, as you really are.

I have tasted and seen the depth of your mystery and the beauty of your creation with the light of my understanding.

I have clothed myself with your likeness and have seen what I shall be.

Eternal Father, you have given me a share in your power and the wisdom that Christ claims as his own, and your Holy Spirit has given me the desire to love you.

You are my Creator, eternal Trinity, and I am your creature.

You have made of me a new creation in the blood of your Son, and I know that you are moved with love at the beauty of your creation, for you have enlightened me.

Eternal Trinity, Godhead, mystery deep as the sea, you could give me no greater gift than the gift of yourself.

For you are a fire ever burning and never consumed, which itself consumes all the selfish love that fills my being.

Yes, you are a fire that takes away the coldness, illuminates the mind with its light and causes me to know your truth.

By this light, reflected as it were in a mirror, I recognise that you are the highest good, one we can neither comprehend nor fathom.

And I know that you are beauty and wisdom itself. The food of angels, you gave yourself to man in the fire of your love.

You are the garment which covers our nakedness, and in our hunger you are a satisfying food, for you are sweetness and in you there is no taste of bitterness, O triune God!

Catherine of Siena (1347-1380): Dialogue On Divine Providence 167, from the Office of Readings for the memorial of St. Catherine of Siena on April 29 @ Crossroads Initiative.

Leave a Response »

 

Benedict XVI: Maximus the Confessor on Gethsemane and the Mystery of Redemption Friday, Apr 23 2010

Pope Benedict is discussing the teaching of Maximus the Confessor (c.580-662) that Christ possessed a human and a divine will (as was subsequently taught by the Third Council of Constantinople in 680-681 after Maximus and Pope Martin I had died as martyrs in defence of this truth).

At first glance, it might appear to be something good if in Christ there had been only one will.

However, St. Maximus understood immediately that this would have destroyed the mystery of salvation, because a humanity without will – a man without a will – is not a true man, but rather an amputated man.

Therefore, the man Jesus Christ would not have been a true man, would not have experienced the drama of the human being, which consists precisely in the difficulty of conforming our will with the truth of being.

Thus St. Maximus affirmed with great determination: Sacred Scripture does not show us an amputated man, without a will, but a true complete man:

God, in Jesus Christ, has truly assumed the totality of the human being – obviously except for sin – hence, also, a human will.

Stated that way, the question was clear: Christ is either a true man or not.

[...] Man must not “amputate” the human Christ to explain the Incarnation.

One must only understand the dynamism of the human being who is fulfilled only by coming out of himself. Only in God do we find ourselves, our totality and our completeness.

[...] For St. Maximus this vision does not remain a philosophical speculation. He sees it realized in the concrete life of Jesus, above all in the drama of Gethsemane.

In this drama of Jesus’ agony, of anguish and death, of the opposition between the human will not to die and the divine will that offers itself to death, in this drama of Gethsemane the whole human drama is realized, the drama of our redemption.

St. Maximus tells us, and we know that this is true: Adam – and Adam is us – thought that the “no” was the apex of liberty; that only he who can say “no” is truly free; that to truly realize his liberty, man must say “no” to God.

Only in this way, he thinks, he is finally himself; he has arrived at the summit of liberty. This tendency was also present in Christ’s human nature, but he overcame it, because Jesus saw that “no” is not the greatest liberty.

The greatest liberty is to say “yes”, to conform with the will of God. Only in saying “yes” does man really become himself.

Only in the great opening of the “yes”, in the unification of his will with the divine will, does man become immensely open, he becomes “divine”.

To be like God was Adam’s desire, namely, to be completely free. However, he is not divine, the man who is closed in on himself is not completely free.

He is so by coming out of himself, it is in the “yes” that he becomes free. And this is the drama of Gethsemane: not my will but yours.

Transferring one’s will to the divine will, that is how a true man is born. That is how we are redeemed.

Benedict XVI (b. 1927): On Maximus the Confessor (translation by Zenit).

Leave a Response »

 

Leo XIII: The Deifying Power of the Spirit Tuesday, Jan 19 2010

Leo XIII

Human nature is by necessity the servant of God: “The creature is a servant; we are the servants of God by nature” (St. Cyril of Alexandria).

On account, however, of original sin, our whole nature had fallen into such guilt and dishonour that we had become enemies to God. “We were by nature the children of wrath” (Eph. ii., 3).

There was no power which could raise us and deliver us from this ruin and eternal destruction.

But God, the Creator of mankind and infinitely merciful, did this through His only begotten Son, by whose benefit it was brought about that man was restored so that rank and dignity whence he had fallen, and was adorned with still more abundant graces.

No one can express the greatness of this work of divine grace in the souls of men. Wherefore, both in Holy Scripture and in the writings of the fathers, men are styled regenerated, new creatures, partakers of the Divine Nature, children of God, god-like, and similar epithets.

Now these great blessings are justly attributed as especially belonging to the Holy Ghost.

He is “the Spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry: Abba, Father”. He fills our hearts with the sweetness of paternal love: “Spirit Himself giveth testimony to our spirit that we are the sons of God” (Rom. 8:15-16).

This truth accords with the similitude observed by the Angelic Doctor between both operations of the Holy Ghost; for through Him “Christ was conceived in holiness to be by nature the Son of God”, and “others are sanctified to be the sons of God by adoption” (Summa Theologiae 3,32,1).

This spiritual generation proceeds from love in a much more noble manner than the natural: namely, from the uncreated Love.

Leo XIII (1810-1903): Divinum Illud Munus 8.

2 Responses »

 

John Ruusbroec: Zaccheus (1) Tuesday, Nov 10 2009

A man who lives this life in its perfection, as it has here been shown, and who is offering up his whole life, and all his works, to the worship and praise of God, and who wills and loves God above all things, is often stirred by a desire to see, to know, and to prove what, in Himself, this Bridegroom Christ is;

Who for man’s sake became man and laboured in love unto death, and delivered us from sin and the devil, and has given us Himself and His grace, and left us His sacraments, and has promised us His kingdom and Himself as an eternal wage;

Who also gives us all that is needful for the body, and inward consolation and sweetness, and innumerable gifts of all kinds, according to the needs of each.

When a man beholds all this, he feels an unmeasured impulse to see Christ his Bridegroom, and to know Him as He is in Himself. Though he knows Him in His works, this does not seem to him enough.

Then he must do as the publican Zaccheus did, who longed to see Jesus, who He was. He must run before the crowd, that is the multiplicity of creatures; for these make us so little and so low that we cannot see God.

And he must climb up into the tree of faith, which grows from above downwards, for its roots are in the Godhead. This tree has twelve branches, which are the twelve articles of faith.

The lower speak of the Divine Humanity, and of those things which belong to our salvation of soul and of body.

The upper part of the tree tells of the Godhead, of the Trinity of Persons, and of the Unity of the Nature of God.

And the man must cling to that unity, in the highest part of the tree; for there it is that Jesus must pass with all His gifts.

John Ruusbroec (1293 – 1381): The Spiritual Espousals, 1,26.

Leave a Response »