Georges Florovsky: Within the Church, through an Acquisition of the Spirit in the Fellowship of Sacraments, the Ascension Continues…Until the Measure is Full Tuesday, May 14 2013

The revelation of the Holy Trinity was completed. Now the Spirit Comforter is poured forth on all flesh.

“Hence comes foreknowledge of the future, understanding of mysteries, apprehension of what is hidden, distribution of good gifts, the heavenly citizenship, a place in the chorus of angels, joy without end, abiding in God, the being made like to God, and, highest of all, ,the being made God!” (St Basil, On the Holy Spirit, IX).

Beginning with the Apostles, and through communion with them – by an unbroken succession – Grace is spread to all believers. Through renewal and glorification in the Ascended Christ, man’s nature became receptive of the Spirit. “And unto the world He gives quickening forces through His human body,” says Bishop Theophanes.

“He holds it completely in Himself and penetrates it with His strength, out of Himself; and He likewise draws the angels to Himself through the spirit of man, giving them space for action and thus making them blessed.”

All this is done through the Church, which is “the Body of Christ;” that is, His “fullness” (Ephesians 1:23). “The Church is the fulfillment of Christ,” continues Bishop Theophanes, “perhaps in the same way as the tree is the fulfillment of the seed. That which is contained in the seed in a contracted form receives its development in the tree.”

The very existence of the Church is the fruit of the Ascension. It is in the Church that man’s nature is truly ascended to the Divine heights. “And gave Him to be Head over all things” (Ephesians 1:22).

St John Chrysostom comments: “Amazing! Look again, whither He has raised the Church. As though He were lifting it up by some engine, He has raised it up to a vast height, and set it on yonder throne; for where the Head is, there is the body also.

“There is no interval of separation between the Head and the body; for were there a separation, then would the one no longer be a body, nor would the other any longer be a Head.”

The whole race of men is to follow Christ, even in His ultimate exaltation, “to follow in His train.” Within the Church, through an acquisition of the Spirit in the fellowship of Sacraments, the Ascension continues still, and will continue until the measure is full.

“Only then shall the Head be filled up, when the body is rendered perfect, when we are knit together and united,” concludes St John Chrysostom. The Ascension is a sign and token of the Second Coming. “This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11).

Georges Florovsky (1893-1979; Eastern Orthodox): And Ascended Into Heaven…; originally published in St Vladimir’s Seminary Quarterly, Vol. 2 # 3, 1954; full text @ Mystagogy.

Leave a Response »

 

Cyril of Alexandria: Christ Granted to Flesh a Way of Entrance into Heaven Saturday, Apr 27 2013

In My Father s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. (John 14:2).

He says that He will depart…for the sake of securing the way to the mansions above, to prepare a passage of safety for you, and to smooth the path that was impassable in old time.

For heaven was then utterly inaccessible to mortal man, and no flesh as yet had ever trodden that pure and all-holy realm of the angels.

But Christ was the first Who consecrated for us the means of access to Himself, and granted to flesh a way of entrance into heaven.

[...] Our Lord Jesus the Christ consecrated for us a new and living way, as Paul says; not having entered into a holy place made with hands, but into heaven itself, now to appear before the face of God for us. 

For it is not that He may present Himself before the presence of God the Father that Christ has ascended up on high: for He ever was and is and will be continually in the Father, in the sight of Him Who begat Him, for He it is in Whom the Father ever takes delight.

But now He Who of old was the Word with no part or lot in human nature, has ascended in human form that He may appear in heaven in a strange and unwonted manner.

And this He has done on our account and for our sakes, in order that He, though found as a man, may still in His absolute power as Son, while yet in human form, obey the command: Sit Thou on My right hand, and so may transfer the glory of adoption through Himself to all the race.

For in that He has appeared in human form He is still one of us as He sits at the right hand of God the Father, even though He is far above all creation; and He is also Consubstantial with His Father, in that He has come forth from Him as truly God of God and Light of Light.

He has presented Himself therefore as Man to the Father on our behalf, that so He may restore us, who had been removed from the Father’s presence by the ancient transgression, again as it were to behold the Father’s face.

He sits there in His position as Son, that so also we through Him may be called sons and children of God.

For this reason also Paul…teaches us to regard the events that happened in the life of Christ alone as common to the whole race; saying that God raised us up with Him, and made us to sit with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ. 

Cyril of Alexandria (c. 376-444): Commentary on St John’s Gospel, book 9 [on John 14:2].

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 »

 

Leo the Great: In Adoring the Birth of Our Saviour, We are Celebrating the Commencement of Our Own Life Monday, Dec 31 2012

Today’s festival renews for us the holy childhood of Jesus born of the Virgin Mary, and, in adoring the birth of our Saviour, we find we are celebrating the commencement of our own life.

For the birth of Christ is the source of life for Christian folk, and the birthday of the Head is the birthday of the body.

[...] A the entire body of the faithful being born in the font of baptism is crucified with Christ in His passion, raised again in His resurrection, and placed at the Father’s right hand in His ascension, so are they born with Him in this nativity.

For any believer in whatever part of the world that is re-born in Christ, quits the old paths of his original nature and passes into a new man by being re-born.

And no longer is he reckoned of his earthly father’s stock but among the seed of the Saviour, who became the Son of man in order that we might have the power to be the sons of God.

[...] The Saviour then, dearly beloved, is born not of fleshly seed but of the Holy Spirit, in such wise that the condemnation of the first transgression did not touch Him.

And hence the very greatness of the boon conferred demands of us reverence worthy of its splendour.

For, as the blessed Apostle teaches: “we have received not the spirit of this world but the Spirit which is of God, that we may know the things which are given us by God.”

And that Spirit can in no other way be rightly worshipped, except by offering Him that which we received from Him.

But in the treasures of the Lord’s bounty what can we find so suitable to the honour of the present feast as the peace, which at the Lord’s nativity was first proclaimed by the angel-choir?

For that it is which brings forth the sons of God…, whose proper work and special office it is to join to God those whom it removes from the world.

Whence the Apostle incites us to this good end, in saying, “being justified therefore by faith let us have peace towards God.”

[...] How will he be partaker of divine peace, who is pleased with what displeases God and desires to get delight from what he knows to be offensive to God?

That is not the spirit of the sons of God; such wisdom is not acceptable to the noble family of the adopted.

That chosen and royal race must live up to the dignity of its regeneration, must love what the Father loves, and in nought disagree with its Maker.

Leo the Great (c.400-461): Sermon 26, 2-3.

Leave a Response »

 

Maximus the Confessor: Let Us Believe that We shall Reach the Realm where Christ Himself Now Is Saturday, Dec 29 2012

He who prays must never stand still on the steep ascent that leads to God.

[...] He must raise his intellect and the resolve of his soul from what is human to what is divine, so that his intellect can follow Jesus the Son of God, who has passed through the heavens (cf. Heb. 4:14) and who is everywhere.

For He has passed through all things for us by the dispensation of His incarnation, so that we, by following Him, may pass through all that is sequent to Him and so come to be with Him.

[...] Since Christ is God and the Logos [“Word”] of the Father, ‘the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily in Him’ in a manner that is according to essence (Col. 2:9).

The fullness of the Godhead dwells in us by grace when we gather into ourselves all virtue and wisdom, a wisdom which, so far as this is possible in man, does not in any way fall short of a faithful imitation of the divine archetype.

For it is not incongruous that, by virtue of our relationship with the Logos, the fullness of the Godhead…should come to dwell also in us.

[...] He who is in essence the Logos of God and knows the Father…is called ‘Messenger of great counsel’ (Isa. 9:6 LXX).

The great counsel of God the Father is the unspoken and unknown mystery of the divine dispensation.

This the only-begotten Son revealed through His incarnation, when He became the Messenger of the great pre-eternal counsel of God the Father.

[...] The Logos of God providentially descended for our sakes into the lower parts of the earth, and also ascended far above all the heavens (cf. Eph. 4:9-10), even though by nature He is entirely unmoving.

Since through the incarnation the Logos has already accomplished in Himself as man all that is to be, let him who delights in spiritual knowledge rejoice inwardly as he considers the consummation promised to those who love the Lord.

If the divine Logos of God the Father became son of man and man so that He might make men gods and the sons of God, let us believe that we shall reach the realm where Christ Himself now is:

for He is the head of the whole body (cf. Col. 1:18), and endued with our humanity has gone to the Father as forerunner on our behalf.

God will stand ‘in the midst of the congregation of gods’ (Ps. 82:1. LXX) – that is, of those who are saved – distributing the rewards of that realm’s blessedness to those found worthy to receive them, not separated from them by any space.

Maximus the Confessor (580-662): Two Hundred Texts on Theology and the Incarnate Dispensation of the Son of God Written for Thalassios, 18,21-25, Text  from G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware (trans. and eds.) The Philokalia: The Complete Text, vol. 2 (Faber & Faber, London & Boston: 1979), pp.141-143.

Leave a Response »

 

Leo the Great: The Birthday of the Life which Destroys the Fear of Mortality and Brings Us the Joy of Promised Eternity Tuesday, Dec 25 2012

Our Saviour, dearly-beloved, was born today:  let us be glad.

For there is no proper place for sadness, when we keep the birthday of the Life, which destroys the fear of mortality and brings to us the joy of promised eternity.

[...] The Son of God in the fulness of time…has taken on Him the nature of man, thereby to reconcile it to its Author, in order that the inventor of death, the devil, might be conquered through that nature which he had conquered.

And in this conflict undertaken for us, the fight was fought on great and wondrous principles of fairness.

For the Almighty Lord enters the lists with His savage foe not in His own majesty but in our humility, opposing him with the same form and the same nature, which shares indeed our mortality, though it is free from all sin.

[...] Unless He were true God, He would not bring us a remedy, unless He were true man, He would not give us an example.

Therefore the exulting angel’s song when the Lord was born is this, “Glory to God in the highest,” and their message, “peace on earth to men of good will.”

For they see that the heavenly Jerusalem is being built up out of all the nations of the world:  and over that indescribable work of the divine love how ought the humbleness of men to rejoice, when the joy of the lofty angels is so great?

Let us then, dearly beloved, give thanks to God the Father, through His Son, in the Holy Spirit.

He “for His great mercy, wherewith He has loved us,” has had pity on us:  and “when we were dead in sins, has quickened us together in Christ,” that we might be in Him a new creation and a new production.

Let us put off then the old man with his deeds:  and having obtained a share in the birth of Christ let us renounce the works of the flesh.

Christian, acknowledge your dignity, and becoming a partner in the divine nature, refuse to return to the old baseness by degenerate conduct.

Remember the Head and the Body of which you are a member.  Recollect that you were rescued from the power of darkness and brought out into God’s light and kingdom.

By the mystery of baptism you were made the temple of the Holy Spirit:  do not put such a denizen to flight by base acts, subjecting yourself once more to the devil’s thraldom.

For your purchase money is the blood of Christ, because He shall judge you in truth Who ransomed you in mercy, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit reigns forever and ever.

Leo the Great (c.400-461): Sermon 21, 1-3.

2 Responses »

 

Albert the Great: “Do This in Remembrance of Me” Thursday, Nov 15 2012

[Jesus says]: Do this in remembrance of me. Two things should be noted here.

The first is the command that we should use this sacrament, which is indicated when he says: Do this.

The second is that this sacrament commemorates the Lord’s going to death for our sake.

So he says, Do this. Certainly he would demand nothing more profitable, nothing more pleasant, nothing more beneficial, nothing more desirable, nothing more similar to eternal life.

We will look at each of these qualities separately.

This sacrament is profitable because it grants remission of sins; it is most useful because it bestows the fullness of grace on us in this life.

The Father of spirits instructs us in what is useful for us to receive his sanctification.

And his sanctification is in Christ’s sacrifice, that is, when he offers himself in this sacrament to the Father for our redemption, to us for our use. I consecrate myself for their sakes.

Christ, who through the Holy Spirit offered himself up without blemish to God, will cleanse our consciences from dead works to worship the living God.

Nor can we do anything more pleasant. For what is better than God manifesting his whole sweetness to us.

You gave them bread from heaven, not the fruit of human labour, but a bread endowed with all delight and pleasant to every sense of taste.

For this substance of yours revealed your kindness toward your children, and serving the desire of each recipient, it changed to suit each one’s taste.

He could not have commanded anything more beneficial, for this sacrament is the fruit of the tree of life.

Anyone who receives this sacrament with the devotion of sincere faith will never taste death.

It is a tree of life for those who grasp it, and blessed is he who holds it fast. The man who feeds on me shall live on account of me.

Nor could he have commanded anything more lovable, for this sacrament produces love and union.

It is characteristic of the greatest love to give itself as food. Had not the men of my tent exclaimed: Who will feed us with his flesh to satisfy our hunger?

as if to say: I have loved them and they have loved me so much that I desire to be within them, and they wish to receive me so that they may become my members.

There is no more intimate or more natural means for them to be united to me, and I to them.

Nor could he have commanded anything which is more like eternal life. Eternal life flows from this sacrament because God with all sweetness pours himself out upon the blessed.

Albert the Great: (1193/1206–1280): Commentary on the Gospel according to Luke @ Universalis.

Leave a Response »

 

Gregory of Nyssa: Everything will be Completely Changed into Life Saturday, Oct 6 2012

When [the Father] will subject all things to [the Son], then [the Son] Himself will be subjected to Him [the Father] who subjects all things to Him [the Son] (1 Corinthians 15:28).

Paul signifies, by the Son’s subjection, the destruction of death.

Therefore, these two elements concur, that is, when death will be no more, and everything will be completely changed into life.

The Lord is life.

According to the apostle, Christ will have access to the Father with his entire body when he will hand over the kingdom to our God and Father.

Christ’s body, as it is often said, consists of human nature in its entirety to which he has been united.

Because of this, Christ is named Lord by Paul, as mediator between God and man (1 Tim 2.5).

He who is in the Father and has lived with men accomplishes intercession.

Christ unites all mankind to himself, and to the Father through himself, as the Lord says in the Gospel, “As you, Father, are in me, and I am in you, that they may be one in us” (Jn 17.21).

This clearly shows that having united himself to us, he who is in the Father effects our union [sunapheia] with this very same Father.
The words contained in the Gospel then add, “The glory which you have given to me I have given to them” (vs. 22).

I think that Christ’s own glory is meant to be the Holy Spirit which he has given to his disciples by breathing upon them, for what is scattered cannot otherwise be united unless joined together by the Holy Spirit’s unity.

“Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him” (Rom 8.91).

The Spirit is glory, as Christ says of the Father: “Glorify me with the glory which I had with you before the world was made” (Jn 17.5).

The Word is God who has the Father’s glory and became flesh during these last days.

It is necessary for the flesh to become what the Word is (that is, to become divine) by uniting itself to him.

This is effected when the flesh receives that which the Word had before the world was made.

This is none other than the Holy Spirit, that same Holy Spirit existing before the ages together with the Father and the Son.

Hence, the text says, “The glory which you have given me, I have given to them” in order that “the unity given through the Holy Spirit to me might be given to you through me.”

Gregory of Nyssa (c 335 – after 394): A Treatise on 1 Corinthians 15.28

Leave a Response »

 

Maximus the Confessor: Christ Makes Us Co-Worshippers with the Angels Tuesday, Oct 2 2012

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matt. 6:10).

He who worships God mystically with the faculty of the intelligence alone, keeping it free from sensual desire and anger, fulfils the divine will on earth just as the orders of angels fulfill it in heaven.

He has become in all things a co-worshipper and fellow-citizen with the angels, conforming to St Paul’s statement, ‘Our citizenship is in heaven’ (Phil. 3:20).

Among the angels desire does not sap the intellect’s intensity through sensual pleasure, nor does anger make them rave and storm indecently at their fellow creatures:

there is only the intelligence naturally leading intelligent beings towards the source of intelligence, the Logos Himself.

God rejoices in intelligence alone and this is what He demands from us His servants.

He reveals this when He says to David, ‘What have I in heaven, and besides yourself what have I desired on earth?’ (Ps. 73:25. LXX).

Nothing is offered to God in heaven by the holy angels except intelligent worship; and it is this that God also demands from us when He teaches us to say in our prayers, ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ (Matt. 6:10).

Let our intelligence, then, be moved to seek God, let our desire be roused in longing for Him, and let our incensive power struggle to keep guard over our attachment to Him.

Or, more precisely, let our whole intellect be directed towards God, tensed by our incensive power as if by some nerve, and fired with longing by our desire at its most ardent.

For if we imitate the heavenly angels in this way, we will find ourselves always worshipping God, behaving on earth as the angels do in heaven.

For, like that of the angels, our intellect will not be attracted in the least by anything less than God.

[...] Christ…arouses in us an insatiable desire for Himself. If we fulfill His Father’s will, He makes us co-worshippers with the angels, when in our conduct we imitate them as we should and so conform to the heavenly state.

Then He leads us up still further on the supreme ascent of divine truth to the Father of lights, and makes us share in the divine nature (cf. 2 Pet. 1:4) through participation by grace in the Holy Spirit.

By virtue of this participation we are called children of God and, cleansed from all stain, in a manner beyond circumscription, we all encircle Him who is the author of this grace and by nature the Son of the Father.

Maximus the Confessor (580-662): On the Lord’s Prayer, Text (slightly adapted) from G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware (trans. and eds.) The Philokalia: The Complete Text, vol. 2 (Faber & Faber, London & Boston: 1979), pp.298-304.

Leave a Response »

 

Gregory of Nyssa: Dead to Sin and Alive in the Spirit Tuesday, Aug 28 2012

Ecclesiastes says: There is a time to be born and a time to die.

[...] May we also receive the grace to be born at the right time and die at the opportune moment.

[...] It is necessary to inquire about what is the birth that happens at a right time and what is the death that comes at an opportune moment.

I believe that a birth is right and not out of its time when – as Isaiah says – someone has conceived out of the fear of God and through the travails of the soul in birth generates his own salvation.

For we are in a certain sense our own parents, when through the good disposition of our soul and complete freedom of our will we form and generate and bring ourselves to the light.

We do this by the fact that we bring God into ourselves, having become children of God, children of virtue, and children of the Most High.

On the other hand, we bring ourselves into the world out of due time and form ourselves in an imperfect and immature manner when there has not been formed in us the image of Christ, to use the words of the Apostle.

For it is necessary that the man of God be without reproach and perfect.

If the manner in which we are born at the right time is evident, equally clear to all is the way we die at the opportune moment and the way every moment was, in the eyes of Saint Paul, opportune for a good death.

For he cries out in his writing, pronouncing in a certain way an oath when he says: For your sake we are being slain all the day long. And we bear within our very selves the sentence of death.

Furthermore, the manner in which Paul dies each day is not obscure; he never lives in sin.

He always mortifies the members of the flesh and ever bears within him the mortification of the body of Christ, for he is always crucified with Christ and never lives for himself but ever has Christ living in him.

This in my opinion was the favourable death which was leading to true life.

In fact, he says: I will put to death and give life; in order that he may persuade others that it is really a gift of God to be dead to sin and to be alive in the Spirit.

The divine word – precisely because he has put to death – promises to give life.

Gregory of Nyssa (c 335 – after 394): On Ecclesiastes6 (PG 44:701-703); from the Monastic Office of Vigils for Tuesday of the 20^th Week in Ordinary Time, Year 2

Leave a Response »