Posts
On a skull in the ossuary of the Romanian Skete Prodromos on Mount Athos one can read the following inscription in Romanian: "Ce sunt eu, vei fi şi tu. Ce eşti tu, am fost şi eu." (translation: What I am, you will be, too. What you are, I've been myself.), reminding the reader the ephemerality of his life and the constant need to think of his own death.
This is the Mystagogy I love ... brilliant, thank you!
ReplyDeleteIt is not enough for one to think to own death. He/she must think at the resurrection from the death of our Lord, God, and Savior, Jesus Christ. This is the Christian certitude about our own resurrection, bringing us spiritual joy! "I look for the resurrection from the death and the everlasting life!"
ReplyDelete(The English version of the Symbol of the Faith:
"The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed:
I believe in One God,
the Father Almighty,
Maker of Heaven and Earth,
and of all things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Son of God,
the Only-Begotten, begotten of the Father before all ages;
Light of Light;
True God of True God;
begotten, not made;
of one essence with the Father,
by Whom all things were made;
Who for us men and for our salvation
came down from Heaven,
and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary,
and became man.
And He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate,
and suffered, and was buried.
And the third day He arose again,
according to the Scriptures,
and ascended into Heaven,
and sits at the right hand of the Father;
and He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead;
Whose Kingdom shall have no end.
And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life,
Who proceeds from the Father;
Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified;
Who spoke by the prophets.
And in One, Holy, Catholic(i.e. Universal), and Apostolic Church.
I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins.
I look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come." from http://web.mit.edu/ocf/www/nicene_creed.html)
Thus each of us is the most precious son of God (by adoption, not by essence), because our God - the Holy Trinity Glorified and Worhiped - is the only true Father. God calls all of us to deification, i.e. to become gods through grace.
Please read 1 Corinthians, the whole chapter 15th, especially take a deep look at :
"55 O death, where [is] thy sting? O grave, where [is] thy victory?
56 The sting of death [is] sin; and the strength of sin [is] the law.
57 But thanks [be] to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58 Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord."
Of course, but it would be difficult to fit all this on a single skull.
ReplyDeleteThe Orthodox practice of contemplation of death is mainly to inspire an inner death towards the world, the flesh and the devil so as to kill the deadly passions in order to be transformed by the Holy Spirit.
"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity".
Dear Brother John Sanidopoulos,
ReplyDeletePlease read the writings of Saint Gregory Palamas or at least "THEOSIS* - DEIFICATION AS THE PURPOSE OF MAN'S LIFE " By Archimandrite George [Kapsanis], Abbott of the Holy Monastery of St. Gregorios on Mount Athos (is to be found at :http://www.greekorthodoxchurch.org/theosis_contents.html )
Let me copy and paste just a short quotation from this Greek writing:
"Unfortunately, there exists ignorance in people outside the Church, but also in many within the Church, because they assume that the purpose of our life is, at best, simply moral improvement, to become better men, whereas this is not what is given to us by the Gospel, by the Tradition of the Church, and by the holy Fathers: that man should only improve, become more moral, more just, more self-controlled, more mindful. All these must be done, but they are not the great purpose, the final purpose for which our Maker and Creator formed man. What is this purpose? Deification (gr. theosis) – for man to be united with God, not in an external or a sentimental way, but ontologically, really.
This is how high Orthodox anthropology places humanity. If we compare the anthropologies of all the philosophies, social and psychological systems with Orthodox anthropology, we will ascertain very easily how poor these are; how they fail to respond to man’s great yearning for something very great and true in his life.
Since man is ‘called to be a god’, i.e. he was created to become a god, as long as he does not find himself on the path of deification (gr. theosis) he feels an emptiness within himself; that something is not going right; he feels no joy, even when he is trying to cover the emptiness with other activities. He may numb himself, create a fancy world, but at the same time poor, small and limited, and cage and imprison himself inside it. He may organise his life in such a way that he is never quiet, alone with himself. He can try, through noises, tension, television, radio, continuous information about this and that, as if with drugs, to forget, to not think, not worry, not remember that he is not on the right path, that he has strayed from his purpose.
In the end, however, the wretched, contemporary man finds no rest until he finds that ‘something else’, the greatest thing that actually exists in his life, the truly beautiful and creative.
Can man unite with God? Can he commune with Him? Can he become a god by Grace?" (from: http://www.greekorthodoxchurch.org/theosis_purpose.html)
to be continued...(see next comment)
Next quotation about deification of human person:
ReplyDelete"
DEIFICATION IS POSSIBLE THROUGH THE UNCREATED ENERGIES OF GOD
In the Orthodox Church of Christ man can achieve daification because, according to the teachings of the Holy Bible and the Fathers of the Church, the Grace of God is uncreated. God is not only essence, as the West thinks; He is also energy. If God was only essence, we could not unite with Him, could not commune with Him, because the essence of God is awesome and unapproachable for man, in accordance with: ‘Never will man see My face and live’ (Exod. 33:20).
Let us mention a somwhat relevant example from things human. If we grasp a bare electric wire, we will die. However, if we connect a lamp to that wire, we are illuminated. We see, enjoy, and are assisted by the energy of electric current, but we are not able to grasp its essence. Let us say that something similar happens with the uncreated energy of God.
If we were able to unite with the essence of God, we too would become gods in essence. In other words everything would become a god, and there would be confusion so that, nothing would be essentially a god. In a few words, this is what they believe in the Oriental religions, e.g. in Hinduism, where the god is not a personal existence but an indistinct power dispersed through all the world, in men, in animals, and in objects (Pantheism). Again, if God had only the divine essence – of which we cannot partake – and did not have His energies, He would remain a self-sufficient god, closed within himself and unable to commune with his creatures.
God, according to the Orthodox theological view, is One in a Trinity and a Trinity in One. As St. Maximus the Confessor, St. Dionysius the Areopagite, and other holy Fathers repeatedly say, God is filled with a divine love, a divine eros for His creatures. Because of this infinite and ecstatic love of His, He comes out of Himself and seeks to unite with them. This is expressed and realised by means of His energy or, better, His energies.
With these, His uncreated energies, God created the world and continues to preserve it. He gives essence and substance to our world through His essence-creating energies. He is present in nature and preserves the universe with His preserving energies; He illuminates man with His illuminating energies; He sanctifies him with His sanctifying energies. Finally, He deifies him with His deifying energies. Thus, through his uncreated energies, holy God enters nature, the world, history, and men's lives."
(from http://www.greekorthodoxchurch.org/theosis_how.html)
to be continued in the next comment...
The last part of quotation about deification of human person:
ReplyDelete"God, according to the Orthodox theological view, is One in a Trinity and a Trinity in One. As St. Maximus the Confessor, St. Dionysius the Areopagite, and other holy Fathers repeatedly say, God is filled with a divine love, a divine eros for His creatures. Because of this infinite and ecstatic love of His, He comes out of Himself and seeks to unite with them. This is expressed and realised by means of His energy or, better, His energies.
With these, His uncreated energies, God created the world and continues to preserve it. He gives essence and substance to our world through His essence-creating energies. He is present in nature and preserves the universe with His preserving energies; He illuminates man with His illuminating energies; He sanctifies him with His sanctifying energies. Finally, He deifies him with His deifying energies. Thus, through his uncreated energies, holy God enters nature, the world, history, and men's lives.
The energies of God are divine energies. They too are God, but without being His essence. They are God, and therefore they can deify man. If the energies of God were not divine and uncreated, they would not be God and so they would not be able to deify us, to unite us with God. There would be an unbridgeable distance between God and men. But by virtue of God having divine energies, and by uniting with us by these energies, we are able to commune with Him and to unite with His Grace without becoming identical with God, as would happen if we united with His essence.
So, we unite with God through His uncreated energies, and not through His essence. This is the mystery of our Orthodox faith and life.
Western heretics cannot accept this. Being rationalist, they do not discern between the essence and the energy of God, so, they say that God is only essence. And for this reason they cannot speak about man's deification (gr. theosis). Because, according to them, how could man be deified when they do not accept that the divine energies are uncreated, but regard them as created? And how could something created, i.e., something outside God, deify created man?
In order not to fall into pantheism, they do not speak at all about deification (gr. theosis). What then, according to them, remains as the purpose of man's life? Simply moral improvement. In other words, since man cannot be deified by means of divine Grace, the divine energies, what purpose does his life have? Only that he becomes morally better. But moral perfection is not enough for man. It is not enough for us simply to become better than before, to perform moral deeds. We have as our final aim to unite with holy God Himself. This is the purpose of the creation of the universe. This is what we desire. This is our joy, our happiness, and our fulfillment." (from http://www.greekorthodoxchurch.org/theosis_how.html)
God bless you, beloved brother John Sanidopoulos!
God bless us all!