 Saint Tikhon Zadonsk. |
Man is more beautiful than any other creature since he
is in the image of God. Through the incarnation he is justified and is no more
under wrath. He has become a member of the body of which the heavenly head is
Jesus Christ. He mysteriously partakes of the life-giving Body and divine
Blood. He is made worthy to become the habitation of God and the temple of the
Holy Ghost. He is in communion with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ.
Through faith in Jesus he becomes a son, an heir, a co-heir with Christ. Read
the Acts of the Apostles and you will see that all these titles are ascribed to
man by the Holy Ghost. ... And what will it be in the future life, according to
the unfailing promise of God! What goodness, bliss, honor and glory! The uninterrupted
flow of eternal blessedness will be like a river, incomprehensible to the
present mind and inexpressible by the tongue, the blessedness which "eye
hath not seen" spoken of in (1 Cor. 2. 9). The children of God will shine
like the sun in the kingdom of the heavenly Father; they will be as angels,
like other gods. Glory be to the Trinity for having so honored and magnified
our kind !
The soul cannot live without grace. Grace and faith
are the necessary conditions for the soul which strives to restore its innate
nobility. "Our own strivings are powerless",read Psalm 118.
Grace is the food and clothing of the saints. It
wakens grief in a man's heart, making him dissatisfied and moving him to seek
the reason of this dissatisfaction. Grace gives sorrow and grace comforts;
showing us the poverty of all things, it engenders in us a repentant sorrow for
having fallen short of the love of God. . . . One who is possessed by such
sorrow will always grieve, for he thinks of God's offended love and not of the
fear of hell. It is a grief of love.
This state, approaching what might be called perfect
contrition, is propitious to the growing longing after God; through grace, the
love of God is increased in the heart, and the soul "desires nothing more
than it desires God." Humility, prayer, thanksgiving, assurance of divine
mercy are gifts of grace."
Faith is a spiritual gift; it enters the heart. It
comes down from heaven and the heart of man is caught up to things celestial....
Faith is the comforting perception of the gospels produced in the heart by the
Holy Ghost. It purifies the heart, endows it with joy and freedom, that gift of
the Son.
Faith is intimately linked with hope, for "we
hope in the One in whom we believe"; moreover, faith calls forth love for
Christ, which leads to pity for all, love for all and-true fruit of true
faith-acts of justice and sympathy.
Alone faith in the Son of God who died for us and rose
again justifies us without regard to our works, nevertheless this faith cannot
be idle but engenders love as its concomitant. Faith, this divine spark, is
kindled in us and bursts into flame with the help of God through the reading of
and listening to the word of God, through meditation on the acts of God in the
past, through prayer, through the partaking of the holy mysteries and, like a
good tree, it reveals itself externally by sweet fruit of love.
Faith is not an emotion divorced from the logical
powers of the mind. The creed is a matter of thought and conviction as well as
of deep religious emotion produced by response to its historical and spiritual
assertions. He never protested against the intellect, but only against the
deadly theoretical knowledge of right dogma divorced from its expression in
Christian life.
True faith is the keeping and confession of right
dogma, that is to say, it consists in true faith in Jesus Christ the Son of
God: for knowledge of beliefs is one thing and real faith in Christ is quite
another. The first often makes one haughty, arrogant, and fruitless. Hence,
many who possess a right knowledge of dogma live lawless lives; many even
preach on faith, and teach and exhort others, but themselves do not move
forward, as though they were mere signposts on the road. True faith in Christ
is humble, patient, merciful, and full of loving-kindness.
A traditional image best expresses it: faith is the
root from which a Christian grows; good works of faith are its leaves and
fruits and the more fruit there is, the lower do the branches bend, as true
symbols of humility.
It is always good to enquire into one's faith,
especially at the present time when there are so many phantasies. Believe,
together with the whole Church, what has been revealed by the word of God.
Faith is inseparable from the other theological
virtues. In the trinity of the acts of man's mind, heart and will, lies his
total response to the perfection of divine love. And with the support of
abundant references from the New Testament: "All Christianity and all
Christian duty consists in faith, hope and love."
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| Lord Jesus, the tree of life. |
Yet the essential freedom of man remains-that freedom
so much in connection with the spiritual combat. It is on account of this
freedom that man can respond to divine love, to the sacrifice of Christ, and to
the whole problem of the future life and salvation. The atonement has achieved
the organic regeneration of man's fallen nature. But salvation has both its
divine and its human side: God's love requires man's free response. "Are
then all saved?. Salvation is offered to all," but those who reject
Christ, or false Christians, deliberately cut themselves away from saving
grace, from the fruit of the incarnation-for Christ wishes to save all (1 Tim.
2. 4).
Salvation is both the content of Christian belief and
the appropriation by man of Christ's saving life and death and resurrection; it
is at once a belief and a mystical experience which has its beginnings here on
earth and is to be lived and fully revealed in the life to come: "The
beginning of salvation is to learn our own wretchedness”. It is here that we
must seek it not after death .... But whilst we neglect it, Satan steals away
our immeasurable treasure, the eternal salvation bought by the blood of
Christ." Whilst he is alive a Christian must strive after that "which
is his dearest hope."
We were created and, having fallen, we have been
redeemed for eternal life. We are renewed in baptism and through the word of
God, and called to eternal life; to this end has holy scripture been given to
us, to this end did Christ the Son of God, come into the world to live as a
man, to suffer and die, that we should receive this everlasting life. The first
duty of a Christian is eternal salvation.
The token of salvation here on earth is true faith practiced
and expressed in acts of love, triumphant in its hope over all temporal
tribulations and firm in its fidelity to Christ. Salvation in the future life
can be apprehended through certain images and mystically experienced.
You see the rising of the sun and yet when it goes
down it seems as if it had never been there and then again it appears. This reminds us of the death and resurrection of Christ, and of the
resurrection of the dead. Victorious soldiers inspire us to contrast earthly
triumphs with the so much greater triumph of the saints whose souls are at
peace and who contemplate the beauty of the Heavenly Jerusalem. What rapture overtakes
those who put on the garment of salvation! ... If here on earth people listen
to sweet singing, and still desire to hear it, and are comforted by it beyond
words, how much more so in that mansion where “the voice of praise is ceaseless”.
There is peace, harmony and love, and his will, and the fellowship of the
saints and angels, complete serenity and perfect wisdom.
Beauty is a reminder to man of his innate dignity; in
nature it is a memory of paradise and an image of future harmony.
Reference:
Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk. Nadejda Gorodetzky.(1976)