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| Tomb of Saint Sophrony. Saint John the Baptist Monastery. Essex. |
The Name Jesus
as knowledge, as 'energy' of God in relation to the world and as His proper
Name, is ontologically bound up with Him. It is spiritual reality. Its sound
can merge with its reality but not necessarily so. As a name it was given to
many mortal men but when we pray we utter it with another content, another
'frame' of spirit. For us it is the bridge between us and Him. It is the canal
along which the streams of divine strength flow to us. As proceeding from the
Holy God it is holy and it hallows us by its invocation. With this Name and
through it prayer acquires a certain tangibleness: it unites us with God. In
it, this Name, God is present like a scent-flask full of fragrance. Through it,
the Celestial One can be sensed imminently. As divine energy it proceeds from
the Substance of Divinity and is divine itself.
When we pray,
knowing this, our prayer becomes at the same time both a fearful and a
triumphal act. In ancient times the commandment bade us not to take the Name of
God in vain. The Lord gave the commandment and bidding to 'ask of the Father in
His Name'. Through the coming of Christ all the Divine Names were disclosed to
us in their more profound sense, and we ought to stand in fear and trembling,
as happens with many ascetics among whom I came to live, when they pronounce
the Holy Name of Jesus. It is bold of me to say that even I could have been a
living witness that fitting invocation of this Name fills all our being with
the presence of the Eternal God; carries our mind into other Spheres; endows us
with the peculiar energy of a new life. Divine Light, which it is not easy to
discuss, comes with this Name.
We know that
not only the Name Jesus but all the other Names, too, are revealed to us from
on High, are ontologically linked with Him - God. We know this from experience
in the Church. All the sacraments in our Church are effected by invocation of
the Divine Names, first and foremost of the Holy Trinity: of the Father and of
the Son and of the Holy Spirit. All our divine worship is based on invocation
of the Divine Names. We do not attribute magic powers to them, as sound
phenomena. They are pronounced in true confession of our faith and in a state
of divine awe, reverence and love - we do indeed hold God conjointly with His
Names. Many generations of the priesthood have preserved knowledge of the power
of the Name of God and performed the sacraments with a profound sense of the
presence of the Living God. The sacrament of the celebration of the Divine
Liturgy was revealed to them. For them there was no doubt that the Blood and
the Body of Christ lay before them in all their reality. Over the bread and the
wine the Name was invoked of Him Who, when He pronounces the word, the word
becomes 'fact'. 'And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Neglect of the
ontological character of the Divine Names, the lack of this experience in
prayers and the celebration of the divine office has desolated the lives of
many. For them prayer and the sacraments themselves lose their eternal reality.
The Liturgy becomes, not a Divine Act but simply a psychological or mental
commemoration. Many go so far as to think prayer a useless waste of time,
especially if their prayer for our everyday needs does not bring about what
they prayed for. . . But is not the union with the God of our being the most
important miracle of our existence? The 'good part' which death shall not take
from us. The fact of our resurrection in God this is what our attention is centred on as
the final purport of our appearance in the world. Love for Christ, filling the
whole man, radically alters our life. He - God-man - united the two in Himself,
and through Him we have access to the Father. Could one wish for anything more.?!.
Reference:
“On Prayer”.
Archimandrite Sophrony Sakharov.1996.