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| Saint Sophrony avec son fils spirituel Père Seraphin. |
St. Georges Cathedral of Charleston - West Virginia - 8 / 1 / 2023
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| Archimandrite Touma (Bitar) |
God became man because He loved man with perfect love. And because He is love, He wanted to cleave to man completely. Love doesn't give something from itself. Love gives itself. God gave Himself to man completely. This is man's inheritance. What do these words mean? It means that the Lord God wanted man to become god. There is absolutely no necessity for the incarnation, inasmuch as its purpose is for the Lord God to divinize man, to make him god. Therefore, He embraced him into Himself. He took on his humanity completely! He became man in every sense of the word! He made Himself the new Adam. Humanity came from the first Adam in the body. But humanity comes from the new Adam in spirit and body! By "spirit", I mean the uncreated Spirit of God. The expression that our fathers saw fit to use is that God wanted to become man in order to permit man to come to be in Him-- that is, in the Lord Jesus Christ-- god. Thus, today is the feast of feasts and the festival of festivals, because that which was in the mind of God since the beginning is realized today. When I say "today", I don't mean "today" according to the hour and I don't mean next Sunday or last Sunday, but rather I mean the fullness of time that humanity has reached, when the Lord God was pleased to be born in the Holy Spirit of a woman, the Virgin Mary, who became by this dispensation the Mother of God.
God and man, in Jesus Christ, are one. He Himself is God and man. But even if we stand before the Lord Jesus Christ as a single being, a single person, the Lord Jesus' divinity remains distinct from his humanity, not mixed with it but also not separate from it. There is no confusion between the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ and His humanity. We cannot ever imagine that the Lord Jesus resembles a drop of water mixed with another drop of water. There is a unity that took place between the divinity and humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ, which surpasses anything that man can imagine. There is no unity on earth analogous to or even resembling the unity of divinity and humanity in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here we are before a reality that surpasses human perception. But this is precisely what happened. God became man! After God became man, everything changed in the world. Of course, it didn't change outwardly. It changed, however, at the level of a new reality that was achieved in the Lord Jesus Christ. We cannot treat this reality like we treat a chair or a table or like we treat anything in our world. This reality was given to us to treat with faith, which is a great mystery.
What is faith? Faith is, in reality, a new sort of relationship between man and God. If we wanted to summarize it in a word, then at the level of man, faith is the trust that we need in order to have a relationship with the world, with people, with everything. Man needs to have trust in others. Otherwise, he cannot interact with them. Everything in our life is something we need to have trust in; otherwise, we cannot deal with it. For example, the seat that we sit on, if we do not have trust that there is nothing on it that would hurt us, then we would not sit on it. There is an implicit trust that every person has, without which he could not deal with anything at all. When someone wants to go outside to take his car and go back home, if he has the slightest feeling that there is something wrong with his car, he won't use it until he makes sure that what he thought might harm him isn't there or is something that he can fix. Otherwise, if he acts without trust, if he doesn't fall here he'll fall there. So trust, in human terms, is necessary for there to be a relationship between man and the world he is in. We come to faith in the Lord Jesus. There is no doubt that man, on his part as man, needs to have trust, as I said, in that with which he interacts or in that which interacts with him. But there is faith in the Lord Jesus, there is faith in God. If we have human trust and find ourselves in a place that makes us able to deal with the world, then we cannot, in reality, deal with God with this kind of trust. Human trust is not enough! We need a special grace that the Lord God gives us. In other words, we need faith that the Lord God gives us in order for our faith to be made perfect, and our trust in those we deal with. So we need God's grace in order to enter into a relationship with God. If one is skeptical, then God's grace is not active in him, is not given to him. But if one is prepared and wants to believe, but cannot believe in God because he is incapable, as a human, of reaching God, then God sees the desire of his heart, sees his good preparedness, sees the uprightness of his soul, sees his being open, "Lord Jesus, come", "Let it be for me according to Your word", "Help my unbelief" and then the Lord God touches him, gives him grace, and he believes in God!
So there is faith from man and faith from God. This is very much in accordance with the new reality that was made manifest in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, by which I mean the reality of the incarnation. That is, divine-human coalescence. In terms of faith, our human faith coalesces with our divine faith. Then, we become capable, by God's grace and by the good will of our heart, of entering into this new reality that was achieved in the Lord Jesus Christ, the reality of the incarnation. Faith is a new language, without which we cannot approach God. If I don't know the alphabet, how can I look at a book in the language of this alphabet? So likewise I absolutely cannot read the book of God, read this divine reality made manifest in the person of Jesus Christ if I do not acquire the alphabet of divine-human faith. Faith, then, enters me into a new state of being, a new reality, a new manifestation. It enters me into a new life! Therefore, God is only pleased with faith. Not one of us has a way to approach God except by faith. Theoretical faith is empty talk. For someone to say that he believes without following the divine commandments is also empty talk, because one who believes believes in spirit and in truth. When one of us believes in spirit and in truth, then his entire life changes, he enters into a new world! If one of us travels to a country that he doesn't know, he doesn't hesitate to learn that country's language, customs, laws, and the systems prevailing there... becoming as though he were from that country. Thus, when we enter into the reality of the divine incarnation that took place in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are called to become new. We treat things according to what is demanded by this new discovery, this new world, this new reality, this incarnation. If I am not prepared to enter into the reality of the incarnation, to deal with the incarnation, to become myself incarnational, then I remain on the outside. But in order to become incarnational, in order to enter behind the veil, into God's heart, into the reality that the Lord God wants me to enter into-- if I want to enter in every sense of the word-- I must walk in everything that is new that is required by this new reality. The Lord Jesus said clearly, "He who loves Me will keep My word." He who does not love Him, does not keep His word and so does not belong to that new thing that has come to be in Him. The Lord Jesus calls us to follow in His footsteps. "He who wants to follow me must take up his cross every day and follow me." Therefore, when we enter into the reality of the incarnation, we always walk steadily, regularly, completely, in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus Christ who said, "Learn from Me, for I am meek and humble of heart." From him, then, we learn the fundamentals of the new citizenship, citizenship in the kingdom, citizenship in the incarnation. Therefore, absolutely no one can enter into the new reality unless he has completely become incarnational. What does this mean?
When one becomes incarnational, he must treat everyone and everything divinely and humanly at the same time. After the Lord Jesus Christ, we have come to treat everything in a divine and human manner. For example, it is time to eat and we come to the table. We don't go there only to eat. This is something purely human. We go to the table to treat the table in a divine-human way. For this reason, we pray. We stand next to the table, we remember God, we ask Him to bless what He gives us, and we bear in mind that we are not just concerned with filling our bellies with food: our fundamental concern is that this food that we see before us is blessed for the heavenly table that we desire and we work so that it will be granted to us to sit with Jesus there. The Lord Jesus said clearly that we must ask for heavenly bread at all times. "Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God." When man eats of the bread that is in this age, he hungers again. The important thing is to ask for heavenly bread at all times. We carry all this within ourselves when we stand before the table that we go to to eat of its good things and thank God for them. All this happens in one's mind, in one's heart. Otherwise, if we were satisfied with formalities in prayers, or even with merely blessing, if we only do what is necessary and then sit at the table to enjoy it, we miss the reality of dealing with the table-- and, in fact, everything-- in an incarnational manner. We treat everything divinely and humanly at once! At the table, in reality, we stand before God and we ask, first and last, for the Lord God to grace us with His Holy Spirit. Man is not sated with food. What sates man is heavenly manna. This is what the Lord God gave us and gives us: "Take, eat, this is My body that was broken for your sake. Drink of it all of you, this is My blood." In this way with regard to everything else.
When one enters into the reality of the incarnation, everything becomes sacramental for him. We treat the whole universe, we treat all people, sacramentally, in the sense that we deal with what is outwardly apparent and at the same time, through what is outwardly apparent, that which is not outwardly apparent. Through human things, we deal with divine things, we scrutinize divine things, we bring down divine things, we ask God to give us Himself, His grace, His blessing, His Spirit, through everything that comes from us, through everything that we treat with our hands, our body, our soul, our mind. Our concern, first and last, is to be filled with God's presence, with His love! Therefore, the incarnation overturned the criteria. Man found himself before a new world that the Lord God opened wide to man. Come, receive light from the light that does not fade, and glorify God risen from the dead! Christ, in everything, has become a sign that is marked upon everything in our world, in our souls, in our mind. Our exclusive concern must be with being filled with Jesus: "If we live, we live for the Lord and if we die, we die for the Lord." "Life for me is Christ and to die is gain." One who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ, who stumbles toward this new reality, sees only Jesus in everything. Therefore, the feast today is the feast of feasts, the season of seasons, Today, we have been entered into God's heart, we have been entered into the Lord's Spirit, we have been entered into a new life, after which it is not fitting for us to treat things as though they were dust. We treat dust as having been filled with divine light, we treat dust as dust and as light at the same time: "We have this treasure in jars of clay." Therefore, let us rejoice in the fullness of time, let us rejoice at this feast for which we are preparing ourselves, then let us extend our joy with it for days. In fact, let us extend it all the days of our life, since after Jesus entered our world as God incarnate, everything has changed. The important thing is that the change which occurred be matched by a change that happens in the heart of each one of us, that Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Reference:
Notes on Arab Orthodoxy - https://araborthodoxy.blogspot.com/
"An exquisite flower unfolds within us: the hypostasis-person"
What is the essence of Christian contemplation? How does it arise and where does it lead? Who or what is contemplated, and in what manner?
As I was taught, true
contemplation begins the moment we become aware of sin in us. The Old Testament
understood sin as the breach of the moral and religious precepts of the Law of
Moses. The New Testament transferred the concept of sin to the inward man. To
apprehend sin in oneself is a spiritual act, impossible without grace, without
the drawing near to us of Divine Light. The initial effect of the approach of
this mysterious Light is that we see where we stand ‘spiritually’ at the
particular moment. The first manifestations of this Uncreated Light do not
allow us to experience it as light. It shines in a secret way, illuminating the
black darkness of our inner world to disclose a spectacle that is far from
joyous for us in our normal state of fallen being. We feel a burning sensation.
This is the beginning of real contemplation- which has nothing in common with
intellectual or philosophical contemplation. We become accurately conscious of
sin as a sundering from the ontological source of our being. Our spirit is
eternal but now we see ourselves as prisoners of death. With death waiting at
the end, another thousand years of life would seem but a deceptive flash.
Sin is not the infringement of the
ethical standards of human society or of any legal injunction. Sin cuts us off
from the God of Love made manifest to us as Light in Whom there is no darkness
at all (cf. 1 John 1.5). To behold one’s pitiful reality is a heavenly gift,
one of the greatest. It means that we have already to a certain extent
penetrated into the divine sphere, and have begun to contemplate- existentially,
not philosophically- man as he is in God’s idea of him before the creation of
the world.
The horror of seeing oneself as one is acts as
a consuming fire. The more thoroughly the fire performs its purifying work, the
more agonising our spiritual pain. Yet, inexplicably, the unseen Light gives us
a sense of divine presence within us: a strange secret presence that draws us
to itself, to a state of contemplation which we know is genuine because our
heart begins to throb day and night with prayer. It cannot be too often
repeated that divine action has a twofold movement: one, which seems to us the
first, plunges us into darkness and suffering. The other lifts us into the
lofty spheres of the divine world. The range of our inner being expands and
grows. But when the downward movement prevails, the cry is forced from us: ‘It
is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God’ (Heb. 10.31).
To begin with, we do not
understand what is happening. Everything is new. We only later, and gradually,
come to comprehend God’s gift to us. Christ said to Peter: ‘What I do thou
knowest not now; but shalt know hereafter’ (John 13.7). Impressed by the world
revealed to her, which the heart did not yet know, the soul is both attracted
and afraid. How can we describe the dread of losing God Who has so unexpectedly
entered and enriched our life? Dismay at the thought of returning to the dark
pit in which we existed until God’s coming to us stimulates a desire to cleanse
ourselves from all that could hinder the Spirit of God from taking up His abode
in us for all eternity. This dismay is so immense that it brings total
repentance.
Repentance does not come readily
to carnal man; and none of us fathoms the problem of sin which is only
disclosed to us through Christ and the Holy Spirit. The coming of the Holy
Spirit is an event of supreme importance. Fallen man meets with God all-Holy.
The notion of sin is possible only where God is regarded as Absolute
Hypostasis. And, likewise, repentance for sin is possible and appropriate only
where there is a personal relationship. Encounter with a Personal God- that is
what the event signifies. The sinful man experiences at one and the same time
fear and exultation. It is new birth from on High. An exquisite flower unfolds
within us: the hypostasis-person. Like the Kingdom of God the person ‘cometh
not with observation’ (Luke 17.20). The process whereby the human spirit enters
into the domain of divine eternity differs with each one of us.
The soul comes to know herself
first and foremost face to Face with God. And the fact that such prayer is the
gift of God praying in us shows that the person is born from on High and so is
not subject to the laws of Nature. The person transcends earthly bounds and
moves in other spheres. It cannot be accounted for. It is singular and unique.
Absolute Being is Hypostatic; and
man, the image of the Absolute, is hypostatic. God is Spirit, and
man-hypostasis is spirit; yet spirit which is not unconnected, abstract, but
given concrete expression by the corporal body. Just as the Divine Logos took
on Himself human flesh and thereby showed that God is not a fantasy of man’s
imagination, born of ignorant fear of unknown phenomena, but actual reality.
So, too, the human hypostasis is actually real. The Divine Spirit embraces all
that exists. Man as hypostasis is a principle uniting the plurality of cosmic
being; capable of containing the fulness of divine and human life.
The person does not determine
himself by opposition. His is an attitude of love. Love is the most profound
content of his being, the noblest expression of his essence. In this love lies
likeness to God, Who is Love. Per se the person is excellence surpassing all
other cosmic values. Rejoicing in the freedom that he has discovered, man
contemplates the divine world.
Scientific and philosophical
knowledge may be formulated but the person is beyond definition and therefore
incognisable from without, unless he himself reveals himself. Since God is a
Secret God, so man has secret depths. He is neither the author of existence nor
the end. God, not man, is the Alpha and Omega. Man’s godlike quality lies in
the mode of his being. Likeness in being is the likeness of which the
Scriptures tell.
O Holy
Trinity, Father, Son and Spirit;
Most
High God, King and Creator of all eternity,
Who hast
honoured us with Thy Divine image
and
didst describe in the visible form of our nature
the
likeness of Thine invisible Being:
Enable
us to find mercy and grace in Thy sight
that we
may glorify Thee in the undying day of Thy
kingdom,
with all
Thy Saints throughout the ages.
Saint Sophrony the Athonite.
When our spirit contemplates in itself
the ‘image and likeness’ of God, it is confronted with the infinite grandeur of
man, and not a few of us- the majority, perhaps- are filled with dread at our
audacity.
In the Divine Being the Hypostasis
constitutes the innermost esoteric principle of Being. Similarly, in the human
being the hypostasis is the most intrinsic fundamental. Person is ‘the hidden
man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible…which is in the sight of God
of great price’ (1 Peter 3.4) - the most precious kernel of man’s whole being,
manifested in his capacity for self-knowledge and self-determination; in his
possession of creative energy; in his talent for cognition not only of the
created world but also of the Divine world. Consumed with love, man feels
himself joined with his beloved God. Through this union he knows God, and thus
love and cognition merge into a single act.
God reveals Himself, mainly through the
heart, as Love and Light. In this light man contemplates the Gospel precepts as
the reflection on earth of celestial Eternity, and the Glory of Christ as of
the only-begotten of the Father- the glory the disciples saw on Mount Tabor.
The personal revelation makes the general revelation of the New Testament
spiritually familiar.
This personal revelation may be granted
suddenly. But though suddenly received man can only assimilate it by degrees,
after long ascetic struggle. From the first instant the vital content of the
revelation is clear and the soul feels no impulse to explain in rational
concepts the grace experienced. But as a matter of course she aspires to ever
deeper knowledge.
The divine nature of this personal
vision is startlingly authentic, though words may fail to convey it. Yet the
knowledge it offers has an objective sui generis character which we repeatedly
observe down the centuries in the lives of many individuals largely identical
in their experience and self-determining. ‘Where two or three are gathered
together’ (Matt. 18.20)- there we have objectivity. ‘There is none other name
under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved’ (Acts 4.12), Peter
declared categorically to the Sanhedrin. John spoke of ‘that which was from the
beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have
looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life’ (1 John 1.1). And
Paul who said that at present we know only ‘in part’ (1 Cor. 13.12),
nevertheless decrees that ‘if any man preach any other gospel unto you than
that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed’ even though he be
‘an angel from heaven’ (Gal. 1.8,9).
As love, the hypostasis requires other
hypostases. We see this from the revelation of the Holy Trinity. It is the same
in the case of man. Having created Adam, ‘the Lord God said, It is not good
that the man should be alone’ (Gen. 2.18). But can created being meet with the
Creator? When the human person stands before Him Who named Himself ‘I AM THAT I
AM’ (Exos. 3.14), his spirit, his whole being not only glories but agonises
over his own littleness, his ignorance, his wrong-doing. Suffering in his lot
from the moment of his spiritual birth. Conscious that the process of
transforming our whole earthly being is still far from complete, the spirit
wearies.
Christian faith is the result of the
presence within us of the Holy Spirit, and the soul knows Him. The Holy Spirit
convinces the soul that she will not die; that death will not possess her. But
the body, as the material instrument of the soul, is subject to decay.
Only sin can stifle the Divine breath
within us. God Who is Holy does not blend with the darkness of sin. When we
seek to justify a sinful action we ipso facto sever our alliance with God. God
does not constrain us but neither can He be coerced. He retires, leaving us
bereft of His luminous presence. Of course, man cannot altogether avoid
sinning; but he can avoid the consequences of sin- separation from God- through
repentance. With repentance and the consequent increase of grace within us, the
reality of the Divine World preponderates over the visible cosmos. We
contemplate the FIRST REALITY.
O
Father, Son, and Spirit;
Triune
Godhead, One Being in three Persons
Light
unapproachable, Mystery most secret:
Lift our
minds to contemplation of Thine unfathomable judgements
and fill
our hearts with the light of Thy Divine love,
that we
may serve Thee in spirit and truth
even
unto our last breath.
We pray
Thee, hear and have mercy.
Archimandrite Sophrony Sakharov (2001) (2nd ed.) His Life is Mine. New York:
St Vladimir’s Seminary Press.
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Saint Sophrony the Athonite.
Through the Holy Spirit, “Which proceedeth from the Father” and reposes in the Son, we know the Son in His Divinity and in the nature of man that He assumed. It is in the Holy Spirit that we live the Father.
29 mars 1968.
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| Saint Sophrony l'Athonite. |
Chers, très chers Père et Matouchka, Micha et Kolia et tous les autres, ceux qui sont à la maison et ceux qui viendront du sud, c'est-à-dire Véra et toute sa famille!
Que la paix et la bénédiction d'en haut
demeurent avec vous, tous les jours de votre vie. Merci beaucoup pour votre
lettre. Vous savoir en vie, ce simple fait me console ...
Merci pour vos vœux affectueux, pour la fidélité de votre amour. Je l'apprécie profondément! Parce que sur terre il y a finalement si peu de gens fidèles à leur parole, à leur amitié, et même dans le mariage! Encore plus rares sont ceux dont l'amitié et la fraternité ne sont pas fondées sur un profit matériel, mais sur la foi en une autre réalité.
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| Saint Sophrony the Athonite. |