Categories: church-history, lives-of-saints, writing
Date: 28 February 2010 04:44:23
My sermon, for those wanting some form of Lenten penitential act, can be read below. I now consider it a bit long and think I tried covering too much. But thanks be to God all went well. I was nervous, I stumbled a bit, and I do not think my mouth has ever been drier [and the medication I am taking for anxiety dries out the mouth further]: it truly is a strange sensation when your mouth does not want to move as you need it to to speak because of its dryness. But, as I wrote, thanks be to God, for I did get through it, and a number of people came up to me after the service to thank and compliment me which was a comfort and blessing to me.
I am thankful to God for the great resources available, online and in books, that helped me. This article, available in a booklet was a great help in providing a great deal of information -- explanations, quotations, examples -- which I used in my talk: I took a great deal of my talk from there. I also looked at a number of books I have at home to help me understand this doctine a bit more in an attempt to work out how I could explain it and show its practical purpose, including Fellow Workers with God: Orthodox Thinking On Theosis and sectons from The Mystery of Faith and The Orthodox Way. And then there is the Internet: searching for quotations from Saints is far easier with the help of Google. And thanks of course to God for His Help in guiding me and helping me to proclaim, I pray I did, His Truth and the glory of this wonderful calling to us to become the likeness of Christ and to participate in the very life of the Holy Trinity.
Through a discussion with my priest yesterday, I understood that my being asked to give the sermon was not only a way to involve me in the life of our parish, but also something which would help me psychologically. With a lack of confidence, a fear of sharing of myself with others and the belief I have nothing to offer forming a great part of how I see myself, as Father explained to me this would grant me the chance to face some of these perceptions head-on, and challenge them. I do sense some progress here, and I pray I may continue to progress in sharing myself and seeing that I have value, to myself as well as others. I have made some attempts to be more social, as I can, and I am, with thanks and praise to God, seeing benefits: and even seeing a small, but nevertheless perceptible, change in my thinking. I know it will take time and I know it will continue to be a struggle, for my default mode is to hide or deem myself worthless. But steps, however small, are needed in a journey. And, with the grace and love of God, and the blessings He grants in many ways, particularly the love and encouragement I receive here for which I most gratefully thank you all, I can but pray I can continue the journey.
Thanks be to God.
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On this Second Sunday of Great Lent, as we continue the journey towards Pascha, we may ask “Why has the Church set aside this second Sunday of Great Lent to commemorate St Gregory Palamas?”; and we may also ask “Who was St Gregory Palamas?”
St Gregory Palamas, who lived the majority of his life in the 14th-century, was a monk of Mt Athos and later became Archbishop of Thessalonica. He wrote on a great number of things, but he is particularly remembered for two things: his defence of Hesychastic prayer — that is, the acquiring of inner stillness within us by the repetition of prayers such as the “Jesus prayer” ["Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner"]; and his defence of the Orthodox doctrine, present and proclaimed from the time of the early Church, that it was possible to know God not only with knowledge, but in experience, and through this experience participate in the very life of the Holy Trinity.
His defence of the Faith, for which at one stage he was imprisoned, was upheld by a church council, and was in fact considered as a second triumph of Orthodoxy — the first triumph being the restoration of icons which John spoke about last week and which we celebrated in procession and prayer. St Gregory was therefore chosen to be remembered on this Second Sunday of Great Lent.
While an inquirer into Orthodoxy, coming across this belief that we are called to share and participate in the Life of the Holy Trinity, which is termed theosis, or deification, simply astounded me. It presented a calling far beyond anything I could imagine. God not only wanted me to know Him, but wanted me to be united to and in Him. There are many treasures of the Orthodox Church, and I am still finding them as I struggle on trying to live the life we are called to: and this is truly one of those treasures worth understanding and pursuing which is why I have, with Father’s blessing, chosen to speak on it today.
Our holy Fathers remind us repeatedly that God is filled with an infinite, divine love for us and because of this love He seeks to be united with us and this union is what we were created for. In Genesis we are told we are created in the image and likeness of God. Sin distorts this image, thus we are all called, with the help and grace of God, to work towards re-creating in us this image of God. As St Maximus the Confessor wrote in the 7th century, “God made us so that we might become partakers of the divine nature [as St Peter write in his First Epistle] and sharers in his eternity, and so that we might come to be like him through deification by grace”. Could there be anything more wondrous than to know our Creator is filled with such love for us, that He not only calls us to a relationship with Him but calls us to be like Him and united with Him?
This love from God to us is shown clearly in God becoming man in Christ Jesus to save us; on this St Athanasius famously wrote, “God became man that man might become god”. That does not mean we become God in his very essence, or that we “merge with” or are “swallowed up” in God: we, as unique individuals created by God, retain who we are, but we become fully what we were created to be in this true union with God.
How do we begin and progress towards this union? As with most things in our lives that are good for us, it is a struggle. It is not easy. But the Church gives us great help along the way to support us, and to help us rise again when we, inevitably, fall along the way.
In Great Lent in particular we are reminded of and called on by the Church to encourage in us this desire for union with God. And this call is “in the Church”. Our union with God cannot be a solo effort, just me and God. We make this journey in and with the help of the Church and all she offers us. And we also make the journey together, because at the heart of the Gospel is love: love for God and love for our neighbour. Metropolitan Kallistos reminds us in one of his writings of a saying from the early Church, “One Christian, no Christian”: we need each other, we are not saved alone: we grow in union with God together. Love, sacrificial love, must be in our thoughts and in our actions in all we do; we must show love to others as God has shown His Love to us.
Participating in the Church means a life with the Sacraments. In the Eucharist, Holy Communion, we truly receive the Body and Blood of our Lord; as one of our Pre-Communion prayers states, “The Body of God makes me divine and nourishes me; it makes the Spirit divine and wondrously nourishes the mind.” We proclaim this “making divine”, this theosis, at every Divine Liturgy. We have our entrance to the Church through the Sacraments of Baptism and Chrismation, where we receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit Who works within us to transform us to be ever-more Christ-like.
The Sacrament of Confession not only grants us forgiveness of our sins, but encourages us to overcome the passions and vices which plague our existence, and by overcoming these we grow in love for God and draw nearer to God. And there are many more practices we are called to: prayer in attending the Church’s services, being part of the Body of Christ here on earth; prayer in our own lives: whether individually or as a family; fasting; giving of our time and money to help those in need; reading the Bible, taking the truths from it and applying them to our lives; reading spiritual works, which encourage and edify us.
By these, and the other practices the Church calls us to, we seek to unite our will, our thoughts, and our actions to God’s will, God’s thoughts, and God’s actions. We strive to be a mirror, a true likeness of God. This struggle to reflect the Divine Image ties in to the Epistle and Gospel readings for today, with their emphasis on the desire and effort required. In Hebrews we heard read, “… we must pay close attention to what we have heard less we drift away …” — we must all take in and practice what we are taught; in the Gospel of St Mark we see the great faith of those who brought the paralytic to Jesus, and their great effort in bringing him: going so far as to take off the roof!
And this pilgrimage to union with God is something that will take us our entire life. It is an on-going struggle, but a struggle we are called to. Christ’s command in the Sermon on the Mount, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” is not a command to do the impossible. God with our participation, for he never forces us, but lovingly calls us to respond, will transform us so that can obey that command. The process will be long and in parts very painful — it is hard for us to deny ourselves and live for God. But the fruits of this will be such joy that we cannot even begin to imagine. We will truly be Who we were created to be.
Please do not think I am preaching from “on high”, because I need to hear and do all this too. Struggles against sin are constant and weary me greatly, as I imagine they do you, particularly during this Lenten season where sin seems all the more present and powerful as we attempt to overcome it. But God is gracious to us in what he gives us in the Church to help us, and God is wonderful in his Saints in providing us examples as encouragement to persevere. Countless saints throughout the history of the Church have demonstrated the possibility of theosis as a reality in their lives; they attained this after much suffering; but through suffering wondrous victories are won.
In instances this union with God was reflected visibly. You may know of St Seraphim of Sarov, a Russian monk of the nineteenth century, who went into the forest with his disciple and biographer during a snowstorm. While praying, St Seraphim shone with a light his biographer described as an “almost blinding light”. Accompanying this, with snow all around, was a feeling of warmth together with a beautiful fragrance and unspeakable joy and peace. St Seraphim attributed this blessed state to his having acquired the Holy Spirit, or theosis.
In the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, a wonderful treasury of sayings and instructions as relevant to us in 21st century Sydney as when they were first recorded, we read that Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, “Abba as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace, and, as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?” [I know I at this point think he is doing pretty well compared to me!] Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, “If you will, you can become all flame.” Abba Joseph’s point was that the younger monk could be set ablaze by the Holy Spirit, by the uniting of himself to God.
I’ll end with some more words of St Maximus the Confessor: “Let us become the image of the one whole God, bearing nothing earthly in ourselves … For it is clear that He who became man without sin will divinize human nature … and will raise it up … to the same degree as He lowered himself for man’s sake.” As far as God condescended to be incarnate in Christ Jesus, to the same level will we be raised to in union with God. Words truly seem inadequate to express the great blessing and privilege bestowed on us.
May we all, through the mercy of God and the prayers of St Gregory Palamas and all the Saints, respond with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, to this calling to true union with God.