Metropolitan John Zizioulas
We cannot be the “image of God” unless we are incorporated in the original and only authentic image of the Father, which is the Son of God incarnate. This implies that communion with the other requires the experience of the Cross. Unless we sacrifice our own will and subject it to the will of the other, repeating in ourselves what our Lord did at Gethsemane in accepting the will of His Father, we cannot reflect properly in history the communion and otherness that we see in the Triune God. Since God moved to meet the other— His creation— by emptying Himself and subjecting his Son to the kenosis (self-emptying) of the Incarnation; the “kenotic” way is the only one that befits the Christian in his or her communion with the other, be it God or neighbor.
*Taken from Communion and Otherness.
Christos Yannaras
The witness of the Christian martyrs goes beyond the heroism of self-denial for the sake of certain ideals which a person believes to be higher in value even than his individual survival. History has seen many forms of such idealistic heroism and extreme self-denial, and all merit absolute respect; but they bear no direct relation to the witness of Christian martyrs. The martyrs of the Church embody the truth of the Church, the truth of the true life which is communion and relationship with God– which is the ultimate self-transcendence of natural individuality, and love for Christ who alone gives a hypostasis of eternal life to man’s personal distinctiveness. It is not a question of ideological fanaticism, or of faith in ideas which aim to improve our common life; what we have seen is the concrete realization of a mode of existence which is the complete antithesis of individual survival, and has its historical prototype in the cross of Christ.
*Taken from The Freedom of Morality.
Fr. Alexander Schmemann
But then the assembling as the Church is above all the sacrament of love. We go to church for love, for the new love of Christ himself, which is granted to us in our unity. We go to church so that this divine love will again and again be “poured into our hearts,” so that again and again we may “put on love”, so that, constituting the body of Christ, we can abide in Christ’s love and manifest it in the world. But that is why our contemporary, utterly “individualized” piety, in which we egotistically separate ourselves from the gathering, is so grievous, so contradictory to the age-old experience of the Church. Even while standing in the church, we continue to sense some people as “neighbors” and others as “strangers” -a faceless mass that “has no relevance” to us and to our prayer and disturbs our “spiritual concentration.” How often do seemingly “spiritually” attuned and “devout” people openly declare their distaste for crowded gatherings, which disturb them from praying, and seek empty and quiet chapels, secluded corners, separate from the “crowds.” In fact, such “self-absorption” would hardly be possible in the church assembly-precisely because this is not the purpose in the assembly and our participation in it. Concerning this individual prayer the gospels say: “When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray…” (Mt 6:6). Does not this mean that the assembling as the Church has another purpose, already contained in the very word “assembly”? Through it the Church fulfills herself, accomplishes our communion with Christ and with his love, so that in participating in it, we comprise “out of many, one body.”
*Taken from The Eucharist, pg. 138.
Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky
In explaining the High Priestly prayer of our Lord, “This prayer concerns nothing else other than he establishment of a new, united existence of the Church on earth. This reality has its image not on earth, where there is no unity but only division, but rather its image is in heaven where the unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit unites Three Persons in one Being. Thus there are not three Gods but One God who lives One life. The Church is the completely new, particular, unique existence on earth, a unique existence which one cannot define clearly by certain concepts taken from profane life. The Church is an image of Trinitarian existence, an image in which many persons become one being. Why is such an existence, as also the existence of the Holy Trinity, new, and for ancient man, inaccessible? For this reason; because in the natural self-consciousness a person is enclosed within himself and is radically opposed to every other person.”
*Taken from The Moral Idea of the Dogma of the Church.
Saint John of Damascus
From my lips in their defilement,
From my heart in its beguilement,
From my tongue which speaks not fair,
From my soul stained everywhere,
O my Jesus, take my prayer!
Spurn me not for all it says,
Not for words and not for ways,
Not for shamelessness endued!
Make me brave to speak my mood,
O my Jesus, as I would!
Or teach me, which I rather seek,
What to do and what to speak.
I have sinned more than she,
Who learning where to meet with Thee,
And bringing myrrh, the highest-priced,
Anointed bravely, from her knee,
Thy blessed feet accordingly,
My God, my Lord, my Christ!
As Thou saidest not ‘Depart’
To that suppliant from her heart,
Scorn me not, O Word, that art
The gentlest one of all words said!
But give Thy feet to me instead
That tenderly I may them kiss
And clasp them close, and never miss
With over-dropping tears, as free
And precious as that myrrh could be,
T’anoint them bravely from my knee!
Wash me with Thy tears: draw nigh me,
That their salt may purify me.
Thou remit my sins who knowest
All the sinning to the lowest –
Knowest all my wounds, and seest
All the stripes Thyself decreest;
Yea, but knowest all my faith,
Seest all my force to death,
Hearest all my wailings low,
That mine evil should be so!
Nothing hidden but appears
In Thy knowledge, O Divine,
O Creator, Saviour mine –
Not a drop of falling tears,
Not a breath of inward moan,
Not a heart-beat — which is gone!
* Translated by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Fr. Alexander Schmemann
In the present context, however, it is important for us to note that this “clericalization” of the Church, the reduction of “ministry” to the clergy alone and the consequent atrophy in the consciousness of the laity, led to the gradual demise of the sacrificial perception of the Church herself and of the sacrament of the Church-the Eucharist. The conviction that the priest serves on behalf of the laity and, so to speak, in their place led to the conviction that he serves for them, for the satisfaction of their “religious needs,” subordinate to their religious “demand.” We have already seen this in the example of the proskimide, where the extraction of particles during the commemoration came to be perceived not as the transformation by ourselves of ourselves and each other into a “sacrifice, living and well pleasing to God,” but as a method of satisfying certain personal needs-”for the health of…,” “for the repose of…” But this example could be extended to the entire life of church society, to all its psychology. The overwhelming majority of the laity (supported in this, alas, all too often by the clergy and the hierarchy) sense of Church as existing for themselves but do not sense themselves as the Church transformed and eternally being transformed into a sacrifice and offering to God, into participants in the sacrificial ministry of Christ.
*Taken from the Eucharist, pg. 116.
Fr. John Behr
The expression, ‘the Catholic Church,’ applies to the local church gathered in the unity of faith under one bishop celebrating one Eucharist. As such, the term ‘catholic’ does not denote a geographical universality, in the sense of the union of all local churches under one center, as parts of a universal whole. It is not so much an extensive property, as an intensive quality, a ‘fullness’ or ‘completeness’; and it is this precisely because it is the whole undivided body of Christ Himself that is present, when, in the unity of faith, the Eucharist is celebrated, making His Body, the Church: “wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church”. Jesus Christ Himself is the only one who makes the local Eucharistic gathering to be truly a Catholic Church.
However this must not be taken as an assertion of the superiority of the local church over the universal — to do so would be to deprive both of catholicity. Rather the two imply each other: the catholicity of the local Church is dependent upon its communion with other Churches. While each local Church is, in this way, catholic, each nevertheless remains unique and distinct, with her own particular characteristics (paralleling the Trinity).
*Taken from his talk on Orthodoxy.
Nativity of the Lord Jesus Christ
We speak, then, in principle of the incarnation of God in the person of Christ, of God’s becoming man. “We say that God has become man, not that man has become God.” When we refer to Christ, we do not define someone who is essentially a man to whom the Divinity has been united; there is no preexistent human hypostasis to which God the Word has been added. But God the Word “has framed” for himself living flesh “from the pure blood of the virgin”, being himself the hypostasis which is made incarnate by this extraordinary conception. The assumption of human nature by the Word followed the way in which nature as an existential event is given effect: It has as a beginning the womb of a woman. There is formed and grows the living flesh which reveals the hypostasis or the person. We speak of the incarnation of the Son and Word of God, of the second Person of the Holy Trinity. This does not mean that the Word acts independently of the other Persons and alone effects the assumption of humanity. The Church recognizes in the event of the incarnation of God the Word a common activity of the Persons of the Holy Trinity. Not that either the Father or the Spirit are in any way made incarnate with the Word. But while the distinction of the divine Hypostases is not removed and only the Hypostasis of the Word assumes human flesh, still the will and activity of the Trinity remains common to them even with respect to the incarnation— the uniqueness of God is preserved, the unity of ‘divine life’. This single totality of life and will and activity of the Divinity is summed up by Christ in his divine-human hypostasis: “for in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col 2:9).
We confess Christ to be perfect God, but also perfect man. The whole Divinity is united in his person with the whole humanity. Every property and every energy of the entire human nature has been assumed by Christ, nothing human has remained outside of this assumption. The initiative for the assumption is, however, in the one who assumes, who acts singly in respect of his hypostasis and triadicly in respect of will and grace. But what is assumed is not a passive factor in the assumption. God in becoming incarnate does not compel human nature, he does not use nature as a neutral material for realizing his will. Human nature is offered to be assumed by God by a free personal consent— the nature is offered entirely and its self-offering is effected uniquely (since nature exists and is expressed only personally): It is the consent of the Virgin Mary, the free acceptance on her part of the will of God, which makes possible the meeting of the divine will with the human in the event of the incarnation of the Son and Word. “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).
*Taken from Elements of Faith.
The Holy Trinity - Hospitality of Abraham
Atheism compels attention and impresses everyone by its massive diffusion. It is no longer the privilege of an enlightened minority, but expresses a norm common to all classes of society. A civilization has been consciously built on a refusal of God, or more precisely, on a negation of all dependence on any power beyond this world. In fact, science no longer has need of God as a hypothesis. Moreover, from the moral point of view, God seems not to be all-powerful since he does not suppress evil, or if he does not wish to do so, then he is not love. Built thus on a negation, atheism has no metaphysical content proper to itself and no constructive philosophy. Explicitly expressed, it still remains rare. Its dominant and widespread form is an atheism of fact, invertebrate but practical. Philosophic considerations intervene only afterward to justify attitudes or to provide an excuse. Its reasons are never truly rational, and they cannot be, for they fall short. Being of an empirical order, they are utilitarian and pragmatic. This explains why the problem at this level simply ceases to interest man. Since he is more concerned with economic and political questions, religious beliefs no longer mean anything to him. His attitude is strengthened by his often justified distrust of philosophers, who have abdicated and betrayed their social function by their own skepticism.
St. Paul knew well what he was doing when he centered his teaching on what immediately aroused a reaction from the men who relied on discursive reason. Indeed the incarnation is always a folly and a scandal for human thought. The latter in its historic criticism demythologizes and distinguishes between the historic Jesus and the Christ rigged out in the dogmas of faith. The archaic state of knowledge in past ages makes every scholar mistrustful and little inclined to take into account a so-called “revelation”. They find no certitude at the outset of the alleged event and, in every way, a truth buried in the centuries is unacceptable to the contemporary spirit that is interested only in the here and now. One must choose between verifiable facts and texts visibly originating in a myth. To the atheist, it is inconceivable, even offensive, that God should enter into time and confide his truth to a handful of obscure disciples and to the precarious transmission of texts, written twenty centuries ago. The life of Jesus shows only anecdotes and miscellaneous facts without any guarantee of objectivity. Can a contingent fact, scarcely remarked by historians, touch the heart of the man in the street in this 20th century? How can an event dated and fixed in time and space lay claim to an eternal value— the authority of God and the universal importance of the salvation of every man? There is here something monstrously out of proportion, even unbearable for critical reason. The man Jesus could very well have lived in Palestine. It is not so much his divinization by his disciples as the humanization of God that is declared impossible. A moral ideal, a philosophic concept could, if need be, receive the title of divine, but the philosopher refuses a God-man, refuses a God speaking as a human being and taking on the face of a man. Thus the authority of the apostolic witnesses crumbles away, and with it, that of the Word. Through lack of hearers, it is more than ever a voice crying in the historic wilderness. Like the wise men of Athens in former times, the man in the street now repulses all discourse with “We will hear thee again on this matter.”
*Taken from The Struggle With God.
The Three Holy Hierarchs - Sts. Basil the Great, John Chrysostom and Gregory the Theologian
God always was, and always is, and always will be. Or rather, God always Is. For Was and Will be are fragments of our time, and of changeable nature, but He is Eternal Being. And this is the Name that He gives to Himself when giving the Oracle to Moses in the Mount. For in Himself He sums up and contains all Being, having neither beginning in the past nor end in the future; like some great Sea of Being, limitless and unbounded, transcending all conception of time and nature, only adumbrated by the mind, and that very dimly and scantily, not by His Essentials, but by His Environment; one image being got from one source and another from another, and combined into some sort of presentation of the truth, which escapes us before we have caught it, and takes to flight before we have conceived it, blazing forth upon our Master-part, even when that is cleansed, as the lightning flash which will not stay its course, does upon our sight.
In order as I conceive by that part of it which we can comprehend to draw us to itself (for that which is altogether incomprehensible is outside the bounds of hope, and not within the compass of endeavor), and by that part of It which we cannot comprehend to move our wonder, and as an object of wonder to become more an object of desire, and being desired to purify, and by purifying to make us like God; so that when we have thus become like Himself, God may, to use a bold expression, hold converse with us as Gods, being united to us, and that perhaps to the same extent as He already knows those who are known to Him. The Divine Nature then is boundless and hard to understand; and all that we can comprehend of Him is His boundlessness; even though one may conceive that because He is of a simple nature He is therefore either wholly incomprehensible, or perfectly comprehensible. For let us further inquire what is implied by “is of a simple nature.” For it is quite certain that this simplicity is not itself its nature, just as composition is not by itself the essence of compound beings.
And when Infinity is considered from two points of view, beginning and end (for that which is beyond these and not limited by them is Infinity), when the mind looks to the depth above, not having where to stand, and leans upon phenomena to form an idea of God, it calls the Infinite and Unapproachable which it finds there by the name of Unoriginate. And when it looks into the depths below, and at the future, it calls Him Undying and Imperishable. And when it draws a conclusion from the whole it calls Him Eternal. For Eternity is neither time nor part of time; for it cannot be measured. But what time, measured by the course of the sun, is to us, that Eternity is to the Everlasting, namely, a sort of time-like movement and interval co-extensive with their existence.
*Taken from the Speech on Theophany.
