Metropolitan John Zizioulas on Christian Communion

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.