The Holy Spirit crowns the eye of the heart as it enthrones God in the heart with uncreated glory, initiating glorification through purification and illumination. Wisdom grounds glorification in purity of heart enlightened by the Holy Spirit, whereas fear contracts and hardens the heart, subverting the glory of grace. Love embraces fear with the kiss of peace, transforming terror into trust, empowering gratitude that co-operates with grace, leading to glorification. Holy Orthodoxy is living experience of grace transfiguring wisdom with glory, experience that transfigures sinners into saints. Trust rests in peace, overcoming death by death through resurrection, ascending into glory with Christ, experiencing glorification. Grace is worthy of whole-hearted trust, crowning the eye of the heart securely grounded within the throne of grace. Ancient throne mysteries did not die but resurrected in Christ as mysteries of glorification, giving Holy Orthodoxy its doxological name. Glorification itself is timeless in its original glory, which comes to meet the saints as their timeless future, restoring falls from grace to original glory as eschatological glorification.
The holy angelic estate was always ‘winged’ because it deified the saints, partaking in the Spirit’s unceasing prayer of the heart, sustaining glorification. The Spirit bequeaths the undying life of wisdom conjoined with glory in the Bridal Chamber of the Holy of Holies, awakening the wonders of wisdom, discerning the mysteries of glory. Conventional religion persecutes wisdom just as it crucified Christ, obscuring glory with vanity and pride. Christ, however, left us God’s Name, far older than time, well able to overcome incompleteness with the glory of completeness. In these times of war, Orthodoxy is once again martyred by the parodies of Orthodoxy, parodies that reduce it to raging nationalism, armed to the teeth but powerless to overcome the resistance of martyrs. True Orthodoxy was always hidden in the glory of its martyrs, refusing to collude with the ruling powers of dictatorial repression. Vanity vainly imposes vainglory in vain, because glory is uncreated and creatively renews Orthodoxy from within.
Wisdom surpasses the clever machinations of intelligence and counter-intelligence, overcoming repressive militarism in the name of peace, sustaining enlightening glorification. Grace vindicates wisdom with prophecy through prayer, emptying hells by opening heavens. The beauty of holiness communicates love’s glory, granting love of enemies whilst resisting the enemy’s mindless violence. The heresy of ‘Russian innocence’ did not pervert Saint Paisios or the Baal Shem Tov, Ukrainians who bore witness to the glory of the Name, Paisios of Poltava, Kyiv and Moldova in Holy Orthodoxy and the Besht of Mazabush south-west of Kyiv, in Jewish Hassidism. According to Saint Seraphim, all have fallen short of glory but grace saves all without exception, not just those who believe in the heresy of axiomatic ‘Russian innocence’ or those who attack Ukraine to impose Russian autocracy. It is true that the Tsar was an autocrat and that Russia often suffered from the repressions of dictatorial rule, but this did not harden into a heresy until Ivan Ilyin and Putin. Holy Orthodoxy diagnosed and condemned the heresy in 1872 but Russian and Ukrainian martyrs bear witness to the healing grace that glorifies and crowns the heart.