The Gospel of grace reveals God in his Name, enlightening the eye of the heart in the Holy Spirit. Without the uncreated energy of the Holy Spirit, there would be no revelation of the Name, no gospel and no grace. There would be only the strain and stress of individual effort and struggle, subjection to clerical control and submission to clerical will to power. The timeless Gospel of inexhaustible grace communicates uncreated light and deifying glory to saints, not as reward for effort and struggle but as God’s glorious gift, shifting everything from worldly power to heavenly wisdom, opening to mysteries of glory in the Name. The culture of stillness in holy Orthodox Hesychasm abides in the glory of grace, not of self-obsessed struggle, but the ascetic orientation to neptic attention called for is costly. Awareness of God, awake in the heart, illumines the mind by uniting with God in the heart, in-breathing the Spirit’s discernment of the glory of grace. This is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that reveals God in uncreated light, opening the glory of heaven to sinners on earth, hallowing elders and saints.
Grace sustains the Gospel by revealing God in his Name, not by reverting to self-centred reliance on the unredeemed will, but by holy trust in God, who deifies sinners who turn and see. Holy saints do not despise sinners but welcome them into God’s realm of grace, that they may repent by living the life of grace as deifying glory. The culture of grace radically transforms those who turn and see God present and aware in his Name. The heaviness of pride shifts into the uncreated light of humility, so that instead of sinking into the depths of despair, wisdom rises into resurrection, delighting in the freedom of the Spirit. Awareness turns right round into the transforming presence of God, releasing insight and wisdom, rather than continuing to proliferate confusion and division. Glory preserves grace from dissipation, ensuring insight discerns the mystery that before was hidden, God’s realm of glory that completes chronological time in the fulness of eschatological time. The Gospel secures wisdom in the Name, guaranteeing the promised dispensation of grace, consummating the glory of eschatological completeness.
Thanksgiving acknowledges the miracle of grace by awakening to wisdom through wonder, wonder that does not take grace for granted but receives grace with infinite gratitude. The Holy Eucharist is the mystery of glory that begins with thanksgiving and ends in the deifying union of hallowing communion. The sacrament of holy Baptism initiates deep turning whilst the sacrament of holy Chrismation awakens profound seeing, sustaining wisdom in the glory of deification. Holy Orthodoxy is thanksgiving living from awakened wisdom, wisdom that loves glory as glory loves wisdom. Before there is institution, there is constitution by grace, then consummation by glory. These mysteries are not the exception but the rule when God reigns in the age to come. Gravity may struggle to soar with grace, but grace is infinite, out-soaring even angels. Who can comprehend what transcends comprehension? Who can anticipate what precedes imagination? Wisdom delights in the Gospel of infinite grace, rejoicing in the glory of the age to come.