The way of truth is eternal life for seers who see as they are seen, know as they are known, glorified by God through God in God, Holy Trinity revealing wisdom and the way of wisdom, wisdom’s truth and life: glorification. But the way was lost among those who read down wisdom to ways and means to acquire it, distancing union and communion. Elders long ago saw what was happening, so they transmitted the way of truth as living praxis and theoria, emptying ways back into the holy way and means back into living truth. This enabled a blessed few to hold wisdom steady in periods of degeneration and retrogression, keeping faith with wisdom and glory through glorification. When extremes reverted to pathological extremism, heresies crept in that extinguished wisdom among many, leaving a few to stand steadfast in wisdom. Elders knew the Holy Liturgy always remembers to stand steadfast in wisdom, even to this day, although they were also well aware that it was necessary to remind the faithful so to do.
The way of glorification still gives Holy Orthodoxy its name, although many persist in reading this down to conventional ways and means that console sinners rather than transform them into saints. The way of glorification relies upon the Holy Spirit of truth to abide in the divine life of wisdom with steadfast trust, not on sophisticated sophistry or scholastic sophistication, because it is the Spirit who bears witness to Christ in communion with the Father of uncreated light. Wisdom’s holy witness regenerates the tradition in the glory of the Holy Trinity, thereby discerning the glory of the age to come. The Spirit’s discernment raises saints to realms of glory where angels continue to abide in ineffable peace, tracing visible heavens back into invisible glory. Christ unceasingly traces these invisible heavens back into the uncreated grace that creates them, revealing the glory of grace without presumption or pride.
The way of truth still glorifies God at centre in the midst, releasing passions back into long-suffering love and peace. Seeing as they are seen, seers know as they are known, glorified by God, through God in God the Holy Trinity, awakening oneness of glory to ineffable openness. It is hallowing glorification that inspires glorification at the heart of Holy Orthodoxy, releasing fixations into liberating freedom. Conventional believers frequently read liberating freedom down to some sort of liberalism but liberating freedom has nothing to do with liberalism, any more than the tradition of glorification is any sort of traditionalism. Conventional labels fall away when wisdom dawns, curing sinners who become liberated, glorified saints. The way of glorification cannot be labelled or fossilised in concepts, any more than God can be grasped by conceptual thought rather than experienced in the Spirit by the heart. The way is truth precisely because truth is life, life of glory lived by wisdom in glorification, the flowering of the purified and illumined heart.
IN MEMORIAM: Metropolitan Kallistos, Hesychast scholar and Archbishop, who died at 1.00am this morning in Oxford, aged 88.