Suffering pierces the soul, opening a blessed wound of love revealing God at centre,’I AM,’ present in glory crying, ‘Glory to God, glorious in angels and saints!’ Desert wisdom remembers its oldest Name for God, ‘YHWH SABAOTH‘, Lord of Hosts, the ‘EHYEH‘ of the glorified ‘ELOHIM,’ the ‘I AM’ of angels in glory, the Name (SHEM) of the deified… Read more »
The glorified are hallowed by the Holy Name of God because in wisdom they glorify God’s Holy Name. The glorification that angels offer sustains creation by participating in the uncreated creative energies of wisdom and glory in the Name. The angelic music of glorification partakes in the ‘Amen’ that says ‘yes’ to the uncreated creativity of God, ‘yes’ to the one… Read more »
Glorified saints sing the Thrice Holy Hymn Isaiah heard in the Temple in BC 742, sung by six-winged Seraphim before the throne in heaven, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory’ (Isaiah 6:3). ‘Lord,’ here, names God’s Name, ‘EHYEH,’ ‘I AM,’ so the Thrice Holy Hymn glorifies God’s Name ‘I AM’… Read more »
Angels glorify God, inspired by wisdom that communicates God-centred glorification. Saints have tended to experience angels as messengers of God but angels transcend what they do as messengers by partaking in the light and grace of unceasing glorification. Angels belong to the invisible creation which Christ unites with our visible creation in his incarnation, a union of illumination and glorification… Read more »
The Holy Name ‘I AM’ is the pinnacle of paths, as we see when Jesus transmits its glory with wisdom in the words, ‘Before Abraham was, I AM’ (John 8:58). Uncreated glory is what Hesychast tradition lives as glorification of the Name, imparting joyous union of wisdom and glory. But it is also endurance of persecution for God’s Name’s sake,… Read more »
The Name of Christ ‘chrismates’ christians in three ways, as prophets who speak in the Name of the Spirit of Truth, as priests who offer themselves in their union with Christ’s healing sacrifice of himself on the Cross and as kings who partake in Christ’s witness to God’s sovereign victory over evil, reigning with Christ in the glory of his Father’s… Read more »
Mother Julian of Norwich was shown that love was our Lord’s meaning; ‘I AM,’ love’s glory, the ground of all our beseeching (Revelation of Love ch. 86). Like Dame Julian, desert wisdom questions the enduring meaning of being, searching out the hidden ground of uncreated, deifying grace. Prophecy transmits the Name so that prayer may receive its gracious gifts, opening… Read more »
In pure prayer, God whispers in the hidden garden of the heart, ‘I am I AM, thy God, turn and see!’ Prayer in the garden discovers God is ‘I AM,’ revealing God to us. My ‘me’ is not ‘I AM,’ usurping God at centre, because even when I become self-centred and fall from glory, God always actually remains ‘I AM’… Read more »
God unveils his face of wisdom when he reveals the glory of his presence through his Name, the experience of glory to which prophets and apostles bear witness that should never be confused with visionary apparitions of psychic phenomena or sensual perceptions of objectified appearances (2 Cor 3:18). Glory, being the uncreated energy of God, is not something that comes… Read more »
Name hallowing, (kiddush ha-shem) ascribes glory to God through his Holy Name ‘I AM,’ in and through whom there arises all that there is. God’s Kingdom comes when wisdom hallows the glory of God’s Name, wisdom always alight now in blessed union with glory forever present. Glorification hallows God’s Name above all names, the Name of ‘He who is, who was and… Read more »