AD MAJOREM GLORIAM DEI: SOLI DEO GLORIA The heavens declare the glory of God by revealing an eternal dance of love round the grace of love that draws everything into transcendence of time and space. This dance of love bears witness to the Spirit’s… Read more »
Is Christmas a dangerous blasphemy? Those who shouted for Christ to be crucified thought it was. Was Christ’s incarnation a disastrous idolatry? Many monotheists thought so, but they were confused by what they saw as his confusion. Was his crucifixion proof that he was a Jewish heretic? In which case, what did his resurrection prove? Was his ascension really his disappearance… Read more »
In Christ, death opens into the uncreated light of glory, because Christ’s death on the Cross overcomes death by death, unveiling the light of glory. Given death opens into uncreated light that overcomes death, revealing uncreated glory, it is an open entrance into realms of light and glory, not what fear dreads. Faith, hope and love know that although fear arises, death… Read more »
Holy Orthodoxy remembers Pentecost first of all as the descent of the Holy Spirit with tongues of fire, then as the revelation of the Holy Trinity, then as the Spirit-filled gathering of all in the Holy Eucharist, initiating hallowed communion in which all things were held in common for the Common Good (Acts 2: 42-47). For desert seers, the revelation of… Read more »
The Spirit’s unceasing prayer in the heart glorifies the Father with the Son, ascribing glory to God in the midst of all falls from glory. It does not wallow in the falling gravity of endless falls, but undoes the power of falling by reversing it in accordance with the ascending gravity of heaven. The Spirit proceeds from the Father to abide… Read more »
The consummation of Biblical prophecy in the Book of Revelation embraces the death, resurrection and ascension of the slaughtered Lamb at the heart of his glorifying union with the Father, putting to death, in the heart of Christ, the universal fall from grace. Raising souls from death to eternal life in the resurrecting heart of Christ, saints are deified in the… Read more »
In his Conversation with Nikolay Motovilov, c1830-31, Saint Seraphim of Sarov said that the true aim of Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God, and means to this end are good only if they are done for Christ’s sake and bring us the grace and fruits of the Holy Spirit. It is the grace of the Holy… Read more »
Patristic Orthodoxy centres on Christ’s divine humanity as the living heart of human redemption and deification. Saints Irenaeus, Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzus and Gregory Nyssa all bear witness that God became human so that humanity may be deified. For Patristic wisdom, Christ’s birth, life, transmission of gospel wisdom, death, resurrection, ascension and glorification, together save and deify humanity, not the Cross of… Read more »
Listening to the Spirit’s witness to wisdom, she reminds us: The Lord of glory was heard to say, ‘Why callest thou me good? None is good save one, that is, God alone (Luke 18:19). In a similar way, perhaps, the Lady of glory may be heard to say: Why do you call me Great Lady, Lady Wisdom, Lady of the Temple, there is… Read more »
The blood of red martyrdom is the life-blood of Holy Orthodoxy, the costly glorification that gives life to the tradition in the light of the Name. The blood of white martyrdom, on the other hand, is the life-blood of Hesychast solitude, the life of desert silence, the beauty of hidden stillness. Both martyrdoms bear witness to Christ in the Spirit of the… Read more »