The co-inherence of Christ and his beloved disciple opens to their right-glorifying communion at the heart of Holy Orthodoxy, but the mystery remains hidden until wisdom unveils it, whose gaze and kiss embraces Christ in the Holy of Holies. Co-inherence is both a Christophanic and Trinitarian theophany but is also key to all the theophanic mysteries of love. Christ’s beloved bears witness… Read more »
The Bride of Christ is glorious in her uncreated energy, deifying all who gaze with her gaze, or return her kiss with her embrace. She is Christ’s wisdom in her compassionate love, glorious in her hallowing beauty. Wisdom is Christ in her, embracing her in the beauty of her glory, embracing us with her grace that glorifies his saints. Her… Read more »
Wisdom discerns the union of mercy and peace in the light of wisdom and glory. The mercy of ineffable openness and the peace of spontaneous presence both bear witness to indivisible oneness. The full spectrum of divine names and qualities is manifest in the revelation of glory, which is the revelation of the completeness of peace in the temporal mercy… Read more »
The Communion of Saints holds all things in common for the Common Good, because the glorification of saints looks back at the great revolution which turned everything round, as something already given, as grace already present, a cause for indescribable rejoicing. For the saints, there is no trace left of inequality, of oppression, of widening rifts between rich and poor,… Read more »
Holy Orthodoxy bears witness to right-glorification, but ‘philodoxy,’ love of glory, is rarely mentioned, because although vainglory, kenodoxy, loves glory, it does so in self-centred ways, whereas it is wisdom who loves glory in sound and wholesome ways. Since love of glory is wisdom’s ultimate concern, ‘philodoxy’ does not only mean love of one’s own opinions but wisdom’s love of glory… Read more »
‘Love is enough,’ for the void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter those lips and those eyes of the loved and the lover (William Morris: ‘Love is Enough,’ A poetic Romance in the form of a Lyric Masque, 1873). For Morris, as for the Song of Songs, ‘love is enough’ because its music of spheres is the song of angels… Read more »
Like poetic prophecy, the Song of Songs is lyrical wisdom poetry and like Hosea’s prophetic poetics of love, the Song offers us a wisdom poetry of love that employs lyrical love tropes to transfigure love. Poetic prophecy communicates wisdom mysteries of love’s ineffable glory, opening the human heart into transfiguring glory in the very heart of God. Mystical theology can… Read more »
The witness of the desert is heard in timeless stillness, HESYCHIA, giving Hesychast wisdom a timeless quality. The stages of the growth of spiritual maturation and restoration: purification, illumination and glorification, do appear to manifest in different tenses, purification anticipating illumination, glorification referring back to illumination and illumination to purification, but the sequential drama is more like a temporal play in… Read more »
Chalcedonian Christian wisdom lives and abides within Christ’s own unconfused indivisibility, the unconfused indivisibility of his divine-humanity, the unconfused indivisibility of his union with the Father as the Son, the unconfused indivisibility of the Spirit’s witness to the unconfused union and indivisible communion of the Father and the Son. This is the ineffable wisdom of the Song of Songs, the… Read more »
Christ embraces his Beloved in stillness, wedding his Beloved Bride, the Church, whose apostles testify to his resurrection, whose prophets unveil the Name and whose saints bear witness to glory in God’s God-centred glorification of God. Christ in our midst sings his Song of Songs that glorifies his Beloved in our midst. Desert wisdom is not a loveless exclusion but a passionate… Read more »