Ecclesiastical Hierarchy 1

That our hierarchy, O most holy of holy children, is of the inspired, divine, and deifying knowledge, activity, and perfection, we must demonstrate from the supramundane and most holy Scriptures to those who, through hierarchic mysteries and traditions, have been initiated into the rite of the sacred mystagogy.

But take heed that you do not profane the holy of holies; rather revere the things of the hidden God, honouring them with intellectual and invisible knowings, keeping them unshared and undefiled from the uninitiated, and communicating them in a manner befitting the sacred, with sacred illumination, to the holy alone among the holy.

For thus, as theology has handed down to us its devotees, even Jesus himself, the most divine Mind beyond being, the source, essence, and most divine power of all hierarchy, sanctification, and divine working, more manifestly and more intellectually illumines the blessed beings superior to us and assimilates them, according to their power, to his own light; and to us he draws together our many diversities by the love of the beautiful that stretches up toward him and lifts us up, and having perfected us into a uniform and divine life, habit, and activity, he graciously bestows the power of the divine priesthood. From this, coming to the holy activity of the priesthood, we ourselves become nearer to the beings above us by assimilation, according to our power, to the steadfast and unchanging firmness of their sacred establishment; and thus, looking up to the blessed and most divine radiance of Jesus, and reverently beholding whatever it is possible to see, and being illumined by the knowledge of these visions, we shall be able, consecrated to the mystic knowledge, to become light-formed and deiform consecrators, perfected and perfecting.

Now what the hierarchy of the angels and archangels is, and of the supramundane principalities, authorities, powers, dominions, and divine thrones—or of the beings ranked with the thrones, which theology hands down as being directly and ever about God and with God, naming them in the Hebrew tongue Cherubim and Seraphim—you will find by examining the holy orders and divisions of their arrangements and hierarchies, in which we, not worthily but as far as was possible, and as the theology of the most holy Scriptures expounded, have hymned the hierarchy that pertains to them.

Yet this much it is necessary to say: that both that hierarchy and every hierarchy, including the one now being hymned by us, has one and the same power throughout the whole hierarchic enterprise—namely, that the hierarch himself, as his being, proportion, and order allow, should be perfected according to divine things and deified, and should impart to those below, to each according to worth, of the sacred deification engendered in him from God; and that those below should follow their superiors, lifting up the lesser toward what lies ahead, while some both advance and, so far as possible, lead others; and that through this inspired and hierarchic harmony each one should partake, as far as he is able, of the truly Existent, Beautiful, Wise, and Good.

But the beings and orders above us, of which I have already made sacred mention, are incorporeal, and the hierarchy that pertains to them is intelligible and supramundane; whereas we behold our own hierarchy, in a manner proportionate to ourselves, multiplied by the variety of sensible symbols, by which we are hierarchically led up, in a measure suited to us, to the uniform deification—to God and divine virtue.

They, as intellects, understand according to what is permitted them, while we are led up, so far as possible, by sensible images to divine contemplations. And to speak truly, there is one thing which all the uniform desire; yet they partake not unitarily of that same and one Existent, but as the divine balances distribute the allotment to each according to worth.

As far as it is possible to speak, I shall attempt this, having invoked Jesus, the source and perfection of all hierarchies.

Every hierarchy, according to the venerable character of our sacred tradition, is the whole account of the sacred things subordinate to it—the most universal summation, as it were, of the sacred things of this or that particular hierarchy.

Our hierarchy, then, is said to be, and is, the comprehensive enterprise of all the sacred things that pertain to it, in accordance with which the divine hierarch, being perfected, will possess participation in all the most sacred things that pertain to him, as one named after the hierarchy.

For just as one who says 'hierarchy' has named collectively, all together, the ordered arrangement of all the sacred things, so one who says 'hierarch' designates the inspired and divine man, the one knowledgeable in all sacred knowledge, in whom the whole hierarchy that pertains to him is purely accomplished and known.

The source of this hierarchy is the fount of life, the essence of goodness, the one cause of beings—the Trinity, from which, through goodness, comes both being and well-being to the things that are.

To this most divine blessedness beyond all things—the triadic, the Monad, the truly Existent—the will (which is unattainable to us but knowable to itself) is the rational salvation of the beings both at our level and above us.

And this salvation cannot come about otherwise than by the deification of those who are saved.

And deification is the assimilation to and union with God, so far as is attainable.

And this end is common to every hierarchy:

the unceasing love toward God and the things of God, sacredly performed in an inspired and unitary manner; and before this, the complete and irreversible departure from things contrary; the knowledge of beings as they are; the vision and knowledge of sacred truth; the inspired participation in the uniform perfection; the feasting of contemplation upon the One itself, so far as attainable, which intelligibly nourishes and deifies everyone who is stretched up toward it.

Let us say, then, that the most divine blessedness, the deity by nature, the source of deification from which comes the being-deified to those deified, in divine goodness bestowed the hierarchy for the salvation and deification of all rational and intellectual beings. To the supramundane and blessed ranks it gave it in a more immaterial and intellectual way (for God does not move them toward divine things from without, but, with their being intellectually illumined from within in a pure and immaterial radiance, He gives them the most divine willing); but to us it has bestowed, in a variety and multiplicity of divisible symbols, that which was given to those ranks unitarily and in a condensed way, drawn from the God-given Scriptures so far as is attainable to us.

For the substance of our hierarchy is the God-given Scriptures.

And we call most venerable those Scriptures which were bestowed upon us by our inspired sacred initiators in holy-written and theological tablets; and likewise all that our leaders were initiated into by those same sacred men through a more immaterial initiation—already, in a way, neighbouring upon the heavenly hierarchy—from mind to mind by means of a bodily yet more immaterial word, apart from writing. Nor did the inspired hierarchs hand down even these things into the common domain of sacred ministry through uncovered conceptions, but in sacred symbols.

For not everyone is sacred, nor, as the Scriptures say, does knowledge belong to all.

Necessarily, then, the first leaders of our hierarchy, themselves filled from the superessential Deity with the sacred gift, and sent forth by the divine goodness to bring it onward to those who came after, and themselves loving ungrudgingly, as divine men, the uplifting and deification of those after them—they handed down to us, by their written and unwritten initiations, the supercelestial things in sensible images, the condensed in variety and multiplicity, the divine in human terms, the immaterial in material things, the superessential in things at our level, according to the sacred ordinances given to us: not only for the sake of the unhallowed (for whom it is not even lawful to touch the symbols), but also because our hierarchy is itself, as I said, in a way symbolic and proportionate to ourselves, needing sensible things for our more divine uplifting from them to the intelligible.

Yet the meanings of the symbols stand unveiled to the divine initiators of the sacred rites, whom it is not lawful to bring forth among those still being perfected as knowers; for those who, by God-given tradition, are the lawgivers of sacred things arranged the hierarchy by the steadfast and unconfused orders of the arrangements, and by the proportionate and sacred apportionments of what befits each according to worth.

(for this is reverent of them): that of all the higher hierarchic sacred discourse you shall impart nothing to another save to those deiform sacred initiators of your own rank, and that you shall persuade them to agree, according to hierarchic ordinance, to touch pure things purely, and to communicate the things of the divine workings only to the divine, the perfective things to the perfect, and the all-holy things to the holy. To you, among other hierarchic gifts, I have imparted this inspired gift also.

It has, then, been said by us sacredly that this is the goal of our hierarchy:

our assimilation to and union with God, so far as is attainable.

And this, as the divine Scriptures teach, we shall attain solely by the loves and sacred performances of the most venerable commandments.

For 'he who loves me,' it says, 'will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him.' What, then, is the source of the sacred performance of the most venerable commandments—that which most fittingly shapes the dispositions of our souls for the reception of the other sacred discourses and performances, the paving of our way to the uplifting toward the supercelestial allotment?

It is the tradition of our sacred and most divine regeneration.

For as our renowned leader said, the very first motion of the mind toward divine things is the love of God, and the most primal procession of sacred love toward the performance of the divine commandments is the most ineffable bringing-into-being of our being in a divine manner.

For if to be in a divine manner is the divine birth, then one who has not even his very existence inspired could never know any of the God-given things, nor could he ever perform them.

Or is it not the case that we too (we speak in human terms) must first exist, and then perform what is ours—since that which is in no way existent has neither motion nor existence, whereas that which somehow is performs or undergoes only those things in which it is by nature?

But this, I think, is clear.

Next, let us contemplate the divine symbols of the divine birth.

And let no one uninitiated come to the sight.

For it is not without danger to look directly, with weak pupils, at the sun-wrought rays, nor is it without harm to lay hold of things above us—if indeed the hierarchy according to the Law is true, which turned away Uzziah because he laid hands on sacred things, and Korah because he laid hands on things above him, and Nadab because he made unhallowed use of things proper to himself.

The hierarch, ever wishing by assimilation to God that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of truth, proclaims to all the truly good tidings:

that God is gracious to those on earth, being good out of his own and natural goodness; that he deigned, through love of mankind, to come to us himself; and by union with himself, like fire, to assimilate to himself the things that have been united, according to their own fitness for deification.

'For as many as received him, to them he gave authority to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh, but of God.' Now he who has loved the sacred participation in these truly supramundane things, coming to one of the initiated, persuades him to be his guide on the way to the hierarch, and himself promises to follow wholly the things that will be handed down to him, and asks that he undertake the oversight both of his introduction and of his whole subsequent life.

But the other, sacredly longing for that man's salvation, yet measuring the human against the loftiness of the matter, is suddenly beset by awe and perplexity.

Nevertheless, in the end, he agrees in a good-formed manner to do what is asked; and taking the man, he leads him to the one named after the hierarchy.

And the hierarch, receiving him with gladness, as the sheep upon the shoulders, first reverences, on behalf of the two men, the one beneficent Source by intellectual thanksgiving and bodily prostration—the Source by which the called are called and the saved are saved.

Having gathered them, in thanksgiving for the divine goodness, into the sacred space, he first chants—together with all the fullness of the church—a certain hymn set down in the Scriptures; and after this, having reverenced the sacred table, he comes forward to the man who is present and inquires of him what he comes seeking.

And when the man, in a God-loving manner, has accused—according to the tradition of his sponsor—godlessness, ignorance of the truly beautiful, and inactivity in the inspired life, and asks through the hierarch's sacred mediation to attain God and the things of God, the hierarch testifies to him that his approach must become whole, as to a wholly perfect and blameless God; and having expounded to him the inspired manner of life and asked whether he will so live, after his confession he places his hand upon the man's head, and having sealed him, commands the priests to enroll the man and his sponsor.

When they have been enrolled, he makes a sacred prayer; and when the whole church has joined in completing it with him, he unbinds and disrobes the man through the ministers.

Then, having set him facing west, with his hands thrust out toward that same averted region, he bids him three times to breathe out against Satan, and furthermore to confess the words of renunciation; and three times having testified the renunciation to him, when he has confessed it three times, he turns him toward the east, and bidding him look up to heaven and stretch out his hands, commands him to enlist with Christ and with all the God-given sacred discourses.

And when he has done this also, the hierarch testifies to him again three times the confession; and when the man has again confessed three times, the hierarch, having prayed over him, blesses him and lays his hand upon him.

And when the ministers have completely disrobed him, the priests bring the holy oil of anointing; and the hierarch, having begun the anointing by sealing him three times with the cross, hands the man over for the rest to the priests to be anointed over his whole body, while he himself goes to the mother of adoption (the font). Hallowing its water with sacred invocations, and perfecting it with three cruciform pourings of the all-holy myron, and with equal-numbered applications of the myron uttering forth the sacred melody of the inspiration of the God-possessed prophets, he commands that the man be brought forward.

And when one of the priests has proclaimed from the register both him and his sponsor, the man is led by the priests to the hand of the hierarch upon the water, led by the hand; and the hierarch, standing above, when the priests have again called out aloud over the hierarch, by the water, the name of the one being perfected, baptizes him three times, with the three immersions and emersions of the one being perfected, invoking the threefold subsistence of the divine blessedness.

And the priests, taking him, deliver him to his sponsor and guide of his introduction; and together with him, having clothed the one being perfected in a fitting garment, they lead him again to the hierarch.

And the hierarch, having sealed the man with the most God-working myron, declares him thenceforth a partaker of the most sacredly-perfective Eucharist.

Having accomplished these things, from the procession toward secondary things he stretches up again to the contemplation of the first, as one who at no time or in any way is turned aside to any alien thing apart from what is his own, but is continually and ever transposed from divine things to divine things by the most divine Spirit.

Such, then, is, as in symbols, the rite of the sacred divine birth, having nothing unseemly or unhallowed, nor anything of the sensible images, but enigmas worthy of divine contemplation, imaged forth in natural and human-befitting mirrors.

For in what would it appear to err, when—the more divine word concerning the things performed being kept silent—it sacredly transacts the good life of the one approaching by persuasion and God-spoken discourse, and in a more bodily manner announces to him the cleansing-away of all evil at once, through a virtuous and divine life, by means of the natural cleansing through water?

signifying the cleansing-away enigmatically by the whole body's being cleansed naturally through water.

But let this be, for the imperfect, an introductory soul-guiding—distinguishing, as is right, the hierarchic and uniform from the multitude, and measuring out the harmonious uplifting to the orders in their several degrees; while we, looking up by sacred ascents to the sources of the things performed, and being sacredly initiated into them, shall come to know of what characters the impressions are, and of what unseen things the images.

For, as has been clearly set forth in the treatise 'Concerning the Intelligible and the Sensible,' the sensibly sacred things are likenesses of the intelligible, and a hand-leading and way to them, while the intelligible are the source and knowledge of the hierarchic things that are according to sense.

Let us say, then, that the goodness of the divine blessedness, ever in the same way and likewise possessing the beneficent rays of its own light, spreads them ungrudgingly upon all the intellectual eyes.

And if the self-determining free will of the intellectual beings should withdraw itself from the intelligible light, closing its eyes by love of evil to the powers naturally implanted in it for being illumined, it is deprived of the light present to it—a light which has not withdrawn, but which shines upon it even as it grows dim-sighted and turns away, running toward it in a good-formed manner.

And if it should presume rashly to leap beyond the bounds of the visible measure given to it, and to look directly at the rays beyond its own sight, the light will do nothing contrary to the things of light; but the being, casting itself imperfectly upon perfect things, would neither attain the things unsuited to it, and, disorderly disdaining the measure given, would fail through its own fault.

Yet, as I said, the divine light is ever, in a beneficent way, spread out before the intellectual eyes; and it is possible for them to lay hold of it as present, since it is ever most ready for the God-befitting imparting of what is its own.

To this imitation the divine hierarch is conformed, spreading ungrudgingly upon all the light-formed rays of his inspired teaching, and being most ready, in a God-imitating manner, to illumine the one who approaches—using neither envy nor any unhallowed wrath over the former apostasy or excess, but ever in an inspired manner illumining hierarchically those who approach by his own light-leadings, in good order and rank and proportion to each one's fitness for sacred things.

But if the divine is the source of sacred good order, according to which the sacred intellects are knowers of themselves, then he who runs back to the visible nature proper to himself will at first see what he himself is, and will receive this as a first sacred gift from looking up toward the light.

And he who has well examined his own things with dispassionate eyes will depart from the lightless recesses of ignorance; and being himself still imperfect for the most perfect union with and participation in God, he will not at once desire it, but little by little—through his own first things to things yet prior, and through these to the most primal—and being perfected, he will be led up in order and sacredly to the most divine summit.

An image of this well-ordered and sacred order is the reverent modesty of the one approaching, and the knowledge of his own condition, having the sponsor as guide on the way to the hierarch.

And the one thus led up, the divine blessedness receives into participation in itself, and imparts to him of its own light, as it were a certain sign, making him inspired and a sharer in the allotment of the inspired and in sacred ranking. Of these things a sacred symbol is the seal granted by the hierarch to the one approaching, and the salvific enrollment by the priests, which enrolls him among the saved and dedicates him, together with his sponsor, to sacred remembrances—since, of the life-giving journey toward truth, the one is a true lover and fellow-follower of an inspired guide, while the other is the unerring hand-leader, by God-given guidances, of the one who follows.

But it is not possible to partake at once of things utterly contrary, nor for one who has had some communion with the One to possess divided lives, if he holds fast to the firm participation in the One; rather, he must be free and unranked in all the divisions of what departs from the uniform.

The tradition, sacredly hinting at this, having stripped off from the one approaching his former life, as it were, and having loosed him as far as the last attachments belonging to it, sets him naked and unshod, looking toward the west, and by the thrusting-out of his hands renouncing communion with lightless evil, and as it were breathing out the disposition of unlikeness engendered in him, and confessing the total renunciations of what is contrary to the deiform.

Thus, having become utterly free and uncommunicating with these, the tradition transfers him toward the east, announcing that his standing and looking-up in the divine light will be pure in the complete departure from evil, and graciously, in a truth-loving manner, accepting his sacred confessions of total inclination toward the One, now that he has become uniform.

But it is somehow clear, I think, to those knowledgeable in hierarchic things, that by the continual, intense stretchings toward the One, and by the total mortifications and non-existences of things contrary, the intellectual faculties hold fast the unchangeableness of the deiform habit.

For one must not only withdraw from all evil, but also be manfully unsoftened and undismayed, ever against the ruinous relapse toward it, and never come to a cessation of the sacred love of truth, but continually and eternally stretch up toward it as far as possible, ever sacredly transacting the uplifting toward the more perfect things of the Deity.

And you see the exact images of these things in the things performed hierarchically.

For the deiform hierarch begins the sacred anointing, and the priests under him accomplish the sacred performance of the anointing, calling forth the one being perfected, in figure, to the sacred contests; in which, being placed under Christ as the steward of the contest—since as God he is the maker of the contest, and as wise he has laid down its laws, and as good he has wrought fitting prizes for the victors—and, what is yet more divine,

since as good he had come to be among the athletes, sacredly contending together with them for their freedom and victory against the dominion of death and corruption—the one being perfected will joyfully enter upon the contests as divine, and will abide by the legislations of the Wise One, and according to them will contend without transgression toward the hope of the good prizes, holding firmly, ranked under the good Lord and leader of the contest; and having set foot upon the divine traces of the First of athletes, who through goodness, by his God-imitating contests, wrestled down the activities and existences contrary to deification, he dies together with Christ—to speak mystically—to sin, according to baptism.

And consider with me intelligently with how great fitness the sacred things hold their symbols.

For since death, in our case, is not the non-existence of the substance, as it has seemed to others, but the separation of things that were united, leading the soul into what is invisible to us—the soul becoming formless as in deprivation of body, and the body, as covered in earth or vanishing from the human form by some other of the bodily alterations, being made invisible—fittingly the total covering by water has been taken up as an image of death and of the formless entombment.

The symbolic teaching, then, initiates the one being sacredly baptized, by the three immersions in the water, to imitate, so far as is attainable to men in the God-imitating, the most divine death of the three-day-and-night entombment of Jesus the Life-giver—in which, according to the mysterious and hidden tradition of the Scripture, the ruler of this world found nothing.

Next they cast light-formed garments upon the one being perfected.

For by the manful and deiform impassibility toward things contrary, and by the intense inclination toward the One, the unordered is set in order and the formless is given form, made radiant by the wholly light-formed life.

And the perfective anointing of the myron makes the one perfected fragrant.

For the sacred perfection of the divine birth unites the things perfected to the most divine Spirit.

But the intelligibly fragrance-making and perfection-working visitation, being most ineffable, I leave to be intellectually known by those deemed worthy of the sacred and God-working communion of the divine Spirit according to the mind.

And at the end of all, the hierarch calls the one perfected to the most sacred Eucharist, and imparts to him the communion of the perfective mysteries.

But it is well that we have made mention of this rite, which it is not lawful for me, in passing it by, to hymn any other of the hierarchic things before it.

For it is, according to our renowned leader, a rite of rites; and one must, before all others, having set it forth in sacred writing from the inspired and (according to the Scriptures) hierarchic knowledge, be led up to the sacred contemplation of it by the most divine Spirit.

And first let us sacredly contemplate this: why, namely, that which is common also to the other hierarchic rites has been ascribed pre-eminently to it above the rest, and has been named uniformly 'communion' and 'synaxis,' since it gathers each sacred-perfective enterprise and our divided lives into a uniform deification, and, by the deiform conjoining of the divided, bestows the communion and union with the One.

And we say that, in the participations of the other hierarchic symbols, the perfecting comes from this rite's most divine and perfective gifts.

For it is scarcely possible for any hierarchic rite to be accomplished without the most divine Eucharist, in summation, sacredly working the gathering toward the One of the one perfected in each particular thing performed, and, by the God-given gift of the perfective mysteries, perfecting his communion with God.

If, then, each of the hierarchic rites, being incomplete, will not perfect our communion and synaxis with the One, and is deprived even of being a rite through its incompleteness, while the end and summation for every one is the imparting of the most divine mysteries to the one being perfected—fittingly the hierarchic understanding has found for it a proper name from the truth of the things themselves.

And thus too the sacred rite of the divine birth, since it imparts the first light and is the source of all the divine illuminations, we hymn from the one perfected by the true appellation of 'illumination' (photisma).

For even though it is common to all the hierarchic rites to impart sacred light to those being perfected, yet this rite granted me the first seeing, and through its most primal light I am led by the light toward the contemplation of the other sacred things.

Having said these things, let us examine and behold hierarchically, in each particular, the exact sacred performance and contemplation of the most holy rite.

The hierarch, having performed a sacred prayer at the divine altar, beginning from the very act of censing, goes over the whole compass of the sacred space.

And returning again to the divine altar, he begins the sacred melody of the psalms, the whole ecclesiastical arrangement chanting along with him the psalmic sacred discourse.

Next, through the ministers, follows the reading of the holy-written tablets; and after these the catechumens go outside the sacred compass, and with them those under demonic energy and those in penitence; while there remain those worthy of the sight and communion of the divine things.

And of the ministers, some stand by the gates of the sanctuary, which are shut, others perform some other thing of their own order, while the elect of the liturgical arrangement, together with the priests, set forth upon the divine altar the sacred bread and the cup of blessing, after the universal hymnody has been confessed beforehand by the whole fullness of the church.

Upon this the divine hierarch performs a sacred prayer and announces the holy peace to all; and when all have greeted one another, the mystical recitation of the sacred diptychs is accomplished.

And when the hierarch and the priests have washed their hands with water, the hierarch takes his place in the midst of the divine altar, and around him stand, with the priests, only the elect of the ministers.

And the hierarch, having hymned the sacred divine workings, performs the most divine things, and brings before the eyes the things hymned through the sacredly set-forth symbols; and having shown the gifts of the divine workings, he himself comes to their sacred communion, and exhorts the others.

—as he is led up hierarchically in the purity of the deiform habit.

For the most sacred odes and readings of the Scriptures expound to them the teaching of a virtuous life, and before this the complete cleansing-away of corruptive evil; while the most divine, common, and peaceful imparting of the one and same bread and cup legislates for them an inspired conformity of manner, as for those fed at one table, and leads them to the sacred remembrance of the most divine supper and arch-symbol of the things performed—according to which the very Maker of the symbols most justly excludes the one who did not sup with him sacredly and conformably upon the sacred things, teaching reverently and in a God-befitting way that the true approach to divine things in habit grants to those who approach the communion that is according to their likeness to them.

These things, then, as I said, well delineated at the forecourts of the inner sanctuaries, and left sufficient for contemplation by those still imperfect, let us leave aside, and let us enter from the effects to the causes, in accordance with our sacred synaxis; and, with Jesus shedding light upon it, we shall behold the comely contemplation of the intelligible things, manifestly making to gleam forth the blessed beauty of the archetypes.

But, O most divine and sacred rite, having uncovered the symbolic vestments of the enigmas wrapped about you, be shown to us far-shiningly, and fill our intellectual eyes full of uniform and unveiled light.

For the most divine blessedness above all things, even though by divine goodness it proceeds into the communion of the sacred things that partake of it, yet it does not come outside its essentially unmoved standing and establishment, but illumines all the deiform proportionately, while it is truly about itself and is in no way moved away from its own selfsameness.

Likewise the divine rite of the synaxis, even though, having a uniform, simple, and condensed source, it is by love of mankind multiplied into the sacred variety of the symbols and proceeds to the whole of hierarchic imagery, yet uniformly it is again gathered from these into its own monad and unifies those who are sacredly led up to it.

In the same deiform manner the divine hierarch, even though he brings down his uniform hierarchic knowledge, in a good-formed way, to those below, using the multitudes of the sacred enigmas, yet again, as absolute and ungraspable by the lesser, he is restored without diminution to his own source; and having made his intellectual entrance into the One of himself, he sees purely the uniform principles of the things performed, making the end of his love-of-mankind procession toward secondary things to be the more divine return to the first.

And the psalmic sacred discourse, being conjoined with almost all the hierarchic mysteries, could not be detached from the most hierarchic of all.

...whether [the holy Scripture] expounded the manner of life and sacred teaching, or the hidden and mystical contemplation of the beloved and divinely-uttering one among the disciples, or the supramundane theology of Jesus, to those fit for deification, and rooted it together with the sacred and deiform uplifting of the rites; while the sacred writing of the divine odes, having as its aim to hymn all the theologies and divine workings and to praise the sacred discourses and sacred performances of the divine men, makes a universal ode and narration of the divine things, producing a proper habit, for the reception and imparting of every hierarchic rite, in those who sacredly discourse it in an inspired manner.

When, therefore, the comprehensive hymnody of the all-sacred things has harmoniously disposed the dispositions of our souls toward the things that are to be sacredly performed a little later, and by the unison of the divine odes has legislated like-mindedness—toward the divine things and toward ourselves and one another—as in one concordant choir of the sacred, then the things abbreviated and rather shaded over in the intellectual psalmic discourse are amplified, through more numerous and clearer images and recitations, in the most sacred readings of the holy-written compositions.

In these the one who sees sacredly will see the uniform and one inspiration, as moved by one and the same most divine Spirit.

Whence, fittingly, in due order, after the more ancient tradition the New Testament is proclaimed, of the inspired and hierarchic order showing forth, I think, this: that the one foretold the divine workings of Jesus that were to be, while the other accomplished them; and that the one wrote the truth in images, while the other showed it present.

For the perfective accomplishment according to the latter confirmed the truth of the former's pre-proclamations; and the divine working is the summation of theology.

Of these, some, wholly un-trumpeted as to the sacred rites, do not even behold the images, having shamelessly repudiated the salvific initiation of the divine birth, and having ruinously cried out against the Scriptures: 'I do not wish to know your ways.'

But the catechumens, those under demonic energy, and those in penitence, the ordinance of the holy hierarchy permits indeed to hearken to the psalmic sacred discourse and to the inspired reading of the all-sacred Scriptures, but does not summon them to the subsequent sacred performances and contemplations—rather, only the perfect eyes of the perfecters.

For the deiform hierarchy is full of sacred righteousness, and allots to each in a salvific way according to worth, granting sacredly the harmonious participation in divine things, to each in measure and proportion, in due season.

The lowest rank, then, has been allotted to the catechumens.

For they are non-participants and uninitiated in every hierarchic place of initiation, not yet having had inspired existence by divine bringing-to-birth, but being still brought to birth by the paternal Scriptures and shaped by life-giving formings toward the life-originating, light-originating, and blessed advancement that comes from the divine birth.

Just as, then, if fleshly infants should fall out, imperfect and unformed, from their proper birthing, as miscarriages and abortions they will have an unborn, lifeless, and unillumined falling upon the earth, and no one of sound mind, looking to what appears, would say that they have been brought forth to the light, freed from the darkness in the womb (for the scientific superintending art of bodies, medicine, would say that light works upon things receptive of light)—so too the all-wise knowledge of sacred things first brings them to birth by the introductory nourishment of the formative and life-giving Scriptures, and, having brought their substance to maturity toward the divine birth, gives to them in a salvific way, in due order, communion with the light-formed and perfection-working things.

But now, as imperfect, it separates them off from the perfect, providing both for the good order of the sacred things and for the bringing-to-birth and the life of the catechumens in the deiform rank of the hierarchic things.

And the multitude of those under demonic energy is itself unhallowed, but is second, toward the higher, to the lowest place of the catechumens.

...being still occupied either by the enticements or by the disturbances of things contrary.

But the sight and communion of the all-sacred things is contracted away even from them, and very fittingly so.

For if it is true that the wholly divine man, the worthy sharer of divine things, the one led up to the summit of the deiform that pertains to him in complete and perfective deifications, will not even perform the things of the flesh beyond the most natural necessities—and that, if at all, only incidentally—but will be a temple and at once a follower, in his highest deification, of the most divine Spirit, establishing like in like; then such a one could never be wrought upon by contrary phantasms or terrors, but will laugh at them, and will wrestle down and drive off those that approach, and will act rather than be acted upon; and, besides the impassibility and unyieldingness of his own habit, he will be seen even by others as a physician of such workings.

And I think, besides this—rather, I clearly know—that the most unmingled discernment of the hierarchic things knows, before these, those wrought upon by a most accursed energy: namely all who, having departed from the deiform life, become like-minded and like-mannered to the ruinous demons, turning away, through their utmost and self-ruinous folly, from the truly existent, immortally possessed, and eternally pleasant things, and desiring and working the material and most passion-ridden alteration, the perishing and corruptive pleasures, and the unstable well-being that is not in alien things but only seems to be.

These, then, first and more properly than the others, let them be separated off by the discerning voice of the minister.

For it is not lawful for them to partake of any other sacred thing than the teaching of the Scriptures that turns one back toward better things.

For if the supramundane sacred performance of divine things hides itself even from those in penitence—though they have already come toward it—not admitting what is not wholly most sacred, and proclaims even this all-purely, that 'To those who in any respect imperfectly grow weak toward the summit of the deiform, I am unseen and uncommunicating' (for the wholly most unmingled voice drives off even those unable to be bound together with the worthy sharers of the most divine things)—how much more will the multitude of those passionately wrought upon be unhallowed and alien from all sight and communion of the sacred things.

And since the uninitiated and unperfected in the rites have come to be outside the divine temple and the sacred performance set above them, and with them the apostates from the sacred life, and following these those who, through unmanliness, are passively affected by the terrors and apparitions of things contrary, as not having attained, through intense and unyielding inclination toward divine things, the unmoved and active condition of the deiform habit; then with them those who have departed from the contrary life, but have not yet been cleansed in habit and inspired love—pure and unmingled—from its phantasms; and after them those not yet wholly uniform and (to speak in legal terms) wholly unblemished and unhurt—then the all-sacred performers of the all-sacred things, and the lovers-of-the-vision, beholding in a holy-befitting manner the most holy rite, hymn with universal hymnody the good-working and good-giving Source, by which the salvific rites have been shown forth to us, sacredly working the sacred deification of those being perfected.

This hymn some call the confession, others the symbol of religion, and others—more divinely, I think—the hierarchic thanksgiving, as comprehending the sacred gifts that have come to us from God.

And when the divine love-of-mankind has thus been sacredly hymned, the divine bread is set forth covered, and the cup of blessing; and the most divine greeting is sacredly performed, and the mystical and supramundane recitation of the holy-written diptychs.

...that those divided against themselves should be gathered together and partake of the peaceful union of the One.

For if, being illumined by the contemplation and knowledge of the One, we are unified toward the uniform and divine gathering, we would not endure to fall down into the divided desires, from which arise the material and passionate enmities toward what is by nature of the same kind.

This uniform and undivided life, then, as I think, the sacred performance of the peace legislates, establishing like in like, and separating off the divine and uniform visions from the divided.

And the recitation of the sacred diptychs after the peace proclaims those who have lived holily and have come unalterably to the perfection of a virtuous life, exhorting and hand-leading us toward the blessed condition and deiform allotment that comes through likeness to them; and proclaiming those others as living, and, as theology says, not as having died, but as having passed over from death into a most divine life.

And consider that they are also dedicated to sacred remembrances—the divine remembrance being made manifest not in a human way in the imagining of the memory, but, as one might say, in a God-befitting way, according to the precious and unalterable knowledge, in God, of the deiform ones who have been perfected.

'For the Lord knew,' say the Scriptures, 'those who are his'; and 'Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his holy ones' (the death of the holy ones being spoken in place of perfection in holiness).

And consider this also sacredly: that, when the venerable symbols by which Christ is signified and partaken have been set upon the divine altar, there is present, without separation, the enrollment of the holy ones, manifesting their indivisible conjunction with him in supramundane and sacred union.

And when these things have been sacredly performed, according to the ordinance described, the hierarch, standing before the most holy symbols, washes his hands with water, together with the august order of the priests.

That, then, as the Scriptures say, 'he who has bathed needs nothing else save the washing of his extremities, that is, his outermost parts'—through which most extreme cleansing, in the all-pure habit of the deiform, and proceeding in a good-formed way toward secondary things, he will be free and absolute, as wholly uniform, and, turning back again uniformly toward the One, he will make his return undefiled and unstained, as preserving the fullness and integrity of the deiform—the sacred laver, as we have said, was in the hierarchy according to the Law, but now the cleansing of the hands of the hierarch and the priests hints at it.

For those who go to the most all-holy sacred performance must have been cleansed even of the outermost phantasms of the soul, and must approach it in likeness to it, so far as possible.

For thus they will be illumined the more brightly by the theophanies of the supramundane flashings, when the kindred mirrors more wholly and more transparently allow the proper radiance to pass through into the brightness.

And the washing of the hierarch and the priests, even to the extremities or outermost parts, takes place before the most holy symbols, as before Christ, who oversees all our most hidden thoughts, and as the most extreme cleansing is defined in his all-overseeing exactitudes and his most just and incorruptible judgments.

Thus the hierarch is united to the divine things, and having hymned the sacred divine workings, he performs the most divine things and brings before the eyes the things hymned.

What, then, we say the divine workings toward us are, must next be narrated as far as is in our power.

For I am not competent to hymn them all, much less to know them clearly and to initiate others.

But what is hymned and sacredly performed by the inspired hierarchs in accordance with the Scriptures, this, so far as is attainable to us, we shall say, having invoked the hierarchic inspiration as our helper.

Human nature, having from the beginning senselessly slipped away from the divine good things, the most passion-ridden life received in succession, and the end of corruptive death.

For, as a consequence, the ruinous apostasy from the truly Good and the transgression of the sacred ordinance in paradise delivered the one who had been driven, by the enticing and hostile deceits of the adversary, away from the life-giving yoke, over to things contrary to the divine good things, and to his own falls.

And wandering, and turned aside from the straight way that leads to the truly existent God, and subjected to the ruinous and malign multitudes, it was unaware that it was serving not gods nor friends, but enemies.

And while they unsparingly abused it according to their own mercilessness, it had pitiably fallen into the danger of non-existence and destruction.

But the most infinite love-of-mankind of the divine goodness did not, in a manner befitting goodness, refuse its own self-working providence toward us; rather, having come into true participation in all things at our level, sinlessly, and having been unified toward our lowliness—together with the unconfused and wholly unhurt condition of its own attributes—it thenceforth granted us communion with itself as with kindred, and showed us partakers of its own good things, having dissolved (as the hidden tradition holds) the dominion of the apostate multitude against us, not by power as overpowering, but, according to the saying mystically handed down to us, in judgment and righteousness; and having refashioned, in a good-working manner, the things at our level toward the wholly contrary.

For it filled the lightless part of our mind with blessed and most divine light, and adorned the formless with deiform beauties; and the dwelling of the soul, in complete salvation of our substance that was all but fallen, it freed from most accursed passions and corruptive defilements, having shown us a supramundane uplifting and an inspired manner of life in our sacred assimilations to it, so far as is possible.

And how could the God-imitating be engendered in us otherwise than by the remembrance of the most sacred divine workings being ever renewed in the hierarchic sacred discourses and sacred performances?

This we do, as the Scriptures say, 'in remembrance of him.'

Whence the divine hierarch, taking his place at the divine altar, hymns the aforesaid sacred divine workings of Jesus, our most divine providence, which he accomplished for the salvation of our race by the good pleasure of the most all-holy Father in the Holy Spirit, according to the Scripture.

And having hymned them and beheld their venerable and intelligible contemplation with intellectual eyes, he comes to their symbolic sacred performance—and this too in a God-given manner.

Whence, reverently and at once hierarchically, after the sacred hymns of the divine workings, he makes apology for the sacred performance that is beyond him, first sacredly crying out to him:

'You said, Do this in remembrance of me.'

Then, having asked to become worthy of this God-imitating sacred performance, and by assimilation to Christ himself to perform the divine things and to impart them all-purely, and that those who are to partake of the sacred things may partake in a sacred-befitting manner, he performs the most divine things and brings before the eyes the things hymned, through the sacredly set-forth symbols.

For having uncovered the covered and undivided bread, and divided it into many, and distributed the unity of the cup to all, he symbolically multiplies and apportions the unity, accomplishing in these things a most all-holy sacred performance.

For the one and simple and hidden of Jesus, the most divine Word, by his incarnation at our level, has proceeded, without alteration, in goodness and love-of-mankind, toward the composite and visible, and has, in a good-working way, transacted our unifying communion with himself, having united our lowly things, at the summit, with his most divine things—if indeed we too are fitted together with him, as members to a body, according to the sameness of the unhurt and divine life, and are not, deadened by corruptive passions, made unfitting, uncleaving, and unable to live together with the divine and most healthy members.

For we must, if we long for communion with him, look intently toward his most divine life according to the flesh, and by assimilation to it of sacred sinlessness, run back to the deiform and unhurt habit.

For thus he will harmoniously grant us the communion that is according to likeness.

These things the hierarch makes manifest in the things sacredly performed, bringing the covered gifts toward the manifest, and dividing their unity into many, and, by the union, at the summit, of the things distributed with those in which they come to be, making the partakers communicants of them.

...[Christ] being given form from us, and proceeding without alteration, from the One that is according to nature, toward our divided condition, and through this good-working love-of-mankind calling the human race into participation in himself and in his own good things—if indeed we are united to his most divine life by our assimilation to it according to our power, and thereby are truly made communicants of God and of the divine things.

And having partaken and imparted of the most divine communion, he ends in a sacred thanksgiving, together with all the sacred fullness of the church.

For the partaking precedes the imparting, and the receiving of the mysteries precedes the mystical distribution.

For this is the universal good order and rank of divine things:

that the sacred leader should first come to be in participation and fulfillment of the things that are to be granted, through him, from God to others, and so should impart to others also.

For just as, in the case of the solar flashings, the more subtle and more transparent of the substances, being first filled with the inflowing radiance, channel forth the light that overflows from them in every direction, in a sun-like manner, to those after them—so too in everything divine, one must not presume to be a leader for others who has not, in his whole habit, become most deiform and shown to be a fitting instrument of the divine inspiration and judgment.

In these things the whole arrangement of the sacred ones, gathered together hierarchically and having communicated in the most divine things, ends with a sacred thanksgiving, having proportionately come to know and hymned the graces of the divine workings.

So that those who are non-partakers and ignorant of divine things could never come to thanksgiving, even though the most divine gifts are, by their own nature, worthy of thanksgiving.

But, as I said, not having been willing even to look upon the divine gifts, out of their inclination toward worse things, they have remained ungrateful toward the infinite graces of the divine workings.

'Taste,' say the Scriptures, 'and see.'

For by the sacred initiation into divine things, the initiated will come to know their munificent graces, and, beholding all-sacredly, in their participation, the most divine height and greatness of them, they will gratefully hymn the supercelestial good-workings of the Deity.

Such, then, are the things of the most holy synaxis, and so beautiful are the intelligible visions, which, as we have often said, hierarchically work our communion and synaxis with the One.

But there is another perfective performance ranked together with this.

Our leaders name it the rite of the myron (chrism).

Having examined its parts, then, in order, according to the sacred images, thus, through the parts, we shall be led up hierarchically by sacred contemplations toward its One.

In the same manner as the synaxis, the ranks of the unperfected are dismissed—after there have gone before, namely, the hierarchic fragrant procession over all the sacred space, and the psalmic sacred discourse, and the reading of the most divine Scriptures.

Then the hierarch, taking the myron, sets it upon the divine altar, covered by twelve sacred wings, while all cry out with a most holy voice the sacred melody of the inspiration of the God-possessed prophets; and having completed the prayer performed over it, he uses it, in the most holy rites of the things consecrated, for nearly every hierarchic perfective performance.

The introductory uplifting of this perfective sacred performance, through the things sacredly done with the divine myron, shows forth, I think, this:

...[that the divine men do not display] for vainglory the beautiful and fragrant assimilations, according to virtue, to the hidden God.

For undefiled are the hidden and beyond-mind fragrant comelinesses of God, and intelligibly they are manifested only to the intellectual ones, wishing to have like-formed to themselves, according to virtue, the incorruptible images in souls.

For the inviolable statue of deiform virtue, well imitated, looking toward that intelligible and fragrant beauty, thus shapes and fashions itself toward the most beautiful imitation.

And just as in the case of sensible images, if the painter looks unswervingly at the archetypal form, drawn aside by nothing else of the visible things, nor in any way divided, he will, so to speak, double that very one whom he paints, and show each in the other, save for the difference of substance—so too, for the lovers-of-beauty who are painters in mind, the steadfast and unbending contemplation toward the fragrant and hidden beauty will grant the unerring and most deiform likeness.

Fittingly, then, the divine painters, conforming their intellectual part unalterably toward the superessentially fragrant and intelligible comeliness, do none of their God-imitating virtues for the sake of being seen, according to the Scripture, by men, but sacredly behold, as in an image in the divine myron, the most sacred things of the church covered over.

For not only are they unseen to the unlike, but they themselves are not drawn down toward the sight of those things.