Mystagogy 1 part 2/13

but I speak concerning Christ and the Church," says the divine Apostle.

"He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him."

Thus then, when the soul has become uniform and gathered both to itself and to God, there will no longer be any reasoning that further divides it in thought into many, since its head is crowned by the first and only and one Word and God;

in whom, according to one inconceivable simplicity, all the inner principles (logoi) of beings exist and subsist in unified manner, as in the Creator and Maker of beings;

for He is not present in part but wholly in the whole; and by a simple apprehension the soul too will know the inner principles and causes of beings — those on account of which, perhaps before being wedded to the Word and God, it was led along by analytical methods — being borne through them in a saving and harmonious way toward Him who is the container and maker of every principle and every cause.

Since, therefore, these things belong to the soul, as we have said — having according to the intellect wisdom in potency, and from wisdom contemplation, and from this knowledge, and from knowledge unforgetting knowledge, through which it is led to truth as the limit and end of the goods pertaining to the intellect;

and having according to reason prudence, and from this action, and from action virtue, and from this faith, according to which it comes to rest in the good as the blessed end of the rational activities;

through which the understanding of divine things is gathered together by way of the convergence of these into union with one another.

To all these things the holy Church of God is clearly conformed, being likened in contemplation to the soul.

Through the sanctuary it signifies all that pertains to the intellect and has been shown to proceed forth from the intellect; through the nave it makes plain all that pertains to reason and has been declared to extend from reason; and it gathers all together unto the mystery accomplished upon the divine altar;

and whoever has been able prudently and wisely to be initiated into this mystery, through the things performed in the Church, has constituted his own soul as truly a Church of God, and divine;

for the sake of which, and as whose pattern, perhaps, the church made with hands — being wisely, through the variety of the divine things within it, an example according to symbol — was handed down to us for our guidance unto the higher reality.

And again, of the whole of Holy Scripture — I mean both Old and New — the letter according to the historical sense is the body;

and the meaning of what is written, and the aim toward which the meaning is directed, is the soul.

Hearing this, I was especially delighted by the precision of the comparison, and fittingly hymned, according to my ability, Him who distributes gifts to each according to his worth.

For just as our human being is mortal according to what is apparent, but immortal according to what is unapparent, so also Holy Scripture — having the apparent letter that passes away, but the spirit hidden in the letter that never ceases to be — establishes the principle of contemplation as true.

And just as this human being of ours, mastering by philosophy the passionate desire and impulse, mortifies the flesh, so also Holy Scripture, understood spiritually, circumcises its own letter.

For the divine Apostle says:

Insofar as our outer man is being corrupted, by so much is the inner man being renewed day by day.

Let this also be understood and said of Holy Scripture, when it is figuratively conceived as a man.

For insofar as its letter recedes, by so much does the spirit gain the advantage;

and insofar as the shadows of the temporal worship pass away, by so much does the truth of the faith—all-radiant, wholly luminous, and shadowless—enter in; in accordance with which and for the sake of which Scripture primarily exists, is written, and is called Scripture, being inscribed upon the mind through spiritual grace—just as our human person, on account of the rational and intellective soul, primarily and especially both is and is called a man.

And He who made him set him apart by nature from the rest of the living creatures, having no trace whatsoever of any kindred power toward them.

How the world is called a man, and in what manner man too is called a world. — Again, after this same image and most fittingly, he set forth that the whole world, composed of things visible and invisible, is a man;

and conversely that man, composed of soul and body, is a world.

For he said that the intelligible realities hold the place of the soul, just as the soul belongs to the intelligible order;

and that the sensible realities hold the rank of the body, just as the body belongs to the sensible order.

And the intelligible realities are the soul of the sensible, while the sensible are the body of the intelligible.

And just as a soul indwelling a body, so the intelligible world is present to the sensible world;

and the sensible is present to the intelligible as a body knit together with its soul;

and the two together form one world, just as soul and body form one man.

Neither of these two—which by union have grown together with each other—denies or rejects the other, because of the law of Him who bound them together, in accordance with which the principle (logos) of the unifying power has been sown into them, not permitting their identity-in-hypostasis at the union to be ignored on account of their natural otherness, nor permitting the particularity by which each circumscribes itself within itself to be stronger toward separation and division than the kinship of friendship mystically implanted in them by the union; in accordance with which the one universal mode of the hidden and unknown presence—of the Cause that holds all beings together—being variously present to all things, constitutes the whole both in themselves and in one another, unconfused and undivided;

and it presents them as belonging to one another rather than to themselves, according to the unifying relation, until such time as it shall please Him who bound them together to loose them, for the sake of a greater and more mystical dispensation, at the appointed time of the hoped-for universal consummation, in accordance with which the world also, like a man, shall die to the things that appear, and shall rise again new out of what has grown old, at the resurrection that is straightway expected;

at which time our human person too, as a part to the whole and a small thing to the great, shall rise together with the world, having received the power no longer to be able to undergo corruption, when the body shall become conformed to the soul, and the sensible to the intelligible, in seemliness and glory, one divine power being manifested to all things by a clear and effectual presence proportionately to each, and through itself preserving the indissoluble bond of union unto the infinite ages.

If, then, anyone wishes to have a life and a discourse pleasing to God and acceptable to Him, let him hold in high regard, as more precious, the better parts of these three men—I mean the world, Holy Scripture, and the man that is ourselves.

Let him care, with all his power, for the soul, which is immortal and divine and destined to be deified through the virtues; and let him despise the flesh, which is subject to corruption and death and able to defile the dignity of the soul whenever the soul is neglected.

“For a corruptible body,” it is said, “weighs down the soul, and the earthly tent burdens the mind that is full of cares.”

“The flesh lusts against the spirit,

and the spirit against the flesh.”

“He who sows to his own flesh shall from the flesh reap corruption.”

But toward the incorporeal and intellective powers let him stir up the contest in his mind through intellection, leaving behind the present things that are seen;

for “the things that are seen are temporal,” it is said, “but the things that are not seen are eternal”;

in which powers, by reason of the abundance of their peaceful disposition, God finds His rest.

In whom is the fullness of good things and the treasures of knowledge and wisdom hidden; and whoever shall be shown worthy to come within them will find God Himself inscribed upon the tablets of his heart through the grace that is in the Spirit, beholding with unveiled face the glory of God by the removal of the veil that is according to the letter.

Of what are symbols both the first entrance of the holy synaxis and the things accomplished after it. — But now our discourse has come, in the brief exposition of what has been said by the blessed elder concerning the contemplations of the Holy Church, to make as concise an account as possible of the holy synaxis of the Church.

He used to teach that the first entrance of the high priest into the Holy Church at the sacred synaxis bears the type and image of the first coming into this world, through the flesh, of the Son of God and our Saviour Christ; by which coming He set free and redeemed the nature of men, which had been enslaved to corruption and, through sin, had subjected itself to death and was tyrannically ruled by the devil—He, the guiltless and sinless One, paying as though liable the whole debt owed on its behalf—and led it back again to the original grace of the Kingdom, giving Himself as a ransom and exchange for us, and giving in return His life-giving Passion as an antidote to our death-bearing passions, a perpetual healing and salvation for the whole world. After which coming, His ascent into heaven and to the supercelestial throne, and His restoration, are symbolically prefigured through the entrance of the high priest into the sanctuary and his ascent to the priestly throne.

Of what does the people's entrance into the holy Church of God give indication. — The blessed elder used to say that the people's entrance into the Church together with the hierarch signifies the conversion of the unbelievers from ignorance and error to the knowledge of God, and the transition of the faithful from vice and ignorance to virtue and knowledge.

For the entrance into the Church not only signifies the conversion of the unbelievers to the true God, but also, for each of us who believe yet set aside the commandments of the Lord by an unbridled and unseemly manner of life, the setting-right that comes through repentance.

For every man—whether murderer, adulterer, thief, proud, boastful, insolent, greedy, lover of money, slanderer, vindictive, prone to wrath and anger, abusive, false accuser, whisperer, easily mastered by envy, or drunkard—and, in short (lest by enumerating all the forms of vice I prolong the discourse), whoever, being held in the grip of any vice whatsoever, when it lies in his power to be held by it willfully and by habit and to act according to deliberate purpose, shall cease and change his life for the better, choosing virtue in place of vice—such a one is properly and truly to be understood and spoken of as entering together with Christ, our God and high priest, into virtue, which is figuratively understood as the Church.

Of what are symbols the divine readings. — The teacher used to say that the divine readings from the all-sacred books faintly disclose the divine and blessed wills and counsels of the all-holy God, through which each of us, proportionately to the power that is in him, receives the directives for what must be done, and learns the laws of the divine and blessed contests; contending lawfully according to which, we are deemed worthy of the victory-meriting crowns of Christ's Kingdom.

Of what are symbols the divine chants. — He used to assert that the spiritual delightfulness of the divine chants makes manifest the pleasure of divine goods, the pleasure that stirs up souls toward the pure and blessed love of God, and the more rouses them to hatred of sin.

Of what, particularly and in respect to each individual, is a symbol the reading of the holy Gospel and the mystical rites after it. — Wherefore, immediately after these, the sacred ordinance of the Holy Church appointed by law that the divine reading of the holy Gospel should take place;

particularly introducing the toil endured for the Word's sake by the zealous, after which the Word—who, like a high priest of gnostic contemplation, comes down to them from heaven—curbs in them the carnal mind, like a certain sensible world.

Thrusting away the thoughts that still incline toward earth, and leading them thence to the contemplation of intelligible realities—through the closing of the doors and the entrance of the holy mysteries—He teaches the ineffable things to those who have now shut their senses to words and deeds and have come to be outside flesh and world;

and toward them, with much beneficence, He graciously elicits the thankful confession of gratitude for their own salvation, which the divine Creed of the faith intimates.

Then, having enrolled them among the angels through the Trisagion and bestowed upon them the same knowledge of sanctifying theology as those possess, He leads them to God the Father, adopted as sons in the Spirit through the prayer by which they were counted worthy to call God Father.

And from there, again, as those who have now knowingly traversed all the principles (logoi) in created beings, He leads them unknowingly toward the Unknown Monad through the “One is holy” and what follows—united to it by grace and made like to it by participation, in the indivisible identity that is according to their power.

Of what, according to its general signification, is a symbol the divine reading of the holy Gospel. — Generally, it intimates the consummation of this world.

For after the divine reading of the holy Gospel, the high priest comes down from the throne, and the dismissal and casting-out of the catechumens and of the others unworthy of the divine contemplation of the mysteries about to be shown takes place through the ministers, signifying and prefiguring through itself the truth of which it is image and type, and as it were crying aloud in these things that, after the Gospel of the Kingdom has been proclaimed, as it is written, in the whole inhabited world for a testimony to all the nations, then shall the end come, when He arrives at His second coming—namely from the heavens, with much glory—our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ;

for the Lord Himself, says the divine Apostle, shall descend from heaven with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God;

executing vengeance upon His adversaries, and separating through the holy angels the faithful from the unbelievers, the unjust from the just, the defiled from the holy—and, in short, that I may put it concisely, those who have walked after the flesh from those who have ordered their lives by the Spirit of God—and, for ages infinite and unending, as the truth of the divine oracles declares, rendering to each the just recompense according to the worth of his deeds done in life.

Of what is a symbol the closing of the doors of the holy Church, which takes place after the holy Gospel. — The closing of the doors of God's holy Church, which takes place after the sacred reading of the holy Gospel and the casting-out of the catechumens, indicates the passing-away of material things, and the separation that shall come to pass after that fearful day, and the still more fearful judgment; and the entrance of the worthy into the intelligible world—that is, into the bridal chamber of Christ—and the complete casting-off, in the senses, of the activity that is according to deception.

[It also indicates] the dispensation of God toward us, and the revelation of the mystery of our salvation that lies in the innermost recesses of the divine hiddenness.

For “I will not drink,” says God the Word to His own disciples, “from now on of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in the Kingdom of My Father.”

Of what is a symbol the divine kiss of peace. — The spiritual kiss of peace, proclaimed to all, prefigures and foreshadows the concord, like-mindedness, and rational identity that shall belong to all toward one another, in faith and love, at the time of the revelation of the ineffable goods to come—the concord through which the worthy receive their intimate union with the Word and God.

For the mouth is a symbol of the word (logos), in respect of which especially all who have partaken of reason (logos), as rational beings, grow together with all others and with the first and only Word and the cause of all reason.

What does the divine Creed of the faith signify. — The confession of the divine Creed of the faith, made by all, foreshadows the mystical thanksgiving that shall take place in the age to come for the paradoxical principles and modes by which we were saved through God's all-wise providence concerning us; by which thanksgiving the worthy present themselves as grateful for the divine benefaction, having besides this nothing whatever to offer in return for the infinite divine goods bestowed upon them.

What does the doxology of the Trisagion signify. — The threefold cry of the “Holy” of the divine hymnody, raised by all the faithful people, indicates the union and equality of honor with the incorporeal and intellective powers that shall be manifested in the age to come; in accordance with which the nature of men shall be taught, in harmony with the powers above, by reason of the identity of unchanging ever-motion concerning God, to hymn and sanctify the one Godhead in three hypostases with three sanctifications.

Of what is the holy prayer of the "Our Father who art in heaven" the symbol?

The all-holy and venerable invocation of the great and blessed God and Father is the symbol of that adoption as sons—real and subsistent—which is to be given by the gift and grace of the Holy Spirit; according to which, every human distinctiveness being overcome and concealed by the visitation of grace, all the saints shall be called and shall be sons of God: namely all who, by their virtues, have already from now made themselves radiant and glorious with the divine beauty of goodness.

What does the end of the mystical liturgy signify—that is, the hymns that are sung aloud, namely the "One is holy, one is Lord," and what follows? The confession of the "One is holy" and what follows it, made by all the people at the close of the mystical liturgy, signifies the gathering and union—beyond reason and mind—of those who have been mystically and wisely initiated according to God, into the one hidden simplicity of the Godhead; in the incorruptible age of intelligible realities, in which, beholding the light of the unseen and ineffably blessed glory together with the powers above, they too become receptive of purity.

After this, as the end of all, the imparting of the Mystery takes place, transforming into itself and rendering—by grace and participation—those who worthily partake to be like the Good that is the cause of all, lacking in nothing of Him, so far as is attainable and possible for human beings.

So that they themselves are able to be, and to be called, gods by adoption according to grace—on account of the whole God who has wholly filled them and left no part of them empty of His presence.

That the first entrance of the holy synaxis is a symbol of the virtues that pertain to the soul. Consider therefore, you who have become a genuine lover of the blessed wisdom of Christ, with the eyes of the mind, at the first entrance of the holy synaxis, the soul's turning away from the outward error and disturbance of material things—according to what is written, "Women coming from the spectacle, come"—I mean from the wandering amid sensible things in their outward form and figure;

for it would not be true to call it contemplation, as do those unwise ones among those who are called sages by the Greeks—for never would those be called wise by us who were unable, or unwilling, to know God through His works—I mean the surface appearance of sensible things, according to which the perpetual war of sensible things against one another subsists, working in all things the destruction by one another, all things destroying one another and being destroyed in one another;

(consider) the words, and the marvelous and great mystery of the divine providence revealed in the Law and the Prophets, the soul receiving in each instance—for the sake of the noble discipleship in these matters—from God, through the holy powers that converse with it intelligibly within the understanding, the peace-bestowing signals, together with the strengthening and preserving enchantment of the divine and ardent longing after God, through the pleasure of the divine songs mystically and intelligibly sung within it.

And again, passing on from these and being gathered up to the one and only summit that unitively comprehends all these inner principles—I mean the holy Gospel—in which all the principles both of providence and of beings pre-exist in a uniform manner, according to one comprehensive power.

After which it is again permitted for those who love God, with the fearless eyes of the mind, to behold by divine perception the Word and God Himself coming to it from heaven—as is signified by the descent of the bishop from the priestly throne—and perfectly separating from it, after the manner of the catechumens, those thoughts that still imagine sense-perception and what is divisible according to it.

And from there again, the soul having come outside the sensible realm—as the closing of the doors of the holy Church of God prompts us to understand—being led toward that immaterial, simple, unchangeable, godlike knowledge of intelligible things, free of all form and figure, which is signified by the entrance of the ineffable Mysteries; according to which knowledge, having gathered its own faculties to itself, it arrives at the Word Himself, and is taught, through the Symbol of faith, to confess with thanksgiving—having by the spiritual kiss united around itself the ineffable principles and modes of salvation.

And upon these things again, the Word—since the soul has now by discipleship comprehended in knowledge, according to a simple and undivided power, the principles both of sensible and of intelligible things—leads it to the knowledge of the manifest theology, after the passing beyond of all things and the granting to it, so far as is attainable for it, of an understanding equal to that of the angels; and so soberly teaches it, that it may know God as one, one essence, three hypostases:

a Monad of essence in three hypostases, and a Trinity of hypostases consubstantial in essence; a Monad in the Trinity and a Trinity in the Monad;

not one and another, nor one alongside another, nor one through another, nor one in another, nor one out of another;

but the same in itself, and by itself toward itself, the very same as itself, both Monad and Trinity, having its union unconfused and unconfusedly, and its distinction undivided and unpartitioned;

a Monad according to the principle of essence, that is, of being—yet not by composition or contraction or any sort of confusion—and a Trinity according to the principle of how it exists and subsists, yet not by division or estrangement or any sort of partition.

For the Monad is not divided into the hypostases, nor is it present in them and contemplated relatively, nor are the hypostases composed into a Monad or fill it out by contraction; but it is the very same as itself, identical, yet in one way and in another way.

For the holy Trinity of hypostases is a Monad unconfused in essence and in the simple principle pertaining to it; and the holy Monad is a Trinity in the hypostases and in the mode of existence.

The same whole being understood as both this and that diversely, according to one principle and another, as has been said;

one and only, undivided and unconfused, simple and undiminished and unchangeable Godhead;

existing as a Monad according to the whole essence, and the same a whole Trinity in the hypostases, and one ray of one thrice-shining light shining forth in a single form.

(the soul) is brought to a corresponding adoption as a son, through which, after the prayers, having God as Father mystically and by grace alone, it shall be gathered—by an ecstasy out of all things—toward the one hiddenness of His secrecy; and it shall experience divine things rather than know them, in such measure as it wills no longer to be its own, nor to be able to be known from itself by itself or by anything else, but only by the whole God who has wholly and fittingly taken it up, and who—wholly in it, in a manner befitting God, and dispassionately infusing Himself into the whole—has wholly deified it.

Of what mysteries is the abiding grace of the Holy Spirit operative and effective, through the ordinances accomplished at the holy synaxis among the faithful who are faithfully gathered together? The blessed elder therefore thought it necessary, and never ceased exhorting, that every Christian should devote himself to the holy Church of God and never absent himself from the holy synaxis accomplished within it: both on account of the holy angels who abide in it and each time register those who enter and present them to God and make supplications on their behalf, and on account of the grace of the Holy Spirit that is invisibly ever present, but most especially in its own particular manner at the time of the holy synaxis, transforming and refashioning each of those present, and truly remoulding them toward what is more divine in proportion to itself, and leading them toward what is signified by the Mysteries that are being accomplished;

even if a person himself does not perceive it—if indeed he is yet one of the babes in Christ and is unable to see into the depth of what takes place—nevertheless the grace signified through each of the divine symbols of salvation that are accomplished is operative within him, journeying in sequence and order from the things nearest at hand to the end of all.

At the first entrance: the casting off of unbelief, the growth of faith, the diminishing of vice, the increase of virtue, the abolition of ignorance, the addition of knowledge.

we are counted worthy to call upon God (as Father)—the most true adoption as sons in the grace of the Holy Spirit.

For those gifts of the Holy Spirit which here, in the present life, through the grace that is in faith, we believe we have received, those very same in the age to come we believe we shall truly attain in actual fact and in subsistence, according to the unfailing hope of our faith and the firm and inviolable promise of Him who promised—if we have kept the commandments to the best of our power—passing over from the grace that is in faith to the grace that is according to manifest form; God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, that is, transforming us toward Himself by the removal of the marks of corruption that are in us, and graciously granting us the archetypal mysteries that have been shown to us here through the sensible symbols.

The holy Church, then, is, as has been said, a figure and image of God, since through it He effects, according to His infinite power and wisdom, an unconfused union among the diverse essences of beings—just as the Creator, holding all together in supreme degree within Himself—and according to one faith and grace and calling she joins the faithful to one another in a uniform manner; the active and virtuous according to one identity of resolve, and the contemplative and gnostic in addition by an unbroken and undivided concord.

And it is a figure of the world—both the intelligible and the sensible—having as the symbol of the intelligible world the sanctuary, and of the sensible world the nave.

Again, it is an image of the human being, since it imitates the soul through the sanctuary and presents the body through the nave.

And of the soul itself, considered in itself, it is a figure and image, since through the sanctuary it bears the glory of the contemplative part, and through the nave it possesses the orderliness of the active part.

As for the holy synaxis accomplished in her, the first entrance signifies in a general sense the first coming of our God; and in a particular sense the conversion of those who, through Him and with Him, are led from unbelief to faith, from vice to virtue, and from ignorance to knowledge.

The readings that take place after it signify, in a general sense, the divine wills and intentions according to which all must be instructed and conduct their lives;