Does not also the present sacred rite-performance dismiss, unmingled, in the same manner as the synaxis, the ranks of those not wholly pure of whom we have already made mention—being seen only in images by the sacred ones, and being beheld and sacredly performed, immediately, only by the all-sacred, through hierarchic uplifting?
These things, then, having already been often said by us, it is superfluous, I think, to keep cycling back to the same words, and not to pass on to what follows, beholding the hierarch, in an inspired manner, holding the divine myron covered under twelve wings and sacredly performing the most all-holy perfection upon it.
Let us say, then, that the composition of the myron is a kind of gathering-together of sweet-breathing materials, having in itself richly fragrant qualities, of which those who partake are made fragrant according to the proportion of the quantity of the participation in the fragrant that has been engendered in them.
And we are persuaded that the most divine Jesus is superessentially fragrant, filling our intellectual part full of divine delight by intelligible imparting.
For if the perception of sensible fragrances makes one feel well and nourishes, with much pleasure, our discerning faculty of smell—provided it be harmless and suitably proportioned to the fragrant—one might say, proportionately, that our intellectual powers also, disposed incorruptibly against the slackening toward the worse, in the natural [discerning] of the critical faculty within us...
...come to be, according to the God-working measures and the suitable turning of the mind toward the divine, in the perception of the deific fragrance, and be filled with sacred well-being and most divine nourishment.
The symbolic composition of the myron, then, as in a giving-of-form to the formless, sketches out for us Jesus himself as the fount of the divine fragrant perceptions, the wealth that, by deific proportions, sends up the most divine vapours into the most deiform of the intellectual ones; upon which the intellects, delightedly rejoicing and being filled full of the sacred perceptions, make use of intelligible nourishment, by the entrance into their intellectual part of the imparting of the fragrant according to divine participation.
And it is, I think, clear that to the beings above us, as more divine, the giving-up of the fount-like fragrance is somehow nearer, and more manifestly displays and imparts itself, overflowing ungrudgingly into the most transparent and well-conditioned of their faculty of intellectual perception, and entering manifold; while toward the lower of the intellectual ones, not equally receptive, having undefiledly hidden away the supreme sight and participation, it is imparted, in a deific proportion, by vapours proportionate to the partakers.
Of the holy beings above us, then, the rank of the Seraphim, so far surpassing, is signified in the twelve-fold number of the wings, standing and established about Jesus, casting itself, as is permitted, upon his most blessed visions, and being sacredly filled, in all-pure receptions, with the intelligible imparting, and crying out (to speak sensibly) with unsilenced mouths the much-hymned theology.
For the sacred knowledge of the supramundane intellects is tireless and possesses an unceasing divine love, and is at once above all evil and forgetfulness; whence, I think, the matter of the unsilenced cry hints at their eternal and unalterable knowledge and intellection of divine things, in all intensity and thanksgiving.
The incorporeal properties of the Seraphim, then, sacredly described in the Scriptures by sensible images revelatory of the intelligible, we have, I think, well beheld in the arrangements of the supercelestial hierarchies, and have shown to your intellectual eyes.
Nevertheless, since now also those who sacredly stand about the hierarch image forth for us that supreme arrangement, in epitome even now we shall behold, with most immaterial sights, their most deiform splendour.
And the six-fold disposition of the wings, as the Scriptures say, I think shows forth not a sacred number, according to the opinion of others, but that the first, middle, and last of its intellectual and deiform powers are uplifting, wholly absolute, and supramundane, with respect to the supreme substance and order about God.
Whence the most sacred wisdom of the Scriptures, in sacredly depicting the formation of the wings about their faces, their middle parts, and their feet, places the wings, hinting at the wholly-winged character of them and the all-manifold nature of their uplifting power toward the truly existent.
And if they cover their faces and their feet, and fly only with the middle wings, consider sacredly that the rank, so far exalted above the supreme substances, is reverent concerning the things higher and deeper than its own intellections, and by the middle wings is led up, in proportion, toward the vision of God, submitting its own life to the divine balances and being sacredly well-disposed by them toward the knowledge of itself.
And the saying in the Scriptures, that 'one cried out to another,' shows, I think, this: that they impart their God-beholding intellections to one another ungrudgingly.
And let us also deem this worthy of sacred remembrance: that the Hebrew tongue of the Scriptures, by an emphatic appellation, calls the most holy substances of the Seraphim from the burning and seething that pertains to the divine and ever-moving life.
If, then, as those who have interpreted the Hebrew say, the most divine Seraphim were named 'burners' and 'warmers' by the theology, by a name revelatory of their essential condition, they possess, according to symbolic imagery, powers that set in motion the divine myron, calling it forth into manifestation and to the imparting of more active vapours.
For the beyond-mind fragrant substance loves to be set in motion toward manifestation by the burning and most pure intellects, and bestows its most divine inspirations, in most blessed impartings, upon those who thus call it forth in a supramundane manner.
The most divine rank of the supercelestial substances, then, was not ignorant that the most divine Jesus had come down to be sanctified, but understands him sacredly to have humbled himself, in things at our level, through divine and ineffable goodness; and beholding him being sanctified, in a manner befitting man, by his own Father and the Spirit, it knows its own source as possessing, in whatever things it works in a deific way, the substantial unalterableness.
Whence the tradition of the sacred symbols sets the Seraphim about the divine myron as it is being sanctified, knowing and depicting Christ as unalterable in his whole true incarnation at our level.
And, what is yet more divine, that it uses the divine myron for the perfective performance of every sacred thing, clearly showing forth, according to the Scripture, the One who sanctifies and the One who is sanctified to be ever the same as himself throughout the whole deific good-working.
Whence, I think, the hierarch also, pouring the myron in cruciform casts upon the cleansing baptistery, brings before the contemplative eyes Jesus going down, even to death itself, through the cross, for the sake of our divine birth—by that very divine and irresistible descent, in a good-befitting way, drawing up those baptized into his death, according to the hidden Scripture, out of the old engulfment of corruptive death, and renewing them toward inspired and eternal existence.
But indeed, to the one perfected by the most sacred rite of the divine birth, the perfective anointing of the myron bestows the visitation of the most divine Spirit—the sacred imagery of the symbols figuring forth, I think, that the most divine Spirit is supplied, by the unalterable condition of his essential deity, by the very One who, for our sake, was sanctified in a manner befitting man by the most divine Spirit.
And consider this also hierarchically: that the ordinance of the most holy rites accomplishes the sacred perfection of the divine altar also by the all-holy pourings of the most sacred myron.
Jesus is the altar—the deific consecration of the divine intellects, in whom, according to the Scripture, being consecrated and mystically wholly-burned, we have our approach. Let us behold, with supramundane eyes, that most divine altar itself, in which the things being perfected are perfected and sanctified, being perfected by the most divine myron itself.
For the most all-holy Jesus sanctifies himself on our behalf, and fills us with all sanctification, the things perfected upon him passing over thenceforth, in a good-working way, into us as God-begotten, by economy.
Whence, I think, according to a hierarchic mind, in a God-given manner, the divine leaders of our hierarchy name this most august sacred performance, in actual fact, the rite of myron, from the thing being perfected—as one might say, a rite of God—hymning in either sense its divine rite-performance.
For it is his rite both that he is sanctified, for our sake, in a manner befitting man, and that he, in a God-working way, perfects and sanctifies all the things being perfected.
And the sacred melody of the inspiration of the God-possessed prophets, those who know the Hebrew tongue say, means 'the praise of God,' or 'Praise the Lord.'
Since, then, every sacred theophany and divine working is sacredly depicted in the manifold composition of the hierarchic symbols, it is not unfitting to be mindful of the God-moved hymnody of the prophets.
1:228
<.> <> αὕτημὲνἡθειοτάτητοῦμύρουτελετουργία
那麼，這就是那至為神聖的聖膏施禮。
This, then, is the most divine rite-performance of the myron.
And it would now be the proper time, after the divine sacred performances themselves, to set forth the priestly orders and allotments, their powers, activities, and perfections, and the triad of subordinate ranks under them, so that the arrangement of our hierarchy might be displayed—separating off and allotting, unmingled, the disordered, unadorned, and confused, and showing forth, in the proportions of the sacred orders that pertain to it, the orderly, the well-ranked, and the steadfast.
And the triadic division of every hierarchy we have, I think, well set forth in the hierarchies already hymned by us, saying, as our sacred tradition holds, that every hierarchic enterprise is divided into the most holy rites, and their inspired knowers and initiators, and those sacredly being perfected by them.
So then, the most holy hierarchy of the supercelestial substances has as its rite the most immaterial intellection of God and of divine things, according to its own power, and the whole and, so far as attainable, God-imitating condition of the deiform; and as light-bringers and leaders toward this sacred perfection, the first substances about God.
For these channel across, in a good-formed and proportionate way, to the subordinate sacred ranks the God-working knowledges ever granted to them by the self-perfecting and wisdom-making Deity of the divine intellects.
And the arrangements subordinate to the first substances, as being sacredly led up by those toward the God-working illumination of the Deity, are, and are truly named, the ranks being perfected.
And after that heavenly and supramundane hierarchy, the Deity, bringing forth its most sacred gifts in a good-working way to the things at our level, granted, to those who were infants according to the Scripture, the hierarchy according to the Law, with dim images of the true things, and likenesses most far-removed from the archetypes, and enigmas hard to contemplate, and types not having easily-discerned the contemplation veiled in them—shining a proportionate light, harmlessly, as upon weak eyes.
And to this hierarchy according to the Law, the rite is the uplifting toward the spiritual worship, and the hand-leaders toward it are those who were sacredly initiated by Moses into that holy tabernacle—Moses, the first of the hierarchs according to the Law, the initiate and leader—toward which sacred tabernacle, in an introductory way sacredly depicting the hierarchy according to the Law, he called all the things performed according to the Law, the image of the type shown to him on Mount Sinai; while those being perfected are those who, by the symbols of the Law, are led up proportionately toward a more perfect initiation.
And it is both heavenly and legal, communicatively laying hold of the middle of the extremes—communicating with the one in intellectual contemplations, and with the other in that it too is variegated with sensible symbols and through them is sacredly led up toward the divine.
And it has likewise the triadic character of the hierarchic division, being divided into the most holy sacred performances of the rites, and the deiform ministers of the sacred things, and those who, by them, are proportionately brought toward the sacred things.
And each of the three divisions of our hierarchy is ranked—consistently with the legal and with the more divine hierarchy at our level—as first, middle, and last in power, providing both for the sacred-befitting proportion and for the well-ordered, ranked, harmonious, and binding-together communion of all.
The most holy sacred performance of the rites, then, has as its first deiform power the sacred cleansing of the unperfected; as its middle, the illuminative initiation of the cleansed; and as its last, and summative of the former, the perfection of those initiated, in the knowledge of their own initiations.
And the arrangement of the sacred performers, in the first power, cleanses the unperfected through the rites; in the middle, it gives light to the cleansed; and in the last and highest of the powers of the sacred performers, it perfects those who have communicated in the divine light, in the scientific perfections of the illuminations that have been beheld.
And the power of those being perfected is, the first, that which is being cleansed; the middle, after the cleansing, that which is being illumined and is contemplative of certain sacred things; and the last and more divine than the others, that which, illumined, is the beholder of the sacred illuminations of which it had become a contemplator, attaining the perfective knowledge.
Of the holy sacred performance of the rites, then, the threefold power has been hymned—the sacred divine birth having been shown from the Scriptures to be cleansing and illuminative illumination, and the synaxis and the rite of the myron to be perfective of the knowledge and science of the divine workings, through which is sacredly accomplished the unifying uplifting toward the Deity and the most blessed communion.
Or do we not see even the sensible substances of the elements going first into those more kindred to them, and through those channelling forth their own activity into others?
Fittingly, then, the source and establishment of all invisible and visible good order first gives the God-working rays to go into the more deiform, and through those, as more transparent intellects, fit for participation in and imparting of light, it illumines and shines forth into the subordinate, in proportion to them.
It belongs, then, to these first beholders of God, to display to the second, ungrudgingly and in proportion to them, the divine visions sacredly beheld by them; and to initiate, into the hierarchic things, those who, with perfective knowledge, have been well initiated into all the divine things of the hierarchy that pertains to them and have received in addition the perfection-working power of initiating; and to impart, according to worth, the sacred things to those who have scientifically and wholly partaken of the priestly perfection.
And the power of the hierarchic order proceeds throughout all the sacred wholes, and through all the sacred ranks performs the mysteries of its own hierarchy.
For even though certain of the venerable symbols are performed by the priests, yet the priest will never perform the sacred divine birth without the most divine myron, nor will he perform the mysteries of the divine communion without the communional symbols having been set upon the most divine altar.
Whence the divine legislation has uniformly allotted the sanctifying of the priestly ranks, the perfecting of the divine myron, and the sacred rite-performance of the altar, to the perfection-working powers of the inspired hierarchs.
The hierarchic rank, then, is that which is filled full of the perfective power, pre-eminently performing the perfection-working things of the hierarchy, and revelatorily initiating and teaching the sciences of the sacred things, and the sacred habits and powers proportionate to them.
And the illuminative rank of the priests hand-leads those being perfected toward the divine visions of the rites, under the rank of the inspired hierarchs, and, performing with it its own sacred performances—in those things in which it itself acts, showing forth the divine workings through the most sacred symbols, and making those who approach contemplative and communicants of the holy rites—while sending up to the hierarch those who long for the knowledge of the sacred performances that have been beheld.
And the rank of the ministers, the cleansing and discerning of the unlike, before the bringing-forward to the sacred performances of the priests, cleanses those who approach, making them unmingled with things contrary and fit for the sacred-performing sight and communion.
Whence, at the sacred divine birth, the ministers strip the one approaching of his old garment, and moreover unshoe him, and set him toward the west for renunciation, and again transfer him toward the east (for they are of the cleansing rank and power), commanding those who approach to cast off wholly the clothings of their former life, and showing forth the darkness of the former manner of life, and teaching them, having renounced the lightless things, to be transferred toward the illuminative.
The liturgical arrangement, then, is cleansing, leading up the cleansed toward the radiant sacred performances of the priests, and cleansing the unperfected and bringing them to birth by the cleansing illuminations and teachings of the Scriptures, and moreover separating off the unhallowed, unmingled, from the sacred things.
For the lesser are unable to leap across to the better things—besides which it is not even lawful for them to undertake such presumption—while the more divine powers, together with their own, know also the sacred sciences subordinate to their perfection.
Nevertheless, since the priestly arrangements are images of divine workings, displaying in themselves the ordered illuminations of the well-ordered and unconfused rank of the divine workings, they have been ranked, in hierarchic distinctions, into first, middle, and last sacred activities and ranks, manifesting, as I said, in themselves the ordered and unmingled character of the divine workings.
For since the Deity first cleanses the intellects in whom it comes to be, then illumines them, and, having illumined them, perfects them toward a deiform perfection-working, fittingly the hierarchic image of divine things divides itself into distinct ranks and powers, clearly showing forth the deific workings standing steadfastly and unconfusedly in most all-holy and unmingled ranks.
But since we have spoken of the priestly orders and allotments, and their powers and activities, so far as is attainable to us, let us also contemplate, so far as we are able, their most sacred perfections.
The hierarch, being brought forward to the hierarchic perfection, bending both his knees before the divine altar, has upon his head the God-given Scriptures and the hierarchic hand; and in this manner he is perfected by the hierarch who perfects him, with the most all-holy invocations.
And the priest, bending both his knees before the divine altar, has upon his head the hierarchic right hand; and in this manner he is sanctified by the hierarch who perfects him, with the sacred-making invocations.
And the minister, bending one of his knees before the divine altar, has upon his head the right hand of the hierarch who perfects him, being perfected by him with the perfective invocations of the ministers.
And upon each of them the cruciform seal is marked by the hierarch who perfects, and over each a sacred proclamation is made, and a perfective greeting takes place, every priestly man present, and the hierarch who has performed the rite, greeting the one perfected for one of the aforesaid priestly orders.
Common, then, to hierarchs, priests, and ministers, in their priestly perfections, are: the bringing-forward to the divine altar and the prostration; the laying-on of the hierarchic hand; the cruciform seal; the proclamation; the perfective greeting.
But peculiar and select are: to the hierarchs, the placing of the Scriptures upon the head, which the subordinate orders do not have; to the priests, the bending of both knees, which the perfection of the ministers does not have.
The bringing-forward to the divine altar and the prostration, then, hints that all who are priestly being perfected must wholly submit their own life to God, the leader of the rite, and bring before him their own intellectual wholeness, all-pure and consecrated to him, like-formed and, so far as possible, worthy of the deific, most all-holy, and sacred altar that consecrates, in a priestly way, the deiform intellects.
And the laying-on of the hierarchic hand at once shows forth the rite-leading shelter, under which, like sacred children, they are cared for in a fatherly way—it granting to them a priestly habit and power, and beating off the powers contrary to them.
And the cruciform seal shows forth the inactivity of all the fleshly appetites at once, and the God-imitating life looking unswervingly toward the manful, most divine life of Jesus, who came, with deific sinlessness, even to the cross and death, and marking those who so live as like-formed by the cruciform image of his own sinlessness.
And the sacred proclamation of the perfections and of those being perfected the hierarch cries aloud, the mystery showing forth that the God-loving sacred initiator is the revealer of the deific choice—not himself by his own grace leading those being perfected toward the priestly perfection, but moved by God toward all the hierarchic sanctifyings.
Thus Moses, the legal sacred initiator, does not lead even Aaron, who was his brother, toward priestly perfection—though he deemed him to be God-loving and priestly—until, moved toward this from God, under God the leader of the rite, he hierarchically performed the priestly perfection.
But indeed even our deific and first sacred initiator (for the most love-of-mankind Jesus became this also for our sake) 'did not glorify himself,' as the Scriptures say, but he who spoke to him:
1:280
ΣὺἱερεὺςεἰςτὸναἰῶνακατὰτὴντάξινΜελχισεδέκή
「你是照著麥基洗德的等次永遠為祭司。」
'You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.'
'Do not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which you have heard from me, that you shall be baptized in the Holy Spirit.' And indeed the very chief of the disciples, together with the ten ranked with him in hierarchic fashion, having come to the priestly perfection of the twelfth of the disciples, reverently left the choice to the Deity, saying, 'Show forth whom you have chosen,' and received the one divinely shown forth by the divine lot into the hierarchic number of the holy twelve.
And concerning the divine lot that fell, by divine ordering, upon Matthias, others have said other things, not reverently, I think; but I too will state my own opinion.
For when a sacred intellect, with priestly habits and powers and divine calling and sanctification, has arrived at priestly perfection-working, it is beloved by the ranks of the same order and most sacred, having been led up toward the most deiform beauty, loving the like-formed intellects and being sacredly loved in return by them.
Whence the priestly greeting toward one another is sacredly performed, signifying the sacred communion of the like-formed intellects, and their mutual loving gladness, as those who wholly preserve, by priestly forming, the most deiform beauty.
For since the perfective power and knowledge of the whole priesthood is bestowed upon the inspired hierarchs by the deific and rite-leading goodness, fittingly upon the hierarchic heads are placed the God-given Scriptures, which are comprehensively and scientifically revelatory of all theology, divine working, theophany, sacred discourse, and sacred performance—in one word, of all the divine and sacred works and words granted by the good-working Deity to our hierarchy—as the deiform hierarch is to partake wholly of all hierarchic power, and is not only to be illumined with the true and God-given knowledge of all the hierarchic sacred discourses and performances, but is also to impart it to others in hierarchic proportions and to work it to perfection, in most divine knowledges and highest hierarchic uplifting, all the most perfection-working things of the whole hierarchy.
And to the priests, the bending of both knees is select, as over against the liturgical arrangement, since that one bends the single knee and is perfected in this hierarchic figure.
The bending, then, shows forth the submissive bringing-forward of the one who brings himself forward, submitting to God the thing sacredly brought forward.