In her introduction to Evelyn Underhill:  essential writings (Orbis 2003) Emilie Griffin summarizes five traits of genuine mysticism that can be discerned in the work of the great Anglican spiritual director and writer.  Hat-tip to Carl McColman.

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1. Christian mysticism is active and practical. Even a Carthusian hermit takes responsibility for living his contemplative life with honor, dignity, and personal integrity. Meanwhile, for the vast majority of Christian contemplatives, the life of silence is embedded in a network of community relationships and responsibilities of some form. True mysticism does not fly from such obligations, but embraces them and seeks to meet them well.
2. Christian mysticism is spiritual and transcendental, rather than magical. The authentic mystic does not seek supernatural power for the purpose of controlling earthly circumstances, but rather seeks to surrender to the will and calling of Divine Love. By doing so, one does not abdicate the need to be engaged with the earthly dimension of life (see #1), but rather abandons all things to Divine Providence, whether “good” or “bad.” Both pleasure and suffering are held lightly and viewed in the light of eternity.
3. Christian mysticism is centered in love. It is not centered in experience, or in shifts of consciousness, or even in miracles or healing — no matter how worthy such spiritual matters might be. For the authentic mystic, all the phenomena of mysticism is always subordinate to the essential fact and yearning for ever-unfolding intimacy and immersion into the dance of Divine love. Such love is the heart of the Trinity and the key to Divine-human relations.
4. Union with God in authentic mysticism transforms the mystic for ever richer levels of life. In the Gospel of John, Jesus says of his followers, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” Mysticism is a portal into such abundant living. Like all things of God, it is never an end to itself — if it were, it would cease to be an icon and instead become an idol. Mysticism points beyond itself to the life of kenosis and theosis: self-emptying in order to participate in the Divine nature.
5. As a result of such loving union, the authentic mystic becomes unselfish. Just as normal human moral development moves us from ego-centric to ethnocentric and finally world-centric stages of care, so the mystical life makes love of God and love of neighbor real by anchoring love of self in ever-widening circles of concern. An unselfish mystic is not contemptuous of the self, but rather loses interest in self-aggrandizement because of the deep love for and interest in others: love that is, of course, expressed in concrete, practical ways.

During this Advent season, we of course ponder the wonder of  God taking on human flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.  Maximus the Confessor, the great seventh-century Greek theologian, suggests that we can allow Jesus to become incarnate within us in a metaphorical yet very real way.  This concept is explored by Brock Bingaman in his comprehensive essay "Becoming a spiritual world of God:  the theological anthropology of Maximus the Confessor."  It is chapter 9 in The Philokalia:  a classic text of Orthodox spirituality, Brock Bingaman and Bradley Nassif, eds.  Oxford, 2012.

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Along with Maximus's teaching on the incarnation as the key to understanding all things, as an act of divine love, as a trinitarian work, and as the self-emptying of Christ, is the idea that the incarnation continues to occur within believers.  In the First Century of Various Texts on Theology, The Divine Economy, and virtue and Vice, Maximus asserts that the "divine Logos, who once for all was born in the flesh, always in his compassion desires to be born in spirit in those who desire him".  Maximus goes on to explain that the Logos becomes an infant and forms himself in the believer through the virtues.  The Logos reveals only as much of himself as he knows the believer can accept.  The limited manifestation of his own greatness in each believer is not due to his lack of generosity, but is based on the receptive capacity of those who long to see him.  "In this way", Maximus continues, "the divine Logos is eternally made manifest in different modes of participation, and yet remains eternally invisible to all in virtue of the surpassing nature of his hidden activity."

In another philokalic text, where Maximus speaks of a balance of dispositions and an inner unity that reflect the holiness of the divine image and likeness, he explains that this is how one participates in the kingdom of God and becomes a translucent abode of the Holy Spirit.  Through grace and free choice, the believer's soul becomes the dwelling place of Christ:  "In souls such as this, Christ always desires to be born in a mystical way, becoming incarnate in those who attain salvation."  Thunberg argues that Maximus's teaching on Christ's presence, birth, and embodiment in the virtues demonstrates that human perfection has two sides.  First, it includes restoration, integration, unification, and deification; and second, it includes divine inhabitation in human multiplicity.  This double emphasis is found whenever Maximus reflects on the theme of Christ's ongoing incarnation in believers and is based on Maximus's late Chalcidonian theology with its emphasis on communicatio idiomatum and perichoresis (or the sharing of attributes and the interpenetration of the divine and human natures in Christ).  Thus Maximus understands that the incarnation of the Logos and the deification of humanity are two sides of the same mystery. 

Theosis or deification is typically considered an Eastern Orthodox concept.  Yet it does crop up fairly often in the writings of Western theologians.  One such is Augustine of Hippo.  In his blog Alvin Rapien collates several Augustinian quotes pertaining to theosis and comments on them, prefacing his remarks with a concise description of what theosis is.  One such quote is reproduced below.  Augustine is at pains to stress that theosis is a participation in the life of God and not a transformation of our created essence into the divine essence.

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So also, just as His inferior circumstances, into which He descended to us, were not in every particular exactly the same with our inferior circumstances, in which He found us here; so our superior state, into which we ascend to Him, will not be quite the same with His superior state, in which we are there to find Him.  For we by His grace are to be made the sons of God, whereas He was evermore by nature the Son of God; we, when we are converted, shall cleave to God, though not as His equals; He never turned from God, and remains ever equal to God; we are partakers of eternal life, He is eternal life.

Richard Hooker (1554-November 3 1600) is almost universally recognized as the single greatest Anglican theologian.  His Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, essentially a treatise on ecclesiology, is a defense of the Elizabethan settlement against the criticisms of Puritans and other radical Protestants.  But it also affirms the validity of the reformed English church in the face of critiques by Roman Catholics.  A very good assessment of Hooker and his work may be found in chapter 4 of Anglicanism and the Christian Church, by Paul Avis, a theologian and priest of the Church of England (Edinburgh, T&T Clark 1989).  I have excerpted what Avis has to say about Hooker's approach to tradition, which appears on pp 66-67.

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The term tradition will serve to designate this third component [along with Scripture and reason] of Hooker's synthesis, though practice, experienceand consent are all involved.  They constitute the third and final test or touchstone of religious truth.  "Where neither the evidence of any law divine, nor the strength of any invincible argument otherwise found out by the light of reason, nor any notable public inconvenience" are decisive, "the very authority of the church itself...may give so much credit to her own laws, as to make their sentence touching fitness and conveniency weightier than any bare and naked conceit to the contrary".

There is a fundamental conservative principle underlying Hooker's thought at this point and it belongs to the uniformitarian presupposition that he shared with all European culture before the eighteenth century.  Truth was eternal.   What was right was right for all times and places.  Universal consent was equivalent to nature itself, and the voice of nature was as the voice of God.  Let us be loath "to change, without very urgent necessity, the ancient ordinances, rites and long approved customs of our venerable predecessors...antiquity, custom and consent in the church of God, making with that which law doth establish, are themselves most sufficient reasons to uphold the same, unless some notable public inconvenience enforce the contrary".  If and when it does, Hooker immediately goes on, the church has authority to respond by altering its practice.

James I of England, also known as James VI of Scotland (1566-1625), was, unlike many Supreme Governors of the Church of England, genuinely interested in religion and theology.  His greatest accomplishment in these areas was his sponsorship of the Authorized Version of the Bible.  His high-church tendencies can be seen in his appreciation of the sermons of Lancelot Andrewes and in his largely futile efforts to maintain episcopacy in the resolutely Presbyterian Scottish kirk.  A statement of his personal faith is found in A Premonition to All Most Mighty Monarchs, Kings, Free Princes, and States of Christendom (1609), reprinted in The Anglican Tradition:  a handbook of sources (GR Evans and J Robert Wright, eds, 1991 SPCK/Fortress.  It appears on pp 206-207 in the latter source.

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I will never be ashamed to render an accompt of my profession and of that hope that is in me, as the apostle prescribeth.  I am such a Catholic Christian as believeth the three Creeds, that of the Apostles, that of the Council of Nice [Nicaea], and that of Athanasius, the two latter being paraphrases of the former.  And I believe them in that sense as the ancient Fathers and Councils that made them did understand them, to which three Creeds all ministers of England do subscribe at their ordination.  And I also acknowledge for Orthodox all those other forms of Creeds that either were devised by Councils or particular Fathers, against such particular heresies as most reigned in their times.  I reverence and admit the Four First General Councils as Catholic and Orthodox.  And the said Four General Councils are acknowledged by our Acts of Parliament, and received for orthodox by our Church.  As for the Fathers, I reverence them...For whatever the Fathers for the first five hundred years did with an unanime consent agree upon, to be believed as a necessary point of salvation, I either will believe it also, or at least will be humbly silent, not taking upon me to condemn the same.  But for every private Father's opinion, it binds not my conscience...every one of the Fathers usually contradicting others.  I will therefore in that case follow St Augustine's rule in judging of their opinions as I find them agree with the Scriptures.  What I find agreeable thereto I will gladly embrace.  What is otherwise I will (with their reverence) reject.  As for the Scriptures, no man doubteth I will believe them.  But even for the Apocrypha, I hold them in the same accompt that the Ancients did.  They are still printed and bound with our Bibles, and publicly read in our Churches.

Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626), a great proponent of Laudian Anglicanism, was during his lifetime known publicly as a great preacher.  Out of the public eye he turned his personal chapel into an oasis of high-church liturgy during a time when the standard worship on offer in most English parishes was Morning Prayer in a surplice.  Even more privately, but perhaps of more lasting significance, were Preces Privatae, a manuscript of private prayers that was not published until long after his death.  The inspiration for these prayers came from many sources, including the medieval West and the Patristic East.  "An Act of Adoration" is found on page 198 of an online version of the prayers, a link to which may be found in the "Anglicans" section of the outer sidebar.

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O God the Father of heaven,
who hast marvellously created the world out of nothing,
who dost govern and uphold heaven and earth with thy power,
who didst deliver thine only begotten for us unto death;
O God the Son, Redeemer of the world,
who didst will to be incarnate of a virgin,
who hast washed us from our sins by thy precious blood,
who rising from the dead didst ascend victorious to heaven:
O God the Holy Ghost, the Comforter,
who didst descend upon Jesus in the form of a dove,
who coming upon the apostles didst appear in fiery tongues,
who dost visit and confirm with thy grace the hearts of the saints:
O sacred, higher, eternal, blissful, blessed Trinity,
always to be praised, yet always unspeakable:
O Father good,
O Son loving,
O Spirit kind,
whose majesty is unspeakable,
whose power is incomparable,
whose goodness is inestimable:
whose work is life,
whose love is grace,
whose contemplation is glory:
Deity, Divinity, Unity, Trinity:
Thee I worship, Thee I call upon,
with the whole affection of my heart I bless now
and for evermore.

For today's commemoration of St Sergius, we have a short video about the monastery he founded.

Alexei V Nesteruk is a researcher in cosmology and quantum physics at the University of Portsmouth in England and is an Eastern Orthodox Christian.  As such, he is one of the relatively few scholars engaged with the interaction of science and Orthodox  theology.  He explores many facets of this topic in Light From the East:  Theology, Science, and the Eastern Orthodox Tradition (Fortress 2003).  Of interest is the seventh-century theologian Maximus the Confessor and the great stress he lays on the discovery of God through the contemplation of the logoi of created things (logoi in this context referring to the underlying principles or patterns of created things, which are a reflection of the Divine Logos, the Creator of the universe.)  Nesteruk discusses Maximus' conception of logoi on pp 25-27 of his book.

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The problem that arises is how to demonstrate the presence of the Logos from within the created realm.  The clue to this demonstration can be found in Maximus the Confessor's theology of the logoi.  According to Maximus, it is the divine Logos (Word of God) that holds together the logoi of created things (that is, their immutable and eternal principles).

Maximus considered the contemplation of the logoi of created things to be a mode of communion with the Logos leading ultimately to mystical union with God.  The fundamental aspect of this communion is that, because it is exercised through the purified intellect (nous), the contemplation of the logoi is not the same as either empirical perception or mental comprehension.  It is a mode of spiritual vision of reality in which the ontological roots of things and beings have their grounds beyond the world.  This Christian contemplation of creation as if it were "from above" or "from within"--and not through external sensible or internal mental impressions--is significantly different from what is now normally accepted as taking place in scientific experience.

Indeed, science usually thinks of itself as starting from experiments and measurements, from things that constitute our sense of ordinary reality, though sometimes mediated by experimental apparatus.  There is, however, another aspect of all scientific investigation that involves the shaping of contingent empirical findings into a theory.  This requires access to symbolic language (for example, mathematics), which makes it possible for us to talk about the entities behind the outcomes of our measurements.  This takes place regularly when, for example, physics talks of elementary particles, fields, global geometry, the totality of the universe, and so forth.  All these "objects" are known to us only through their effects and are representable in our minds only with symbolic images.  In other words, their physical existence is affirmed in terms of their symbolic images.  We understand at present that this way of looking at reality corresponds to what we call human rationality.  The source of this rationality is hidden in the mystery of the human hypostasis, the human person.

The human person, made in the image of God, "is not identifiable with the body, or the soul, or the spirit.  It arises from another order of reality".  In other words, "the transcending character of human hypostasis...cannot be manifested within the relationship between body and soul--for they form one nature--but only in relation to something which is not of human nature, ie superhuman".

It is only because of the existence of this divine dimension in human beings that it is possible to infer from nature to God.  Only because of this dimension can we hope to unveil the divine intentions behind created things through the principles and ideas that are introduced into science by means of human rationality.

According to Maximus, the divine Logos is present in all things, holding their logoi together.  Thus the world is filled with the divine reality, and humans, in accordance with their logos, can have knowledge of the logoi of things.  Maximus expresses this thought in a characteristic, quite modern way when he speaks of the presence of the divine in the structure of the created world:  "Indeed, the scientific research of what is really true will have its forces weakened and its procedure embarrassed, if the mind cannot comprehend how God is in the logos of every special thing and likewise in all the logoi according to which all things exist".

Maximus contends that people know things from nature in their differentiated mode--that is, they see creation as divided into parts--and that this perception always confuses them.  The natural contemplation of things means the knowledge of the principles of existence of those things in their differentiation.  The fundamental step, which is made at this stage of mediation, is to contemplate all sensible creation in its oneness through finding that all the logoi of sensible things can be united in one divine Logos, which constitutes the principle of creation.  To achieve this contemplation, people mus be detached from sensible creation so as to see things spiritually.  Maximus compares this kind of contemplation of natural things with the angelic knowledge of sensible things, for angels know the logoi of sensible things directly, "from above".  Because the incarnation, according to Maximus, takes place both in the words of the Scripture and in the logoi of things that are held together in the universal Logos, spiritual ascent through the contemplation of the logoi of creation leads finally to the Logos-Christ.  The knowledge of things of the world thus acquires all the features of participation in the Divine:  "On the account of the presence of the Logos in all things, holding their logoi together, the world is pregnant with divine reality, and knowledge of it--through the rational quality of humans, their own logos--is itself a kind of communion with God, a participation in divine things through the aims and purposes that are recognized in creation"...

It is characteristic of Maximus and of the Greek Fathers in general that they could transcend spiritually the material world, the world of nature, in order to contemplate its logoi and through this contemplation praise the creator of the natural world...The Fathers never worshiped nature, only its creator...Praying to the Creator does not remove the distinction between God and the creation.  This safeguards the position of the Fathers from pantheism.  God and nature are not identical, but one may seek access to nature in order to find God.

For today's feast I offer an address by Metropolitan Kallistos.  Please be aware that the talk is in several parts.

Sergei Bulgakov (1871-1944) was one of the leading Russian Orthodox theologians of the 20th century.  His multi-volume systematic theology, of which The Bride of the Lamb (Boris Jakim translator, Eerdmans 2002) is the culmination, speaks of many things.  Since the anniversary of his death was recently observed on July 13, let's look at a bit of what he says about death in a Christian context.  Interestingly, it is reported by witnesses that just before his own death his face assumed a beatific expression and shone forth with an unnatural light, a phenomenon interpreted by Orthodox as the Uncreated or Taboric Light, a visible manifestation of God Himself.  The excerpt below is found on pp 359-360.

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This revelation of the spiritual world in death is the greatest joy and an ineffable triumph for all those who, in this life, yearned for this spiritual world from which they had been exiled.  But death is an inexpressible horror, anguish, and torment for those who did not want this spiritual world, did not know it, rejected it.  And here one is confronted with with this greatest of trials, which makes inevitable one's transformation from a corporeal being into a spiritual being.  One who was flesh is forced now to become directly convinced of the existence of his spiritual nature.  However, even after death, a human being does not stop being a human being, forever connected with this world by his corporeality.  But, for the fullness of spiritual-corporeal being and spiritual-psychic being, before death and after death.  The two halves are inseparably linked; they both belong to the life of the same individual, to his unique life that would have been free of this rupture if it had remained apart from this pathological dialectic of life and death, from the schism of the dual-unity.  But this is no longer the case:  to achieve fullness of humanization, a human being must go to the end of himself, not only in mortal life but also in the afterlife state, in order to attain the ripeness that makes him capable of receiving resurrection to eternal life in the fullness of true humanity.  Understood this way, as an essentially necessary part of human life, death is actually an act of continuing life, although life that is affected by "dormition".

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) was one of the greatest Jewish philosophers of the 20th century. A native of Poland, he taught for many years at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City.  Besides his scholarly work, he was passionately committed to social justice and marched with Dr King at Selma.  In his book God in Search of Man (Jewish Publication Society 1956) he points out that the biblical Hebrew word yirah, conventionally translated as fear (as in "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom", in Psalm 111: 10) can also--and perhaps better--be rendered as awe.  The implications of this insight for Christian theology need hardly be exaggerated.  The following quote is taken from pp 76-77 of his book.

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 According to the Bible the principal religious virtue is yirah.  What is the nature of yirah?  The word has two meanings:  fear and awe.  There is the man who fears the Lord lest he be punished in his body, family, or in his possessions.  Another man fears the Lord because he is afraid of punishment in the life to come.  Both types are considered inferior in Jewish tradition.  Job, who said, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him," was not motivated in his piety by fear, but rather by awe, by the realization of the grandeur of His eternal love.

Fear is the anticipation and expectation of evil or pain, as contrasted with hope which is the anticipation of good.  Awe, on the other hand, is the sense of wonder and humility inspired by the sublime or felt in the presence of mystery.  Fear is "a surrender of the succors which reason offers," awe is the acquisition of insights which the world holds in store for us.  Awe, unlike fear, does not make us shrink from the awe-inspiring object, but, on the contrary, draws us near to it.  This is why awe is compatible with both love and joy.

In a sense, awe is the antithesis of fear.  To feel "The Lord is my light and my salvation" is to feel "Whom shall I fear?" (Psalm 27:1)...

Awe precedes faith; it is at the root of faith.  We must grow in awe in order to reach faith.  We must be guided by awe to be be worthy of faith.  Awe, rather than faith is the cardinal attitude of the religious Jew.  It is "the beginning and gateway of faith, the first precept of all, and upon it the whole world is established."  In  Judaism, yirat hashem, the awe of God, or yirat shamayim, the "awe of heaven", is almost equivalent to the word "religion".  In Biblical language the religious man is not called "believer", as he is for example in Islam (mu'min), but yare hashem.

Maximus the Confessor (ca 580-662) is perhaps the leading Patristic-era theologian of the Eastern Church.  His works are prolific and cover a very wide range of topics.  He is the most anthologized author in the Philokalia, the multi-volume collection of spiritual writings collected by two Athonite monks and first published in 1782.  An invaluable reference work dealing with the Philokalia is the collection of essays called The Philokalia:  a classic text of Orthodox spirituality, Brock Bingaman and Bradley Nassif, eds, Oxford, 2012.  Bingaman's essay "Becoming a spiritual world of God:  the theological anthropology of Maximus the Confessor" (chapter 9) is an excellent overview of Maximus' theology, dealing with a number of topics.  In this post we will look at his approach to cosmology.

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...one text in particular, his Fourth Century on Love, provides a helpful summary of his cosmology...In the first section of this century, there are eight discernible elements of cosmology.  The first is creatio ex nihilo.  In line with orthodox Christian tradition, Maximus asserts that God created the world out of nothing...This view expresses the superiority of God over all creation, as well as the idea that God does not need any pre-existent material in order to create.  It safeguards the distance and distinction between God and creation.

A second cosmological element concerns creation because of God's will...The world was created according to God's sovereign will, not because of obligation or any other external factor.  Linked with the idea of creation by God's sovereign will is Maximus' theology of the logoi...For Maximus, the logoi are the divine ideas for all things that have received their being from God.  Not only are these principles of differentiated creation preexistent in God, as God's thoughts, but they are divine wills or intentions...

The third element...is creation because of God's benevolence..Maximus explains that God's creative activity is rooted in divine goodness...Maximus asserts that the reunification of all things through communion with the Logos is an original divine intention, something interrupted by humanity's fall into sin.

A fourth element in Maximus' cosmology is creation by the Word...God creates through God's coessential Logos and Spirit.  The creation of all things is a trinitarian work...God's purpose [was] to create a world of differentiated creatures, independent creatures that find their unity in relationship to the Logos.  The logoi, those divine ideas or intentions in the mind of God, are dynamic realities that radiate from God, the Creator and Cause of all...through centempation in the Spirit, believers are enabled to see the Logos in the logoi of creation...Therefore, those who are in communion with Christ are enabled to see the logoi, the world of differentiated creatures, in light of their integral connection to the Logos...

...a fifth aspect of Maximus' cosmology can be seen:  creation on the basis of God's prudence...God's prudence or practical wisdom transcends the human intellect and is beyond human comprehension...

A sixth element...concerns creation as an act of God's condescension...Creation is good because God is its Cause...God enters into a deep relationship with creation by simply giving it existence...God the Logos actually indwells all of creation..

...The next element [is] the notion that every creature is a composite of substance and accident...God is pure being or substance, while creatures are given qualified being with the possibility for participation in something more than general being...Creaturely existence...is the gift of participation in God's own being, goodness, wisdom, and life...Human beings are able to transcend nature without violating it, and to realize their created purpose, which is union with God or deification...This union is made possible for humanity through the coming of Christ, through the hypostatic union of his human and divine natures.

The eighth and final point of Maximus' cosmology...is that creation is in need of divine Providence

When confronted with the doctrine of the Trinity, we are probably better off contemplating how a triune God interacts with us during worship rather than trying to imagine how the three persons interact with each other, a task which many learned theologians assure us is is impossible.  A good example of this can be found in an essay by Marquette University theologian Susan K Wood, "The Trinity in the liturgy, sacraments, and mysticism", found in The Cambridge Guide to the Trinity, Peter C Phan, ed, Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp 383-384.

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The movement of God's saving action and our response are related to two essential liturgical elements, anamnesis and epiclesis.  Anamnesis, translated as "memorial", commemoration", or "remembrance", actually has the much stronger meaning of making present an event or person from the past.  Anamnesis asks God to remember his saving work in Jesus Christ in order that the benefits of Christ's sacrifice may be made present to the faithful here and now.  These deeds are actually made present in the liturgy in the anamnesis, not as a repetition of his saving deeds or as a mere recollection of them, but as an actualization of them within the modality of sacramental sign.  The anamnesis is accomplished through the work of the Spirit, who "awakens the memory of the Church then inspires thanksgiving and praise."

The epiclesis is a calling on the Spirit to transform the material of creation and make it salvific in its sacramental use.  Sacraments are effective because they are Christ's action, made present through the power of the Spirit.  Although we may think of the epiclesis primarily in terms of the Eucharist, most of the sacraments, as we shall see, have an epicletic moment.  The Holy Spirit brings us into communion with Christ, effects our spiritual transformation into the image of Christ, both individually and corporately, and constitutes Christ's ecclesial body, the corpus mysticum.  Thus the Spirit is the bond of unity in the church and the source of empowerment for service and mission.

The Father as the source and end of all blessings of creation and salvation is the source and goal of the liturgy, which reveals and communicates the divine blessing.  We receive these blessings through the incarnate Word of the Father, who, in turn, pours out the gift of the Spirit.  The liturgy offers adoration, praise, and thanksgiving to the Father by offering to the Father his own gifts, especially the gift of his Son.  The Spirit "recalls and makes Christ manifest to the faith of the assembly",  "makes Christ present here and now", and "unites the Church to the life and mission of Christ."

The end or purpose of all the sacraments is reconciliation with the Father and the Father's glorification (Eph 1:12; 2 Cor 3:18; Jn 17).  The Latin word for sacrament, sacramentum, is a translation of of the Greek word mysterion, which refers to God's plan for salvation (Col 1: 26-27).  This plan is the Father's plan "to reconcile to himself all things through Christ, in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, who made peace through the blood of his cross" (Col 1: 19-20).  The paschal mystery is the keystone of the Christian mystery.  All the liturgical feasts and sacraments are referenced to the event of Christ's dying and rising and to this great pattern of reconciliation with the Father through Christ in the power of the Spirit.  Thus the liturgical year is not simply a memesis or imitation of Christ's life.  Christmas is primarily about God's Word becoming flesh and dwelling among human beings in order to bring salvation.  Sacraments are not just seven anthropological markers of lifetime passages such as birth, puberty, sickness, and marriage, but relate to the two fundamental sacraments, baptism and Eucharist, in their functions of reconciliation and building up the church as a messianic saving community.  Sacraments give access to participation in this plan of salvation, anamnesis (memorial) and epiclesis being essential to each of them.

A bit in advance of Pentecost, we have some words on the role of the Holy Spirit in the process of deification by Greek Orthodox priest and theologian Christoforos Stavropoulos.  It first appeared in Partakers of Divine Nature (Light and Life 1976); I found it in the excellent compendium Eastern Orthodox Theology:  A Contemporary Reader, 2nd edition, Daniel B Clendenin, ed,  Baker Academic 2003, where it appears on pp 188-189.

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The Holy Spirit is the great resident of the church.  It is there that the Holy Spirit exercises all of his sanctifying and deifying power.  The work of our theosis, which our Lord Jesus Christ accomplished objectively, is completed by the Holy Spirit, adapting it to the life of every faithful Christian.  The Holy Spirit is the main and essential beginning of sanctification.  The Fathers of the church specifically teach that the theosis of human beings is attributable to the Holy Spirit.  The essential place of the Incarnate Word of God is matched by that of the Holy Spirit.  The divine Spirit that proceeds from the Father divinizes us.  The Spirit is "divine and divinizing".  The Holy Spirit is a divine bond which harmonizes and draws the mystical body of Christ, that is, the church, together with its Lord.  It is the Holy Spirit who makes the faithful into other Christs, and thus creates the church.  Our incorporation in the mystical body of Christ and our theosis are not exclusively the work of the incarnation of Christ.  They are also the work of the creative Holy Spirit, who creates the church with his spiritual gifts.

Through the Holy Spirit the faithful become sharers of divine nature.  They are formed in the new life.  They put off corruption.  They return to the original beauty of their nature.  They become participants of God and children of God.  They take on the shape of God.  They reflect the light of Christ and inherit incorruptibility.  Thus, the contribution of the Holy Spirit is always a finalizing action.  God the Father, before all ages, conceives of the work of salvation and theosis.  He realizes it in time, in the Son.  The Holy Spirit completes and perfects and adapts this work to people.  In the sphere of the church, the Holy Spirit mystically sanctifies and unites the faithful with Christ, thus creating and giving life to the mystical body of the Lord.  Here, in this  mystical body, the Holy Spirit's sanctifying energy shines forth.  These divine energies and the variety of graces of the Holy Spirit and the gifts which he mystically transmits to the soul of the believer, all shape and form the new Godlike human nature.  The Holy Spirit consequently has a power which re-creates, renews, and causes a rebirth.  Basil writes, "From the Holy Spirit there are the foreknowledge of the future, the comprehension of mysteries, the understanding of hidden things, the distribution of graces, the heavenly way of life, association with angels, unending happiness, residence in God, the likeness of God, and the highest of all things to be desired, to become God."  This re-creative power of the Holy Spirit is what is known as divine grace.  It comes and meets people.  It does not force.  It strengthens them in a spiritual way to walk the road leading to theosis.  However, it is absolutely necessary that people receive divine grace willingly and without coercion.  It is absolutely necessary for individuals to freely cooperate with divine grace in order to be able to travel the blessed road of union with God.

Many people with only a casual acquaintance with Alan Watts (1915-1973) are probably unaware that he was an ordained priest in the Episcopal Church earlier in his life.  As a boy he was a somewhat nominal member of the Church of England, but for a time he attended Canterbury School (adjacent to the Cathedral) at a time when the Cathedral dean was a strong Anglo-Catholic.  The young Watts was an acolyte under the dean and was exposed at an impressionable age to the glories of bells and smells.  After his first marriage, he and his wife moved to the United States where he came back--for a time--to the active practice of Christianity after an intense involvement with Buddhism.  They attended St Mary the Virgin (aka "Smokey Mary's") in New York City which further strengthened his love of high-church ritual.  Watts decided to become a priest and was accepted as a postulant for Holy Orders by the Bishop of Chicago, despite his lack of a university degree.  He was able to enroll in Seabury-Western Seminary and was ordained in 1945.  Following this, he was assigned to serve as Episcopal chaplain at Northwestern University.  For a time his ministry flourished; liturgies in the chapel featured lots of incense and Gregorian chant performed by Northwestern music students.  He became a popular lecturer and attracted many in the university community.

This all came crashing down in 1950 when his marriage failed.  He and his wife were unfaithful to each other, in both cases with Northwestern students.  His wife informed the bishop of the situation, and that was the end of Fr Watts. (the sordid details are recounted by Monica Furlong in her biography Zen Effects [1986, Houghton Mifflin]).  But before Watts self-destructed as a priest, he was able to publish Behold the Spirit:  A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion (Vintage 1971; orig 1947).  This amazing book was a reworking of his seminary master's thesis, and must be considered a minor masterpiece of Christian spirituality, all the more so considering the author's dedication to Zen and other Eastern traditions.  The book reveals a thorough knowledge of the Western Christian spiritual tradition.  Had Watts remained a priest, he might well have become one of the leading Anglican spiritual masters of the 20th century.

The final part of the book contains his thoughts on liturgy, some of which is excerpted below.

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On the whole...it is probably safe to say that it impresses [the modern person] as less awkward when the form of worship is very frankly archaic and symbolic.  It may still seem unreal and remote from life, but this will only be true so long as the Church fails to complement symbolic religion with mystical religion.  Given an understanding of mystical religion, we shall not need or desire to mix formal religion with everyday life or make any compromise between secular forms and religious forms.  On the contrary, we shall keep our forms separate and realize complete harmony of inner meaning.  It is highly probable, therefore, that as the mystical understanding of Christianity increases, as union with God is realized more and more in everyday life, our forms of worship will become unashamedly archaic and symbolic.  We shall keep the ancient symbols of the Christian religion in all their original purity, for our spiritual progress will not consist in a development and adaptation of symbolism, but in an increased understanding of its meaning.

By and large, a prayer meeting in a modern living-room leaves one with nothing but a bad taste in the mouth.  The characteristic mentality of our time finds this kind of thing totally awkward and absurd, not because it "brings religion home" or too close for comfort, but because it smacks of exhibitionism.  Yet at Christmas intelligent pagans go by thousands to Midnight Mass in the local Roman or Anglican church and enjoy themselves immensely...Of course, they go in part to "see the show" and to hear fine music, but there is also the attraction of the numinous, the infectious fascination of the holy which delivers the soul from its own futility.

Hat-tip to the Glory to God for All Things site.

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 Be crucified, but do not crucify others.

Be slandered, but do not slander others.

Exult with those who repent.

God is not One who requites evil, but who sets evil right.

That is what the torment of hell is in my opinion:  remorse.  But love inebriates the souls of the sons and daughters of heaven by its delectability.

Repentance is given us as grace after grace, for repentance is a second regeneration by God.  That of which we have received an earnest by baptism, we receive as a gift by means of repentance.  Repentance is the door of mercy, opened to those who seek it.  By this door we enter into the mercy of God, and apart from this entrance we shall not find mercy.

God's recompense to sinners is that, instead of a just recompense, God rewards them with resurrection.

Gregory of Nyssa (ca335-395) was the brother of Basil the Great and the friend of Gregory Nazianzus.  Collectively, they are known as the Cappadocians, after the region in Anatolia where they spent most of their lives.  Gregory of Nyssa had a strongly philosophical bent--he was especially influenced by Plotinus--and he aimed to engage his theology with the best philosophical thought of his day.  He played a key role in formulating the late fourth-century theological understanding of the Trinity, which remains foundational for orthodox theology.  He is commemorated by the Episcopal Church on March 9.  Below is an excerpt from his treatise on the Lord's Prayer.  Along with other quotes by Gregory, it can be found here

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"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God".  Who are these?  Those who imitate the Divine love of others, who show forth in their own life the character of the Divine energy.  The Lord and Giver of good things completely annihilates anything that is without affinity and foreign to goodness.  This work he ordains also for you, namely to cast out hatred and abolish war, to exterminate envy and banish strife, to take away hypocrisy and extinguish from within resentment of injuries smoldering in the heart.  Instead, you ought to introduce whatever is contrary to the things that have been removed.
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This week Pope Francis declared St Gregory of Narek--or Grigor Narekatsi, as he is known in Armenian--a Doctor of the Church.  Gregory lived between 951-1003 and spent his entire life in the town of Narek, located near Lake Van in what is now eastern Turkey.  He was born into a clerical family (his father was an archbishop) and he soon entered the local monastery.  He wrote poetry of a strongly mystical nature and is considered one of the major figures in Armenian literature.  The sample excerpted below is from the Book of Lamentations, written about 977.  The translation is by Thomas J Samuelian, and the on-line version is available here.

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Prayer 1

The voice of a sighing heart, its sobs and mournful cries,
I offer up to you, O Seer of Secrets,
placing the fruits of my wavering mind
as a savory sacrifice on the fire of my grieving soul
to be delivered to you in the censer of my will.

Compassionate Lord, breathe in
this offering and look more favorably on it
than upon a more sumptuous sacrifice
offered with rich smoke.  Please find
this simple string of words acceptable.
Do not turn in disdain.

May this unsolicited gift reach you,
this sacrifice of words
from the deep mystery-filled chamber
of my feelings, consumed in flames
fueled by whatever grace I may have within me.

Today marks the centennial of Thomas Merton's birth.  Although he died in 1968, his influence remains significant today, and extends far beyond the bounds of the Roman Catholic Church.  A Trappist monk, his spiritual interests likewise extended far beyond the bounds of Western monasticism.  He was particularly engaged with the hesychastic tradition of Eastern Orthodoxy.  As novice master of Gethsemani he was charged with teaching the young monks about asceticism and mystical theology.  He did not exclude the Christian East from his syllabus. 

A sample of this can be found in Merton and Hesychasm, Bernadette Dieker  and Jonathan Montaldo, eds, Louisville, Kentucky, Fons Vitae, 2003.  The chapter is "Love for God and Mutual Charity:  Thomas Merton's Lectures on Hesychasm to the Novices at the Abbey of Gethsemani", transcribed and edited by Bernadette Dieker.  The quote below, found on pp 471-472, deals with the recitation of the Jesus Prayer to drive away distracting thoughts.

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The idea is first finding your heart, getting completely centered inside where the struggle is going on, and then in your heart socking this stuff with the most powerful thing that you've got, which is the Name of Jesus.  So you take the Jesus Prayer and you get this in the center of your heart and everything that comes up, WHAM!  And you really don't fool around, you hit it.  And you hit it out loud to begin with.  You're in a cell, you're by yourself, you're not in the Church, and you learn this prayer by saying it with your lips, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."  Then you say that about 5,000 times.  You keep saying it...You really work at this thing.  It becomes a full time project, and you keep it up until you or the thought gives up.  It's "either/or."  Now of course this is a bit drastic.  I don't think this is what most people need to do, but it's good to recognize that this is a basic approach that some people have.  Obviously there are simpler ways of doing it, but this is the way these fellows do it.

Then, after saying it with your lips, you learn that you don't have to say it out loud, you can just whisper it, and then it gets a lot quieter and you begin to calm down quite a bit.  Of course, this is over a period of time.  Then it becomes mental, and you think of it purely in your mind.  You don't say any words anymore, and then it gets down into your heart.  Mind, Heart, see.  And when it gets into your heart, it's a question that the mind and the heart have to be one.  This is the key to the whole thing.  A very complex idea, it's a very deep idea, actually.  A deep psychological idea of uniting your mind and your heart.  This is the key to the whole thing.  It takes an awful lot of understanding, and a great deal of work, uniting the mind and the heart.  What do they mean by that?  Well, that requires quite a lot of discussion.  The real fruit of the thing is when the prayer becomes completely spiritual--this follows pretty much the old Greek pattern of words, concepts, and then beyond concepts.  This is the way that they go at this thing, and I think that it's very interesting.  We'll come across this all the way down--there's the whole tradition, all through Russian spirituality which keeps coming back to this, and this is one of the big things in the nineteenth century.  This is one of the sources of nineteenth century Russian mysticism.  I think if we keep the idea of serious interior asceticism centered on this idea of a prayer of the heart which is effective in socking these things, but don't try to do it in the wrong way.  Just keep in your memory that there is such a method, but that you can't do it just by wanting to.  But it's something that is worth considering and you might look into it in the future as something that may have something to it.  I'll say at least that much.

Hilary (ca 300-368) was born in southwestern Gaul.  His parents were pagan and gave him what must have been an excellent classical education, to judge by the good Latin style of his later writings.  He also knew Greek, learned in part during his exile in the eastern part of the empire.  He was baptized, along with his wife and daughter, at a relatively mature age, and was elected bishop by the inhabitants of Poitiers only a few years later.  He quickly became embroiled in a theological dispute with adherents of Arianism, which was still vigorous despite its condemnation by the Council of Nicea.  Hilary fell afoul of the emperor Constantius, who was somewhat "soft" on the heresy, and was exiled to Phrygia in Asia Minor for several years.  After his return to Poitiers he completed De Trinitate, his major work, and mentored the great monastic Martin of Tours. 

Edward C Sellner, in Finding the Monk Within (HiddenSpring, 2008, pp 64-66) has some good insights into Hilary's approach to the Christian faith.

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All of his works...were composed with the strong conviction that God was not only one being, but three persons...God, and those who are created in God's image, Hilary believes, are thus called to community, to participate and build in their own lives communities that reflect the God in whose image they have been made...

A second conviction...is his intense love of and loyalty to Jesus Christ.  For Hilary, the Son of God was truly God not in name and metaphor only, but in the fullest sense and deepest reality.  This personal relationship with Christ, in fact, is his primary motive for the writings on faith that he does.  It is his reading and study of the sacred texts of scripture that inform his theology and the explanations he gives to justify belief in the power and equality of the Trinity.  Ultimately his love of Christ relies not solely on intellect and intellectual arguments, but upon his intuitive senses, his heart...

Hilary also learned from the Eastern fathers during his exile that to be a theologian was, above all, to be a person of prayer.  They had taught him that all theology begins and ends in prayer.  With this awareness, it was natural for him to conclude that "God cannot be known except by devotion".  As he writes in his book on the Trinity, "What presumption to suppose that words can adequately describe God's nature, when thought is often too deep for words, and His nature transcends even the conceptions of thought...We must believe, must apprehend, must worship, and such acts of devotion must stand in lieu of definition."  For Hilary, what he learned from the Eastern fathers was the ancient Christian principle, lex orandi, lex credendi" (the law of worship is the law of belief); in other words, how a person or community worships reveals what an individual or a community believes.  Thus his understanding of faith is linked intrinsically with a life of prayer, one that includes the reading of scripture, yes, but also public worship and personal prayer...

A fourth element of his theology also reflects the teachings of the Eastern father...when Hilary says, "What presumption to suppose that words can adequately describe God's nature."  Eastern theologians had taught him this apophatic theology:  based upon the presupposition that words or dogmatic definitions cannot fully explain the profound mystery of God.  Here Hilary anticipates the theology of later Eastern Orthodox Christians, the sixth-century writer Pseudo-Dionysius, and a number of medieval mystics, including the fourteenth-century anonymous English author  of the Cloud of Unknowing and the sixteenth-century Spanish poet, John of the Cross (1542-1591).  Hilary states in his book on the Trinity that the very "purpose" of faith, what it proclaims, is that it cannot fully "comprehend that for which it is seeking".  Anything that is said is merely an attempt to wrap words around a mystery that is beyond verbal or intellectual explanation.