Fr John Wehling - Video from here
by Olivier Clement
The
ancient Greeks, to symbolize a true meeting, used to use a split ring
whose two separate halves were joined together again. In Christ the
world is joined together again in symbol, in a profusion of symbols. The
invisible part appears in the visible: the visible draws its meaning
from the invisible. Each symbolizes the other in the 'house of the
world', of which God is the 'eccentric centre', being radically
transcendent.
God transcends the intelligible as well as the visible,
but through the incarnation of the Logos he penetrates them both,
transfigures and unites them. The world is a vast incarnation which the
fall of the human race tries to contradict. The diabolos [the Greek term
for devil, JW], the opposite of the symbolon, is continually trying to
keep apart the separated halves of the ring; but they come together in
Christ. Christian symbolism expresses nothing less than the union in
Christ of the divine and the human - of which the cosmos becomes the
dialogue - displaying the circulation in Christ of glory between 'earth'
and 'heaven', between the visible and the invisible.
God's
love for humanity wraps the spiritual in the perceptible, the
super-essential in the essence. It gives form . . . to what is formless
and, through a variety of symbols, it multiplies and shapes Simplicity
that has no shape.
-St Dionysios the Areopagite, The Divine Names
The
world is one . . . for the spiritual world in its totality is
manifested in the totality of the perceptible world, mystically
expressed in symbolic pictures for those who have eyes to see. And the
perceptible world in its entirety is secretly fathomable by the
spiritual world in its entirety, when it has been simplified and
amalgamated by means of the spiritual realities. The former is embodied
in the latter through the realities; the latter in the former through
the symbols. The operation of the two is one.
The
divine apostle says: 'Ever since the creation of the world his
invisible nature . . . has been clearly perceived in the things that
have been made' (Romans 1.20). If the invisible things are seen by means
of the visible, the visible things are perceived in a far greater
measure through the invisible by those who devote themselves to
contemplation. For the symbolic contemplation of spiritual things by
means of the visible is nothing other than the understanding in the
Spirit of visible things by means of the invisible.
-St Maximos the Confessor, The Mystagogy
God himself is simple and unlimited, beyond all created things . . . because he is free of any interdependence.
-St Maximos the Confessor, Ambigua
Ordination of the Orthodox Deacon Richard Amuyunzufrom Lugari by the Bishop Athanasius of Kisumu and All Western Kenya (from here)
So
everything is symbolic: all creatures, however lowly, and their
relationships, their balance, in which life springs unceasingly from
death. The purity of matter, that point of transparency at the heart of
things, reaches its perfection in Mary's fruitful virginity. Alongside
the utilitarian use of objects, or rather by means of it, one must learn
to contemplate the flowering of heavenly realities in them. There is
not only the horizontal concatenation of cause and effect. Each created
object when contemplated 'vertically' expands to infinite horizons. Only
this 'vertical' knowledge can clarify the scientific quest and limit
and guide its technical power. Homo faber (Man the Maker) suffocates
himself and suffocates the world if he is not in the first place homo
celebrans (Man the Worshipper).
See also
Kiss The Who's What? (A Holy Kiss)
The Way - An introduction to the Orthodox Faith
Theosis (deification): The True Purpose of Human Life
What do we mean by “Fathers of the Church”?
The ancient Christian Church - About Orthodox Church in the West World...
Posts in English in our blog
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