Cycles of Newness

In every person we meet, we find either Christ crucified or Christ glorified, but nevertheless we will find Christ. – One of the Ancient Fathers, I forget which.

Relationships are not my strong point, I analyze them to death and kill a good thing with kindness (analysis paralysis, as they say.) However, relationships are the answer to life. Each time I meet someone, each time I fellowship with another person I am presented with a choice – to focus on Christ in that person, or to focus on the state of Christ in that person, as either crucified or glorified. Should I focus on the state of Christ I do not err, I can see a person in need of love and salvation, or a person full of love and salvation.

To an extent this is good, for love is good, salvation is good, and even the Crucifixion was good and is good today. But there is a trap set here, a trap of getting caught in the details, trying to build up in my mind an image of a person and the state of their soul, and then I am passed by the person themselves.

I find this same challenge in prayer. I seek after God to commune with Him, and his goodness overwhelms me. So much so that I instinctively look away to His good works rather than focus on the face of pure Revelation – (Barth). Barth would argue that we cannot comprehend God as God is, we would be consumed by the Holy Fire that creates reality as it passes by. We could not stand before this in our sinful state. But the mystics disagree. As the Cloud of the Unknowing asserts, a thought about God’s good works is not God, God Himself is our aim and the one we must commune with. How would I commune with God without dying, whose “love is like a consuming fire”? How would I see Him face to face?  We have an ability and a sense that has been hidden away from the western world, buried by the rigors of the sciences and throttled around the neck by efficient business. The Fathers tells us to look within ourselves, not through our senses or our faculties of reason and logic, but through the center of our love, that is our hearts. “So, when during the liturgy we recite the prayer ‘I believe in One God…,’ we try in reality to move from an intellectual faith in God to the actual vision of God. Faith becomes Love itself.” – Father Maximos The Mountain of Silence. From the depth of my heart I see God, and by faith I move towards God in the fullness of who He is.

For a brief moment in our history, we were graced with a man who saw God as God is. The Son of God knew everything about the Father and shared His every desire. When Christ walked among us, He brought with Him the fullness of the Holy Deity. He was fully God, lacking nothing. Yet He gave up His divine will, emptying Himself that the Father’s will be done. (Phillipians 2:7-8) The Father’s will was that humanity be united to Himself, that His lost sheep would return to their Shepard and Creator. The Second member of the Trinity had fully given up his will for the first, this was not a pseudo-relinquishment of Himself, for the acts of God are as real as they get.* Another mystery comes here, as the love of God places Christ upon the cross for us. Christ suffers every sin of humanity, that in Him every sin might be overcome. Christ is even cut off from the Father and sent to the grave and “now there is no place that God is not.”** But Love is stronger than death, and the grave cannot hold Christ who, because He is God and still part of the Trinity, is Life itself.

And Life, dear brothers and sisters, is as real as it gets. I had an anxiety attack tonight, I was expecting one after these past few weeks. Had some bleeding, it set me off, and then hit by anxiety. Said the Jesus Prayer as I walked to and from Reed gym, trying to get the focus off myself and my pain. Andrew gave me a ride back to the apartment, what a man. Then I spent the evening playing the guitar, writing and some personal meditation. More Jesus Prayer. “Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Hallelujah.

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*Google “kenosis” sometime. It’s a good word.

**The mystery and debate here is how could Christ be separated from God without splitting the deity. Rather than arguing metaphysics, I simply assert that Christ would suffer EVERYTHING that we suffer so that sin and death might be defeated by Him in all forms. This is a difference in Substitution Salvation(St. Anselm) vs Orthodox Salvation, check out the Orthodox Way by Kallistos Ware for that side of things.