| We read further: And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day (Gen. 1:11-13). On the third day of Creation God brought plants into being. And vegetation was created by God with such wisdom! Let’s take an acorn as an example. Who put so much information into a tiny acorn that it grows into a huge oak, and not into a birch or a pine tree? Who, speaking in modern language, “downloaded” all the necessary information into a sunflower seed, like a kind of flash drive, that it will inevitably grow into a tall sunflower which turns its bloom from west to east? Who inserted such information into a simple grain of wheat that it will eventually become bread? Who did all of this? It’s a very serious question. If we do not load any program onto a computer or a storage medium, they remain pieces of metal or plastic. Therefore, God the Creator and Sustainer of the world, arranged everything in this world in a wonderful way. He creates all the things by His will and providence. So on the third day God created vegetation. But this vegetation remained lifeless for a short time—one day: there were no birds, no fish, no animals to inhabit all these forests, and there was as yet no man—the crown of creation. We read further: And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so (Gen. 1:14-15). And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven ”—recall that the firmament is weightlessness—we spoke about this already. There’s more we need to say in connection with these verses in the book of Genesis. Many critics of Holy Scripture sneer: “You should have edited the Holy Scriptures!... How is it that first the grass and herbs bearing seed are created, and then the sun? Everything is exactly the opposite! First should be the sun and then plants—they can’t grow without photosynthesis! The days are wrong in the Bible.” No, we answer, Divine Revelation is in need of no such revision. God has all wisdom. God creates vegetation first, so that, as St. Basil the Great writes about it, we wouldn’t become idolaters and start worshiping the sun, and wouldn’t think that the sun is the cause of all life on earth. Therefore God first inserts His light, His Divine Energy, His grace into plants, in every seed they bear, in every bush which grows, in every petal, in every tree, in every flower which will ever grow on earth. God does everything in wisdom and thereby delivers us from idolatry. |
| On occasions He would even speak of Himself as We. ‘And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’ (Gen. 1.26). ‘And the Lord God said, Behold, man is become as one of us’ (Gen. 3.22). An even more remarkable instance occurs with Abraham: three men appeared to him yet he addressed them as if they were but one (cf. Gen. 18.2 et seq.). The acquisition of knowledge of God is a slow process, not to be achieved in all its plenitude from the outset, though God is always and in His every manifestation invariably One and indivisible. Christ used simple language intelligible to the most ignorant but what He said was above the heads even of the wisest of His listeners. ‘Before Abraham was, I am’ (John 8.58). ‘I and my Father are one’ (John 10.30). ‘My Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him’ (John 14.23). ‘I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever’ (John 14.16). (So now a Third Person is introduced.) ‘The Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me’ (John 15.26). We note that Christ only gradually began to speak of the Father, and it was not until towards the close of His earthly life that He spoke of the Holy Spirit. Right to the end the disciples failed to understand Him, and He made no attempt to explain to them the image of Divine Being. ‘I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now’ (John 16.12). Instead, He indicated how we might attain perfect knowledge: ‘If ye continue in my word…ye shall know the truth’ (John 8.31-32). ‘The Holy Ghost… shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you’ (John 14.26). ‘When he the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth’ (John 16.13). And He came, and revealed to us the fullness of Divine love but the gift was too much for our comprehension. Yet He does not withdraw but waits patiently for us to love Him, Christ, ‘the power of God, and the wisdom of God’ (1 Cor. |
| Photo: tatarstan-mitropolia.ru This internal transformation for women is an unbearably excruciating process. Compared with it, the pain of giving birth is not perceived by a woman as a punishment from the Lord. I have gotten a man from the Lord (Gen. 4:1), says Eve, having had her firstborn. It’s precisely in their children that women try to find their consolation, when they turn out to be incapable of fulfilling their main task of recognizing the authority of their husbands over them. The Lord indicates to man the path to correction, but begins His conversation with Adam by pointing out his guilt: thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it (Gen. 3:17). The Lord blames Adam not because he hast eaten of the tree, but because he put the counsel of his wife above the commandment of the Lord. The guilt of Adam, for which he was driven from Paradise, consists in following feminine sensuality instead of following the wisdom of the Lord. The sentence is simple. Instead of paradisiacal fruits, now man In the sweat of [his] face shalt … eat bread (Gen. 3:19). Together with paradisiacal fruits, free communion with God is taken away. Such a natural, and perhaps even habitual condition of conversation with God for man comes in the overwhelming labor of prayer: Man shall not live by bread alone , but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God (Mt. 4:4). Now the capturing of this true bread has become for husbands the main task of the return to Paradise. Only prayer in the sweat of [his] face gives man the opportunity to hear and comprehend the word of God and to follow it. Change yourself, not the other Thus, to return to Paradise, Adam must restore his manhood and strict adherence to the word of God, and Eve must restore her subordinate union with Adam. In other words, the purpose of the union of a man and a woman is to overcome the damages done to male and female nature received at the Fall. They were jointly acquired by Adam and Eve and they must be overcome together in the union of man and woman, in the union in which man takes a woman to himself—as she is, with all her weaknesses and desires. |
| 13 . If a person " s intellect is illumined with intellections of the divine, if his speech is unceasingly devoted to singing the praises of the Creator, and if his senses are hallowed by unsullied images – he has enhanced that sanctity which is his by nature, as created in the image of God, by adding to it the sanctity of the divine likeness that is attained through the exercise of his own free will. 14 . A man keeps his soul undefiled before God if he compels his mind to meditate only on God and His supreme goodness, makes his thought a true interpreter and exponent of this goodness, and teaches his senses to form holy images of the visible world and all the things in it, and to convey to the soul the magnificence of the inner principles lying within all things. 15 . God has freed us from bitter slavery to tyrannical demons and has given us humility as a compassionate yoke of devoutness. It is humility which tames every demonic power, produces in those who accept it every kind of sanctity, and keeps that sanctity inviolate. 16 . He who believes fears; he who fears is humble; he who is humble becomes gentle and renders inactive those impulses of incensiveness and desire which are contrary to nature. A person who is gentle keeps the commandments; he who keeps the commandments is purified; he who is purified is illumined; he who is illumined is made a consort of the divine Bridegroom and Logos in the shrine of the mysteries. 17 . Sometimes when a farmer is looking for a suitable spot to which to transplant a tree, he unexpectedly comes across a treasure. Something similar may happen to the seeker after God. If he is humble and unaffected, and if his soul, after the example of the blessed Jacob (cf. Gen. 27: 11 ), is sleek, and not hirsute with materiality, then God may grant him the contemplation of divine wisdom even though he has not laboured for it. But if the Father then asks him how he came by this knowledge, saying to him ‘What is this you have found so quickly, My son?’ he should reply, as Jacob did, ‘It is what the Lord God has granted to me’ ( Gen. 27: 20. LXX ). We should realize in such a case that what he has found is a spiritual treasure; for the devoted seeker after God is a spiritual farmer who transplants, as if it were a tree, his contemplation of visible and sensory things to the field of noetic realities; and in so doing he find a treasure – the revelation by grace of the wisdom in created things. |
| 37 . In the life of ascetic practice the Logos, adapted to the corporeal action of the virtues, becomes flesh (cf. John 1: 14 ). In the contemplative life the Logos, refined by conceptual images that arc spiritual, becomes what He was in His principial state, the Logos that was God and was with God (cf. John 1: 1 – 2 ). 38 . If you expound the teaching of the Logos from the standpoint of the moral life, using relatively materialistic words and examples which correspond to the capacity of your hearers, you make the Logos flesh. Conversely, if you elucidate mystical theology by means of the higher forms of contemplation you make the Logos spirit. 39 . If you theologize in an affirmative or cataphatic manner, starting from positive statements about God, you make the Logos flesh, for you have no other means of knowing God as cause except from what is visible and tangible. If you theologize in a negative or apophatic manner, through the stripping away of positive attributes, you make the Logos spirit or God as He was in His principial state with God: starting from absolutely none of the things that can be known, you come in an admirable way to know Him who transcends unknowing. 40 . When like the patriarchs we learn to dig wells of virtue and spiritual knowledge within ourselves by means of ascetic practice and contemplation, we will find within us Christ the spring of life (cf. Gen. 26: 15 – 18 ). Wisdom commands us to drink from this spring, saying, ‘Drink water from your own pitchers and from the spring of your own wells’ ( Prov. 5: 15 ). If we do this we shall find that the treasures of wisdom truly are within us. 41 . Those who animal-like live solely according to the senses make the Logos flesh for themselves in a dangerous way: they misuse God " s creation in order to indulge the passions. They do not understand the principle of that wisdom which is revealed to all: that we should know and praise God through His creation and that by means of the visible world we should understand whence we came, what we are, for what purpose we were made and where we are going. On the contrary, they travel through this present age in darkness, fumbling with both hands merely their ignorance of God. |
| In other terms, God is revealed to the creation through the Logos. The Logos is the revelation of His Wisdom (Leg. All. I, xix, 65). The simple, hidden, immaterial, ineffable God is “the Father of Wisdom.” The Logos or Wisdom is the World of Ideas, He by whom God framed and organized the cosmos. Thus, in one place, Philo wrote that God “stamped the entire world with an image and idea, namely, of His own Logos” (Somn. II, vi, 45), that is, “the Logos of God is the first principle, the archetypal Idea, the first measure of the universe” (Migr. Abr. XVIII, 103). The Logos is “the Idea of Ideas” (δα δεv), an expression based upon Aristotle’s description of the divine Mind as the “form of forms” (εδος εδv), which also explains Philo’s conception of the human mind as shaped “in conformity with the archetypal idea, namely, the most sublime Logos” (Spec. Leg. Ill, xxxvi, 207) – a theory, incidentally, upon which mutatis mutandis the epistemologies of Augustine and Origen also rest 116 . According to Philo, “to see things as they really are” is to see “the most holy Logos,” that which impressed itself not only on the human mind but on the universe. Although the Logos is “the image of God through whom the entire universe was framed” (De Spec. Leg. I, 81) and the Logos dwells in the creation as its “soul,” it cannot be said that anything is made “in the likeness of the most High One and Father of the Logos” (Quaest. in Gen. II, 62 ). Moreover, although the very purpose of philosophy is the vision of the divine Logos, visio Verbi, one may not expect that such a vision entitles us to the direct vision of God, visio Dei 117 . But Philo’s God is the Absolute, beyond all human knowledge and experience, and we know Him only indirectly through the Logos by which He created the world, the Logos, Who is the reflection of the divine Mind. Given these “first principles,” may we know whether the world is eternal. The question is not without its perils to answer: if God is eternal, if there is no change in Him, must He act eternally? If “no,” He is mutable, one time acting, one time not; if “yes,” does He continue to create even now and, therefore, our world is forever being created; or are there an infinite number of worlds? The distinction between God and the Logos was a partial answer to the first question. Philo dedicated an entire treatise to the second, Concerning the Indestructabilitv of the World (De Aeternitate mundi or, in the Greek, περ θαρσας кσμος). Such inquiries held no fascination for St Gregory. He took literally the declarations of Scriptures concerning the beginning and end of the created universe. He went no further in his cosmogony. |
| 9078 Epictetus Diatr. 4.3.9 (LCL 2:310–11). In the Loeb introduction, l:vii, an epigram attributed by Macrobius to Epictetus also calls him God " s friend. 9080 Philo Contempt Life 90, although there is a textual variant for «God " s.» God is a friend to Virtue in Philo Creation 81 and to Wisdom in Sobriety 55. Philo develops some Stoic friendship ideals; on Philós friendship ideals in general, see Sterling, «Bond.» 9081 M. " Abot 6:1. Cf. similarly Justin Dia1. 28: God " s friend is whoever knows and obeys him; Sent. Sext. 86ab: self-discipline produces piety, which seeks friendship with God. 9082 Sipre Deut. 53.1.3; b. Sukkah 55b; this is much less frequent tban Israel as God " s son in such parables. Cf. other, later references, in Deut. Rab. 3:11; Pesiq. Rab. 5:5,11; and Marmorstein, Names, 57; on God as friend to the world, Marmorstein, Names, 72–73, 86. God also befriends proselytes (Num. Rab. 8:4). 9083 Jub. 19:9; 4Q176 frg. 1–2, co1. 1, line 10 (quoting Isa 41:8–9); Philo Abraham 89 (θεοφιλος), 273; Sobriety 55; T. Ab. 1:7; 2:3, 6; 8:2; 9:7; 15:12–14; 16:3A; Apoc. Ab. 10(no earlier than second century C.E.); Apoc. Zeph. 9:4–5 (possibly a second-century Ebionite work); Mek. Pishi 18.8 (literally «beloved); Sir. 10.54–55 ; Gen. Rab. 65:10; Exod. Rab. 27:1; Lev. Rab. 11:7; also Jas 2:23; J Clem. 10.1, 17.2. The title is applied to Jacob in some MSS of Jos. Asen. 23:10; cf. perhaps Gen. Rab. 69(where the Shekinah may be a friend to Jacob, apparently in third-century tradition). The title is only rarely applied to postbiblical characters (R. Ishmael in 3 En. 1:8) or biblical characters other than Abraham or Moses (Levi in Jub. 30:20–21; Cambridge Genizah Text C lines 8–9). 9084 Philo Sobriety 55. In T. Ab. 9:2A, Michael told Abraham «everything which he had heard from the Most High» (επεν ατ πντα σα κουσεν παρ του υψστου) (ed. Stone, 20–21). 9085 CD 3.2. Similarly, Isaac and Jacob kept God " s word and came to be inscribed as friends for God (3.3–4) ( ). |
| Establish your thought in this teaching and you will see that in our present condition, one thing is seen from without, while another is working within, both in us and outside us. The present state—both ours and of the whole world—is a transient state, like the state of a sick man covered with bandages, or of a tree frozen for the winter, or a house under renovation and encompassed with scaffolding. When the time comes they will take the bandages off the sick man, and he will appear healed and healthy in a renewed life; the renovation will end, they’ll take away the scaffolding, and everyone will see the new house in all its beauty; the spring of a new age will come and the tree of the world’s existence, now bare, will put forth its leaves, flowers, and fruits. In the beginning, when God looked upon the universe He had just created, everything in it was very good (Gen. 1:31). When man fell, everything went bad, like a chain when the first link is broken. Then it was said of the world, that, thorns and thistles shall it bring forth; to the woman: in pain thou shalt bring forth children; and to the man: In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread (Gen. 3:16, 18–19). Thus, all was clothed in mourning, or a penance was laid upon everything. Everything took on a decrepit and decaying state. Thus would it have remained forever. But the ever creative wisdom of God opened, God’s goodness chose, and God’s power began to bring to pass a mysterious means of correction and restoration of everything to its better, former, and perfect form. The seed of a woman, it is said, will crush the head of the snake and destroy the evil that was poured into man and through him into all creation. Then did that promise begin to work. But by most wise divine economy, it was not immediately manifest in full strength. The full effect of its power in creation was destined to be revealed through flesh, the phenomenon of flesh being limited by conditions of time and place. However, although it appeared in the flesh, the seed of salvation headed everything in itself: the heavenly and the earthly, the past, the present, and the future. Through this it was able to penetrate all things with its restorative powers, without cancelling the mystery of their action. The outward state remains—the painful, disconsolate, decaying, corrupting state. |
| Homily on the Feast of the Meeting of the Lord and Sunday of the Prodigal Son Today the Church commemorated the Afterfeast of the Meeting of Our Lord. We offer you one more homily on the Feast which was preached yesterday by Fr.Sergei Sveschnikov in Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russian Church in Mulino, Oregon. Today is an unusual day. In this day, two liturgical cycles come together, and we hear two marvelous Gospel reading about the Meeting of man and God. In a certain sense, in this Meeting is the meaning of religion. If we choose to derive the word “religion” from the Latin re-ligare “to re-tie,” then the break which began when “ the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?” (Gen. 3:9), ended when the son “arose, and came to his father” (Luke 15:20). In this time of preparation to the Great Lent, the Church teaches us through examples from the Gospel. Last week, we heard about the foolishness of the Pharisee, who brought to God his imaginary “worth” and “earnings,” and about the wisdom of the publican, who in himself saw the true state of mankind – on its knees, burdened with sin, in the mud of its passions – and who brought to God his illness, sorrows and weakness; that is to say, he brought to God his true self, and not a fake mask. Today, Christ calls us through His parable and urges us to get up from our knees and to run to Him, as did the prodigal son when he came to himself (Luke 15:17). But how are we to come to Him, Who is so far away and unreachable, to the King of kings, the Creator of the ages, and the Master of the universe? Is it not natural to appear at a royal reception decorated in lace and medals, wearing hats with feathers and brocade dresses? Is it not normal to show off one’s dignity and to pose (Luke 18:11)? But what is the worth of all of these fake props in the presence of Him Who is the fullness of reality? “My son, give me thine heart…” (Prov 23:26) The Lord is not asking us to give Him anything which did not give to us Himself. It was not Adam who was looking for God, but God Who was calling the lost soul (Gen. 3:9). The son was travelling from far away, but the father was already waiting for him and “when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him… and ran” to him (Luke 15:20). The righteous Simeon prayed to the Master as a servant, but the Master was already lying in Simeon’s arms having Himself become a servant (Luke 2:28). God did not come to us seated on a throne somewhere in the clouds, unreachable, surrounded by armies of angels. God came to us as a weak and helpless Child; He gave Himself completely into our arms, holding back nothing, hiding nothing. |
| If we live in the way we have promised, we will receive, as daily and life-giving bread for the nourishment of our souls and the maintenance of the good state with which we have been blessed, the Logos Himself; for it was He who said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven and gives life to the world’ (cf. John 6: 33 – 35 ). In proportion to our capacity the Logos will become everything for us who are nourished through virtue and wisdom ; and in accordance with His own judgment He will be embodied differently in each recipient of salvation while we are still living in this age. This is indicated in the phrase of the prayer which says, ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ (Matt. 6: 11). I believe that the expression ‘this day’ refers to the present age. It is as if one should say, after a clearer understanding of the context of the prayer, ‘Since we are in this present mortal life, give us this day our daily bread which Thou hast originally prepared for human nature so that it might become immortal (cf. Gen. 2: 9 ); for in this way the food of the bread of life and knowledge will triumph over the death that comes through sin.’ The transgression of the divine commandment prevented the first man from partaking of this bread (cf. Gen. 3: 19 ). Indeed, had he taken his fill of this divine food, he would not have been made subject to death through sin. He who prays to receive this daily bread, however, does not automatically receive it all as it is in itself: he receives it in accordance with his receptive capacity. For the Bread of Life in His love gives Himself to all who ask, but He does not give to all in the same way. He gives liberally to those who have done great things, and more sparingly to those who have achieved less. Thus He gives to each person in accordance with the receptive capacity of his or her intellect. The Saviour Himself has led me to this interpretation of the phrase we are considering, because He commands His disciples explicitly not to take any thought at all for sensible food, saying, ‘Do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will put on. For the heathen seek all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things as well will be given to you’ (Matt. 6: 25, 32, 33). How then can it be that He teaches us to pray for what He commands us not to seek? Obviously He does not order us to do anything of the kind: we should ask in prayer only for things that we are commanded to seek. If the Saviour commanded us to seek only the kingdom of God and righteousness, then surely He intended those who desire divine gifts to ask for this kingdom in their prayers. In this way, by showing what petitions are blessed by His grace, He conjoins the intention of those who ask with the will of Him who bestows the grace. |
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