www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Scripture and Patristic Writings Saint Gregory of Sinai - Living Christ's Life Progressively

I would like to offer this quotation from Saint Gregory of Sinai that I came across. Being that this forum section has been expanded to include now Patristic Writings, I would like see some patristic quotations offered and comments given by the forum community.

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+

Thanks Father Anthony for that quote.

I'm sorry but I don't have a good quote right now.

Father,

Should we move St. Symeon's Hymn No. 30 from Faith and Worship over to here? And then if I add more I'll put them here and they'll all be under one roof?

Eli

Eli,

I'll move it here in a moment. As you can see the forum reorganization has begun.

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+

Indeed!! And I LOVE it!

Eli

Everyone baptized into Christ should pass progressively through all the stages of Christ's own life, for in baptism he receives the power so to progress, and through the commandments he can discover and learn how to accomplish such progression.

Reminds me of something Sr. Nancy Keller said, it was about building a fire in a pot bellied stove. You had to have three things to make the fire start and grow. The kinneling, the paper, and the coal.

The paper was the smoke, but without the paper it was much harder to get the wood to burn. Once the wood was burning it burned out fast - didn't last. But, once it was aflame you had to add the chunks of coal, that made the fire hot and burn for a long time.

It is a progression in our life with Christ, from Baptism to Death. When we were Baptised the paper is lit, when we are Chrismated the kinneling is added to help us burn (grow), but then we have to add the coal by the power of the Holy Spirit to take all that Christ gave us at Baptism and Chrismation and set our lives on fire.

So yep, I say we progress. I know I am not the same person that came into the church 25 years ago that is for sure - I have prayed, received our Eucharistic Lord, studied, fellowshiped with God's people, communed with his saints - yep I have progressed this once shy Southen Baptist girl has definately progressed to a full blown Eastern Catholic child of God.

Thank you Jesus!
Pani Rose

Progression is cooperation with GRACE!

My two cents:

Progession in the life of Christ is acceptance of the life of Christ in our lives, especially His cross.

-- John

It seems to me that our progression begins with the Mysteries of Initiation which, like leaven, slowly begin our conformity to Christ. He feeds us at His Table and this nourishment allows the leaven of Faith received in the Mysteries of Initiation to grow. Since we can do nothing except in Him--"I am the Vine and you are the branches"--this constant nourishment is absolutely necessary for us to grow.

We move to participation in His Life also by becoming aware at some point that we, too, are called to "be about my Father's business," as the 12-year-old Jesus told His parents when they found Him in the Temple after they thought He was lost. Being "about my Father's business" means conforming oneself ever more closely to the teachings of the Church found in Holy Tradition and the Scriptures. It means that one progressively becomes less like those around us: those who have the world's values and who are indistinguishable from others who have no faith and no hope.

For this, we can expect to walk through the steps of the Passion. We can expect a scourging: the thousands of little slights and asides that come our way to make us conform to the behavior of the world; the cutting words, the shunning by our supposed friends and even family, remembering that "he who loves father or mother or brother or sister is not worthy of Me." It is all because the one who progresses in the life of Christ makes others uncomfortable and cause their consciences to remind them of their own commitment not lived up to. And, I might add, if we do not make others uncomfortable by who we are and the way we live, by the values we espouse and live, then we have failed to make the first step in being followers of Christ.

There is no Resurrection without the Cross. If we are to rise with Him, we should expect the stripping, the scourging, the Crown of Thorns. The thorns, by the way, are linked with the Parable of the Sower. The thorns are the cares of this world that threaten always to choke out the life of Christ in us which we are to carefully nurture with the Mysteries, with Scripture, with Prayer, with the ascetic effort, and with all the other tools that our Fathers have prescribed as being necessary for obtaining what St. Seraphim of Sarov calls "the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God."

The stripping which Our Lord endured, too, is something that we should take a look at. He was stripped of His garments while we are progressively stripped in this life of our attachments to it. We lose so many things, people, and accomplishments that we attain or have as we make our pilgrim way. Things wear out; they become obsolete; they break; and they do not deliver the happiness that we think they will give us. People die; families are changed by death; and the external circumstances of our lives change irrevocably. Accomplishments are rewarded and the next day we are left with a sense of let-down. All of this is to remind us of the truth of a verse sung at a funeral of one of my relatives: "our true home is in Heaven." We have no permanence here and we are pilgrims on a journey, regardless of the fact that many of us are able to delude ourselves with routines that block this truth. Our task is to lay up treasures in our true home where neither moth nor rust nor thief can destroy.

We need to remind ourselves always that, like the Lord, the world that lauds us today can turn on us tomorrow--remember how short the time from Palm Sunday to Good Friday. We need to remember always that His summons comes at His good time and that we need to be, like Him in every thought, word and deed, found "busy (about doing the father's Will) on His return." We need to be ready to make a good report of our stewardship of His talents, His grace freely given, and the time He gives to combine the two for His glory.

In Christ,

BOB

Dear Bob,

I know of no one that would have made a better moderator than you. You are a gift to us, and as I have said before, the Holy Spirit speaks through you...and so eloquently! So is it any wonder that our 'adversary' gave you such a difficult time trying to get on the computor? :rolleyes:

I better stop, or you might get a swollen head... and you know how quickly that gets knocked down.

Zenovia

And St. Gregory of Sinai composed some of my all-time favorite prayers - the glorfications at the conclusion of the Canons to the Holy Trinity for Sunday Midnight Office.
FDD

Zenovia:

As I have said before--if something that I offer gives faith support or edification, then thank the Good Lord and the Holy Spirit for it because it does not come from me. But if something is simply silly, vain, or shockingly stupid, then admonish me with kindness because that alone I can claim as my own.

I have studied and read for the past many years because I have been given a "hungry" faith gift. I want to know more about the One that I love and how I may love Him more by knowing more about Him. He is an elusive Lover Who gives us a little and then withdraws so that we, small as we are, will not be overwhelmed by His greatness.

BTW, this did not come through some sort of effort on my part. For so long it seemed that I was reading in so many different areas that I could not connect. But I continued to pray as well as and and study, so that I could understand where the Holy Spirit was leading. By being open and allowing Him to lead it can sometimes seem like one is wandering in so many disconnected areas that one sometimes wonders what the purpose is or what good can come from it. And that, I believe, is the key: it is said that the one who does theology without praying it merely does the theology of the demons. It is so important to lay what one is reading and studying before the Lord and to ask that the Holy Spirit make what one is studying clear. It is in the asking for and the disciplining oneself in humility that causes the Holy Spirit to "connect the dots" because the Lord is an eternity away from the proud.

It also helps to have a single focus: how can what I am learning be given away for others. Since God Himself is Other-Directed and we are to become like Him, what we read, what we study, what we discipline ourselves for must ultimately be for others, not for ourselves. We must, by example, draw others to Christ and that, beyond building the relationship with Him ourselves--lest in saving others we find ourselves lost--is the only reason we are here.

In Christ, your brother who asks humbly for your continued prayers,

BOB

Dear Father and Friends,

I've been mulling for a few days, trying to decide how to say what came to mind when first I read this passage.

I want to add to the those thoughts already here, not detract from them, but what I have to add is something of a deviation from the obvious realization that Jesus came as the New Adam so that he could teach us how to defeat the internal oppression of evil, and grow in natural virtue so as to prepare the field for the seeds of infused holiness.

Not only is Jesus Christ our Rabbi but he also models right actions and makes straight the path.

In Hebrews 2:18 it is said that "It is because He Himself has been tried by suffering that He has the power to help us in the trials we undergo."

Again in Hebrews 4:15 "It is not as if our High Priest was incapable of feelings for us in our humiliations, for He has been through every trial, as He is fashioned as we are, only sinless."

You see it is in this perfect sinlessness that our Lord and Master, Master Teacher, Master Craftsman deviates from all others of created humankind.

So when we speak of Living Christ's Life Progressively, it is important that we do not fall into the trap of believing or expecting that our lives are to be lived in a way that is lock-step and rigidly sequential. It is not. That is not the meaning of progression here.

Our human path to holiness is not at all sequential; it is not predictable or clear in any way. We are free to choose and in so being and so doing we stumble and stagger, begin and start over, end and start over, get lost, are found, and on and on, in straight lines and in circles, climbing in slow grinding agony one moment and descending rapidly, dizzyingly the next.

Our Lord may have taken one sequential, providential step after the other in a direct line to the Garden, Golgotha and the Empty Tomb, but we do not walk that Path of Perfect Holiness in quite the same way as the one who forged that path in the first place; walk it as the New Adam, accompanied and assisted by the New Eve. The path is surely there for us but we often miss it and then pause to wonder, how. How does one miss a path so clearly trod and paved with Love and Light and Life?

No. We walk that path with a fully human step that is creaturely, flawed or disintegrated in nature, and only incarnate by adoption, only deified by participation in the divine, only healed by the freely given grace of the Father.

This following example may help to illustrate what I mean even more clearly.

We know from Scripture that Jesus was severly tried, severly tempted.

These temptations that are described in such lurid detail in Scripture are to teach us that without great temptation, we will never be able to experience great holiness.

We are taught that it is not Christ-like to avoid pain, and difficulty and distress, but rather we are taught to embrace it, welcome it, and turn it to the greater honor and glory of the Father, neither yielding to temptation, nor hiding from it, running from it.

But there is a difference in the temptations suffered by one whose Person is divine, whose natures are unblemished and integral, without flaw, perfect, and the temptations of those whose person is human with a flawed and disintegrated and sick human nature as a consequence of the ancestral sin.

That difference is this: Our temptations can come from outside of us, of course for there is the world, the flesh and the devil, but most often our greatest temptations generate internally through temptations toward the sins of the flesh, lust and gluttony; the sins of the mind or intellect, pride and envy; and the sins of the soul which is deny the Creator, the Trinity, as the only and greatest due good and the purpose of all created life. The most insidious temptation of all is the eventual acceptance and embrace of the things of the material world, the things of creation, and our own use of that creation, as the greatest good and most worthy of our full attention or greater attention, which are the sins of idolatry and vain glory. And that temptation generates within each human bosom, within each human mind and heart.

In contrast, a perfect Jesus, an Incarnate Perfection in the form of true man and true God cannot possibly be possessed of the internal temptations of a fallen nature, a broken and sickened and disintegrated nature.

In fact we see clearly in Scripture that the temptations suffered by the Christ were all external, coming to him from outside of His own perfect Person and natures.

This is a difficult teaching and one that has captured the mind of the Church from the very beginning, and given rise to all of the classic heresies, and one that comes to life here in this teaching of St. Gregory of Sinai.

To God be all glory!

Eli

Eli:

Christ is in our midst!! He is and always will be!!!

Well put!! In fact what I have offered and what you have offered overlap. While we are on a steady progression from birth to death in our pilgrim journey, it is also true that we take one step forward and two steps back; two forward and one back; stand in place; fall down; start over; go in circles; get off on tangents that need correction by our spiritual father. We get lost and are found.

But one important thing we must always remember. That is, that the Lord is always faithful and He will not allow His faithful ones to undergo corruption or get lost UNLESS WE WILL TO BE CORRUPTED AND/OR LOST. He has committed to us in Baptism and He will never go back on His commitment no matter what we may do. He is always ready to take us back, heal our wounds, and renew us like the prodigals we are.

Thanks for the lucid reminder.

In Christ,

BOB

UNLESS WE WILL TO BE CORRUPTED...

Just as a way of continuing these thoughts, I am mindful of the prayer before communion where we supplicate "Therefore I pray Thee: have mercy upon me and forgive me my transgressions both voluntary and involuntary, of word and of deed, committed in knowledge and in ignorance."

St Gregory Palamas notes this voluntary and involuntary corruption of the body, mind and soul when he remarks that "We can free ourselves more easily from passions that are a matter of our own volition than from those rooted in nature."

In fact the entire body of ascetic and apophatic spirituality is dedicated to rooting out those habits of body, mind and soul or heart which are habitual, besetting, and very often not consciously cultivated, or raised to awareness at the level of the will, at all.

How does that then fit with "UNLESS WE WILL TO BE CORRUPTED...."?

Eli