www.byzcath.org Forums Preaching Jesus Christ to the West

Thanks for the meat and potatoes!


I believe the Christian East gives a proper focus to the Deified Humanity of Christ, in which we participate as Members of His Body that is the Church, and are brought to a participation of deification as well.

That is just it, people in general want to be as God. They don't want the responcibility or the work. As Mother Theresa said, "whatever we do, we do it with Jesus, for Jesus, and to Jesus." To many want vain glory and recgonition for what they do. They are not willing to go through the mortification of self to become 'Christ like.' When we turn from our self, giving all the glory to God, then we are able to become as children. When we are children and have placed him first in everything in our lives - faith, church, family, friends, workroom, bedroom - then we may begin to become like him. We must lay down everything for him, picking up the cross so that we may share in his love, and take it to a hurting world.

I am a convert, even though it has been 25 years, I am learning and relearning the words.
Pani Rose

Dear Friends,

I think we are to always underline the fact that our approach to our Lord is as before the Incarnate God.

That is really mind-boggling - God Who became Man for us!

The Fathers, I believe, do say that even if Adam had NOT sinned, God would have become Man anyway.

We should always refer to Christ as our Lord, God and Saviour, Jesus Christ or "OLGS Jesus Christ" for short.

And the spiritual way Iconography depicts OLGS Jesus teaches us that He is a "composite" Being, a Divine Person Who became, as Fr. Bilaniuk used to say, "Inhominized."

Alex

Alex writes:

"In the West, holiness is about the acquisition of Grace defined as something that comes from God.

In the East, holiness is about the acquisition of the Holy Spirit Himself."
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Alex:

I think that what you have summarized here is one and the same thing, though using different words. My understanding of "grace" (Western) is the life of the Trinity that is given to the believer in the Church, the Body of Christ. My understanding of the Person of the Holy Spirit is that He is the One Who moves within the Church giving the Divine Life to believers (Eastern). In fact, one definition of Tradition that I read from an Orthodox writer says that it is "the life of the Holy Spirit moving within the Church leading Her into all Truth." I think that the difference is that the West likes neat definitions and having everything fitting into neat compartments. The East, on the other hand, seems to me to prefer to let the Holy Spirit move around, allowing for some things to remain as mystery. In other words, it's like a child unwrapping everything at Christmas: in the West we've got to tear off all the paper and see everything exposed to view; in the East it seems that people are willing to allow some time to appreciate what is not fully apparent but not to be in too much of a hurry to try to define what may be beyond definition.

It may be that we are at a point where we need the Christian East's approach because with the deconstruction current in Western philosophy and in the academy neat definitions that come from the assumption of an Absolute Truth that can be known leave us without concepts and words with which to communicate.
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You also say:

"In the West, sanctification has to do with the imitation of Christ, a process that only Grace may achieve through prayer and the sacraments.

In the East, sanctification is about participating in the Life in Christ and in the Divine Energies that emanate from God through participating in the deified Body of Christ through prayer and the Mysteries."

Is not participation in prayer and the Sacraments/Mysteries something common, though understood differently? Both, according to the Fathers, are ways in which we build our communion with Christ--as well as Scripture reading and almsgiving.

It seems to me to be akin to the blind men and the elephant. Each had a completely different view of what an elephant was and none was completely correct in his analogy. No one of us has the complete picture of what the process and experience of holiness is. It's a gift and our understanding of the gift is different, but no one has exhausted what the infinite gift is. We all actually need the insights and gifts that have been developed in our Churches over the centuries albeit to this day in isolation. It seems to me that a new evangelization of the world needs the comprehensive approach of all the gifts and insights that the Apostolic Churches have. No one alone can speak to the hardened world we find ourselves in: we've gto to pull together and understand that together we've got quite a lot to offer.

In Christ,

BOB

Dear Bob,

Well, in delineating (or trying to delineate) the differences, I'm not, at the same time, saying that the two approaches are mutually exclusive.

Perhaps they are in some respects, but I don't think so.

There are those who will tell us they are irreconcilably different - but again, we don't think so.

I do believe that the emphasis on acquiring the Holy Spirit as a Person is a more dynamic view than the acquisition of what seems to me to be an impersonal understanding of a spiritual "life force" known as "Grace."

Perhaps my Eastern bias is showing here?

Alex

Alex:

We all start with the "bias" we have been brought up with. It seems to me as long as we don't let that be the end of the journey it's not anything to worry about.

I'm just trying to breath with both lungs and see things through the eyes of my brethren, like you, from the Christian East. We will never be united until we can somehow try to see things through another's eyes. That's why I have included Eastern sources in my reading since my days as an undergrad.

In Christ,

BOB

My comments about the word "acquire" were due to connotations I have in my mind with that word. I tend to think of the act of going out and grasping or taking for oneself when I think of the word "acquisition". This also might be my own contra-protestant view of always keeping mindful not to suggest that as Catholics we somehow "earn" grace or God's love. It's made me think more about the word "acquisition" and "acquire" and get past my own assumptions about the word. It also got me digging through my Catechism which I don't think I read often enough.

I'm not sure that the view of God's grace as a spiritual force is one that the West really teaches, though I can easily see it being taken that way. Rather, 1997 of the CCC says, "Grace is a participation in the life of God." In the Theology of the Body, I think I can understand it as such: God's free gift, or the gift of the Holy Spirit, is His grace, which is Himself, the Divine Life. Man must accept the gift and thus acquire it for himself and continually make himself open to God's love and life. Man's response then, is to give himself utterly back to God in order to become that which God intends for him. In this way, I think the nuptial meaning of the body is rather important to seeing the interplay between God and man. Definitely not an impersonal interplay though.

Dear Mike,

Yes, "acquire" may not be the translation of the Russian word that St Seraphim of Sarov uses!

Charles still thinks that my translation of St Seraphim's rule is a biased one intended to pull the wool over everyone's eyes to get them to say the Rosary!

(He's right about the Rosary, but I've translated faithfully - but tell him that!).

Alex