Category Archives: Patristics

Humanity and the Incarnation (part two)

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Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise

Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise

The western Christian churches, following the example of Augustine of Hippo, generally begin their understanding of humanity with the fall. If humanity is defined by the fall, then we end up with the concept of original sin, and the guilt of Adam’s sin which is inherited by all of humanity. However, what if humanity is not defined by the fall, but by the creation? What then of Adam’s sin and it’s impact upon humanity?

Humanity was created in the image and likeness of God and, after the creation of humanity (both man and woman together), God announces that the entire creation is now “very good”. Humanity is the capstone of God’s creation. The relationship between the husband and wife, who become “one flesh”, is a similitude of the inner life of the Trinity. We are made for communion with each other, and with God. Moreover, like the animals, man is material; like the angels, man is immaterial. In this manner humanity was meant to be the bridge between the corporeal and the incorporeal. Humanity is the priest of creation, uniting the whole of creation and offering it back to God.

St. Irenaeus of Lyon writes:

For the glory of God is a living man; and the life of man consists in beholding God. For if the manifestation of God which is made by means of the creation, affords life to all living in the earth, much more does that revelation of the Father which comes through the Word, give life to those who see God (Against Heresies, Book 4, 20:7). 

Mankind fell: the great deceiver tricked Eve, but Adam sinned willfully — which is why after the fall we are all “in Adam”, and in Adam all die. Both Adam and Eve turned from beholding God, the giver of life, and chose the material world instead, along with all that the material world, apart from the life of God, affords. Lacking the wisdom of God, they chose sin, death, and the devil.

And yet that is not the whole of the story. We must examine the account of the creation and fall very carefully, for it is not true that God cursed humanity. Examining the accounts closely, we see God curse the serpent, yet we merely see God describing the effects of the fall upon humanity and the material world.  Thus it is untrue that God decreed that the woman be subservient to the man; that is merely a side effect of the fall. And we see no mention in the Genesis accounts of original sin, or of the Calvinist doctrine of Total Depravity. We see nothing of God’s wrath against Adam and Eve, but instead his providential care for them — both in His clothing them in the skins of animals, and in his promise of a redeemer who will wound the serpent’s head.

The first promise of the redeemer (which in theological terms is called the Protoevangelium, or first Gospel), contains no hint of any substitutionary atonement, no hint of an infinitely offended God defending His honor, or Hisdivine law. Instead, we see the overturning of the curse, and the victory over sin, death, and the devil. And how was this accomplished? Through the birth of the Christ, conceived by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, through whom He became man.

Our Lord was like us in every way. He is consanguineous with us, just as we are consanguineous with each other. Since He is of one blood with us, if we bear the guilt of Adam’s sin, so too did He. And yet He was free from the guilt of Original Sin, for Adam’s guilt is his own. We all bear the guilt of our own sins, and not the sins of another. We bear the burden of Ancestral Sin; our common humanity is infected by sin. As the author of Hebrews says, He “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Heb 4:15).

The point of the Incarnation is not that that the Son of God came to suffer and die the infinite penalty for our sins, but that He came to suffer with us, and die like us, so that He could win the victory over sin, death, and the devil, restoring humanity to its original purpose. The Christ put us back on our original path; once again we are called to be priests of creation, offering the entirety of God’s creation back to Him.

 

Humanity and the Incarnation

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Christ in Glory

Christ in Glory

Most of us misunderstand the Incarnation, because we have a faulty understanding of humanity, of what it means to be human. When we misunderstand the meaning of humanity, we don’t know what it means for God to become not only of us, but consubstantial with us according to His humanity, while remaining consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Spirit according to his divinity.

Archimandrite Justin Popovich, in a Christmas sermon entitled “Perfect God and Perfect Man”, writes of the Incarnation.

God is born on earth, and moreover He is born as a man: perfect God and perfect man–the unique God-man. And He has forever remained as the God-man both on earth and in heaven. Indeed, the God-man is the first perfect man on earth. Perfect man? Yes, because only in the God-man is man without sin, without evil, without death, totally filled with God, and thereby with all divine perfections.

 The God-man has demonstrated and proved this most convincingly: man is only a true man when he is completely united with God, and in everything and every way completely lives in God, thinks in God, feels in God, acts in God, is virtuous in God, is immortal in God, is eternal in God. Only and solely in God is man a man, a true man, a perfect man, a man in whom all the fullness of the Godhead lives.

For what purpose did God take upon himself the form of a servant? For what reason was He made in the likeness of our humanity? If we accept the western idea of substitutionary atonement, then God need not be consubstantial with us. In fact, the western idea of original sin, and the necessity that Christ be born without the guilt of original sin, means that the Christ could not have been “touched with the feeling of our infirmities”, nor could He have been “in all points tempted like as we are” (Heb 4:15). If humanity is contaminated by Original Sin, and if the Christ was born without Original Sin, then the humanity of Christ was something other than our humanity, and therefore Christ cannot be consubstantial with us according to His humanity.

Gregory of Nazianzus, in his Epistle 101 against the Apollinarians, describes the problem for us.

For that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved. If only half Adam fell, then that which Christ assumes and saves may be half also; but if the whole of his nature fell, it must be united to the whole nature of Him that was begotten, and so be saved as a whole.

Do you see the problem? If Christ was not fully one of us, if He did not assume the entirety of our human nature, then Christ’s work on the cross was for nothing, and we are still in our sins.

(To be continued)

Anthropology in Poetry and Prose

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Becoming Human by John Behr

Becoming Human

Becoming Human by John Behr

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’ve been doing some writing on the subject of Christian Anthropology, but after reading John Behr’s slim volume, I don’t know that I’m up to the task. I certainly can do no better than John Behr.

“The glory of God is a living human being.” This first quote alone, from St Irenaeus of Lyon, contains so much theology that one could spend a lifetime studying it. That simple sentence encompases everything we know and everything we cannot know about ourselves, our relationship with humanity, and the reciprocity between us and God.

But wait, there’s more!

View all my reviews

Repristination and the Plan of Salvation

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The Harrowing of Hades, fresco in the parecclesion of the Chora Church, Istanbul, c. 1315, raising Adam and Eve is depicted as part of the Resurrection icon, as it always is in the East.

The Harrowing of Hell. This representation of Christ’s descent into Hell shows Him breaking down the gates of hell and restoring Adam and Eve to Paradise.

My first indication that something was seriously wrong with the various Protestant communions was when I read the Didache (aka The Teaching Of The Lord To The Gentiles By The Twelve Apostles.) This document very likely preserves the order of the church in Jerusalem; scholars now believe to be a first century document, likely before A.D. 70, placing it well within the apostolic era.[1] Here was a different expression of Christianity, one completely foreign to me, yet one the apostles did not seem to have a problem with.

One thing that struck me is that although the Didache contains a great deal of information about how to live and worship as a Christian community, it contains nothing of what I recognized as doctrine. I compared this to the Apostolic Traditions, written by Hippolytus in the third century to preserve the church order and practices in use in Alexandria; once again, it contains nothing of what we today would call doctrine. Finally, I came across the Apostolic Constitutions, a second or third century work containing fourth and fifth century interpolations, a document preserving the church order of Asia Minor. This work is more extensive than the first two, yet only the sixth book against Heresies contains any doctrine—and apart from a creedal portion in Section III entitled An Exposition of the Preaching of the Apostles, most of the work consists of a description of various errors or of the prescriptions of the apostles. What we would term the doctrinal portion of this work is surprisingly brief.

I found a similar concern in the epistles of the apostle Paul. The first two thirds are usually concerned with correcting certain matters of theology, while the latter third is concerned with matters of church order, and with prescriptions for holy living. The epistles to the Corinthian Church are even more explicit, mixing prescriptions for church order and discipline, theology, and exhortations to holy living throughout these letters. How we live as Christians mattered to the apostle. We are to live out our faith; we are to “work out our own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12). Other New Testament authors say the same. James tells us to resist the devil (Jas 4:7). In his exhortation to holy living, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews write: “Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin” (Heb 12:4).

I now had three different church orders from different regions: one from the apostolic era, one from the era prior to Constantine, one from after Constantine, and all saying basically the same thing. What I had was an expression of Christianity that I could not deny, yet could not explain either. These Christians were concerned with how one lived in community with each other and before the world, and with how they were organized and worshiped as church. These two were not separate areas, but were commingled together in a manner I found confusing. As I was working at Lutheran seminary at the time, I raised these issues with some of the professors. The basic answer I got was that we could not repristinate, a word that means to restore something to its state of original purity. This was an implicit admission that we no longer believed and worshiped in a manner like the early church. Somehow they were alright with that, but I couldn’t make sense of it.

The attempt to “revive the faith of a pristine church” is the functional definition of repristination. In Lutheran history, repristination was an attempt to restore historical Lutheranism over and against the Prussian Union, which attempted to unify the Lutheran and Reformed churches in Germany. Although the founder of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (C.F.W. Walther) is historically identified as part of this movement, today the term is generally used in a perjorative sense, for a romantic attachment to a golden age.

Interestingly, that was the same argument used to explain all the changes in Lutheran practice and worship from the time of Luther. It also became clear that neither Luther, Melanchthon, nor Chemnitz would have been welcome in most Lutheran churches, as they believed, taught, and confessed a different faith than did modern Lutherans. Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi.[2] Not only did Lutherans not worship the same way as the ancient church, they didn’t even worship the same way as the Lutheran Reformers. That indicated that they had a different doctrinal understanding than did the Reformers, who had a different doctrinal understanding than did the ancient fathers of the church. It became clear that the argument against repristination was a tacit admission that the Lutheran faith had changed.

Fr. Anthony McGuckin, in his book “The Orthodox Church”, brings up the issue of repristination when discussing the mystery of marriage. While the Pharisees had a contractual understanding of marriage, similar to that found in modern civil law. Jesus expressed a different understanding of marriage, one of intense, interpersonal communion. The Pharisees came to Jesus and tested him by asking if it was lawful to divorce one’s wife for any reason. Jesus answered with a reference to the orders of creation, and the covenant God made with humanity when He instituted marriage. “For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Matt 19:5-6). Of this, Fr. McGuckin writes:

Over and against the economies that were necessary for society where hardness of heart was the common order of the day, Christ begins to set a new standard for his church, which itself goes back to the more fundamental creation covenant, which he has come to restore and repristinate in his church. The Mosaic law of contractual divorce is made to give way to a higher ‘law of one flesh’, that is communion. It is God who bonds a man and a woman in a mystical union that grows out of the union of flesh. This psycho-physical bond is a profound sacrament of the love Christ has for his church.” (McGuckin 2011)

We humans seek to justify our departure from the truth by telling ourselves that we cannot repristinate, that we cannot return to the state of original purity, that we cannot return to Eden. And yet this is countered by St. Irenaeus and his discussion of the economy of salvation as one of recapitulation, as the restoration of the natural order of things, as the reopening of the gates of paradise so that whosoever will may come.

The Protestant urge for the restoration of the early church is an admirable thing. And yet that restoration is nothing without repristination, without a return to Eden and the restoration of the state of original righteousness.

Bibliography

McGuckin, John Anthony. The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to its History, Doctrine, and Spiritual Culture. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

 

[1] There are differences of opinion about this. Some date the Didache as early as 50 A.D., while others date it as late as the 4th century. The reason for an early date rests on a number of pieces of evidence. First, the Didache uses the ‘Two Ways’ description of Christianity; the Way was an early way of referring to Christianity (Acts 9:2; 19:9; 19:23; 22:4; 24:14; 24:22). Second, the Didache does not reference the different factions surrounding different apostles, suggesting an early date. Third, the Didache does not reference the growth of heresies, also suggesting an early date. Fourth, the Didache refers to itinerant apostles, prophets and teachers, and ways of determining their legitimacy. This was a problem in the earliest church, suggesting an early date. Fifth, it appears that Bishops and Deacons were, at this time, chosen by their congregations rather than the later tradition of election, then ordination by the bishops. Sixth, there is no reference to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Seventh, after the martyrdom of St. James in 63 A.D., the historian Eusebius writes that the Jerusalem Christians were warned to leave Jerusalem due to its imminent destruction. The Jewish historian Josephus writes that this flight of Christians occurred in 64 A.D. (Jewish War 2, 20, 1) This flight from Jerusalem is not referenced in the Didache.

[2] Lex Orandi – the law of prayer; Lex Credendi – the law of belief. Loosely translated, this states that the law of prayer is the law of belief. The way you prayer (and worship) is the way you believe. This is transitive, in that the way you believe is reflected in the way you prayer. Thus a change in the way you pray and worship reflects a change in your beliefs, while a change in beliefs is reflected in the way you worship.

Book cover for "The Orthodox Church" by John Anthony McGuckin

The Orthodox Church

The Loneliness of Contemporary Man

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Picture of a man's hands gripping prison bars

Isolation

My beloved faithful, our contemporary society and most authorities …are increasingly isolating us, in order that we may become lonelier, less bound to each other, and less communicative, in order that they may lead us to their intended destination. They are trying to isolate us, because communities are much harder to lead than isolated individuals.

The Communists have done this through violence. The West doesn’t use violence but another method: proclaiming that you are “unique,” that you have “many rights,” that you are an “independent man,” that you need to be alone, not confined by your parents, not obedient to them or to anyone as a child, because you are a “free man.”

This misunderstood freedom is a revolt against God, it is nihilism.

Thus we have reached the state that we see today, with all the crimes that haunt the world … where fourteen-year-old children shoot their teachers, their friends, and their parents.

We have broken the human ties with those we live near. That spiritual relationship between my brother and me, between my parents and me, between parents and children, between friends has vanished. And in this disintegration of personality, which leads towards a demonized world, we are growing increasingly isolated.

Let us remain united in faith and love with one another, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let us stay united in the community of the Church, because the Church of Christ is the only beneficial social group.[1]  Other groups lead to self-destruction. They attempt to destroy humankind, to make man an instrument of business,[2] a mere cog in the complicated mechanism of human society.

Bibliography

Calciu, George. Father George Calciu: Interviews, Homilies, and Talks. Edited by Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood. Platina: Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2010.

[1] [Fr. George is not speaking here of family and friends. Elsewhere Fr. George speaks of the father as the priest of the family church. He also says: “You are in Christ’s Church whenever you uplift someone bent down in sorrow, when you help someone elderly walk more easily, or when you give alms to the poor and visit the sick.” (Calciu 2010, 162) The Church of Christ exists wherever we bear the body and blood of Christ to the world; the Church of Christ exists wherever we serve our family, our friends, and our neighbor, renewing the bonds of love and thereby resacrilizing the world.]

[2] [We are treated as an “instrument of business” when we are lumped together in arbitrary groups based on common characteristics rather than as communities of persons — when our primary relationship is viewed as being the isolated customer of a soulless corporation, treated in the aggregate as consumers.]

A Word on the “Spirit of the Times”

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Coexist

Coexist

There is a “spirit” unveiling itself in Europe and the world in general, a New Age kind of spirit that frequently changes its appearance and speech,[1] striking the Christian world from all sides. Its images is generally gentle, its discourse attractive, but its intent perfidious. This spirit can speak in beautiful words about family, but its intent is to annihilate it. It can also sermonize on the Church, full of “love” for all, a sort of religious syncretism, but its urge is primarily to dispel Orthodoxy. It can speak about nations and their homelands as something that it tries to support, but its intent is to destroy both the Church and the nations. This spirit is called Ecumenism.

And this whole “beautiful” discourse, which takes on many faces, has only one purpose: the destruction of nations, the abolition of the Orthodox Church in particular, and the establishment of a group of leaders, anointed by I do not know whom …to win over all nations to their spirit, to initiate them into certain social, political, and religious orders, so that those leaders may always direct [world events]. Let us not be deceived! I live among these “spreaders” of prolific and protean discourses that cover the world. And I know their hearts. They have no good intention for our Church! Under the guise of Christian love, of Christian peace, they hide their perfidious intent. And I came here to say: Do not be allured by it!…

Subjectivism

Subjectivism

For their intent is to destroy all the elements of the Faith, the moral elements, the elements of kinship, on which we have relied, since (so they say) there is no absolute truth. The truth, according to them, is that which I possess {i.e., subjective truth]. And therefore, when my neighbor is wrong I cannot tell him, “You are deceived!” Nor can he tell me that I have erred, because we are absolute entities [unto ourselves]. We have our opinions which are absolute, but before others, they hold no value! This game of hiding the truth is an insidious invention of Satan.

Fr. George Calciu. Interviews, Homilies, and Talks. Platina. Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood. 2010. 314-315.

Translated by Elena Chiru from Diaconesty Monastery, ed., Fr. George Calciu: Living Words (in Romanian) (Bacau: Bonifaciu Press, 2009), pp. 86-87

[1] [According to the fathers, one of the signs of a demonic spirit is its changeableness, its inability or unwillingness to maintain a consistent appearance.]

Fr. George Calciu on the Uncreated Light

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Father George Calciu

Fr. George Calciu

I can tell you about the burning bush. The burning bush was seen by Moses, and he understood that God was there. He tried to approach, and the voice of God said, Put off thy shoes from off thy feed, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground (Ex 3:5). The bush was enveloped in Light, but the Light did not consume it. It was the same Light that God gives to man, which in touching us does not consume us. Only sin is consumed in us, as this Light gives us perfection or makes us better.

Icon of The Mother of God of the Burning Bush

The Mother of God of the Burning Bush

You know that this burning bush represents the Mother of God, who received in herself the absolute Light of Jesus Christ, the fire. We say in our prayers before receiving the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ: “Rejoicing and trembling at once, I who am straw partake of fire, and, strange wonder! I am ineffably bedewed, like the bush of old, which burnt without being consumed.”[1] It is true: we take in our mouth the fire — God, Jesus Christ — but we are not burnt because the fire consumes nothing except for sin [Isa 6:1-7].

In Exodus we read: The glory of the Lord abode upon Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days: and the seventh day He called unto Moses out of the midst of the cloud. And the sight of the glory of the Lord was like devouring fire on the top of the mount in the eyes of the children

of Israel (Ex 24:16-17). This means that the mountain was covered by that Uncreated Light which cannot be comprehended by us.

God said to Moses: Thou canst not see My face: for there shall no man see Me, and live…. Thou shalt see My back parts, but My face shall not be seen (ex 33:20, 23). No one can see God and be alive because we can never see or understand the Essence of God. He is above everything: above every mind, above every possibility of being misunderstood. Even the angels cannot see the face of God, that is, His Essence. They see only his “back parts,” that is, His Uncreated Energies.

Prophet Moses Receiving the Ten Commandments

Prophet Moses Receiving the Ten Commandments

What did Moses see? He saw precisely the Uncreated Light of Energies. After that, he lived: this means he did not see the face of God, but saw only His Uncreated Energies. The Holy Fathers say that we, like the angels, can only see the “back parts” of God. We can see only from the back and never see His face.

Afterwards, when Moses was invited by God to the top of Mount Sinai and wrote down the Ten Commandments, the glory of God again filled the mountain. Moses didn’t see the face of God, he saw only the Uncreated Light.

Sometimes this Light makes the body and soul come near to perfection, and thus the body begins to shine. The Light is incorporated by the body and becomes visible to the physical eyes. That is why Moses, when he came down from the mountain, covered his face with a veil: the shining of his face was unbearable for the Jews to look at (cf. Ex 34:33-35). The Uncreated Energy was present in his body, not only in his spirit.

Fr. George Calciu. Interviews, Homilies, and Talks. Platina. Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood. 2010. 264-265.

[1] Prayer of St. Symeon the New Theologian.

St. John of Krondstadt on the connection between the Virgin Mary and the Incarnation

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Jesus Christ, Emmanuel

Jesus Christ, Emmanuel

In order that the Lord may unite Himself with anybody, it is necessary that that man should be perfectly free from the impurity of sin and be adorned with virtues, or that he should believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, Who took upon Himself the sins of the whole world; that he should acknowledge his sins, should sincerely condemn them, considering them foolish, and that he should ask with all his heart to be forgiven them, firmly intending not to sin again in future. It was in this manner that all the saints were united with the Lord and became holy.

Union with God is achieved either through a life of virtue or a life of repentance. The lives of the saints demonstrate that these are one and the same thing.  As St. Sisoe of the Desert said on his deathbed, (to the astonishment of his fellow monks): “I have not yet begun to repent.” Given this, what are we to make of the Virgin Mary? In what way was she worthy to become the Mother of God the Word, and is such a life possible for us?

How holy therefore must be our Lady, the Mother of God, with Whom God the Word Himself, the Light everlasting, was most truly united: ” the true light, Which lighteneth every man that cometh into the world,” [647] whom “the Holy Ghost came upon,” and whom “the power of the Most High overshadowed”! [648] How holy and most holy must be our Lady, the Mother of the Lord, Who became the temple of God, not made with hands, and was entirely penetrated, in all Her thoughts, feelings, words, and deeds, by the Holy Ghost, and from Whose blood the Creator Himself made flesh for Himself? Truly She is most holy, firm, steadfast, immovable, unchangeable throughout all eternity in Her most high, divine holiness, for the all-perfect God, Who humanly became Her Son, made Her all-perfect by reason of Her most great humility, Her love of purity and the source of purity, God; Her entire renunciation of the world, and Her attachment with all Her thoughts to the heavenly kingdom, and especially by reason of the fact that She became His Mother, carried Him in Her womb, and afterwards in Her most-pure arms, nourished with Her most-pure milk, Him Who feeds all creatures, cared for Him, caressed Him, suffered and sorrowed for Him, shed tears for Him, lived Her whole life for Him, for Him alone was wholly absorbed in His Spirit and was one heart, one soul with Him, one holiness with Him! O highest unity of love and holiness of the most-pure Virgin Mary and Her Divine Son, the Lord Jesus Christ! Wonderful, too, are God’s saints by their entire love for the Lord, by the streams of blood and sweat they shed out of love for the Lord.

The Virgin Mary is one of us. She was not conceived immaculately, as the Latins falsely claim, for then Our Lord would not have been fully human either. In the words of Irenaeus of Lyons” “For that which He [i.e. Christ] has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved.” If Mary was unique amongst humanity, then Jesus Christ partook of that uniqueness — in which case the efficacy of Christ’s saving work is called into question.

The Virgin Mary has been glorified in and by means of her humility. Of all of humanity, she was the first to “see Him as He is”. Therefore, when we honor the Virgin Mary, we honor the One who built for Himself a body of her flesh and blood, and became one of us. We honor the Virgin Mary for her renunciation of the world, and her total focus on her Son, Jesus Christ. The totality of focus on the Lord Jesus Christ, as shown in the life of the Virgin Mary, and indeed of all the saints, is not simply a curiosity, but a matter of life and death. Their example shows us the way to life everlasting. Thanks be to God.

Sergieff, Archpriest John Iliytch; St John of Kronstadt (2010-05-26). My Life in Christ, or Moments of Spiritual Serenity and Contemplation, of Reverent Feeling, of Earnest Self-Amendment, and of Peace in God (Kindle Locations 4453-4468).  . Kindle Edition.

St. John of Krondstadt on the Panagia

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The Great Panagia

The Great Panagia

You earth-born creatures, who have not purity, triumph in the fact that the Most Holy Virgin Mary, the Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, has entirely and superabundantly attained the purity of soul and body unattainable to you; triumph in this, and pray to Her, that She may teach you and your children to pass your lives in purity in this corrupt world, so full of temptations. It is because of Her purity, humility, and virtues, and because She was found worthy of becoming the Mother of God the Word, that, when offering the bloodless sacrifice, we offer gratitude to the Heavenly Father, and say: “Especially to the Most Holy …. Glorious Lady, the Mother of God . . . .” [640] –that is, we offer to Thee our verbal service, glory, and thanksgiving.

Sergieff, Archpriest John Iliytch; St John of Kronstadt (2010-05-26). My Life in Christ, or Moments of Spiritual Serenity and Contemplation, of Reverent Feeling, of Earnest Self-Amendment, and of Peace in God (Kindle Locations 4426-4431). . Kindle Edition.

St. John of Krondstadt on the Mother of God.

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St. John of Krondstadt

St. John of Krondstadt

The Mother of God is one flesh and blood, and one spirit with the Saviour, as His Mother. So infinitely great was Her merit by the grace of God that she became the Mother of God Himself, giving Him most pure and most sacred flesh, nourishing Him with Her milk, carrying Him in Her arms, clothing Him, caring in every way for Him in His infancy, kissing Him over and over again, and caressing Him. O Lord, who can describe the greatness of the God-bearing Virgin? ” Every tongue is in doubt how to worthily praise Thee, even the angelic mind itself wonders how to hymn Thee, Mother of God…..” [623] We must call upon Her with one thought and simple impulse of the heart….. She is one with God, like the Saints.

Know and remember, that the matter of your salvation is always near to the heart of Our Lady, the Mother of God, for it was for this that the Son of God, by the favour of the Father, and the co-operation of the Holy Ghost, chose Her out of all generations and was incarnate of Her in order to save the human race from sin, the curse and the eternal death, or everlasting torments. As the matter of our salvation is near to the Saviour, so likewise it is near to Her. Turn to Her with full faith, trust, and love.

Sergieff, Archpriest John Iliytch; St John of Kronstadt (2010-05-26). My Life in Christ, or Moments of Spiritual Serenity and Contemplation, of Reverent Feeling, of Earnest Self-Amendment, and of Peace in God (Kindle Locations 4326-4334). . Kindle Edition.