"In the end that Face which is the delight or the terror of the universe must be turned upon each of us either with one expression or with the other, either conferring glory inexpressible or inflicting shame that can never be cured or disguised. I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God. By God Himself, it is not! How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important. Indeed, how we think of Him is of no importance except insofar as it is related to how He thinks of us. It is written that we shall 'stand before' Him, shall appear, shall be inspected. The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please
God. To please God...to be a real ingredient in the Divine happiness...to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son-it seems impossible, a weighty or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is."
Ordinary People
"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature, which if you saw him now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long, we are, in some degree, helping each other to one of these destinations...There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, civilizations- these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit- immortal horrors or everlasting splendors... Next to the Eucharist itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor, she is holy in almost the same way, for in her, Christ- the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself- is truly hidden."
Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed and growing sweet-
all this universe, to the furthest stars
and beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.
Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,
A billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.
Buddha in Glory
...Rainer Maria Rilke (Ed. & Translated by Stephen Mitchell)
https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/PIA04630/PIA04630~orig.jpg
"You walk the journey inward all your life to meet the God who dwells within.
"For Philip Toynbee the journey into God was a matter of seepage, a slow seepage, an advancing tide...God enters gradually, bringing light and meaning to the emerging mind. This speaks of something that is slow, hidden, mysterious, not always recognized at the time, but later on, looking back, can be seen as the result of moments of grace.
To follow a God who moves and who expects us to move with him is a risky undertaking. It means not playing safe, and it asks for confidence in God's hidden purposes. In the wilderness of Massah the people of Israel berated the God whom they felt had abandoned them and let them down, they grumbled and tested him as they demanded, 'Is God amongst us or not?' It is difficult not to feel sympathy for them for how often when things are going badly have we not found ourselves asking:
'Is God in this or not? How can I find him in these situations of loss, betrayal, depression?'
If we are to see the journey as one that takes us downward and inward, down to all the hardest realitites of our lives, we have the consolation of knowing that Christ is alongside us, a man who in His own life experienced the most extreme realities Himself."
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Christ appearing to Mary in the Garden |
The bond that unites the living and the departed is experienced by Orthodox Christians as being particularly close throughout the forty days immediately after death. There is at such a time but a thin veil between this world and the next, and so during these first few weeks memorial services for the newly departed are celebrated with exceptional frequency. When the forty days are over, public prayers are offered less often although we continue to remember the newly departed daily in our private intercessions. While the bond between living and dead remains unbroken, we the living have as it were gradually to "let go" the one who has died so that she or he may be free to pursue in peace the one pointed journey on the other shore. This does not mean, however, that at the end of the forty days the living cease to mourn for the one who has died; on the contrary, the time of special grieving needs to extend far longer than that- far longer indeed, than our contemporary western culture usually deems necessary.
Bishop Timothy acknowledges that it is natural for us to have such questions as to the relationship of our present body to that of a resurrection one in the Age to Come. He points to St. Ephraim the Syrian, as one who comes closer that most theologians to imaging the unimaginable when he writes;
A hundred times finer and more subtle is the body of the just when they are risen, at the resurrection: it resembles a thought that is able, it if wills to stretch out and expand, or, should it wish, to contract and shrinks: if it shrinks, it is somewhere; if it expands, it is everywhere.
The spiritual beings (in paradise)- are so refined in substance that even thoughts cannot touch them!
This is perhaps as good a description of the resurrection glory as we can expect to find. Let us leave the rest to silence.
... from "The Mystery and the Resurrection"...Bishop Kallistos Ware
"One brother wisely said, 'The cross is usually exactly the opposite of what we thought it was.'
When suffering comes your way, there is one thing that you certainly will do: you will ask the Lord, 'Why has this happened?' There is something else almost as certain.
You will receive no answer.
If the 'why' could be removed, dear brother and sister, most of the transforming power of the cross would disappear. The 'why' factor of the cross is perhaps its 'sharpest', most effective, most deadly aspect. Remove the 'why' factor of the cross and there really isn't much suffering involved in it."
"....The one we love is not hidden in the ground; he is received into heaven. Let us wait a little while, and we shall be once more with her. The time of our separation is not long, for in this life we are all travelers on a journey, hastening on to the same shelter. While one has reached his rest, another arrives, another hurries on but one and the same end awaits them all."
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St. Basil the Great, pray for us! |
