The Spirituality of the Christian East – 20140216

The Christians of the first centuries were aware that Christ had outstanding imitators and that it was especially because of them that the Church had become a light to the nations.

It should come as no real surprise, then, that our ,the Christian tradition, has always considered the reading of the lives of the saints as useful to the soul. Many of its early documents originated in a desire to present models that could be followed. All of the saints that have been written about seem to proffer the same message: There is nothing on earth that gives so much pleasure as the knowledge of God.

If we are to model our lives after those of the saints, we must then make every effort to come to know God – that is to strive to have an experience of God.  When Christ revealed the identity of the Father and of God, he placed this revelation within another, still more inaccessible, mystery, that of the Trinity. God is Father because he has a Son who is God, Jesus Christ. The basic principle of divine fatherhood was thereby transposed to a level which surpasses merely human thought.

image340The divine Trinity is the fundamental mystery of the Christian faith. It is the one starting-point from which the other elements of the Christian faith can be understood. Knowledge of God, therefore, must be knowledge of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In the opinion of Father Gregory Nazianzen, the grace of the kingdom of heaven consists in the Holy Trinity     uniting itself wholly to the whole soul.

Two different concepts are found in the exposition of Trinitarian faith, though it would not be right to exaggerate their difference: the Alexandrian-Latin view and the so-called Greek view.

As Greek-Catholics, I believe that it is essential that we make every effort to come to a better understanding of these two views since, in some way, we encounter both views as we live out our existence as Greek Catholics. Remember: one is not right and the other wrong.

Comments are closed.