St Gregory Palamas

In the last issue of this article, I shared with you this thought of Gregory: if we wish to be with Christ, then we must become like Him. As St. John, the most theological of the evangelists, instructs us, “God is love (I John 4:8, 16). And so the criterion of whether we are truly following the WAY of Christ is love; but not just any love – divine Love. In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ Himself exhorts us to love even our enemies, which is humanly speaking impossible. But by this exhortation, He reveals to us the all-embracing character of His love – of how He is; and how we must exist, if we would be like Him and with Him.

The Fathers of the Church teach us that the root of all evil is pride, otherwise referred to as “self-love”. Self-love is the refusal to   relate to those who are different than us and to embrace them. Love of one’s self places man at the center of the universe and hence seeks to usurp that which belongs to God alone. This was the sin of Adam and before him, of Lucifer. But love of enemies, the opposite of self-love, is divine because it is the way that God exists. His love for us is unconditional love – unconditional and infinite personal love and care for each and every one of us, no matter how different from Him we may be, no matter how sinful we may be. God’s love, by which death itself was destroyed, is able to forgive all, accept and embrace all.

This is the great discovery St. Gregory tells us that the Mother of God made when she entered into the Holy of Holies at the tender age of three. In her diligent practice there of “holy stillness”, she arrived at the knowledge of the vision of God, where she discovered her kinship with the whole of creation and so began to intercede for the whole world. Gregory explains it in this fashion: “She found that the purest thing in us is precisely intended by nature for this holy and divine love.” The result of this communion of divine love is prayer for the entire world, which is the prayer and longing of all the saints, of all those who have truly become like Christ, of all those who can say, “His Life is mine”. This is the unceasing prayer and inner life of the Holy Church which has, as its head, Christ Himself.

Is it possible to unconditionally love others like Christ did? We know that with His help and our own prayer and fasting we can accomplish it.