Transfiguration
Eastern Christian spirituality aims at the perfection of the faithful in Christ. This perfection can’t be obtained in Christ, except by participation in His divine-human life. Therefore the goal of Eastern Christian spirituality is the perfection of the believer by his union with Christ. He is being imprinted to a ever-greater degree by the human image of Christ, full of God.
So the goal of Eastern Christian spirituality is the union of the believer with God, in Christ. But as God is unending, the goal of our union with Him, or of our perfection, has no point from which we can no longer progress. So all the Eastern Fathers say that perfection is unlimited.
Our perfection, or our union with God, is therefore, not only a goal, but also an unending progress. On this road two great steps can be distinguished: first, the moving ahead toward perfection through purification from the passions and the acquiring of the virtues and secondly a life progressively moving ahead in the union with God. At this point, man’s work is replaced by God’s. Man contributes by opening himself up receptively to an ever-greater filling with the life of God.
Given the above understanding, the following are the basic features of Eastern Christian spirituality:
- The culminating state of the spiritual life is a union of the soul with God, lived or experienced.
- This union is realized by the working of the Holy Spirit, but until it is reached man is involved in a prolonged effort of purification.
- It takes place when man reaches the “likeness of God.” It is at the same time knowledge and love.
- Among other things, the effect of this union consists of a considerable intensification of spiritual energies in man, accompanied by all kinds of charismas.
The East also uses the daring world “deification,” or participation in the divinity, to characterize the union with God. So the goal of Eastern Christian spirituality is none other than living in a state of participation in the divine life. This experience, strikingly expressed as a state of deification, includes several general teachings. During the coming weeks I shall share these and more. Eastern Christian spirituality is all about growing in our likeness of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Redeemer.