{"id":3414,"date":"2015-12-06T10:00:06","date_gmt":"2015-12-06T15:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=3414"},"modified":"2016-01-19T10:24:32","modified_gmt":"2016-01-19T15:24:32","slug":"learning-our-faith-from-the-greek-fathers-of-the-church-20151206","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=3414","title":{"rendered":"Learning Our Faith From the Greek Fathers of the Church — 20151206"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"capadocios\"<\/a>In the last issue of this article I began sharing what the Cappadocian Fathers taught, especially about the Holy Spirit. The fact that man\u2019s life is somehow connected with God\u2019s breath, makes man to be God\u2019s image<\/em>. A being taken from the earth, writes Father Cyril of Alexandria, could not be seen as an image of the Most High, if he had not received this breath. <\/em>Thus the perfecting action<\/em> of the Spirit does not belong to the category of the miraculous, <\/em>but forms a part of the original and natural plan of God. It should be remembered that in Genesis God first takes earth and forms man and then breathes<\/em> into that which He formed from the earth.<\/p>\n

God\u2019s Spirit assumes, inspires and vivifies everything which is still fundamentally good and beautiful and maintains in creation the first fruits of the eschatological transfiguration – that is the Spirit maintains the potential<\/em> in humankind that changes when humans undertake cooperating with God and bringing about the actualization of this potential. In this sense, the Spirit is the very content of the Kingdom of God. Gregory of Nyssa reports the ancient variant for the text of the Lord\u2019s prayer, \u201cThy Kingdom come,\u201d in Luke 11;2, as:\u201d May Thy Holy Spirit come upon us and cleanse us.\u201d The Byzantine liturgical tradition maintains the same tradition when it starts every single office with an eschatological invocation of the Spirit, addressing Him as \u201cHeavenly King.\u201d We also see in the Divine Liturgy that it is only after the Holy Spirit is\u00a0\u00a0 invoked that the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ \u2013 that the symbols of life are really transformed into the very Body and Blood of our Incarnate God.<\/p>\n

The liturgical office of Pentecost, centered mainly on the role of the Spirit in redemption and salvation, also glorifies the Spirit as \u201cthe One Who rules all things, Who is Lord of all, and Who preserves\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 creation from falling apart.\u201d Our Greek Catholic customs associated with the feast of Pentecost suggest that the outpouring of the Spirit is indeed an anticipation of cosmic transfiguration. The traditional decoration of churches with greens and flowers on that day reflects the experience of new creation. This is one reason why we wear green<\/em> vestments on Pentecost instead of red<\/em> vestments as the Western Church does. Since our Church was developed in an agrarian society, the color green always\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 represented the newness of life springing forth from dormant plants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the last issue of this article I began sharing what the Cappadocian Fathers taught, especially about the Holy Spirit. The fact that man\u2019s life is somehow connected with God\u2019s breath, makes man to be God\u2019s image. A being taken … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-learning-our-faith-form-the-church-fathers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3414"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3415,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3414\/revisions\/3415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}