{"id":430,"date":"2014-01-26T13:04:21","date_gmt":"2014-01-26T18:04:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=430"},"modified":"2014-02-03T08:00:14","modified_gmt":"2014-02-03T13:00:14","slug":"the-spirituality-of-the-christian-east-20140126","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=430","title":{"rendered":"The Spirituality of the Christian East – 20140126"},"content":{"rendered":"

The heresy of Docetism led early Christian writers to\u00a0 \u00a0reaffirm the reality of Christ\u2019s existence on earth. Docetism promoted the idea that Jesus only appeared to be human but really wasn\u2019t. His human form was an illusion. It was rejected, together with the thoughts of Arius, as heretical by Nicaea in 325.<\/em> It was more theological reflection which led the Fathers to pay more attention to the nature of man which the Word did not scorn. We cannot say that the Fathers\u2019 preoccupation with this was \u2018devotion\u2019 to Christ\u2019s human nature or that they took a predominantly dogmatic view of it. The cult of the \u00a0humanity of Christ is foreign to the Eastern tradition. In act I believe that this is when all of the prayers in the \u00a0Eastern Church end with a doxology to the Trinity.<\/p>\n

It is undeniably difficult to speak of an explicit devotion to the humanity of Christ during the early centuries. One thing astonished the pagans greatly: that such religious homage was being addressed to a crucified man.<\/p>\n

It is also true that the function of the liturgy was to stress the divinity of Christ. At the same time, various feasts gave\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Christian poets an opportunity to compose hymns in honor of the God-Man. Pilgrims had the opportunity of visiting the localities of Christ\u2019s life and venerating in particular the instrument of salvation, the cross, and later the \u201choly face\u201d (the napkin or towel on which tradition tells us Christ left His image on the way to Calvary).<\/em><\/p>\n

Slowly, Christian piety agreed to view Christ in his humiliations as a human being. John of Damascus justified this adoration: Christ, therefore, is one, perfect God and\u00a0\u00a0 perfect man. Along with the Father and the Spirit, we worship him in one adoration\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 together with his body, for to us his body is not unworthy of adoration. In fact, it is adored in the one Person of the Word. We do not do homage to what is created. We\u00a0worship him not as mere flesh, but as flesh united with the godhead<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The heresy of Docetism led early Christian writers to\u00a0 \u00a0reaffirm the reality of Christ\u2019s existence on earth. Docetism promoted the idea that Jesus only appeared to be human but really wasn\u2019t. His human form was an illusion. It was rejected, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-spirituality-of-the-christian-east"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430","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=430"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":441,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430\/revisions\/441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}