What Guarantee?

    Being The Greatest, God supremely is the greatest among all who
claim to speak the truth and ask us to take them at their word (vss.
13,18).  Notice, however, that God carefully gives us reason to believe
Him, knowing full well that we are accustomed to lies and deception.  
Hence, He swears an oath of fidelity and truth to us.  What guarantee do
we have that yet again we are not confronting perjury in the Word of
God?  He swears by Himself, and for this reason the Lord Jesus pointedly
asks, "What greater than God do we require?" (Mt. 23:16-22).

    God is One Who blesses.  Especially, He blesses those who resolutely
trust Him (vs. 14).  Look again at the Genesis account from which verse
14 quotes (Gen 22:1-17).  One cannot think of greater trust in the
veracity of God than that which Abraham exhibited.  In turn, God has
proven true to the word He spoke to Abraham, and He continues in truth
to this very day.

    God is Consolation for all who have been lied to, who have been
wounded unfairly, or who have themselves failed and repented.  For this
reason St. Paul says to the Church at Corinth, "Blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of
all comfort; Who comforts us in all our tribulation….For as the
sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds
through Christ" (2 Cor. 1:3-5).

~ from Dynamis for April 2, 2006

OK, I read that first paragraph above and laughed out loud. Yeah, right. That’s such a good "guarantee". Someone swears by himself that he isn’t lying and that we should believe in him! Well, actually, if GOD Himself were indeed standing right here in front of me right now swearing by Himself to me personally, that would be one thing! But no, it is merely words on a page, or someone claiming to speak in God’s name. (Even if the words are in the Bible, if a person is still debating the veracity of the Bible itself, swearing by one’s "self" doesn’t do any good.)

The worst of it is that people who lie about God do more harm than ANYONE else on the planet in my opinion. What could be worse? Tell me truly. Even if they do it unintentionally, can you imagine any greater harm? I can’t.

So those next two paragraphs above are absolutely necessary. A hesitant trust in God and what He (supposedly) says has to be verified. And the foundation of that verification is indeed Blessing and Consolation. The kicker is that God gives us, as part of his veracity, only true blessing, which unfortunately, most of us can’t recognize as such most of the time. We want what we want, not what is truly good for us, not what God, in his Truth, lovingly gives us. So how often it seems that He has failed us and lied to us, when in fact it is we who fail and who have been so deeply wounded by being lied to and deceived about what we do want, that we cannot see Truth and Blessing when it does appear.

Double Vision

The following excerpt goes to the problem of motivation for good works, or the relationship between intent and activity. Fr. Allen starts by talking about the parable of the two sons, where one son tells his father he will go work in the field, and doesn't, and the other son tells his father he will *not* work in the field, and *does*.

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Unlearning Evil Converse

Preparation of heart is the unlearning the prejudices of evil converse. It is smoothing the waxen tablet before attempting to write on it.

~ St. Basil the Great, a quote found at the Eighth Day Books web site

Compassionate and Merciful Lord

In every Church service I attend and pray through, there is a prayer that stands out to me. Here was tonight’s from Vespers:

Compassionate and merciful Lord, You are most patient with us, and most merciful. Hear our prayer, and be attentive to the sound of our plea. Make us become a sign for good. Set us upon Your own path, to walk in Your truth.

Gladden our hearts, that we may stand in awe of Your holy Name, for You are great, and Your works are wondrous! You alone are God, and there is none like You among the gods.

Lord, You are mighty in the mercy and benign in the power with which You help and comfort and save all who hope in Your holy Name.

For all glory, honor and worship belong to You, to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Beauty in Nature

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living. Of course I do not here speak of that beauty that strikes the senses, the beauty of quality and appearances; not that I undervalue such beauty, far from it, but it has nothing to do with science; I mean that profounder beauty which comes from the harmonious order of the parts, and which a pure intelligence can grasp.

~ Henri Poincare

Human beings were meant to cultivate delight by seeking out the beauty of nature. In the Creed, we say:

I believe in One God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, and of all things Visible and Invisible.

Poincare talks about the beauty of both the visible (sensible) world and the invisible (intelligible) world. God made all things, sensible and intelligible, and therefore all things reflect His Beauty.

The beauty of creation leads us to the beauty of the Creator, God Himself, which can also be known — and known not only through the beauty of other creatures, but also from within ourselves, through the heart, which was created to love and delight in Him. All created beauty shows forth His glory.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Patience Casts Off Distress

Affliction, if not accompanied by patience, produces double torment, for a man’s patience casts off his distress, while faintness of heart is the mother of anguish. Patience is the mother of consolation and is a certain strength which is usually born of largeness of heart. It is hard for a man to find this strength in his tribulations without a gift from God, received through his ardent pursuit of prayer and the outpouring of his tears.

~ St. Isaac the Syrian, The Ascetical Homilies, from Gleanings

The Common Denominator

Sin is the common denominator of all heresy, and the chief sin of every heretic is pride.

~ today’s Dynamis reading (on 2 Peter)

Here is another key point:

Without fail, error will deny the nature and essence of the Lord. (2:1)

Put another way: The heretic sets up an idol, a false god, according to his own imaginings. In his pride, he worships his idol rather than God. Not surprisingly, to do this endangers salvation. That’s why heresy is bad.

Mission Statement

Christ Himself, knowing the joy of life in the Kingdom, “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant” (Ph 2:6), as a measure and example not to seek flight from the world, but to reach for an ever fuller experince of the transport that comes through God’s love, to wear ourselves out in striving for ways to share the faith and knowledge given to us by Him with those with whom we share this space and time.

~ Vladimir Berzonsky, The Gift of Love, “The Invitation”

!!!

The Fragrance of Christ

First we must come to learn what God did for us in Christ by reading the Bible and sharing in the remembrance of His workings throughout history as recalled and recreated in the sacred worship of the Church. But learning is not complete without a loving union with the One whose actions we grow to comprehend at ever deeper levels of understanding through a lifetime of study and meditation. The Church does not hesitate to use the language of love to illuminate that sacred, mystical desire to be with Christ, a desire that inspires and motivates all true believers whether awake or sleeping, in every circumstance of life. That desire will suffer many challenges throughout a lifetime. Idolatry, which the Bible puts in first place among sins, manifests itself in varied and subtle ways. Whatever comes between Christ’s love for us and our love for Him, no matter how noble or significant, falls within that category. This includes the close relationship we form with other human beings.

As we continue in our repentance and prayers, the fragrance of Christ will draw us forward through the world into the Kingdom of the Father, for the desire to be with Christ includes our response to the invitation of the Holy Trinity to a union planned for humanity. This is what the fathers of the Church describe when they theologize. St. Symeon the New Theologian is filled with such exclamations of mystical love, as can be seen in the following example.

Your beauty is extraordinary, Your appearance without comparison, Your magnificence is inexpressible, Your glory is beyond human language… And for this reason the desire and love that draw us to You conquer over every other love and desire of mortals. (Hymn 39)

~ Vladimir Berzonsky, The Gift of Love, p. 20-21

God as Unanticipated Beauty

For Gregory (of Nyssa) God is to be understood first as … an unanticipated beauty, longed for but without a certain hope, and so evoking desperation: a God “seen” only by the infinite inflaming of desire, whose savor draws one on into ever greater dimensions of his glory, so that one is always at the beginning of one’s pilgrimage towards him, always discovering and entering into greater dimensions of his beauty.

David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite, p. 186-87; see also this review by Placher