Celebration of Living

-

 


Each heartbeat is an act of faith. Living cannot but be celebration. That is why Alyosha Karamazov tries to dissuade his brother Ivan from nihilism, begging him to love life, to dare to abandon himself to the great love that is within him; only afterwards will it make sense to him. And it is why even today, despite the apparent victory of nihilism, there are so few suicides.

 Through loving life we become aware that God's grace is prevenient, that existence apart from him is impossible, because life is inseparable from grace.

 'Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being' (Genesis 2.7).

 The Fathers are constantly commenting on this passage, saying that uncreated grace, which is light and fire, is implicit in the act of creation itself. Humanity receives life and grace at the same time.  From the beginning grace is inherent in the very fact of existing.

 Gregory of Nazianzus even speaks of an outpouring of divinity' (On the Soul PG.XXVII.452). For him, the life within us is the actual breath of God, the Holy Spirit, who not only broods over the waters at creation, but is concentrated in the life of the human person, where the universal life is completed and transcended.

 In countries where Orthodoxy has been influential, literature, even when avowedly atheist, bears witness to this essential grace. In their own way the novels of Kazakov or the songs of Theodorakis express gratitude for the gift of life. The same gratitude transforms the 'tragic nihilism' of Kazantzakis. Wherever Eastern Christianity has left its mark there remains an awareness of divine forces, even when God is denied.

 The human vocation is to become the willing and conscious celebrant of this great mystery. The only truly natural person is the one who is aware of being a creature drawn by grace, called to union with the Creator.

Olivier Clément, On Human Being: A Spiritual Anthropology (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2000)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

God seeks us more than we seek God

-
Image
  That is why Adam had to undergo the test of freedom, to grow in maturity towards a conscious love. That is why sacrificial Love could not be revealed until Abraham's knife had glinted in the eyes of Isaac or until Job's cry had resounded, calling on God to transcend his own power. That is why the chosen people were a stiff- necked people, who got their name - Israel - after wrestling in the dark with the unnamed Stranger. That is why, finally, when God took on himself the destiny of Isaac and of Job, he came in secret, so that only by the free love of humankind could he be recognized in a crucified slave, defiled with blood and spittle. Even the risen Lord does not force himself on our presence; it was with a cry of faith and love that Mary Magdalen recognized him in the garden, and the beloved disciple on the lake shore. Our God comes in secret, and the Church herself, where we are united by the Spirit to the eucharistic body of the risen Christ, is a secret whose holiness i...
Read more

A Dimension of Resurrection

-
Image
  When the Son of God, the fullness of personal existence, becomes the Son of the Earth, he allows himself to be contained by the universe at one point in space and time; but in reality the universe is contained in him. He will not use his body to possess and exploit the world, but by his constantly eucharistic attitude, he makes it a body of unity, flesh which is both cosmic and sacrificial. In him the world becomes a spiritual corporeity, not dematerialized but quickened by the Spirit. Willingly he buries his luminous corporeity in our suffering and burdensome corporeity, so that on the Cross, and in the sudden radiant dawn of Easter, everything is bathed in light; not only the universe, but all human effort to transform it. That is why the body and blood of Christ are not just grapes and wheat, but bread and wine! In and around him, fallen matter ceases to enforce its necessary consequences and constraints, becoming once again a means of communion, a temple of celebration and me...
Read more

From Beginning to Beginning

-
Image
  Eternity begins here and now, in our ability to do away with objectification, to see that in Christ the door of clever ignorance which is shut between me and my neighbour is for ever broken down. In eternity our neighbour is no longer an impersonal object 'that one' - classified, catalogued, forgotten, but comes to life as profoundly secret, unfathomable as God himself or as I am to myself. Then I am set on a destined path as if entering a land of childhood, knowing very well that, in the words of St Gregory, it will take me all eternity to go 'from beginning to beginning, by way of beginnings without end' (Commentary on the Song of Songs, PG,XLIV,941 A). Eternity is a first time, continually renewed. The miracle of the first time: the first time you realized that this person would be your friend, the first time, in childhood, that you heard that heartrending music, the first time that your child smiled at you, the first time. Then you become used to it. But etern...
Read more