“When spiritual joy comes to the body from the mind, it suffers no diminution by this communion with the body, but rather transfigures the body, spiritualizing it —rejecting all evil desires of the flesh, it no longer weighs down the soul but rises up with it, the whole person becoming spirit, as it is written: ‘He who is born of the Spirit is spirit’” (John 3:6-8)
St. Gregory Palamas, Triads, II, 2.9
The definition of human beings: We are creatures in the state of an ongoing transition. We are neither angels nor animals. Jesus Christ is the Way, and we follow Him on the way towards unity with the Holy Trinity, or else we are descending into a dark pit of self-destruction—but we are never satisfied with where we are. Great Lent provides us with spiritual energy to become who we are, or whom our Creator intends us to be. Great Lent is a process intended to guide us to a bond with divinity by stages, to the extent that we are capable of overcoming selfhood and making advances nurtured by the Holy Spirit and led by the example of Jesus Christ. It’s why ladders appear in our icons to lead ever onward and upward, but allowing for descent if we should need it.
One Sunday is devoted to St. Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica, a special saint of the fourteenth century who had the wisdom, faith and insight to harmonize the advances made in monasteries with the spiritual strivings of ordinary Orthodox Christians such as us. You may notice our bishops and monastic women and men wearing a cord on their left wrists. It has many separated knots, and it’s used to count short prayers in rhythm with their breathing. You may have such a rope yourself. It’s one way to pray in silence or hesychia—of course, not the only way, but a method that some in St. Gregory’s time thought of as foolish and worthless. They considered it a time waster for monks who should more profitably serve God by work or study.
Those who criticized the Hesychasts, as they were called, went further and condemned the goal of the monks who were convinced that it is possible for human beings to witness the light of divinity just as the three apostles had who were with Jesus Christ when He was transfigured on the mountain [Matthew 17:2, Mark 9:2]. Even today the phenomenon divides Christians into those like us who believe it actually happened from those who understand it as mere metaphor. How can it be possible for mere humans to behold divinity? Was it not just the light of the sun that blinded the apostles?
St. Gregory explained that while the essence of Godliness is reserved for the Holy Trinity, even since the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, our bodies have become “temples of the Holy Spirit who dwells in us” [I Corinthians 6:19]. It is in our bodies that are baptized into Christ, and through the Holy Eucharist that we receive God, no longer outside of us, but within us. The light that the apostles witnessed was external to them since Christ had not died and was risen, but now we are capable of knowing ourselves and growing into the awareness that Christ is alive not just outside but within us as well. We are dust and matter, but with the dignity and potential of sanctification. God in Christ is not just saving our souls, but our bodies and minds as well. By grace the whole person is saved, and this is not some abstract theology, but St. Gregory uses the New Testament to explain how this happens.
St. Gregory goes on to describe deification, the process of incorporating ever deeper into the Body of Christ by drawing our minds into our hearts, uniting thought with feeling. We don’t abstract ourselves from the Church. Indeed, it’s only through the Church and the sacraments do we find our way to God, as members of the Body of Christ, because He is the heart of the Church where we find our true selves.