“He who is, becomes. The uncreated is created. He whom no locality can hold, through the mediation of an intelligent soul, is contained within the limits of flesh. He who enriches others, Himself becomes poor, and because He assumed the poverty of our flesh, we are made rich with His divinity. Fullness empties itself, because He empties Himself of His glory for a time in order that I participate in His fullness” (St. Gregory Nazianzen, On the Baptism of Jesus)
Within the halo of every icon of our Lord, God and Savior, Jesus Christ, you may notice three Greek letters, an “o” with a backward comma above, a fat “w,” and a “v.” They mean, “He who is,” the Septuagint [Greek translation] of the four Hebrew consonants that mean: “I am Who I am,” or “I am ‘He who is.’” [YHWH]. When the Almighty appeared to Moses on Mt. Sinai and was asked His Name, this was His answer, a response that has humanity searching to define ever since, aware that the Name is indefinable. To define is to limit. God is beyond all limits.
We shall never define God, nor shall we gain entry into God’s essence. Yet out of love for His world, God the Second Person of the Holy Trinity became Man. We celebrate that awesome mystery without being able to solve it. A millennium ago the great theologian St. Gregory Palamas explained the way that God comes to us by grace, or “energies,” without offering us access to divine essence. That relationship is exclusive to Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Even beyond this lifetime God as He is in Himself will not be revealed; however, through the exchange between Christ and ourselves it will be made real. This is the promise, which St. Gregory of Nazianzen expressed so beautifully in the above sermon.
That mystery is proclaimed throughout the Orthodox Church worship. Listen to the poignant embellishment of Psalm 118/119 sung plaintively at the matins of Holy Friday, as the Church ponders again Christ’s incarnation, ministry and crucifixion. As we hold a wake for the crucified Lord of heaven and earth, the Word of God who was “In the beginning,” that is, before the universe, prior to the angels, earlier than anything that was created, not only was “with God,” but indeed “was God.” And yet “for us men and for our salvation became man—and we have beheld His glory” [John 1].
Now read above the passage that explains His glory: He enters the creation made by Him, He accepts the limits of humanity, never having been limited by space or time. He permits Himself to take on the confinements of our nature, the “poverty of our flesh,” so that we may become like Him, and thereby become, miracle of miracles, true children of His Father not in the same manner in which He is as the Son of God, but by adoption. He emptied Himself for a time, in order that we may be filled with Him.
We may ask ourselves, or even ask Him why He would do that for us? Surely not for anything we did to earn that gift of adoption to sonship. Not through some compulsion on God’s part, nor that He needs anything from us other than to return His love, the only answer, with as much love as we humans are capable of, given our natural limitations.
No bequest on earth can equal God’s gift of love to us. Imagine being visited by some billionaire with the offer to make us his sole inheritor. Would we refuse? How much more ought we to express our appreciation to Jesus Christ for having brought us the gift of entry beyond death to eternal life.