Listening to the Fathers:: A Year of Neo-Patristic Reflections

By Philip Krill

LISTENING TO THE FATHERS: A Year of Neo-patristic Reflections is a day-by-day prayer journey based on selections from the Early Church Fathers. In this book of prayers, Philip Krill, whose personal mission is ‘to promote a Trinitarian vision of deification and contemplative prayer,’ seeks to introduce the reader to the Fathers’ vision of divinization in Christ and the universally salvific impact of His Incarnation. It is also his hope that those who pray with these texts will enter more deeply into contemplative prayer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781728372594

Philip Krill

PHILIP KRILL is a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, MO

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OTHER BOOKS BY PHILIP KRILL

Life in the Trinity: A Catholic Vision of Communion and Deification

Before the Foundation of the World: Encountering the Trinity in Ephesians 1

Gaudete: Mysteries of Joy

The Hope of Glory: A Contemplative Reading of Colossians 1

Deified Vision: Towards an Anagogical Catholicism

More than Conquerors: The Pauline Mysticism of Romans 8

Illume: Mysteries of Light

Listening to

the Fathers:

A Year of Neo-patristic Reflections

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PHILIP KRILL

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© 2020 Philip Krill. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 09/14/2020

ISBN: 978-1-7283-7260-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-7259-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020917010

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Scripture taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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To

Bob and

Kathy Eddy

‘And Mary said.’ (Lk. 1:38)

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‘God became man so that man could

become God’

St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation 54

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CONTENTS

Introduction

January - Mysterion

February - Incarnation

March - Ecclesia de Eucharistia

April - Lectio Divina

May - Theotokos

June - Ascesis

July - Parrhesia

August - Prayer

September - Enstasis & Exstasis

October - Agape

November - Theosis

December - Apokatastisis

Sources

INTRODUCTION

A defining moment occurred in my life when, in the fall of 1992, shortly after its publication, while I was teaching a course on the Catechism of the Catholic Church, I encountered, as if for the first time, the famous quote from St. Athanasius of Alexandria: ‘God became man so we could become God’. (On the Incarnation, 54, quoted in CCC 460). At that moment, it was as if I had stumbled upon my own personal, spiritual Rosetta Stone. It has since become the centerpiece of a contemplative vision that had been growing in me since at least third grade. For even since third grade, I knew that the penal-substitutionary model of Atonement which was being fed to us in religion class - Jesus died for your sins, and can’t you see how much hideous suffering your sins and the sins of the world have caused Him? - was baloney. My own father, I thought to myself, was surely not perfect, yet not in my wildest nightmare could I ever imagine him demanding the death of any of his five sons in order to compensate for any offense, or all the offenses taken together, that we may have caused him. Yet, such a theory of divine retribution was exactly the spiritual pedagogy the nuns and the priests were promoting at the time. Sadly, in the western church, this sadistic and irrational theological perspective still prevails, especially among neo-conservative clerics who often mistake haberdashery for liturgy, and among certain lay faithful who not infrequently misidentify baroque liturgy as an ancient form of Catholic worship.

St. Athanasius’ words spoke to me of an alternative vision, one my heart and soul had long been seeking. It is a vision of deification, divinization. It is a ‘participative’ vision - one that apprehends a fundamental and unbreakable union between God and humanity more intimate and more impervious to divorce than that of a happily married couple. We ‘participate’ in God’s own life, even as it has pleased God to become a partaker of our humanity in the Incarnation.

The Source of our deification in Christ, of course, is the Trinity itself. Each of the Persons of the Trinity is as indissolubly wedded to every human person as Father, Son and Holy Spirit are to each other.

Impacted by the words of St. Athanasius, I have spent the years since 1992 delving deeply into the contemplative vision of the Christian East. I soon discovered that Athanasius was preceded in his vision of theosis by St. Irenaeus who said, ‘The Son of God became what we are in order to make us what he is in himself’ (Against Heresies, V.1.1). He was succeeded in his vision by St. Maximus the Confessor who asserted, ‘God makes man divine in the same measure as that in which God was made human’ (Cap. Theol. Dogm., cent. I, c.62). In other words, St. Athanasius, I realized, spoke for the whole of the patristic tradition. Here was a vision of the deification of all of humanity, indeed of the very cosmos itself, that offered the church and the world a transformative spiritual alternative to the shopworn, threadbare moralisms of organized religion.

In my previous books I have tried to give expression to my unceasing joy and admiration as I continue to contemplate the theological vision of the early church fathers. For theirs is a deified vision - one that is inherently anagogical, that is, uplifting, both in content and impact. Focusing on the recapitulation of all things in Christ, they view the mysteries of the Christian faith from above, not from below. For the fathers, and for the Eastern church today, worship is a participation in the heavenly liturgy, through which the risen and triumphant Lord continually ‘makes all things new’ in the Economia of the Spirit (Rev. 21:5).

Listening to the Fathers: A Year of Neo-patristic Reflections is of a piece with my previous work, but in a different key, the register of prayer. ‘If you are a theologian, you will pray truly,’ said Evagrius of Pontus, the fourth century monk and ascetic, ‘and if you pray truly, you are a theologian’. (On Prayer, 61). Theology and prayer were virtually synonymous in the early church. The greatest academics were also the greatest saints. The fatal cleavage between study and spirituality had not yet occurred. This volume is offered in tribute to the patristic tradition of prayer as the believer’s first priority, as well as a contribution to the neo-patristic synthesis needed in the church to effect the kind of renewal Vatican II, for example, desired but failed to achieve.

This book is dedicated to Bob and Kathy Eddy, dear friends of mine from Yale Divinity School where we were students together in the early 1970’s. At YDS we sat at the feet of such great, prophetic professors as George A. Lindbeck, Rowan Greer, Coleman Barry, Aidan Kavanagh and Henri Nouwen. Each in his own way predicted what Karl Rahner was also saying at the time: ‘The church of the future will either become more contemplative or it will not exist at all’. Though formed in the Calvinistic culture of New England Congregationalism, Bob and Kathy Eddy, whose musical and artistic talents have earned them inter-national recognition, have also developed a deep appreciation for contemplative Christianity, including, even, a new-found devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the holy Theotokos. My life has been immeasurably enriched by theirs, so I offer this work in gratitude for their love and friendship for over forty years.

August 15, 2020

Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

January

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Mysterion

January 1

There [in the Hebrew scriptures] I discovered that God bears witness to himself in these terms: ‘I am who am,’ and ‘Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you’’ (Ex. 3:14). I was filled with wonder at this perfect definition which translates into words the incomprehensible knowledge of God. Nothing better suggests God than Being. ‘He who is’ can have neither end nor beginning…[and] There is no place without God; place does not exist except in God.

St. Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity, I, 1-13

Reflection

Long before anything was created, O Lord, You ARE. All be-ing derives from You-Who-Are, not from what You do. Your ‘I-am-ness’ is the Source of any ‘thing’ that ‘is’. Existence is itself a function of the Mystery of You, whose Being is without being, and whose Existence is undefinable beyond any words with which we try to imagine You.

All that exists, exists ‘in’ You, O Lord! You are in the world and the world is in You, but You are not the world and the world is not You. This mystical co-inherence gives itself to our minds when we contemplate the truth of Your Apostle’s words, ‘In Him we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28). But You are not comprehensible by any created intellect, O God! No amount of metaphors or analogies - as helpful as they may be - can assist us in know who You are! You transcend all that can be thought or said of You. And yet, Your Spirit is the Source and inspiration of our desire to know You completely. You call us to seek You beyond words and concepts, even while You reveal to us words and images of Your splendor, inspiring us to pursue You.

Accept our poverty of spirit, O Lord! We fall before You, both in wonder and bewilderment. And in our very inability to conceive of You, You reveal Yourself to us, not as an object of our consciousness, but as an indefinable wellspring of awareness itself. In experiencing our own existence - our own I-am-ness - do we not also experience Your Presence indefinably mingled with my own? Do we not experience that You are with us, O Emmanuel, when we allow myself to be arrested by the very fact that ‘You are’?

‘Stay with us, Lord,’ for ‘our hearts are burning within us’ because of Your abiding Presence in the depths of our being (cf. Lk. 24:29, 32)!

January 2

When God, who is absolute fullness, brought creatures into existence, it was not done to fulfill any need, but so that his creatures should be happy to share his likeness, and so that he himself might rejoice in the joy of his creatures as they draw inexhaustibly upon the Inexhaustible.

St. Maximus the Confessor, Centuries on Charity, III, 46

Reflection

You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, even though You are in need of nothing. For it has pleased You not to be completely Yourself without us. Though we add nothing to Your glory, we also somehow complete the glorious Mystery of triune Love that You are. Your Inexhaustibility now includes us. We, who are nothing, somehow make it possible for You to ‘come to full stature’ (cf. Eph. 4:13).

Once Your disciples asked You, ‘Who sinned that this man was born blind’? ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned,’ You answered, ‘but that the works of God might be manifest in him (Jn. 9:2-3). In like manner, O Lord, we, who are both blind and deaf, are given existence by You so that the glorious work of Your beneficence might be made visible in us. We are created for the sole purpose of giving visible expression to Your Infinite Love. For You are the fulness of Divine Love (1 Jn. 4:8, 16), a Love of which ‘no eye has ever seen, no ear has ever heard, nor any mind ever conceived’ (1 Cor. 2:9).

How can it be, O Lord, that Your joy finds its completion in us? How is it that Your Son can say to us that it is His greatest desire is that His ‘joy may be in us and that our joy may be complete (Jn. 15:11)? Is there really a kind of divine ‘neediness’ in You, O Lord, such that it can find fulfillment only in us? Can it truly be that our joy in discovering You also somehow satisfies a hungering and thirsting within Yourself? Can it really be that in completing us You also complete Yourself?

We praise You, O Lord, for creating us for ‘the praise of Your glory’ (Eph. 1:12-14). We rejoice in Your glory, and we give You thanks for the unspeakable mystery that You find joy in our rejoicing in You! Open our eyes to the reciprocity of Your Love, O God! Reveal to us in the Spirit that You have made us for Yourself, and that, in the depths of Your fatherly love, cannot rest content until all Your prodigal children ‘come to their senses’ and return to their Father’s house (cf. Lk. 15:17-18).

January 3

Every concept formed by the intellect in an attempt to comprehend and circumscribe the divine nature can succeed only in fashioning an idol, not in making God known.

St. Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Moses

Reflection

Concepts cannot capture You, O Lord, nor can the mind truly know You. You are known only in the revelation of Yourself by Yourself. You are the Wisdom that makes possible all knowledge. You are the Divine Sapientia that transcends the capacity of our minds to lay hold of Who You are. ‘In Your Light, O Lord, we see light ‘ (Ps. 36:9).

It is in the silence of the present moment, not in our mental chatter, that You speak to us, O Lord. For it is given us to be aware of the operations of our own minds. To observe our mind is to transcend it. Herein, O Lord, we catch a glimpse of your divine Presence. Not in the operations of the thinking, O Lord, are You present, but as the indefinable background to these mental operations. Nothing can make You visible to us, save Your own self-disclosure.

In Your Son You have spoken Your definitive Word to the world, O God, and through the invisible movement of His Spirit, His Presence is communicated directly to us. Your Spirit touches us in the very act of letting go: letting go of mental abstractions that cannot do justice to Your majesty; letting go of conceptual exercises that pretend to understand You; letting go of intellectual analysis that make an object of You. Instead, Your Spirit invites us to focus on the sense of Your Presence that arises when we simply allow the stillness to speak.

You are present to us, O Lord, as the inmost center of our existence. Your power is revealed to us when we surrender completely to the form of the present moment. We have an intuition of Your Presence when we have the courage to harken to Your words, ‘Be still and know that I am God’ (Ps. 46:10). You are the great I AM in whom we exist. ‘In You we lie and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28).

Show Yourself to us, O Lord, not in concepts or abstract forms, but as the very Source of our awareness; not in the mentations of our intellect, but as Ground of our very existence! Glory and praise to You, O God, now and forever, Amen !

January 4

God is known both in all objects and outside all objects. God is known both through knowing and through unknowing…He is nothing of what is, and therefore cannot be known through anything that is; and yet he is all in all. He is nothing in anything; and yet he is known by all in all, and at the same time as he is not known by anything in anything.

Dionysius the Areopagite, On the Divine Names, VII

Reflection

You are ‘in’ everything, O Lord, including ourselves, but not as another element of our composition. You are not another object in, or outside, the world of objects. You are nowhere to be found as a ‘thing,’ yet no thing exists without You. You are the indefinable condition for the possibility of existence. You are infinitely present to everything that is, yet we seek in vain to locate or identify Your actual Presence in the world of things. We can no sooner ‘see’ You, O Lord, than we can see our own eyes. We can no sooner grasp You, O Lord, that we can grasp our own shadow. Yet, more certainly than our eyes make possible our sight, or our shadow accompanies our movements, so does Your Spirit, O Lord, make possible our existence and accompany all our actions. You are not contained in our existence, and You are not visible in our actions, but You are most surely present there, O Lord, as the indefinable Power (Dynamis) enabling all that is to be.

You cannot be seen, O Lord, except by being still. A sense of Your Presence arises each time our cognition quiets itself and simple awareness takes its place. When we are present to the present moment, Your Spirit envelops us with an unmistakable intuition of Your Presence. In silence and stillness we experience You as nearer to us than we are to ourselves. This sense of Your abiding and indwelling Presence cannot be named, still less can it be captured or contained (cf. Jn. 3:8). Yet, more certainly that our own existence, we know and experience Your Presence inside and outside of us, O Lord, when we become still and open to the reality of the present moment.

All things speak of You, O Lord, not as One like ourselves, but as the One without Whom they would not exist. The world is alive with Your grandeur, O Lord, yet Your glory is such that we can no sooner capture it as collect the colors of a rainbow. Make us to seek You, O Lord, in all You have made. Deliver us, O Lord, from the illusion that You may be found as another object amidst the objects of the world or our minds.

January 5

Just as at the center of a circle there is a single point at which all the radii meet, so one who has been judged worthy to reach God recognizes in him, by direct awareness and without forming thoughts, all essences of created objects.

St. Maximus the Confessor, Gnostic Centuries, II, 4

Reflection

In You, O Lord, all things have their beginning and end (cf. Rev. 22:13), their center and circumference. You are found at the deepest center of our being,¹ an infinitesimal point of nowhere, from whence, in a manner more mysterious than any created intelligence can conceive of, You summon all things into existence, imparting to them their power of being that derives from, but is completely other than, the Infinite Being of Your own divine I AM. No accumulation of images and metaphors, signs and pointers, are adequate to the manner in which You are lovingly present to all You have created, O Lord. The Upanishads says: ‘The One who created the universe dwells in the human heart and, in silence, is loving to all’.² This is not only true of us, who have been created in Your image and likeness, but of all creation, animate and inanimate, human and sub-human. Every created essence, in its own unique way, glorifies and honors You, O God, simply by being what it is. The logoi, or archetypal patterns of the multitudinous genera and species of the things You have created, are themselves expressions of the Divine Logos who calls them into being (cf. Jn. 1:3). How can they ever be separate from You, O Lord, if Your very Word continually speaks them into existence? Must He Himself not be present in the mysterious depths of their being, giving them existence and holding them in actuality, without, for all of that, being identical with them?

O Heart of my heart, soul of my soul! How gracious are You, O Lord, who have created the universe for Yourself, so that Your glorious goodness might be reflected in every form of created reality! Praise to You, O Divine Love, whose hand is made visible in birds and bugs, no less than in sinners and saints! Rightly are You to be praised, in all You have created, especially in ourselves, we who are wondrously made in Your own image and likeness (Gen. 1:26).

January 6

O thou who art beyond all, how canst thou be called by another name? What hymn can sing of thee?

No name can describe thee. What mind can grasp thee? No intellect conceives thee. Thou only are the inexpressible; all that is spoken comes forth from thee. Thou only art unknowable; all that is thought comes forth from thee. All creatures praise thee, those that speak and those that are dumb. All creatures bow down before thee, those that can think and those that have no power of thought. The universal longing and groaning of creation tends towards thee. Everything that exists prays to thee and to every creature that can read thy universe sends up a hymn of silence. In thee all things dwell. With a single impulse all things find their goal in thee. Thou are the purpose of every creature. Thou art unique. Thou art each one and art not any. Thou art not a single creature, nor art thou the sum of creatures. All names are thine; how shall I address thee, Who alone cannot be named…Have mercy, O thou, Beyond All; How canst thou be called by any other name?

St. Gregory Nazianzus, Dogmatic Poems

Reflection

It matters not what we name You, O Lord, for You have revealed Yourself to us as a Name beyond all naming, as a Love beyond all praising. The Mystery of Your glory renders ignominious our feeble attempts to praise You adequately. We acknowledge our futility in speaking of Your unsurpassable greatness. You are the ‘Beyond All’. How, then, shall we call upon You, O Lord? How can we approach You in a way ‘otherwise’ from our usual ways of praying, for we are rendered deaf and dumb when trying to reach You with words? As Your prophet, Isaiah, declared, ‘Truly, you are a God who hide yourself, O Lord…’ (Isa. 45:15).

We begin to pray aright when we realize that Your hiddenness derives, not from Your distance from us, O God, but from Your very nearness. For You are closer to us than we are to ourselves. Yet Your very intimacy with us still bewilders and baffles us, O Lord, for we do not know how to address the One whose very Word abides in us as the unseen Source of our speech.

Fortunately, Your Spirit ‘helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words’ (Rom. 8:26). O You who are beyond all naming, we praise Your holy Name! For Yours is a Name beyond all names. And, in our very inability to call upon You properly, You come to our aid in our weakness, whispering in the depths of our being, ‘Be not afraid! It is I!…I am with you always, even until the end of the age’ (Jn. 6:20; Mt. 28:20)! Glory and praise to You, O Lord, now and forever!

January 7

If it happens that in seeing God one understands what is seen, that means it is not God himself who is seen but one of those knowable things that owe their being to him. For in himself he transcends all intelligence and all essence. He exists in a super-essential mode and is known beyond all understanding only in so far as he is utterly unknown and does not exist at all. And it is that perfect unknowing, taken in the best sense of the word, that constitutes the true knowing of him who transcends all knowing.

Dionysius the Areopagite, Letter to Gaius

Reflection

We must come to You by the Way of Unknowing, O Lord, for ‘truly You are a hidden God’ (Isa. 45:15). You cannot be comprehended, only apprehended. We seek not to capture You, but to worship You. And in opening ourselves to You, we find You are present, yet hidden, in the very act of openness.

When, exactly, did the Virgin Mary conceive of you in her womb, O Lord? Was it not in that indefinable milli-second of openness when she declared, ‘Let it be done unto me according to Your word’ (Lk. 1:38)? But was that milli-second actually a moment in time, or was it more mysteriously an indefinable movement in the heart of Mary? Did not St. Augustine say that Mary ‘conceived Jesus in her heart before her womb’?³ Does not Your Presence reveal itself within us, Lord, whenever we experience a moment of virginal openness? Does not every movement of genuine receptivity transport us beyond time and insert us into the Eternal Now, the only ‘place’ You can truly be found?

Time and space are rendered irrelevant, O Lord, once we discover that Your ‘kingdom is in our midst’ (Lk. 17:21). Saying ‘Yes!’ to the present moment then becomes the portal to that kingdom where You dwell in inaccessible light (cf. 1 Tim. 6:16). Forgetting about ‘God’ as we have learned to conceive of You seems the necessary precondition for the revelation of Yourself in the act of simple acceptance and unalloyed awareness. ‘Blessed are the pure of heart,’ You told Your disciples, ‘for they shall see God’ (Mt. 5:8). Truly we ‘see’ You, Lord, not when we cultivate thoughts about You but when, in a miraculous moment of non-judgmental openness, You allow Yourself to be apprehended by us as the Source and Summit of our very seeking.

January 8

This is the rule of our faith, the foundation of the building, the stability of our manner of life. Article I: God the Father, uncreated, who cannot be defined or seen, God, Creator of the Universe. Article II: the Word of God, the Son of God, Christ Jesus our Savior, who appeared to the prophets … according to the times and seasons ordained by the Father; by whom all things were made; who, above all, in the last days, to sum up all things in himself, became man amongst men, able to be seen and touched, to destroy death, to cause life to spring up, and to establish full communion between God and humanity. Article III: the Holy Spirit, by whom the prophets prophesied, the Fathers received revelations, the righteous were led in the way of righteousness; and who in the last days was poured out in a new way on humanity, to renew it over all the earth and to bring it into union with God.

St. Irenaeus of Lyons, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, 6

Reflection

Hidden and unknowable in Your essence as Father, O God, You have communicated Yourself to us as a trinitarian Fount of Divine Love. You are our Creator, Deliverer, and Sanctifier. But even these names fail to capture the mysterious relations of self-surrender and self-donation that constitute Your triune Life as God. We profess You as One and Three, yet, like the Apostles of Your Son, we ‘do not really know what we are saying’ (cf. Mk. 10:38). We hold fast to the Rule of Faith, but only Your Spirit can disclose to us the Mystery of Your Life which is ‘the life of the world’ (cf. Jn. 6:51).

Pour forth Your Spirit upon us, O Lord, that we might receive an anointing that illumines our inmost being and works its way outward into thoughts and expressions of praise. We are created to be the ‘praise of Your glory’ (Eph. 1:12-14). Let our spirits be arrested with the reality of Your Presence, O Lord! Transport our minds and hearts beyond our illusory fears and worries, remorse and recrimination that we associate with our past and future. Help us to find You perfectly and always present as the Fulness of Love in the sacrament of present moment. You are only ever known as the Power of the Now.⁴ Nothing truly exists that is not known now, for never is there a time when it is not simply ‘now’.

At the heart of every single Now we find You waiting for us, Lord. The light, joy, and peace of Your triune Presence arises within us in proportion to our surrender to Your eternal Now. Give us this grace, O Lord, to live in the mystical moment of the present!

January 9

The words of the prayer [Our Father] really point to the Father, the Father’s name, and the Kingdom, to teach us … to honor, to call upon and to adore the One Trinity. For the name of God the Father, in its essential subsistence, is the only-begotten Son. And the Kingdom of God the Father, in its essential subsistence, is the Holy Spirit. For what Matthew calls ‘Kingdom’ another evangelist calls Holy Spirit: ‘Thy Spirit come …’ [Luke 11.2, variant reading].

St. Maximus the Confessor, Commentary on the Lord’s Prayer

Reflection

Lord, what is there to ‘going to heaven’ other than being in deep, heartfelt communion with You? For are You not pure Relationship itself? And is not communion with You always a matter of discovering, in the depths of our being, Your Presence with us there, You, whose very name - Emmanuel - means God-with-us?

Father, You are no less dispossessed of Yourself than is Your Son in His kenosis (cf. Phil. 2:6-11). Your only Face is that of Your Son, and Your only voice is that of Your Eternal Word. You keep nothing for Yourself. You give everything to Your Son. Indeed You have no identity as our Father apart the complete donation of Yourself to Your Son.

Your Son, in turn, following Your example, pours Himself out upon us with the same complete self-dis-regard as You demonstrate to Him as His Father (cf. Phil. 2:6-11; Jn. 20:22). As He sees You doing, so also He does (cf. Jn. 5:17; 8:38; 14:31). Because You are the Fount of supreme self-dispossession, Your Son does not deem power or might as things to be grasped at, but, like You, empties Himself out completely upon us for Your greater honor and glory (cf. Jn. 1:3; Eph. 1:3-10; Col. 1:17; Mt. 11:27).

In our prayer to You, then, ‘Our Father,’ we pray that Your Kingdom may come, not as an external event perceived by signs and wonders (Lk. 17:23; cf. Mt. 24:24; Mk. 13:22; Jn. 4:48) but as a mystical, synergistic transfiguration in which, by responding to the Spirit You have placed in our hearts (cf. Rom. 5:5; 2 Cor. 1:22; Gal. 4:6), and by contemplating the Face of Your only-begotten Son (cf. Jn. 14:9), we are made one with You and become ‘partakers of Your divine nature’ (2 Pt. 1:4). May Your Spirit possess us, O Lord, that we may know Your coming Kingdom as a life of immediate and complete intimacy with You! Then we will truly be in heaven…

January 10

God, the divine Origin, is praised in holiness: whether as Unity, on account of the character of [His] simplicity and unity…or as Trinity, because of the thrice personal manifestation of this super-essential fruitfulness…or as Love for man, because…the godhead has been fully imparted to our nature by one of its Persons calling humanity and raising it to himself…

Dionysius the Areopagite, On the Divine Names, I

Reflection

You deserve praise in ways we are incapable of giving You, O God, as Your infinite holiness surpasses anything we can know or say about it. Perhaps that is why You have created angelic choirs nine-fold (cf. Eph. 1:18, 20-21; Col. 1:16), in order to give You the glory which we poor, pathetic creatures are unable to deliver unto You? For what do we know of Your ‘super-essential fruitfulness’ or of Your ineffable ‘simplicity and unity’? Still more are we ignorant of the how and wherefore of Your ‘thrice personal manifestation’. Who can adequately praise You as our ‘Divine Origin’? Who can to render You proper homage as the One who generates ‘super-essential fruitfulness’?

It is only with the Incarnation of Your Eternal Word, O God, that we can put a Face to Your Name. Your Son reveals You as a triune Mystery of Divine Love (1 Jn. 4:8, 16), a universally beneficent Fount of Life and Light (cf. Jn. 1:4; 1 Jn. 1:1-5; Mt. 5:45).

He has also placed Your Spirit in our hearts (cf. Rom. 5:5; 2 Cor. 1:22; Gal. 4:6), such that we can now render You praise worthy of Your divine majesty!

You impart Spirit to us, O Lord, in order to incorporate us into Yourself. Like a mother hen who instinctually desires to envelop and embrace her young (cf. Lk. 13:34), so does Your Eternal Word come forth from Your incomparable glory to envelop us in Your divine Embrace. You accommodate Yourself to us in order to deify us. You create us in order to divinize us. You impart Your divine Life to us, O Lord, in order to elevate us into Your world of limitless life, love, and life.

You ‘make all things new’ O Lord! (cf. Rev. 21:5). For this we glorify You even though words of praise fail us as we contemplate the mystery that You have ‘fully imparted to our nature’ a share in Your own divinity, ‘calling humanity and raising it to Yourself’ in the Person of Jesus. Open our hearts to comprehend such a gift, O God! Loosen our lips to give express the joy within us that is ultimately ‘too deep for words’ (cf. Rom. 8:26).

January 11

The Father makes all things by the Word in the Spirit. So it is that the Unity of the Trinity is safeguarded. So it is that in the church is proclaimed the one God who is ‘above all and through all and in all’ (Eph. 4.6). He is ‘above all’ as Father, as author and source; ‘through all’ by the Word; ‘in all’ in the Holy Spirit.

St. Athanasius of Alexandria, Letters to Serapion

Reflection

You seem to have a ‘prepositional identity,’ O God, for You are the One who makes all things by Your Word in the Spirit. You are the One who is above, through, and in all. It is as if all things are in You, O Lord, and You are in all things, yet You are not all things, and all things are not You! It is this mysterious co-inherence that You reveal to us, O Lord, by which we come to know You and for which we give You unending glory and praise.

As Father, You are above all, not in the simple sense of being ‘up there somewhere,’ but as being beyond all things. You are eternally present to all things as their non-locatable Source and Origin. Yet, even the preposition ‘beyond’ can mislead us when contemplating Your triune Mystery, O Lord. For ‘beyond’ means ‘otherwise than’. You are otherwise that we are. You are Non-aliud, i.e., ‘totally other’ from what You have created. You are the Mystery that has no opposite. Nothing can compare with You. You are beyond all definition or description. No polarities can be applied to You. In You the coincidence of opposites finds its source and satisfaction. In You all paradoxes and contradictions are overcome. Nothing can be said of You other than what You have said of Yourself: ‘I am who I am’ (Ex. 3:14). You are without being, O God, yet all beings have their existence only in You. You are before and beyond all that is, yet existence itself is incomprehensible apart from You.

Through Your Eternal Word, O God, ‘all things were made’ (Jn. 1:3). All things are created ‘through Him and for Him’ (Col. 1:16). ‘For from him and through him and to him are all things’ (Rom. 11:36). For this we praise You, O Lord! You sustain all things without being contained or constrained by them. Glory to You, O triune God, in whom all things ‘live and move and have their being’ (Acts 17:28). Blessed are You, O Eternal World, ‘through whom and for whom all things are made’ (Col. 1:16)! Praised be to You, O Holy Spirit, who illumine our hearts to understand these things! To You, O Most Holy Trinity, ‘be highest glory and praise for ever!’ (cf. Rom. 11:36; Dan. 3).

January 12

I have hardly begun to think of the Unity before the Trinity bathes me in its splendor: I have hardly begun to think of the Trinity before the Unity seizes hold of me again. When one of the Three presents himself to me, I think it is the whole, so full to overflowing is my vision, so far beyond me does he reach. There is no room left in my mind, it is too limited to understand even one. When I combine the Three in one single thought, I see only one great flame without being able to subdivide or analyze the single light.

St. Gregory Nazianzus, Oration 49, On Baptism, 41

Reflection

You bathe us in Your splendor, O Lord, as we contemplate the triune Mystery that You are! For To think upon You is to be illumined by Your Spirit. And to be illumined by Your Spirit is to be bathed in Your glory. For it is You own Spirit who breathes within us the desire to know You as You know Yourself! At all times You seek to incorporate us into Your own divine Life, that ‘Your joy may be in us and our joy be complete’ (cf. Jn. 15:11).

Is there not also a sense, O Lord, in which Your own joy is made complete by our delighting in You? Did not your Son desire that He have His joy fulfilled in us (Jn. 17:13)? Is not the fulfillment of His joy also the fulfillment of Your joy? Does it not delight You, O Lord, to see us bathed in the splendor of Your Spirit, since it is You Yourself who seize us with Your beauty? Our minds cannot contain You, yet in ‘Your Light we see light’ (Ps. 36:9). In the effulgence of Your divine revelation, we discern Your Presence as Emmanuel, the God who is always with us (cf. Mt. 1:23).

You are a Trinity of uncreated suns, O Lord, so brilliant as to blind the eyes of our understanding. Yet because Your Light is also Love (1 Jn. 1:5 cf. 4:8), this blinding is a delight, and our ignorance of Your overflowing beauty a blessing. Like little children, we bask in the excess of Your divine glory. We make no pretense of grasping Your trinitarian unity-in-difference and difference-in-unity; yet, we have an inherent appreciation of Your triune Mystery. We worship You as One in Three and Three in One: a trinitarian Mystery of Life, Light, and Love, into which You desire to assimilate us.

O Life of our lives, we praise You! O Light of our souls, we bless You! O Love beyond all telling, we glorify You! All praise, honor, glory and blessing belong to You, O triune God. You alone are the unfathomable Mystery whom all creation adores!

January 13

When I speak of God, you should feel yourselves bathed in a single light and in three lights … There is undivided division, differentiated unity.

St. Gregory Nazianzus, Oration 39, 11

Reflection

No wonder You tell us that only ‘the pure of heart shall see God’ (Mt. 5:8), O Lord, since, in contemplating You, we are cleansed of our sins and bathed in the purity of Your Divine Light. You ‘are light,’ O God, and in You ‘there is no darkness’ (1 Jn. 1:5). Your illumination is our deification, the sight of Your countenance our sanctification. The very mention of Your Name fills us with overflowing joy. To speak of You is to have our souls awash in Your purifying Light, a resplendence of which ‘no fuller on earth can match’ (Mk. 9:3).

Let Your uncreated Light bathe our souls constantly, O Lord! May we be transfigured continually by the single-yet-triune Illumination that pours forth from the Mystery Who You Are. Infuse our souls with the uncreated Life that Your Spirit pours out upon us (cf. Acts 2:33; Jn. 10:10). Though our minds are darkened by the blinding Light of Your Essence, O God, let our lives be recreated by the impact of Your Divine Energies upon us (cf. 2 Cor. 5:17)!

We can only stammer Your praises, O God, for You are Source of all Light and the Light with which we are illumined! All of Your Mysteries are forever luminous! Though opaque to our understanding, they are yet powerfully present upon us. Though Your Light originates at an unbridgeable distance beyond us (cf. Isa. 55:8-9), it is nevertheless always within us. Truly, Your ‘Kingdom is in our midst’ (Lk. 17:21).

Forgive us for speaking so boldly of You, O Lord, for we ‘know not what we are saying’ (cf. Mk. 9:6). Still, in singing Your praises we experience ourselves as bathed in Your Light, and even in our halting acclamations we are being divinized by Your omnipresent Love. Blessed are You, O most holy and undivided Trinity, for ‘truly, you are a hidden God ‘ (Isa. 45:15), yet ‘in your light we see light’ (Ps. 36:9)! Bathe us always in this Light! Transform us continually in the uncreated splendor that is Yours!

January 14

Even if the godhead, which is beyond all, is worshipped by us as Trinity and as Unity, we know neither the three nor the one as numbers.

St. Maximus the Confessor, On the Divine Names, XIII

Reflection

‘Who do you say that I am,’ You once asked Your apostles, O Lord (Lk. 9:20). And when Moses asked You Your Name, You said to him, ‘I am who I am…say this to the sons of Israel, ‘I am has sent me to you’’(Ex. 3:14). Who You are can never be known by describing what You are, O God! Neither numbers nor theological maxims can worthily express the Mystery of Divine Persons we call the Most Holy Trinity. You are an ineffable Communion of Persons (Communio Personarum), and we ask Your forgiveness for often forgetting Your divine Personhood when describing or approaching Your Majesty.

Forgive, also, our theological insolence. For in formulating nifty creeds to express Your trinitarian relations, we fool ourselves into believing that in so doing we make real contact with You. But our words are only pointers, O Lord, and impoverished pointers at that. How blind must we be to pretend that precision in our definitions of Your Unity and Trinity reflect, in any real sense, the ineffable Mystery of Love that You Are? Never do we know You as mere numbers, O God! Never can we behold Your beauty by fashioning clever ways of expressing what can only burn with inexpressible joy in our hearts (cf. Lk. 24:32)! You are the God beyond all praising. You are that Wondrous Love that escapes all articulation.

Allow us to rest in our awareness, O Lord, that Your Presence is always more immediate, more transcendent, more inexpressible that our ability to express it. Silence our lips that we may allow Your inaudible Voice resound in the stillness of our hearts. Take us to that place, O God, beyond all cognition where You abide forever. Grant us a share in the ‘peace that passes all understanding’ (Phil. 4:7). Remind us again and again that ‘what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, is what You have prepared for those who love You’ (1 Cor. 2:9). Accept our praise for so great a gift, O Lord! Make us ever more worthy of Your promises, O Christ, especially that of our deification in You (cf. Jn. 10:34-35)!

January 15

As if God no hands of his own! From all eternity he has with him the Word and Wisdom, the Son and the Spirit. It is by them and in them that he does all things.

St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, IV, 20, 1

Reflection

You have ‘two hands,’ O God, Your Son and Your Holy Spirit! Both proceed from You eternally, and neither returns to You empty but accomplishes that which You intend. They ‘prosper the things for which You send Them’ (cf. Isa. 55:11). Jesus is Your ‘right hand man,’ and Your Spirit is the One who keeps us, in all humility, from knowing what either our own ‘right and left hands are doing’ (cf. Mt. 6:3).

Who can fathom the Eternal Word and Divine Wisdom that are Your ‘two hands,’ O Father? For in You is contained the fulness of the Godhead, yet You are inseparable from Your Son and Your Holy Spirit. All that You are is communicated and imparted to Them, yet not only are You not diminished by this Self-dis-possession, but You are mysteriously fulfilled and completed in so doing. ‘Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it’ (Ps. 139:6). And even in this awareness of our ignorance, Your Eternal Wisdom is communicating Your Divine Word to us ‘with sighs too deep for words’ (Rom. 8:26).

Have pity on us in our foolishness, O Lord! Show mercy to us in our weakness! Lift us up with Your ‘two hands’. Enfold us into Your Fatherly Embrace! Help us to recognize in Your Son’s desire to ‘gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings’ (Mt. 23:37). Make our salvation a visible expression of Your desire from ‘before the foundation of the world’ that we be ‘holy and blameless in Your sight’ (Eph. 1:4). Through Your Holy Wisdom, fulfill Your Eternal Word’s desire that we, whom You have given to Your Son, may ‘be with Him where He is, to behold the glory which You, O heavenly Father, have given Him before time began’ (cf. Jn. 17:24)!

O God, place upon us the ‘two hands’ of Your Fatherly Love! Allow us to feel the touch of Your Divine Wisdom and the Presence of Your Eternal Word. Gather us into Your majestic Embrace. Make us ‘partakers of Your divinity’ (cf. 2 Pt. 1:4), even as, in Christ, You assumed our humanity. Deify us with Your Holy Spirit so we can become ‘the praise of Your glory’ (Eph. 1:12-14).

January 16

The Father represents in the bosom of the deity the element of generation, Jesus and the Spirit are after a fashion the divine shoots of God’s engendering deity, and as it were its super-essential flowers and radiance.

Dionysius the Areopagite, On the Divine Names, II

Reflection

We search in vain, O God, for images and metaphors to express our inestimable joy in loving You! We know full well that there are no ‘elements’ in You. We know also that You do not possess a ‘bosom’. Yet, from the depths of our being as poor human creatures, we grope for words that can adequately reflect the groanings of adoration Your Spirit inspires within us whenever we turn our minds and hearts to You (cf. Rom. 8:26).

You, O Father, the the Un-originate Source of what we so blithely call ‘God’. You are our Arche (ἀρχή, archē) - our Origin without a beginning - our Creator without a container. You are Un-generated One, from whom Your Son and the Holy Spirit are engendered, also without beginning or end. You are the triune Mystery of Love that has no opposite. Your Eternal Word and Divine Wisdom proceed from You without ever being separated from You. Who can fathom such a Mystery? Who can speak of such an incomprehensible Love?

We do so only because Your Son has made You known through the illumination of His Holy Spirit (cf. Jn. 1:18; 14:9-11; 16:13). Together they reveal You as the Engendering Source of all that is, and They glorify You as the ‘divine shoots’ of Your Un-engendered Life. Jesus is the ‘shoot from the stump of Jesse’ (Isa. 11:1; cf. Rom. 15:12), the ‘flowering Branch’ who testifies to the irrepressible Power (δύναμις, dynamis) of the Divine Vine (cf. Jn. 15:1). He is radiant with the anointing of Your Spirit, exuding the Light and Life, Love and Consolation that find their un-generated origin in Your fatherly heart. We call you ‘Father’ because Your Son told us to (Mt. 6:9; cf. Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6), and none call You ‘Father’ unless Your Holy Spirit so inspires them (cf. Mt. 11:27).

Accept our inadequate praise, O God, and despise not our stumbling attempts to give You the honor and blessing and glory that becomes You as God!

January 17

The single nature of the Three is God. In regard to his oneness he is the Father. The others come from him and return to him without being confused with one another. They coexist with him, without being separated in time, in purpose, or in power.

St. Gregory Nazianzus, Orations, 42

Reflection

You are better called ‘the Three,’ O Lord, than simply ‘God’. For You are a Communio Personarum - a Communion of Divine Persons. You are not an amorphous, ethereal, invisible Force. How easily and how often we relate to You as a distant Object, as an eternal Entity devoid of any qualities or aspects of Yourself that we might call ‘personal’. And yet, our very existence as persons - not simply as ‘things’ - is because You created us in Your ‘own image and likeness’ (Gen. 1:26). Can we not rightly believe that whatever personal qualities that exist in us must not also somehow be Yours, if only in a super-eminent way, O Lord?⁵

What You are is ‘God,’ but Who You Are…ah, there You reveal Yourself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! We can address You as ‘Lord,’ because, as even as God, You are altogether personal. You are always and forever our ‘Thou,’ never simply an ‘It’. We adore You because we love You; we do not adore You because fear You.

Banish from our consciousness any lingering notions that You are like the ‘Wizard of Oz,’ O God! Remove from our hearts all dreadful and impersonal ways of relating to You! Reveal Yourself anew to us a triune Mystery of super-personal Love. Let us forever relate to You as a community of Divine Persons, no longer as an undifferentiated Power, distant and unaffected by the persons who, with hungry hearts and thirsting souls, search for You.

Accept our praise, O heavenly Father! Allow us, like Your Son and Holy Spirit, to be with You and in You without confusion and without separation. Your Son and Your Spirit are ‘other’ from You but are never found apart from You. Allow us to enjoy by participation what They enjoy by nature: perfect communion with You in an incomprehensible Mystery of eternal light, love and joy!

January 18

By his mysterious divinity God is Father. But the tender love he has for us makes him become a mother. The Father in loving makes himself feminine.

St. Clement of Alexandria, Can a Rich Man be Saved?, 37

Reflection

We have no other way of conceiving of You, O Lord, apart from the analogies of Your glory suggested to us in this world. We know full well that any images or likenesses we predicate of You have validity only, and only incidentally, because You have first made us in Your ‘own image and likeness’ (Gen. 1:26). We realize that Your Divine Mystery transcends all distinctions between masculine and feminine. At the same time, You reveal Yourself to us in certain dimensions of our own, gender-constituted existence. For Your Divine Word repeatedly bears witness to Your ‘maternal tenderness’ (e.g., Isa. 49:15; Lk. 13:34), and the scripture speaks often of Your ‘bowels of mercy’ (cf. Phil. 1:8; 2:2; Col. 3:12) with visceral intensity. Given these images of Your paternal and maternal protection, we cannot but believe that in a way far surpassing our own experience of fatherly and motherly care, that You love us, care for us, and cherish us as Your very own children.

Yet, Your favorite way of being known is as ‘Father’,