If a poorly educated Christian must go through a considerable experience of asceticism in order to expound his faith coherently when necessary – and this duty, according to the Apostle Peter, lies with everyone – then mental purgatory is no less severe, since here one must beware of traps – such concepts of God that St. Gregory of Nyssa calls idols, and pseudo-theological speculations without a direct connection with the mystery of Christ. The goal of all mental activity is to bring the mind to obedience to the Lord, to regeneration by Baptism, to conversion. It is necessary to reveal Christ in us through the direct contagious action of grace and through the work of purifying the mind. Such work can precede the acceptance of Christ. We must proceed from the divine principle in man, realize this principle, personify it and call it Jesus Christ, our Savior.

There remains, therefore, the only way to convey the message. To teach the gospel is to translate it into the modern language of a given country and a particular society at all levels of culture. It is necessary to attain such a high level of mastery in order to transmit the Gospel without betraying it, in order to bring the truth revealed in the Judeo-Hellenic context closer to people whose minds are alien to this culture and for whom the liturgical symbolism and mentality of the Fathers are something like a cipher. We know, however, that Pentecost introduced into the world not only glossolalia—speaking in incomprehensible tongues—but also the gift of understanding tongues. A new concept does not appear by itself, it is formed. It can be the fruit of the work of a community of people concerned with saving a hungry and broken world. But, once again, these efforts are not the lot of theologians alone, for mission must be carried out at all levels, and the ways of conveying the message change during the transition from one intellectual and social stage to another.

Translation implies the presence of two ways of thinking: that of the Christian and that of his listener. Hence the need to delve into the culture of other people, into their system of symbols, into their psychology, to build bridges between us and them. At the same time, we must not fall into syncretism, that is, we must be extremely careful not to introduce into our message foreign elements originating from the religion or philosophy of our interlocutors, otherwise we will no longer transmit the Gospel, but religious eclecticism. A Christian can assimilate elements of non-Christian culture, philosophy, or religion, but he cannot mix tares with wheat. In any similarity of ideas there is a certain divergence, as well as the possibility of coincidence in opposition. Since the historical order is not alien to God's plan—and God is the master of both the world and time—there are religious values in history that Christianity has more or less left in the shadows. The idea of obedience to God, as developed in Islam, when combined with the proclamation of the Gospel, could be extremely fruitful. The whole spiritual life could be built around this idea, linking it with the Jesus Cross. And it would be much more dynamic than on the basis of Islam. It is here that the most important aspect of missionary theology and our understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit lies. If the Holy Spirit is omnipresent, or can be omnipresent, in all non-Christian cultures and religions, and therefore they do not belong entirely to the realm of death, then we, discovering the presence of the Lord in them, do not deserve the reproach that the angel addressed to the myrrh-bearing women: "Why do you seek the living among the dead?" (Luke 24:5). By the action of the Holy Spirit, who breathes where He will, Christ is undoubtedly secretly present outside the visible boundaries of the Church.

This, however, does not mean that one can take a thoughtlessly optimistic position in relation to the cultural world. It is impossible to jump with impunity from the plane of God's creativity to the plane of human creativity. Man is a sinner and a bearer of death, and therefore all his activity is essentially ambiguous. As Claudel said about artistic creativity: "Evil is a slave who pumps water." The mysticism of human creativity does not and cannot exist in the Christian worldview. That is why we cannot subscribe to the statement of the great Protestant theologian Paul Tillich: "Religion is the essence of culture, culture is the form of religion," just as we cannot subscribe to the statement of the modern Orthodox theologian, for whom culture is the fruit, form and manifestation of man's power to create in the name of the Creator. In fact, there are purely pagan cultures that do not exceed the level of pure aesthetics, even if it is religiously colored. Another modern theologian, the Protestant Jacques Ellul, wrote in a book entitled "Presence in the Modern World" as follows: "The will of the world is always the will to death, the will to suicide. This suicide must not be accepted, it must be done in such a way that it cannot take place. Therefore, it is necessary to know what is the current form of the world's will to suicide in order to resist it, in order to understand where our efforts should be directed. […] It is a question of penetrating into the very point where this will to commit suicide is at work, and to see how the will to preserve God can operate in this position. […] This means that we must know this gravitation of our world towards death in all its depth, in all spiritual reality, and direct our efforts to it."

This is the missionary position toward worldly spirituality, and it is partially correct. It is true because it opposes God's judgment to every human action, because it sees sin in man in a profoundly biblical way. And partly, because human thought is not only the aspiration of fallen man, but sometimes it is an expression of the rebirth of man in a foreign land, outside the visible realm of the Church, in that hidden realm of the Church where the Holy Spirit unites those people from all nations who grope for justice and truth. Therefore, there are elements through which the Spirit of Jesus draws a significant number of people, and we must be able to recognize these elements in an evangelical way.

These fragmentary reflections on testimony will become useless in the day when our existence becomes a call. If it is important that a group of Christians should reflect on the problem of evangelism, it is infinitely more important that those who are not involved in the ministry of Christ should know for certain that we have passed from appearance to being, from anguish to peace, that the truth of God is already present in that immeasurable joy which is the dawn of the kingdom.

Paths of holiness

In the saint who lives among us, I am struck by how simultaneously and equally strongly he feels the power of God and his own human weakness, which, moreover, necessarily condition each other. When, at the Byzantine Liturgy, the priest breaks the Eucharistic bread before Communion and exclaims: "Holy to the holies!", the choir on behalf of the congregation retorts to him: "One is holy, one is the Lord Jesus Christ..." Since humility is a sense of our insignificance — and, according to John Climacus, the highest step on the ladder of virtue — it allows us to see how wretched we are, the more clearly we are given to contemplate the light of the Lord. Here is a double paradox, dogmatically affirmed. If holiness is the meeting of grace and good will of man, that is, synergy, then the reality of man in his sanctification never disappears.

Man is placed by God before His face forever. Therefore, our love for Him is not merging with Him. If it were a fusion, it would be a rejection of creation. No one has penetrated the mystery of the mutual love of God and man. Here we are confronted with the impossibility of union in mystical marriage: "I behold Thy refurbished nuptial rest, O Lord, and I have no garment to enter it." This is the eternal nakedness of man in prayer and the eternal protection that God gives him.

However, the great St. Symeon the New Theologian, who lived in Byzantium in the tenth and eleventh centuries, taught that the spiritual man exists in the realization of grace, the new birth in the Spirit, which is identical with the knowledge of the Spirit Himself. Of course, a person is carried out for this birth by Baptism, and there are no sudden breakthroughs of grace outside of church life. But, as St. Simeon asserts, Baptism is only bathing in water, if it is not combined with the gift of tears.

The grace given to us never makes us feel important, for we know that we are always "useless slaves." We are aware of God's holiness in us, our purpose as transmitters, and our total unworthiness. The divine-human work is still ineffable.

Holiness is incomprehensible outside the category of eros. When St. Ignatius of Antioch said of Jesus: "My Love (Eros) is crucified," he was aware that through martyrdom he would come to marital peace. The concepts of agape and eros are always opposed, but it is precisely the passion for man that God nourishes. He gives himself to him in the death of the Son and evokes in him a reciprocal passion for God. Man examines his own heart and by his obedience entrusts his thirst for God: "If you love me, keep my commandments" (John 14:15).

The Face of God that we see becomes the power of the Transfiguration. A person believes because his heart is touched. Faith is the first thing that begins the betrothal to our Lord. The face of God is still hidden, for its light is too bright for us. But when the Beloved leads us into His hiddenness, the boundary between faith and vision is erased and the promises of the future life blossom. We realize that the kingdom is within us. Everything is illuminated by the petition from the Lord's Prayer, which St. Gregory of Nyssa pronounced thus: "Thy Holy Spirit come," instead of: "Thy Kingdom come." Love for God itself becomes the power of faith, generates it, revives it, and, burning it to a flame, surrounds it with itself.

In the depths of holiness, faith and hope seek to merge with love. Whoever has truly come to the full realization that he is loved by God has already been transferred to the kingdom and takes it with him into death. To whom God has trusted, whom He has adopted in the Son, he already sees the unsetting light. In a sense, he has already risen from the dead. He alone clearly sees the Resurrection of Christ as Holy and as Lord. We are alive in the Living One, Who is resurrected in us by the Spirit. There is no knowledge outside of the vision of this eternal Passover, which we eat in the purity of our hearts.