Despite the immutable gulf between the essence of the Creator and the essence of the creature, God remains in some way accessible. In order for us to be worthy of the name of "partakers of the divine nature," there must be something in God to which we can participate. Through God's eternal impulse toward us—his divine energies, as the Fathers call them, as opposed to an entity that remains incomprehensible—the Godhead actually lives in us. Grace is the true light that illuminates existence as a whole.

A person becomes the God he loves. The desirer revolves around the Desired, already participating in His life, in His being. "This participation in divine things is the similarity between the communicants and that to which they participate," affirms St. Maximus the Confessor. A person, in his soul and in his body, receives a sanctifying glory that permeates him completely. That is why St. Maximus ventured to proclaim: "Having become a god by deification, the creature henceforth bears within itself and manifests only the energy common to God and His chosen ones, or, rather, henceforth there is only God, inasmuch as He fills the whole wholeness of His chosen ones with all His wholeness."

This is the highest point of unity. But unity is prepared by unceasing effort, by a sincere striving for grace and an effort to find it. "The kingdom of heaven is taken by force, and those who use force take it away" (Matt. 11:12). There is a storm in the world, a storm in our hearts, but it is not a question of bringing good weather to our rooms. We must settle down with Jesus, put aside worldly cares. We must give ourselves to Jesus with our hearts. The symbol of this will to purification is the invocation of the holy Name of Jesus. Through concentration on this Name, through this reality of Jesus in us, we move towards Him in our hearts, we enter with Him into a fiery rush of love.

However, the giants of spiritual life have always looked upon their spiritual feats as a simple preparation for the reception of heavenly gifts. That is why St. Seraphim of Sarov said at the beginning of the nineteenth century: "Prayer, fasting, vigil and all other Christian deeds, however good they may be in themselves, are not the only ones that the goal of our Christian life consists in, although they serve as the necessary means to achieve it. The true goal of our Christian life is to acquire the Holy Spirit of God."

This means that there is no technique of holiness, or even a discipline that would mechanically prepare for it. Ascetic effort in itself is already the fruit of grace, and it is not enough during the entire life of the ascetic to drive away demonic delusions. Imagination and human talk about deification remain dangerous obstacles. The greatest seriousness in the fulfillment of the Beatitudes, the taming of the gaze, the "circumcision of the senses," as Origen says, the statutory fasts, and prolonged prayer are supported by the gifts of the Spirit, and they themselves are the stones on which the ascetic stands and awaits these gifts. According to the rule of Tradition, "when united, the righteousness of works and the grace of the Spirit fill the soul with blessed life, in which they become identical."

Struggle and charisma, a gift of grace, are united in personality. Nature is no longer distorted by sin or demonized by temptation. It becomes beautiful, like the dawn of the last Sunday day, which will not be twilight. In the inner asceticism acquired in conversion, the Christian feels how light the Lord's yoke is. The heart, where passions and slavery once dwelt, becomes the place where the kingdom is revealed, where the light is seen, and where the believer keeps the treasures entrusted to him by God. The ability of a being to contemplate, the receptacle of the image of God in a person, the heart of a believer is preserved by the Spirit. The mind, which must remain cold, watches so that the heart is not blinded by the fervor of the "lusts of the flesh." Balance, clarity of mind in a converted person is exactly what the great spiritual fighters of the East said: "the mind descends into the heart" under the influence of the Holy Spirit.

This ideal of holiness does not change to the taste of the ages. It is not related to the life form. Whether a monk or a layman, a man or a woman, married or single, whether he leads the life of a farmer or works in industry or in the field of high technology, his heart endures the same temptations and receives the same strength from God. We are not faced with a choice between social or political activity, on the one hand, and the transformation of the inner being, on the other. A Christian always has faith, which consists in agreement with God and the inner life of man himself. The Holy Spirit is not on one side and mental, social, or family life on the other. In all the states of life, one thing inspires – the Gospel absolute, for in it salvation lies. There is only that surge of love which, proceeding from the heart of the Trinity, inflames us and the world, constantly transforms us and holds us before the Lord. We stand before Him in boundless humility, but He Himself gives us His Spirit again and again every day. "The patience of the saints" awaits sinners with tears. The saints know the abysses, but they also know that God is stronger than our hearts, and that the hell of man must turn into a day filled with light. Holiness is an Easter gift, a hymn of joy, sung in the hope of the omnipotence of love.

The testimony is holiness itself. The commandments contained in the law of God are a testimony precisely because He is all-holy. The tablets of the law were kept in the ark of revelation, or testimony (Exodus 27:21), and the tabernacle was called the tabernacle of revelation (Exodus 38:21). The prophets bore witness to God when He accused His people (Jeremiah 29:23) because He wanted to convert them to the kingdom of priests, which became in the New Testament "the royal priesthood" (1 Pet. 2:9). In verse 5 of the same chapter, the priesthood is called holy, predestined "to offer spiritual sacrifices" to the holiness of one's life. The Apostle Peter thus places the idea of witness in connection with the dedication of the congregation to God: "But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people taken as an inheritance, that you may proclaim the perfection of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light" (1 Pet. 2:9).

If the prophets of ancient Israel were called witnesses, it was because the Word they carried was the very presence of God. The Spirit that spoke through them bore witness of Himself. When the Orthodox Church dedicates a feast day to the memory of each prophet – Isaiah, Daniel – she thereby recognizes his personality transfigured through the Word. Some theologians say that all the prophets were deified.

But the faithful witness is Jesus par excellence, for He Himself is the Word of God. He says that He knows what He Himself has seen (John 3:I). He makes the Father known, for He Himself is "He who is in the bosom of the Father" (John 1:18). It is the perfect intimacy between Him and God, who made Him a witness: "All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no man knoweth the Son but the Father; and the Father knoweth no man but the Son, and to whom the Son willeth to reveal" (Matt. 11:27). Testimony is unity, and this is because the witness himself lives in communion with God—in the communion of love and obedience. That is why Jesus became a constant witness of God, who "perfected him through suffering" (Heb. 2:10), and will remain so until the end of history. When Jesus appeared in His death as the "Lamb of God," He became the High Priest of our souls.

There is no other testimony than the testimony of the Cross. This explains why, after the Ascension, Peter demanded in the following words that someone take the place of Judas, who had fallen away: "It is necessary, therefore, that one of those who were with us all the time that the Lord Jesus dwelt and spoke to us, from the baptism of John until the day in which he ascended from us, should be a witness with us of his resurrection" (Acts 1:21-22). Being with Jesus is a source of testimony of His victory. That is why the Christian East calls the contemplation of Jesus bios apostolikos (the apostolic life). Only the one who has seen Christ is a "messenger."

Finally, the witness is the martyr. In Greek, it is the same word. Whoever is for Christ will overcome the devil "with the blood of the Lamb and with the word of his testimony" (Rev. 12:11). For love conquers nature, "the lover and the beloved are united in death," as the Church sings on the feast of St. George.

Nevertheless, the Church is obliged to teach and preach. The priesthood itself is defined as the ministry of the Word. Indeed, the word of the teacher of the Gospel will reach the hearts only if his own heart is wounded by the Word. Only fiery people have a fiery word. Teaching can enlighten the mind, but it does not lead to the glory of God. This can only be done by a spiritual father, that is, a person who is able to give birth to another in Christ. Such a person may not belong to the clergy.

Such a pattern of testimony is equally true for a society marked by religious pluralism or secularized. An indifferent, cold, disappointed or hateful heart will still respond to someone who loves unselfishly. The light of the witness becomes the radiance of Revelation if those who live near a person know that his power comes to him from Christ.