In this vision of one's sin, which gives birth to true humility and unrepentant repentance (2 Corinthians 7:10), lies the only reliable, unshakable foundation of the entire spiritual life of a Christian!

Literature

1. Archbishop Sergius (Stragorodsky). The Orthodox Doctrine of Salvation. St. Petersburg, 190.

2. V.A. Kozhevnikov. Buddhism in comparison with Christianity. Petrograd, 1916, vol. 1.

3. A.N. Kochetov. Buddhism. Moscow, 1968.

4. Suomi Vivekananda. Jnana Yoga. St. Petersburg, 1914.

5. M. Lodyzhensky. The Invisible Light. Petrograd, 1915.

6. Revelations of Blessed Angela. Transl. L.P. Karsavina. Ed. G. Lehman. Moscow, 1918.

7. Losev A.F. Essays on ancient symbolism. Moscow, 1930. T.

8. D.S. Merezhkovsky. Spanish mystics. Brussels, 1988.

9. Dzhems V. Mnoobrazie religioznogo opyta [Diversity of religious experience]. Moscow, 1910.

10. Ignatius Loyola. Spiritual exercises. Transl. S. Lizareva. Krakow, 1933.

11. St. Nilus of Sinai. 153 chapters on prayer. Hl. 115. Philokalia. Moscow, 1884. T. 2.

12. Simeon the New Theologian. On the Three Forms of Prayer. Philokalia. Moscow, 1900 vols. V.

13. Gregory the Sinaite. Chapters on commandments and dogmas. Hl. 131. Philokalia. Vol. V. Izd. 2. Moscow, 1900.

Source: "Troitsky Blagovestnik" No 40, STSL, 1993

 The holiness of man in the Orthodox ascetic tradition

Report

GOD AND MAN

The fact of the primordial and universal nature of religion in the history of mankind testifies not only to the theoretical satisfactoriness of the idea of God as the unconditional Source of all life and all good, but also to the profound correspondence of religion to human nature, to its all-round justification in historical, social, and individual experience.

The essence of religion is usually, and rightly, seen in the special unity of man with God, of the human spirit with the Spirit of God. At the same time, each religion indicates its own path and its own means to achieve this goal. However, the postulate of the general religious consciousness about the need for the spiritual unity of man with God to achieve eternal life always remains unshakable. This idea runs like a red thread through all religions of the world, embodied in various myths, legends, dogmas and emphasizing in different planes and from different sides the unconditional significance and primacy of the spiritual principle in human life, in the acquisition of its meaning.

God, having only partially revealed Himself in the Old Testament, appeared in the fullness that is extremely accessible to man in God the Word incarnate, and the possibility of union with Him became especially clear and tangible thanks to the Church created by Him. The Church is the unity in the Holy Spirit of all rational creatures, following the will of God and thus entering into the Divine-human Organism of Christ – His Body (Ephesians 1:23). Therefore, the Church is a society of saints. However, membership in it is conditioned not simply by the fact of the believer's acceptance of Baptism, the Eucharist and other sacraments, but also by his special participation in the Holy Spirit. So a member of the Church who is indisputable by all external indicators may not be in it if he does not satisfy the second condition. This thought may seem strange: has not a Christian partaken of the Holy Spirit in the sacraments? And if so, what other communion can we talk about? This question is of fundamental importance for the understanding of holiness in Orthodoxy.

STAGES OF LIFE

If the old nature (Ephesians 4:22) was inherited by the descendants of Adam in the natural order, then the birth from the Second Adam (1 Corinthians 15:47) and communion with the Holy Spirit takes place through the conscious-volitional process of personal activity, which has two fundamentally different stages.

The first is when the believer is spiritually born in the sacrament of Baptism, receiving the seed (Matt. 13:3-23) of the New Adam and thereby becoming a member of His Body – the Church. Prep. Symeon the New Theologian says: "... who believed in the Son of God... repents... in his former sins and is cleansed of them in the sacrament of Baptism. Then God the Word enters into the baptized as into the womb of the Ever-Virgin, and dwells in him as a seed"[2] But by Baptism a person is not "automatically" transformed from the "old man" (Ephesians 4:22) into the "new" (Ephesians 4:24). Being cleansed of all his sins and becoming like the first-created Adam, the believer in Baptism, nevertheless, preserves, in the words of St. Maximus the Confessor, passion, decay and mortality [3], inherited by him from his sinful ancestors, there remains in him a susceptibility to sin.

Therefore, the holiness to which a person is called is not yet attained by the sacrament of Baptism. This sacrament is only its beginning, and not its fulfillment, a person is given only the seed, but not the tree itself, which bears the fruit of the Holy Spirit.