All the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar's household. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all (Phil 4:22-23).
Having returned to this city preserved by God, I have much to say from the abundance of my heart. The inscrutable judgments of God have bound me to it by bonds both blessed and fearful, because they are sacred.
First of all, I must gratefully glorify God, the Author of every good. He has been pleased to bring safely to an end my fourth long sojourn far from these borders.
Yet can this be called the end of a sojourn for those who "have here no continuing city," an earthly one, "but seek the one to come," the heavenly (Heb 13:14)?
Then I must reverently greet you, most holy Head, exalted not only by the grace of sacred ministry, but also by the manifest grace of wonderworking.
I greet also your companions, who inhabit these ancient strongholds in a manner worthy of God, by your incorrupt bodies, and still more by the spirit of your prayers pleasing to God.
May you strengthen my weakness by them, correct my unworthiness, and bless me to appear again in the field of service inherited after you.
With love I greet all who stand here and dwell here. You share one-minded faith in Christ and labor together in life according to one law before God.
In whatever calling each has been called, may he honor the true God, serve society, benefit his neighbor, and build up his own salvation.
Only let him walk worthily of the high calling of the Christian.
With special consolation I greet those who share and labor with me in sacred service. In the absence of their hierarch, as in his presence, they preserve their order and foundation without confusion and without shame.
Thus they show in themselves the sign of the Church, unshaken unto the ages.
But, as a bank restrains water, I restrain my speech by the commandment of the Fathers. It bids us have the testimony of divine Scripture for all that we do and say.
By what word of Scripture, then, shall we guide and limit the course of the present discourse?
Let us hear what the holy Apostle Paul says to "all the saints in Christ Jesus," that is, to those sanctified by the truth of Christian doctrine and the power of the Mysteries, "who are in Philippi" (Phil 1:1).
He had preached to them and loved them with the affection of Jesus Christ. He did not come to them in person, but almost the same thing happened through Epaphroditus visiting them and through his letter speaking to them.
"Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" (Phil 1:2), he says at the beginning of his epistle.
Evidently he was not content to pronounce this greeting once. Evidently, having no other so excellent, he repeats the same greeting at the end of the epistle: "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all."
So I too shall say to you, and it is no matter if I say it not for the first time: "grace be with you all."
Grace, insofar as the name explains itself, is the power that bestows good.
In the spirit of the sacred language it is also fitting, if it seems simpler, to call it mercy.
This means the quality and disposition of a good being by which another being appears dear to him and draws love, insofar as it is good.
It draws compassion insofar as it suffers, and forgiveness insofar as it is guilty.
Or, if the concepts must be more precisely distinguished, love and mercy, when they come into action, are called grace. Grace received becomes a gift.
The apostolic words just cited, and many other sacred sayings, show that the source and immediate beginning of grace is God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The Father gives it. Jesus Christ brings it in His name. The Holy Spirit breathes it into believing souls and quickens them by it to spiritual life.
He strengthens them and moves them to activity that is truly beneficent, and therefore pleasing to God and saving.
From this concept of grace, composed according to our ability, it is not difficult to understand how desirable it is for us. Better said, it is necessary.
In its essence, however, grace remains incomprehensible, because it is divine.
Without it there is no hope of forgiveness for the sinner. There is no sure deliverance for the afflicted. There is no good at all for anyone.
Every good comes from the one God.
Since God is infinite in His perfections, He is all-sufficient for Himself. Therefore He has need of no one and nothing, and borrows nothing from anyone.
Therefore He owes nothing and is obliged in nothing to anyone.
Consequently, He gives every good not by any debt or necessity, but only by His boundless love and overflowing grace.
If we examine with some attention even the bodily beings of this visible world, we must separate from them accidental imperfection and impurity.
These were introduced into them by the abuse of the most excellent creative gift, freedom.
Then we shall find that the root beginning and deepest foundation both of their being and of their well-being, or the perfection they can contain, can be nothing else.
It is the same ceaselessly active goodness and power of God.
In the particular manner of its action upon spiritual and free beings, this goodness and power is called grace.
Look at the world of earthly plants renewed in spring, and consider where its beginning and foundation are.
Will you say that it is the earth from which it arises?
Take a handful of earth covering a plant's root. You will see that it has none of the force, beauty, nourishment, or fragrance proper to various plants.
What it does not have, it cannot communicate to them.
Will you also say that the powers of sun, air, and water combine in plants?
But even this does not explain their origin.
How do a few elements produce innumerable kinds of plants, and even in one plant so many different parts and qualities?
How do the same sun, the same earth, water, and air, at the same time and place, produce the strong oak, soft grass, and fragrant rose?
How do they produce hardness in one plant's stem, softness in its leaves, fragrance in its flowers, and nourishment in its fruit?
Let us descend, so far as possible, more deeply to the natural foundations of visible being.
What is the foundation of the earth itself, which seems to be the foundation of what is visible upon it?
Shall we say, with investigators of nature, that it is the force of gravity or attraction toward it, and in the sun and stars, acting mutually among them?
What a dead foundation for a world full of life, even now, when death, which God did not make, has entered it.
What a narrow foundation for so vast an edifice.
And is this even a foundation?
The investigating mind is not satisfied. It asks: on what is so immense a power of attraction founded and in what is it fixed?
This force must bear and move the whole universe.
Lest we fall into the abyss while probing the depth, let us stop.
Is it for us to disclose the inner principles and foundations of nature, we who live, so to speak, on its bark and shell?
Only He who built so immeasurable an edifice can reveal its foundation, and He reveals it insofar as He reveals Himself.
"He hangs the earth upon nothing" (Job 26:7). So Job contemplates Him.
What does "upon nothing" mean? How can anything stand or hang upon nothing?
Job does not deprive God's work of its foundation. He humbles human sense-knowledge, since it does not reach the foundation of God's works.
Go, he says, to the ends of the earth. Descend to that side of it which you imagine to be beneath your feet.
You will find nothing around the earth, above it, or beneath it, except air.
Think how so huge and heavy a body has been held for so many ages in so thin a substance.
Even light down does not remain long in the air, but soon falls.
Your mind is lost. You see the earth hanging, but you do not find upon what.
How, then, can one avoid error in explaining this wondrous phenomenon?
Ascend to the Founder, and you will find the true foundation.
"He hangs the earth upon nothing."
God alone is the Founder of every creature, and in Him alone is its deepest foundation.
Everything stands upon that on which it was set in the beginning.
Look through the telescope of the prophetic spirit, and you will see.
"God said, Let there be light; and there was light" (Gen 1:3).
The same is true of every subsequent creature.
Thus God said, Let it be. Here is the root beginning of all things.
The power of God, the word of God: here is the deepest foundation of their being and their well-being.
One must not imagine the word of God like the spoken word of man. Once it has gone out of the mouth, man's word immediately ceases and vanishes into the air.
In God there is nothing transitory and nothing that vanishes. His word goes forth, but does not pass away: "the word of the Lord abides forever" (1 Pet 1:25).
The creative word is like an adamantine bridge on which creatures have been set and stand.
Beneath it lies the abyss of God's infinity. Above it lies the abyss of their own nothingness.
The power of God, according to our manner of representation, is the hand of the Almighty.
In it He holds the orb of the earth, every speck of its dust, and all the circles of heaven, as many as He Himself counts.
He alone "counts the stars" (Ps 146:4).
This is not my speculation, but the pure revelation of the very wisdom of God through the Apostle.
He says that the Son of God "upholds all things by the word of His power" (Heb 1:3).
He upholds, that is, He acts continually in creatures by His word and His power.
If not exactly as He acted in the first days of their creation, then at least in a like manner.
Even until now the creating Word of God is the foundation of the being of creatures, both begun and continuing.
The blessing Word of God is the foundation of their well-being.
By Him the sun shines. By Him the earth brings forth.
By Him and His inexhaustibly varied power, bread nourishes, wine strengthens, and oil softens and heals.
By Him every creature lives, grows, is perfected, and each is blessed according to its measure, to the glory of creative wisdom, goodness, and might.
After this reflection I ask: what ought to be nearer to God, man or the other earthly bodily creatures?
The answer scarcely needs to be spoken.
Yet lest someone say that all creatures are equally near to their immediate Creator, let us recall known testimonies and signs of man's superior nearness to God.
There is God's counsel concerning his creation, unparalleled in the other parts of creation.
There is the taking, by God's own hand, so to speak, of the purest dust from the earth to form the first man's body.
There is the breathing, into his face, as it were from God's own mouth, of the breath of life.
There is the image of God, shamefully lost, but all the more gloriously restored by the Cross-bearing exploit of the consubstantial Image and Son of God.
He did not consider it unworthy of Himself to become and be called the second Man and the last Adam (1 Cor 15:45, 47).
The heavenly Teacher Himself uses this nearness of man to God, surpassing that of other creatures, as a powerful means of instruction.
He says: "If God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?" (Mt 6:30).
We may now follow the same path of inference when speaking of grace.
If God has "set His dwelling" in the "sun" of this bodily world (Ps 18:5), and by it He shines so beneficently and generously "on the evil and on the good" (Mt 5:45), then much more must the higher realm of the human spirit be a living dwelling of the Most High.
Otherwise it gives itself over to the abomination of desolation and becomes a land of darkness and the shadow of death.
It must be enlightened by His "true Light," which, as the servant of the Light sees and shows, truly "enlightens every man coming into the world" (Jn 1:9).
This is so insofar as man does not flee from this inward light into the outer darkness of evil deeds.
THEOSIS