Our Lord Jesus Christ communicates through the Prophets, at times using His name and at others our own, uniting Himself with us as it is written, "two shall be one flesh." This is the reason the Lord declares in the Gospel regarding marriage that they are no longer two but one flesh. One flesh—He assumed our mortality by taking on human form, yet He is not merely one deity, for He is the Creator and we are His creation. Therefore, whatever our Lord conveys through the Flesh He has embraced pertains to both the Head that has ascended into heaven and the members still traversing their earthly paths. Let us listen to our Lord Jesus speaking in prophecies. The psalms were composed long before the Lord's incarnation through Mary, but He was already Lord, for from eternity He has been the Creator of all. In time, He was born of His own creation. Let us affirm this Divinity, striving to comprehend Him as equal to the Father. Yet this Divine nature, equal to the Father, participated in our mortal essence, not from His own lineage but from ours; so that we too might participate in His Divine nature, not from our own but from His.
"Lord, Thou hast tried me, and hast recognized me" (Psalm 138:1). Let the Lord Jesus Christ Himself declare this; and let Him also address the Father: "Lord." His Father can only be called His Lord because He chose to be born in the flesh. He is the Father of God and Lord of Man. Are you aware of whom He is a Father? The equal Son. The apostle states, "Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God" (Philippians 2:6-7). This divinity is a Father, in the form equal to Himself, the only begotten Son, begotten from His own essence. Out of love for us, that we might be transformed and become participants in His divine nature, being renewed unto eternal life, He embraced our mortal nature. What does the Apostle say of Him? He proclaims, "But He emptied Himself, and took upon Himself the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men, and was found in fashion as a man." He existed in the Form of God, equal to the Father; yet He assumed the form of a servant to show Himself less than the Father.
"You have recognized my sitting and my rising" (Psalm 138:2). What is there to sit, and what is there to rise? The one who sits humbles himself. Thus the Lord sat during His Passion and rose in His Resurrection. You have known it, meaning you willed it, you approved it; it was accomplished by Your desire. If you receive the words of the Head in the identity of the Body: a man sits when he humbles himself in repentance, and he rises when his sins are absolved and is elevated to the promise of eternal life. Do not raise yourselves up unless you have first humbled yourselves, for many wish to stand before they sit, striving to appear righteous before they acknowledge their sinfulness.
"You have understood my thoughts from afar; You have marked out my way and my limit" (Psalm 138:3); "and all my paths You have seen beforehand" (Psalm 138:4). What does "afar off" signify? While I am still on my pilgrimage and have not yet arrived in my true homeland, You are aware of my thoughts. The younger son ventured into a distant land, and after enduring labor, suffering, sorrow, and need, he remembered his father and desired to return, saying, "I will arise and go to my father." I will arise, he indicated, for before he sat down. Here, one can discern him declaring, "You knew how I sat down and rose up." I sat down in lack; I rose up in my hunger for Your Bread. You have understood my thoughts from afar. Indeed, I have journeyed far, yet where can I go apart from You, whom I have abandoned? Hence, the Lord proclaims in the Gospel that his father met him as he walked. Truly, for he comprehended his thoughts from afar. "My way," he says; what else but a misguided way—the path that led him away from his father? What is my way? The path I have taken. What is my limit? What I've accomplished. You have delineated my path and my limit. This limit of mine, however distant, was not absent from Your sight. I journeyed far, yet You were present. "And all my ways Thou sawest beforehand." He did not say "saw," but "saw in advance." Before I traversed them, before I engaged with them, You perceived them; and You permitted me to walk my own paths through toil, that if I would not labor, I might return to Your ways. For there is no falsehood upon my lips. What did he mean by this? Behold, I confess to You that I have strayed; I have grown distant from You, the one with whom it was good for me, and it has been for my detriment without You.
"Behold, O Lord, You know all my works, last and ancient" (Psalm 138:5). You were aware of my last deeds when I tended swine; You recognized my earliest actions when I requested my share of the inheritance. Those ancient actions were the inception of my most recent woes: the primal sin at the fall and the final punishment I came under as I entered this taxing mortality. If that was the last time for us, it can be so again if we now seek to return. For indeed, there remains a final reckoning for some wicked individuals, to whom it will be said, "Depart into everlasting fire" (Matthew 25:41). "You have fashioned me, and have laid Your hand upon me." Fashioned me where? In this mortality; now for the labors to which we are all destined. For no human is born without God's creation in their mother's womb; every created being has God as its maker. Yet You have created me within this labor and have placed upon me Your avenging hand, Your chastening hand, humbling the proud. For He has so graciously brought low the exalted, that He might elevate the humble.
"Thy art hath marvellously manifested itself in me; it hath become strong, and I shall not be able to attain it" (Psalm 138:6). Pay attention now to something that is truly profound but brings great delight upon understanding it. Moses, the holy servant of God, to whom God spoke through the cloud, had to be addressed by God in a manner accessible to him, through some work of His hands. He longed to see the truth of God's presence and said to the One who spoke to him, "If I have found grace in Your sight, show me Your glory" (Exodus 33:13). When he earnestly desired this and implored God, who graciously conversed with him, to see His glory, God replied, "You cannot see My face; for no man shall see My face and live" (Exodus 33:20). But I will place you in the cleft of the rock; I will pass by and cover you with My hand; when I have passed, you will see My back, but My face shall not be seen. These words, therefore, reveal another mystery, a figurative representation of truth. "When I pass by," says God, "you shall see My back parts," as if He held a face on one side and a back on the other. We should not think such things regarding this Majesty! For who can hold such a notion of God without being misled? Those who have been angered by the Lord whom they had seen now seek counsel for their salvation, and they are told, "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins" (Acts 2:38). Behold, they only saw His back, whose face they could not behold. For His hand was not permanently over their eyes, while He was passing by. After He departed, He removed His hand from their sight. When the hand was removed from their eyes, they said to the disciples: What shall we do? Initially they were cruel, then became loving; first in anger, then in fear; first hardened, then softened; first blind, then enlightened.
"Behold, you find that a fugitive in a far country cannot escape the gaze of he from whom he flees. And where can he go whose limit is exhausted? Is this what he states? Where shall I go from Your Spirit?" (Psalm 138:7). Who can escape the Spirit that fills the world? "And where shall I flee from Your presence?" He searches for refuge from the wrath of God. What place can shelter God's fugitive? Those harboring fugitives inquire of whom they have fled; when they discover one fleeing from a master of lesser power, they receive him without fear, thinking, "He has no master to pursue him." Yet when they learn of a mighty lord, they either refuse to take him in or do so with great trepidation, knowing even a strong man may be outwitted. Where is there no God? Who can deceive God? Who is unseen by God? From whom does God exempt His chase? Where can that fugitive hide from the gaze of God? He twists this way and that, as if seeking a place to hide.
"If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there" (Psalm 138:8). Finally, wretched fugitive, you have learned that you cannot elude Him from whom you wish to depart. Behold, He is omnipresent; you, where will you go? He has found counsel, and that wisdom was instilled by Him who has chosen to remember it. If, having sinned, I descend into the depths of wickedness, concealing my confession, stating, "Who sees me?" (for in Hades, who confesses to You?), "You are there present to punish." Where can I go to flee from Your presence, that is, to escape Your ire? Such was the design he conceived: "I will flee from Your face; I will flee from Your Spirit; from Your vengeful Spirit, Your wrathful countenance; I will flee." How? "If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea" (Psalm 138:9). Can I flee from Your face if I run to the remotest parts of the ocean? Will not the One from whom I flee be there? For what is the horizon of the sea but the extent of the world? There, let us run with hope and longing on the wings of dual love; let us seek rest only in the furthermost reaches of the sea. Should we desire solace elsewhere, we shall be cast down into the abyss. Let us take wing to the shores of the sea, and ascend on the wings of double love; while we leap towards God in hope, let us mediate at the other end of the sea.
Now, listen to the One who can guide us there, the very One from whom we wish to hide in anger. What does He state further? "And there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall uphold me" (Psalm 138:10). Let us ponder this, beloved brethren, let it be our encouragement, our solace. Let us once more embrace through love the wings that lust had weighed down. For the allure of lust has been the glue of our wings; it has caused us to falter from the liberty of our heavens—the unfettered breeze of God's Spirit. As we fell, we lost our wings and became, in a sense, captives of the fowler; from whence He redeemed us with His blood, from whom we fled to be ensnared. He grants us the wings of His commandments; now liberated, we can lift them high. Yet we must have wings, and He must guide us, for He is our Helper. We possess free will; but even within this freedom, what can we accomplish if He who commands does not assist us?
THEOSIS