My beloved spiritual children in Christ Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE.
+
ON THE CHURCH
[Source: Wounded by Love: The Life and Wisdom of Saint Porphyrios]
The Church is without beginning, without end and eternal, just as the Triune God, her Founder, is without beginning, without end and eternal. She is uncreated just as God is Uncreated. She existed before the ages, before the Angels, before the creation of the world--"before the foundation of the world" as the Holy Apostle Paul says. (Ephesians 1:4). She is an expression of the richly varied Wisdom of God. She is the mystery of mysteries. She was concealed and was revealed "in the last of times" (Col. 2:9). The Church remains unshaken because she is rooted in the love and wise Providence of God.
The Three Persons of the Holy Trinity constitute the Eternal Church. The Angels and human beings existed in the thought and love of the Triune God from the beginning. We human beings were born now, we existed before the ages in God's Omniscience.
The Love of God created us in His image and likeness. He embraced us within the Church in spite of the fact that He knew of our apostasy. He gave us everything to make us gods too through the free gift of grace. For all that, we made poor use of our freedom and lost our spiritual beauty, our original righteousness and cut ourselves off from the Church. Outside the Church, far from the Holy Trinity, we lost Paradise, we lost everything. But outside the Church there is no salvation, there is no life. And so the compassionate heart of God the Father did not leave us exiled from His Love. He opened again for us the gates of Paradise in the last of times and appeared in flesh.
With the Divine Incarnation of the Only-begotten Son of God, God's pre-eternal plan for the salvation of mankind was revealed again to men. In his Epistle to Timothy the Holy Apostle Paul says: "And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory" (1 Timothy 3:16). The words of the holy Apostle Paul are dense in meaning: divine, heavenly words!
God in His infinite Love united us again with His Church in the Person of Christ. On entering into the uncreated Church, we come to Christ, we enter the realm of the uncreated. We the faithful are called to become uncreated by grace, to become participants in the Divine energies of God, to enter into the mystery of Divinity, to surpass our worldly frame of mind, to die to the "old man", and to become immersed in God (cf. Col. 3:9; Romans 6:6; Eph 4:22). When we live in the Church we live in Christ. This is a very fine-drawn matter; we cannot understand it. Only the Holy Spirit can reach it to us. (Orthodox Heritage)
(To be continued)
_______________
"Glory Be To GOD For All Things!" -- Saint John Chrysostomos
+++
With sincere agape in His Holy Diakonia (Ministry),
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+Father George